What absolutely kills me about SGU is that the overall premise was incredible. Destiny itself, nevermind the way they even got to the ship in the first place, were just great ideas full of all kinds of plot potential. Put the cast inside a giant flying puzzlebox in space? Genius.
I get that this was concocted on the heels of Battlestar Galactica, which was wall-to-wall internal conflict when the Cylons weren't wrecking house. And... sometimes during. But all those characters had compelling character traits, relatable motivations, and had their humanity shine through all of it - even the frakking Cylon characters! It's a good idea to stick to what works, and what your audience is flocking to go see. what could go wrong?
As it turns out: everything can go wrong. The comic is correct: nobody in the cast is likeable. SGU's writing team wrote themselves into a corner on the first episode, with a bunch of assholes trapped together in what can only be described as the escape-room squad from hell. This undermines the show's premise from the outset, as though Stargate Command didn't bother to assess anyone's personality for the project. Then they undermine every plotline with needless conniving, scheming, and back-biting, with no apparent grasp on the instinctive survival benefits to cooperation. Then they use the body-snaching-ansible-thing to be even more dickish to each other's personal lives and families, back on Earth. Our suspension of disbelief is broken through incompetence at every level of SGC through to the cast itself, then kicked into the dirt even harder by stupendous levels of bad psychology, and finally shot in the head by just a miserable viewing experience.
To be more succinct, I hate this kind of story for the same reason I dislike zombie dramas: It often requires character-breaking incompetence to move the story forward.
The effects, set-work, costuming, and initial concept are all cool as hell though. It all deserves a kind of spiritual reboot.
