THIS is how you do time travel

I can’t believe this.

After all my negative reviews and all the trashing followed by a slow, steady improvement that showed that either the producers were actually listening to fans or they were leading up to something in the first place — it’s all going to be over soon.

To say that “Stargate Universe” started out slowly is an understatement. It started out horribly.

The actors took a long time to get their cadence built up, and the “we’re gonna die every episode” mentality got old really quickly.

So SyFy did what SyFy does — they cancelled the show without asking too many questions.

And here’s the kicker: Season 2 has been excellent, particularly at the end.

The episodes Common Descent and Epilogue stack up with anything else on SyFy and did the “time travel” angle better than “SG-1″ and “Atlantis” ever did. The two-parter was moving, gripping and human, and the actors did a good job putting it all out there.

The episodes revolved around the Destiny accidentally going back in time 2,000 years before being destroyed, but not before most of the crew went to a nearby planet. Over the next 2,000 years, they spawned their own civilization.

In some weird loop of time, a copy of the Destiny arrived later and found “their people.” The resulting interaction was the best piece of television the “Stargate” franchise has ever put out.

And after the action-packed Blockade episode, that left one crew member blind in another emotional performance, there’s only one left before “Universe” goes away for good.

That, is a shame. Because I was wrong about “Stargate: Universe.” Dare I say, it’s good. It has a lot of the components that the other two shows lacked, and its serious tone is starting to sell the human drama element that is so critical in a science fiction show.

Maybe if the first two seasons were packed together into one. Maybe if the producers forced a little more team building before taping the show. Maybe it’s not too late. I don’t know what the exact solution is, but certainly even the suits at SyFy must have felt that “Universe” had a chance when it was discussed at Comic-Con in San Diego in 2009.

Unfortunately, it all happened too slowly, even for cable’s standards.

The SyFy channel’s latest iteration of the wormhole franchise will get a second season. “Stargate Universe” will begin filming a 20-episode season two in early 2010.

The first season had its fall premiere last week and will return to finish out the season in April.

The show has averaged 2.6 million viewers, including DVR recordings, per episode.

“Universe” is the second highest-rated show on SyFy, after “Ghost Hunters.”

In other SyFy news, “Sanctuary” will be renewed for a third season.

Sex and affairs. Sex and affairs. I have a few aunts back home who would love this show.

We are so close. I’m mixed on this episode. I like the dark character twists. I don’t like the love triangles so much. Cheating and affairs and all that shit … I just don’t know.

I liked “Time.” Poof. It was gone. Not on television. They even wrapped up the interesting “Time” storyline online. I guess, there wasn’t enough time to finish “Time.”

Enter “Life.” With an initial impression that screams: “Days of Our Lives.”

Here’s a sci-fi question: They have no fresh food. They’re rationing what they have. Why are they all doing heavy calisthenics and burning all their calories? You lose weight when you starve to death too.

The interesting thing in this episode was the discovery of an Ancient chair that might hold the knowledge the crew needs to use the ship or maybe even get home.

There’s a lesbian story arc with Ming-Na’s (E.R.) character. I like it. It’s well done. It’s romantic instead of pornographic like most shows show lesbians. It adds value to the story and the character, which is always a struggle in Stargate with International Oversight Committee members. I just loved it. It is the only relationship that feels real so far. Ming-Na, a guest, supporting character, has shown the most talent.

And that’s just interesting. Homosexuality is lampooned on television. It’s debated in most of the country. And on this show, this show that I’ve trashed all fall, there’s a homosexual relationship that’s portrayed as real is real life is.

Also, Lt. Scott has a kid. We saw that coming.

What I also like is the intrigue being shown by Rush and the conflict between Col. Young and Dr. Rush. We actually have some interaction between the characters that’s meaningful.

Let’s go back to an argument I’ve made for three weeks now: If we were in week four or week five, we’d be on the right track. We’re still behind. We’re through 10 episodes with five episodes of story.

Yes, I’ve decided it: I liked “Life.” It sets a stage. Even a seed sprouts in the end, a sign of hope.

Cause, maybe, just maybe, they’re not doomed every week.

Well … FINALLY.

This week the team of flirty, dramatic lost wanderers finds themselves on a jungle planet with weird food, and suddenly people start getting sick. The race is on to figure out what’s making everyone sick and how to fix it before time runs out.

It’s an episode! Get it? Well, almost. Because it’s another multi-part episode.

But it’s progress. We’ve well established that they’re stranded on a ship in outer space with no chance of getting home. That doesn’t mean they can’t have a little off-world fun, does it?

There’s drama, jungle, disease, rain, but oh no wait, it’s all just a flashback from an alternate reality that they now need to work to prevent. Perhaps even two alternate realities.

Finally, it almost feels like we’re watching Stargate again.

Character development: We learn about these people. We learn their human stories; where they come from; what their burdens are. We learn what makes them tick, and it makes is relate to the characters. How many people gasped when they learned *spoiler* that Eli’s mom’s mystery sickness is that she was a nurse who got HIV from a junkie who stabbed her in a hospital.

These are the kinds of things that add value to the show. The soldier and the scientist working together, helping each other.

In the episode, a team from the Destiny arrives on a jungle world and finds one of their floating recording devices already on the planet with a full recording file. They return immediately and see that the video is actually of them. The team on the tape arrives, comes down with a horrible disease, and they can’t risk going home. But at night, horrible lizard-like creatives emerge and attack, laying waste to the team. Lt. Scott gets bit and goes into a coma. He wakes up to find he’s the only one alive. The alien snake’s venom cured the disease. An unstable wormhole meant that when Scott tried to return to Destiny, it sent him back in time, and that’s how the “real” team found the recording device.

Back to the present, the disease isn’t from the planet, it’s from the water the team brought back two episodes ago. Now the team has to go back to the awful snake planet to capture one of them and extract its venom to cure everyone else.

Things don’t go well, but that’s all the time we have for today. Tune in next week for the dramatic conclusion.

I don’t like all of these multi-part episodes, but it’s progress. It’s already late in the season, but I can sense that we’re getting closer to “good” here in SGU.

As I’ve said before, if we were at this point a month ago, things would be a lot cheerier in the SGU world, especially among fans of SG-1 and Atlantis. If the setup wasn’t so awful leading up to this, I don’t think I’d have said a negative word about the show so far.

Ch-ch-ch-changes.

The inclusion of Richard Dean Anderson in this episode of “Stargate Universe” was a happy anecdote. He’s now a 3-star general.

Totally changed is the senator’s wife, role from a raging alcoholic who’s emotionally out of control to this oddly grounded matron who has to comfort and reassure her daughter. I guess grief is a process.

Oh wait … HEY! A sex scene! Col. Young, (Justin Louis) millions of light years away, used one of the ancient communications stone devices to take over a soldier’s body on Earth to communicate with everyone back home. And he has sex — in that soldier’s body — with his wife. I’ll leave that one out there for you to comment on. We also learned that Young had an affair with Johansen (Alaina Huffman) before any of this all happened. It might has also been the reason she has decided to leave the Stargate/Icarus program shortly before the attack that forced them to evacuate through the Ninth Chevron.

And then, two of the other characters, in two other people’s bodies, get drunk and go clubbing. Elyse Levesque plays a decent drunk. Not great, but decent.

We do learn more about these characters. The senator’s daughter role (Levesque) gets a back story that’s not too surprising. She was a shallow, rich, bitch, whose boyfriend is dating her best friend now. She didn’t have real friends, and she’s beginning to learn that her happy little life wasn’t so great. This is all good stuff. This is character development. There remains much work to do on the three fronts of character development, writing dialog, and acting it out.

The Eli character (David Blue) was also improved. We knew he was an underachieving misfit with a sick mom, but we saw more of his inner monologue. We gets to take over the body of an attractive, fit man and gets to be popular with the ladies for once.

Improvement was made in this episode, but I still can’t help but wonder if this much progress could have been made in three episodes instead of seven. We are also having all of these “good” moments on Earth, instead of on the ship the show is set in.

We learned in previous episodes that the ship, “Destiny” recharges its power by flying through a sun, but each pass doesn’t recharge the batteries to 100 percent. Earth has a master plan to fire the ship’s weapons, to lower the ship’s power, to force the ship to further recharge its batteries entirely by flying through another star, hopefully giving the ship enough power to dial the Stargate back to Earth. We know this fails, because that would essentially end the show. A nice twist is the fact the plan might have worked — or it might have blown up the ship — if Dr. Rush (Robert Carlyle) hadn’t staged the whole thing to fail.

Rush showed me something in this episode. He’s spiteful and arrogant, but we’re finally seeing clearly that his goal is to study the ship and learn more about the universe. The ship might be very well able to get everyone back home, but Rush’s experiment is ongoing.

On a side note, it’s so refreshing to continuously see the talent that Carlo Rota brings to the table every time. The man who played Morris O’Brianon in “24″ added something to “Stargate Universe” in his brief appearance as a member of the International Oversight Committee.

This was the best episode of “Universe” yet, but it came six weeks and seven episodes later. You get the feeling we’re an an impasse here. They’re stranded. Earth tried to intervene/interfere and failed, and now they have to figure things out for themselves. If this were week four, I think people would be more drawn in to the suspense.

Wow … more sex drama. Ooo … Scott got caught with the senator’s daughter by his former lover. Why exactly did he stop banging the first girl anyway?

“General Hospital” is on Wednesdays at 3 p.m. on ABC, but that’s not what we’re talking about.

I’ve been holding back so far in my “Stargate Universe” episode reviews. I’m a fan. I keep hoping they’re going to bust out with “the big one,” and everyone is going to be happy.

We noticed later on in the “Stargate SG-1″ and “Atlantis” runnings that the powers that be would put together a fantastic opening plot, fraught with unimaginable danger and peril, only to hastily wrap it up when they ran out of time. We saw this when SG-1 “fought” Ares. How about “Red Alert?” That’s what’s happening so far in “Universe,” only it’s happening at the beginning of the series. And it’s happening on two fronts. The makers are building up this fantastical plot in every episode, complete with certain death. Only each episode spends 40 minutes building up a 5 minute plot. And each episode is building up to what we assume is going to be something, but we’re deeply into the season without any hint of the endgame.

In this episode, “Water,” Lt. Smith (Brian J. Young) nearly dies on an ice planet only to not die. This is maybe the third time this has happened to him.

Oh and an alien bug that may or may not be benevolent was flushed out of the ship via the Stargate. I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of that.

And that’s it. That’s all that happened on this week’s episode of “Stargate Universe.” It was 43 minutes of “oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, what are we gonna do?” and no substance. We know little more about the characters, and, frankly, I am starting to care less and less about each one to the point where I’d like to see someone killed off just to make things interesting. Do the producers forget what happened when Daniel Jackson died/ascended to a higher plane of existence on “SG-1?” People went nuts. People created “Save Daniel” websites. People were truly in love with these characters. To a slightly smaller extent, the same applied to the now-abandoned characters on “Atlantis.”

“Universe?” No one gives a shit about these people. Even Ben Browder has a proper introduction to “SG-1″ that made us care about him. And he’s a better actor than anyone on this new show. Even Robert Carlyle is beginning to let down (though, to his credit, it’s mostly the writing that’s making him look bad).

The producers are acting like they have a three-season order in place already from SyFy. All seven episodes have been garbage so far. They have done nothing to build a community feeling for the viewers. In the past two shows — and on any good sci-fi show — the audience is naturally brought in somehow. They feel included. In “Universe” we feel like the outsiders. We’re the nerdy kids watching the high school football game. There are aspects of a good sci-fi series that make people go apeshit and dress up in full-on cosplay costumes — that they make themselves, spending sometimes thousands of dollars on — to attend conventions.

What you never saw, was someone dressing up as their favorite Gilmore Girl. It’s a different fanbase, people.

Sadly, “Universe” fails both as a sci-fi show and a teenage melodrama, because the elements that attract sci-fi fans religiously aren’t there and the writing just sucks.

So we’ll see what happens next week.

We’ve been talking so much about Stargate lately.

Between Universe and the recent news about Jason Momoa, you’d think we’d have covered it all by now, right?

Wrong.

“Stargate Atlantis” alumnus David Hewlett, who’s appearing in the forthcoming straight-to-video movies that will wrap up the “Atlantis” story, was recently cast in an indie film called “The Whistleblower,” GateWorld reported.

The movie films in Romania and is about the true story of a Nebraskan police officer who outs the United Nations for covering up sex trafficking.

Hewlett plays an American U.N. peacekeeper who’s suspected of being involved in the elicit sex trade. It’s a far ways away from his nerdy scientist character in Stargate.

“The Whistleblower” also stars Rachel Weisz, Vanessa Redgrave, David Strathairn and Monica Bellucci, so it’s the real deal.

GateWorld also said that MGM gave Hewlett a green light on a script he’s working on. No details about that just yet.

This isn’t your older brother’s Stargate.

And for people who have been loyal to Stargate and Sci-Fi Channel and now SyFy, this isn’t our Stargate either.

What’s left is for us to decide if that’s a bad thing or not.

Through the first four episodes? Yeah. It’s a bad thing.

Now we get to the fifth episode of the series. Once again, the crew is facing imminent demise.

Only 15 people will fit aboard a shuttle that can leave the “Destiny” for another planet. The melodrama unfolds but becomes difficult — actually impossible — to believe when half of the main cast of the show is not picked in a lottery to decide those 15 shuttle-mates.

Oh my god, MacGyver, how can you possibly get out of this one??

Of course, they do. Everyone lives to die another day.

The ship was on a collision course with a sun. What happens? Instead of crashing into the sun and dying, the ship’s tiny remaining shield power protects it while the ship flies directly into the sun, which recharges the ship’s power. All is well.

Yay.

This whole experience — after more than a month of episodes — unites this crew of misfits. Now they’re all friends. Or are they? Another cliff hanger at the end of Episode 5: “Light.”

This month has taught us definitively that “Stargate Universe” is absolutely not “Stargate SG-1.” In the second episode of SG-1, the crew was already out visiting new planets and encountering new civilizations. SG-1 and Atlantis were shows about societies and groups of people. Universe is a show about a few people. The main problem so far is that I don’t give a damn about these people. There’s no depth to them, except maybe Dr. Rush (Robert Carlyle) who is easy to single out as the bad guy or just a pure Machiavellian.

But there’s too much build up and anticipation and not enough performance. Every episode of “Stargate Universe” is prom night with chevrons.

Thinking outside the box here, maybe they should have brought back Ben Browder for this one? Or Joe Flanigan? There’s a lot of inexperience on this show. It’s already written like The CW’s version of Stargate

I’m not saying that we need a new episodic adventure every week. SGU is obviously tied into this main story for survival far from Earth. I get it. All I’m saying is we don’t need an hour to realize that the crew isn’t going to die for the fifth time. Let’s explore a bit. Let’s have some adventures.

The show has two elements that can be used to make a few interspersed episodic adventures work: When the ship stops in a solar system, there’s a ticking clock until it will jump back into “faster than light speed.” The crew can disembark on an adventure. You can leave the ticking clock at the bottom of the screen and let then get into all sorts of mischief, trying to make sure they can get back in time.

You also have a love triangle emerging with Chloe (Elyse Levesque) and the muscular hero Matthew Scott and the lovable nerdy genius Eli. The Stargate overlords skirted (totally ignored) the love triangle in “Stargate Atlantis,” but now you can use it. There are more ways to make drama than “death at every possible turn.”

The show is still getting better ratings than “Dollhouse” though.

Will you please just get on with it already?

We get it. They’re in space. It’s dark. It’s a big freaking void.

But I’m so sick of the “Stargate Universe” crew facing imminent death at every foreseeable turn.

Can we start watching the show now? Please?

We’re three weeks and four episodes in, and they’re already recording the “Dear Home, If we die out there…” messages. They didn’t get to that until the end of the first season of “Atlantis.” Although we knew they would go there, because Brad Wright and company stopped writing new show ideas sometime around 2001.

I don’t mean to be bitter. I’m still glad that some semblance of Stargate is back on the air, even if it is just a semblance.

This week’s episode, “Darkness” felt too similar to the first three episodes. Maybe frustration is a good thing? I admit that I’m really looking forward to whatever enemy or actual plot will start to develop.

There’s also just — I never thought I’d actually say this — there’s too much sexual tension. It seems like any 10 characters are just going to drop down and bang at any given moment. Stargate Orgy, anyone?

We do have a genuine McKay/Zelenka between Rush and Volker.

Nothing else happened in this episode. They were dying before “Darkness,” and they’re still dying. They found some new planets, but now they might crash into the sun. They’re out of power. Etc.

“Darkness” could have been a 10 minute intro to a real episode.

Kinda waiting on one of those…

Not much at all in terms of premieres today. Just cable stuff, really.

Lifetime has “Sherrie” at 7 p.m. and Rita Rocks at 7:30. Logo has “The Decorating Adventures of Ambrose Price” at 10 p.m., and BET has “The Mo’Nique” show at 11.

The two-hour season premiere of Ugly Betty will be pushed back a week from October 9 to October 16 on ABC. Then it will settle into every Friday at 9 p.m.

The Versus network opened its fifth season of NHL game coverage with about 830,000 total viewers total watching the Bruins vs. Capitals and Avalanche vs. Sharks. Versus is the only cable channel that airs NHL matches.

The first two-hours of the three-hour/two-week premiere of Stargate Universe did well for itself, drawing 2.35 million total viewers, beating Dollhouse on Fox, though some will argue that these numbers represent live views only and not DVR views. This argument holds that Sci-Fi nerds have nothing better to do on a Friday night than watch Stargate, while Dollhouse’s stalwart fanbase is out clubbing on going on dates.

NBC will cut back its drama “Day One” from 13 episodes to a meager four-part miniseries after budget issues.

Comcast is continually trying to take over the digital world. The company is in talks to buy NBC Universal and it’s also working with Hulu to try and get that company to charge for its online video service.

People weren’t exactly glued to their televisions on Friday, but “Dollhouse” is off to rough start. And that’s an understatement.

FOX’s second episode of the Joss Whedon show finished fourth on Friday night, just above The CW.

The CBS premiere of “Ghost Whisperer” carried the 8 p.m. hour Friday.

But it was the 9 o’clock hour that was really interesting. NBC won the hour with, of all things, “Dateline.” CBS was second for “Medium,” ABC’s “The Forgotten” was third. “Dollhouse came in fourth, raking in just 2.1 million viewers and its lowest ever 0.8 rating for the second new episode of the season. Last week’s premiere drew about 2.75 million viewers.

“Stargate Universe” did premiere Friday night, and we’re sure that hurt “Dollhouse,” but the numbers aren’t out yet form SyFy.

If this keeps up, “Dollhouse” could go the way of Joss Whedon’s “Firefly.”

The show opened with chaos and questions.

Then there was a flashback, followed by an old 80s movie plot line where a young, ingenious nerd beats a video game that the government set up.

Then Jack O’Neill (Richard Dean Anderson) shows up to beam the nerd aboard a spaceship. Then there’s a appearance by Dr. Daniel Jackson (Michael Shanks). The first reaction was simple: I really miss Stargate. I miss the characters I’ve become familiar with and watched struggle through every imaginable enemy

That comes to an apex when our young teen (David Blue) is beamed to a space ship called the “George Hammond” named for the late commander of the Stargate program, General George Hammond, played by the late, great Don S. Davis, who gave his last media interview to Blast before his death in 2008.

Even Gary Jones, an SG-1 series regular, makes an appearance on the two-hour opener of “Stargate Universe.” It’s a reminder that Stargate is back, but not in the way fans have known for the past decade. This is a new Stargate. It’s younger, edgier. There’s even a sex scene, which we don’t think we’ve seen in either of the previous shows or the movies.

Robert Carlyle plays a brilliant yet frustrated scientist trying to solve the mystery of the Stargate’s “ninth and final” chevron. A secret off-world military base has a special stargate on it that is tapped into the planet’s core for power. It’s purpose is to dial that ninth chevron. His character, Dr. Nicholas Rush, the scientist who has endeavored for years to solve the riddle of the last Ancient stargate secret. He’s got some work to do. I’m still seeing Renard from “The World is Not Enough” at times.

When the base comes under attack by an old enemy, the Lucian Alliance, the base is forced to evacuate through the ninth chevron address, which lands them on a massive ship built by The Ancients, the old and advanced race that built the Stargate System. The ship has been traveling faster than light for hundreds of thousands of years. It’s several billion light years from Earth.

Nerd moment: There’s a little plot hole that old Stargate fans will catch. When the base is attacked, its only real defense is The Hammond, a brand new Earth ship with all kinds of amazing gear and weapons. It’s attacked by three “motherships,” an antiquated enemy vessel that the Hammond could dispatch easily with a single blast from its Asgard weaponry. But that moment is not important to the rest of the show.

The ninth chevron leads to the ancient ship, which can travel faster than light without using hyperspace technology. The life support is failing and people are injured and dying.

That completes the first hour of this two-part episode.

In the second part, the team is floating along on the ship trying to get things in order, doing the usual sci-fi stuff.

David Blue plays the math whiz, Eli Wallace, and he sells his part well like a television Jonah Hill.

The producers know that they have to do a lot to make us fall in love with these brand new characters, and halfway through the second part, they come as close as I would have thought possible. A gut-wrenching scene of self-sacrifice involving one of the main character’s fathers draws the viewer into the show.

There’s conflict. Much like the first few episodes of Stargate Atlantis, there are scientists and soldiers and even some politicians jockeying for position, trying to figure out who knows best. Meanwhile, the ship is dangerously high on carbon dioxide.

The show has all the elements to get us interested and leave us wanting more. There’s even a mini cliffhanger ending where we learn that the ship’s autopilot brings it to a planet every so often.

But the 80 minutes of footage in the first two parts of the opening episode was either poorly edited or made to purposefully leave plot holes. At some point, Dr. Rush uses an ancient (and reusable) communications device to contact Earth, but no footage of his contact with Earth is shown, and the team inexplicably never uses the device again. I guess they have to be able to contact Earth sometimes, and that does leave open the possibility of cameos from old SG-1 and Atlantis characters, but it’s a bit gaping. We’re pretty sure this gets closed up in the third part of “Air” which airs next Friday.

The big issue is that one or two of the characters need to separate themselves. They need to stand out in the way Sheppard and McKay did on Atlantis. I didn’t quite get a feeling for who would take the lead here, though it’s possible that Blue will stand out, while Brian J. Smith, who plays the number two military guy, Lt. Scott, has potential. But Sheppard and McKay stuck out from the first few minutes of “Atlantis.” Not so in “Universe.”

Next week will be big in terms of the show’s success or failure. The season is tentatively scheduled for 20 episodes, and we’ll have to see what happens. Right now I’m left wanting more, but I’m not sure why.

SAN DIEGO — One of the most anticipated presentations of San Diego Comic-Con International was the “Stargate Universe” panel, complete with creators Brad Wright and Robert Cooper and the “Comic-Con virgin” cast.

“Universe” is the third television series in the “Stargate” franchise, and it centers on a melange of characters thrown together on a ship and forced to survive while at the same time embarking on the adventures that fans have come to expect from this particular science-fiction establishment.

The cast is comprised of all new faces to the series, a fact highlighted when a group of the actors, laughing, told the story of when they dropped by the “Stargate” booth in the Exhibition Hall. Not only were they not recognized by the booth worker, they were even asked if they were interested in entering a draw to win a guest spot on the show.

Blast spoke to two of the show’s female stars, Alaina Huffman (familiar as the Black Canary to fans of “Smallville”), who plays medic Tamara Johansen, and Elyse Levesque, who plays the character Chloe Armstrong. The conversation ranged from their thoughts on their characters, to “Battlestar Galactica,” to the oh-so-dreamy Robert Pattinson, and of course, geek culture.

The funny story of their trip to the “Stargate” booth was fresh in their minds when asked about their experience at the convention thus far. “That poor girl,” Levesque said. “We just didn’t have the heart to tell her, to set her straight. So we just kinda went along with it.”

Sympathetic, Huffman defended her. “Why would she know? Well…”

BLAST: Well she’s just working the “Stargate” panel, I dunno. You would have thought that standing in front of the “Stargate” would have jogged some memory.

Levesque: You’d think but no, no…

BLAST: Well how has your experience been so far? You’ve done the panel, you’ve done the Exhibition Floor…

Levesque: It’s unreal. It’s been such a trip! I didn’t really know “" I don’t know if any of us knew the enormity of this, how big this actually is. One thing that’s been so surprising is how instantaneous the information is. Like, words-you’re-saying-words, and they’re already on the Internet. People are finishing your thoughts for you somewhere online. It’s just so massive. It’s really impressive to see all the people, all the fans and they’re so committed and they’re standing in line for hours and hours at the crack of dawn to meet you… It’s just surreal, for me.

Huffman: I found wonderful reception at the panel yesterday, and also at the autograph signing on the floor. I mean, it was a big room full of people. The energy was wonderful.

Levesque: Really positive.

Huffman: Yes, it was really positive. Like Brad said, we were all comic-con virgins, despite, you know, some of our science-fiction backgrounds. I thought I was going to be very, very nervous, and then I was kind of nervous, and then Brad and Robert got up there and just did what they do and I was like, I’m fine.

Levesque: It was that initial open the mouth and hope that a sound comes out. Yeah, once you kind of get over that hurdle it’s smooth sailing.

BLAST: Well I imagine going into a show like “Stargate Universe,” with two previous shows, you have an inbuilt fan base. Is that intimidating? Does that make you more excited to join the project, knowing at least you got those people somewhat in the bag?

Levesque: I think we’re actually lucky. So lucky to have such a loyal fan following.

Huffman: You can thank Brad and Robert and SyFy and MGM for that. They’ve really put in the work and written over 300 episodes.

Levesque: I don’t know how they keep coming up with new stuff!

Huffman: Not only do they keep up with it, but they keep coming up with it in way that attracts more fans and keeps the fan base. And it’s very impressive to me, I mean hats off to them. I think some of the reception, or some of the fanbase “" you know there’s a population of them that are kind of like, “Oh, this new one, why is it dark, why is it different?”

Levesque: Um, 90210.

Huffman: Yeah, remember that horrible question about criteria, like, “You used to cast strong, intelligent women?”

(During the Q&A portion of the “SGU” panel, a fan asked this question, essentially wondering if these new cast members were up to the precedent set by actresses like Amanda Tapping)

Levesque: You know what’s funny is that it didn’t even really hit me at first, I was just like, tra-la-la and then I realized and went, “Aww.”

Huffman: But I think he just needs to watch the show and that population of people needs to watch the show. They’re the same guys. They know what they’re doing. They know how to develop great, deep women. These aren’t shallow female characters “" my character is a first lieutenant, she’s a medic, she’s very confident and capable in what’s she doing. She’s put in, we all are, we’re put in a very extreme circumstance. We’re literally thrown aboard this ship unprepared. And we are along for the journey to discover the ninth chevron, and this is what the “Stargate” fan wants… and along with it will come the circumstances that we’re all put under and the pressures and the stresses and survival and what we have to endure. And you learn a lot about these characters and the bonds they make and the enemies they make.