The premier of the next series in the Stargate franchise, Stargate: Universe, aired last night on Space. The premise is a group of people consisting of military-types, scientists, and bureaucrats who end up on an extremely old spaceship that travels faster than the speed of light, millions of light years away from Earth, after escaping via a stargate from a military outpost that came under attack. Rather than dialling a stargate address in the Milky Way galaxy, the lead scientist dialled a stargate address that had an extra character in its address. This nine-character address took them to Destiny, the spaceship, which was created by the Ancients thousands of years ago.

Being an extremely old spaceship, there are a number of “challenges” they’re going to have to deal with. First and foremost: the life support systems in the ship are not exactly in the greatest condition and there are a number of rather inconvenient holes that are slowly venting what remains of the atmosphere into space. They have extremely limited supplies of food and water. The lack of a proper doctor to look after the people who were injured in the evacuation is going to tax their medic.

And, of course, there’s the lead scientist who wants to explore for the sake of exploring. There are hints that he may have other motivations, too.

One of the character finds himself thrust into the world of the stargate after solving some thousand-year old mathematical puzzle that  the military had embedded in a video game to identify geniuses, similar to how the government tested the security of a new encryption scheme in the movie Mercury Rising.

I thoroughly enjoyed the premier and I’m looking forward to the rest of the series. The actors were brilliant, the characters were real, the sets and effects stunning, the cinematography superb and Joel Goldsmith’s music was perfect.

Commenters over at Joseph Mallozzi’s blog appear to like the new series, too. (Joseph is one of the consulting producers and writers of SGU and has been teasing his readers over the last few weeks with pictures from the series.)

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