I've admitted it before, and I'll admit it again. I'm a geek. One of the shows that I've really enjoyed for a long time is Stargate SG-1, which is now on the SciFi Channel. They've now created a new spin off series called Stargate Atlantis which premiered last night. Granted it was the premier, which means that the cast still has to mature together a little. But my first impressions bring two words to mind: Recipe and Dark.

Ok, first word, Recipe. You can see pretty quickly that they really meant from the beginning for this to be a pure replacement, because they took SG-1 as a recipe for Atlantis. They have a military leader who is sarcastic and has trouble with authority (*cough* Jack O'Neill). They have an alien who joins the team (*cough* Teal'c). They have an alien enemy his is superior to them, but that somehow they will be able to beat week after week (*cough* Goa'uld). This enemy also seems to have the ability to regenerate, and is really really hard to kill. Hmmm... at least they're in another galaxy.

Second word, Dark. That's it. The first world they go to has a lot of night. The enemy is immediately dark and menacing (more than usual). I simply came away with this dark feeling. That's not really abnormal for Sci Fi in general though, but I think it's wrong to do that here. I think one of the things that made SG-1 so popular though was that although they had some dark stuff going on, they somehow kept it a little light. Maybe they'll be able to do that here too, but they're off to a bad start in my opinion.

My two cents, or two words really.