OK, bear with me. This will seem like a pretty meaningless and trivial post (as opposed to the world-shatteringly important ones, like the cat photos), but I think there might be something of some cultural importance here.
Two science fiction shows from recent years that I found entertaining were “Stargate SG-1” and “Primeval.” They had a few points of similarity:
1) Both are set in the present day
2) There are wormhole-like things that allow for instant travel from this world to another
3) There are teams whose job it is to investigate these “portals” and what lies beyond
4) The government is fully aware of the portals and what lies beyond, but is covering it up from the public
5) There are, nevertheless, journalists trying to uncover the truth
6) There are competing groups trying to control the portals
7) there are dangers on the other side of the portals… and sometimes they come through into our world
OK. Now, the differences:
1) Stargate is American TV, set largely in America; Primeval is Brit TV set largely in Britain
2) The “Stargate” is a machine built millenia ago by aliens, and it opens a portal to other stargates on other worlds across the galaxy; the portals in Primeval are gateways to the distant past (or future) of Earth, and appear to be naturally occuring holes in spacetime
3) Stargate thus deals with aliens; Primeval deals with dinosaurs and such.
Now, here’s where this becomes interesting to me. In both shows, the people involved are *forever* getting in trouble with the aliens/critters on the other side of the portals. In general, they’re always getting their asses handed to ’em by those on the other side. But… while the Stargate team is getting whupped by aliens thousands of years more technologically advanced than modern humans, the Primeval team is getting spanked by critters with no more smarts than your average retarded rat. Now, why might this be? Well, let’s take a look at the teams involved:
Primeval:
Stargate:
Primeval:
Stargate:
Primeval:
Stargate:
Primeval:
Stargate:
I notice one subtle difference in how the teams are equipped. Did you catch it? That’s right… the Stargate team wears camouflage.
And packs heat. Lots of heat.
If you notice in the last of the Primeval cast shots, there is one guy tucked way in the back holding a shotgun. This character was an addition in the third season, when it was becoming obvious even to the BBC that “gee, maybe some form of defense might make some sort of sense, as these velociraptor chaps aren’t behaving properly.” But even then the guy was something of a puss… and of course none of the rest of ’em were armed (except for the occasional tranquilizer rifle which tended to not work terribly well on the bigger and angrier critters).
Granted, this Just Television. Getting too worked up about this makes as much sense as a Kirk vs Picard argument (when we all know the winner: Nuke ‘Em Sheridan). Still, I think a message of some small importance can be gleaned from this.
Anybody with more than a double-digit IQ should be able to figure out that if there is a Magic Portal To A Dangerous Beyond, you had damned well better prepare for all kinds of eventualities… and often enough those eventualities seem to be aliens and other critters that want to eat you. As a consequence, if you must send people through, or have a reasonable suspicion that those Dangerous Nasties are going to come through on their own…your people had damned well better be armed. This is just basic sense. And yet, the British take on the idea seems to be that arms are dirty, nasty things, almost more distasteful than being chewed up and swallowed by some prehistoric blighter. While in Stargate, they’d often enough go through packing not just guns… but nuclear fricken’ bombs. And when we encountered aliens, the first things we did was reverse engineer their weapons and power systems.
Interestingly, one thing that repeatedly startled me for the first few years of Stargate SG-1 was how often the team would wander into some alien village with machine pistols, rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers, zap guns, grenades, knives and what have you all hanging out in the breeze, right out in front of Odin and everybody… and the villagers/aliens – from paleolithic tech on up to Star Trek-level tech – *never* freaked out about it. For the longest time this seemed like an oversight to me. But then I realized that it was a rare case of Hollywood *not* being stupid. In a world where all kinds of people and aliens and critters are coming and going… of course you go about armed. Duh.
In the end, Willing Suspension Of Disbelief lets me sit back and enjoy TV shows about stargates and cracks in the fabric of spacetime; stories about aliens snakes living in people’s heads, and super-evolved bats. But I just can’t suspend disbelief enough to let Primevals’ wholly bizarre world of intentionally defenseless humans slip by without complaint.
18 Responses to “Stargate vs Primeval: A Clash of Cultures”
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“Nuke ‘Em Sheridan”? I knew there was a reason I enjoyed your blog! Now the key question: “What do you want?”
> “What do you want?”
Understanding is a three-edged sword.
I never really “got” Primeval, it just didn’t zing, for whatever reason. And I actually like a lot of English telly!
Oh, and I am more a “wait till its all out on disc” kind of series watcher. So I am usually a couple years behind the curve in that respect.
>And I actually like a lot of English telly!
Same here. The odd thing is, “Doctor Who” has everyone – except, of course, for the Doctor and his “companions” – running around armed to the teeth. But Dr. Who his own self makes it quite clear that he dislikes armaments and those who carry them. As he wipes out entire species.
I really liked Stargate. It got stale around the eighth season (after the snake guys were mostly gone), but even then the producers did a reasonably good job keeping new plot-lines going. The problem was not the storylines, but that the basic premise was getting old.
Stargate also has…
Jack O’Neill!
Sam Carter!
Teal’c!
And…. THE MEN
Hammond of Texas and Master Bra’tac.
Who are you?
This was not made by the BBC – have a look at the pictures it says ITV. There is more than one channel in the UK….
> This was not made by the BBC…
Ah, but here in the US it’s shown on the BBC:
http://www.bbcamerica.com/shows/primeval/
They show it, it’s theirs.
> There is more than one channel in the UK…
Indeed. A quick check of Wiki shows BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three *and* BBC Four.
Dont’cha know Scott? Public ownership of the media is the only real way to handle information dissemination in a democracy. Americans are just backward fools when it comes to this whole “freedom of the media” nonsense.
Favorite line:
“Can I say here that this is a VERY badly designed bomb??”
Randy
Yeah, the UK has BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, then a handful of left wing “private” channels that spew even more lies than the BBC.
Even “Doctor Who” has been dragged into this mess by now. “Waters of Mar”s… oh yeah, the oil and the climate almost brought mankind to extinction! Whaaa whaaa whaaa! BBC doing the bidding of their master in Downing Street.
BBC should be renamed into BPC. Brown’s Propaganda Channel.
You could also compare Primeval vs Stargate like this:
A bunch of wussy Brits vs the bad mofos from USAF and USMC and Teal’c.
Indeed.
Sue me, but knowing what’s happening in the UK, having seen some of it with my own eyes, my respect for Great Britain has gone down the drain. It’s worse than Germany or the Netherlands there. 4 million CCTV cameras in the streets, solely to spy on law abiding citizens. Crime rates are soaring anyway. Gun related crime’s going up up and away, despite the strict gun control laws. The UK is a hellhole, thanks to Labour under Blair and Brown.
Mountainbear – You should read the Fourth Realm series by John Twelve Hawks. He points out many of the things that you are talking about. Also recommended is “The Way We Live Now”, which you can download from Amazon for cheap.
Mountain Bear shows the typical American shit head attitude!
Don’t think just shoot it, the real of the world isn’t like that!
> Mountain Bear shows the typical American shit head attitude!
Mountain Bear complained of the proliferation of CCTV cameras that are turning the UK into a “surveillance state.” That makes him a “shit head?”
Odd, that.
> Don’t think just shoot it, the real of the world isn’t like that!
Ah. So how is the “real world?” Did the Tutsi and the Hutus settle their differences with a game of Scrabble?
The ultimate purpose of the second amendment is to make sure that the citizens have the means to revolt against the government should the need ever arise. If completely believing in the meaning and purpose of that amendment makes me a “typical American shithead,” so be it.
Mountain Bear wrote:
>A bunch of wussy Brits vs the bad mofos from USAF and USMC
>and Teal’c.
Just a “note” but other than Teal’C, (forgetting about who taught HIM? Master Bra’tac? :o) it was ALL the “bad-mo-fos” of the USAF :o)
We don’t need no “jarheads,” “squids,” etc, the Air Force carries the day all by itself. (Which I think is a LITTLE over-doing it personally, AF-SpecOps are tough mind you but come on… :o)
Anyone else noting the “uniforms” of the Star Gate Command are rapidly trending towards “Battlestart Galactica”?
Randy
LOL noticed that a long time ago. Kinda like the whole startrek lets wear spandex and hold lasers but never think about personal armor, night vision gernades etc.
One of those things that always bugged me.
The airforce flying ships……seriously? No. Navy flys the ships. Marines fight the land battles.
That whole atlantis thing wouldnt have happened if they had marines or some good army airborne.