Stargate Atlantis is Taking its Final Bow.

Image via WikipediaI wrote awhile back about Stargate Atlantis after it was announced that the series would be canceled. The first week of January 2009 will air the final episode. I was reading about the marathon of Atlantis leading up to the grand finale. (I have a link to the right for Gateworld). I already watched every episode faithfully even though I complained on a regular basis about the poor quality of writing. I do not know what compelled me to watch every episode but I did. Something drew me to the show and I kept asking myself what is it,why do I keep watching? I think that the characters and the actors are what kept me tuned in. I really like the different characters and the acting but there is only so much an actor can do when the writing is mediocre. My favorite characters were Dr. Weir and John Sheppard. Actually I liked all of the main characters. What I liked, as well, was that we could see people from all over the world coming together to work on this top secret project Atlantis.
I have always viewed Atlantis as the sister to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Stargate SG1 as the sister to Star Trek: TNG. The main differences being the time that the stories take place and the division between military and science where Star Trek is a version of the military and science community combined.
Now getting back to Atlantis, my compulsion to watch the series was the actors. I wish they could have extended the series a couple more years by writing the stories to include the personal aspects of being in such a ground breaking and yet secret operation and the conflict it brings to each character.Can you imagine being a physicist and making a discovery that would change the world and not be able to publish it? They could have made an entire episode just about that. If they had made several episodes that combined these stories with the off world stories and problems with the Wraith and Replicators, we would have had a more complete picture of the individuals we watched each week as well as expanding the storyline base. Instead, I felt they were just "putting out fires" each week with one problem after another. This, in my opinion, left the characters one dimensional. In Star Trek:DS9, we did have the character defining episodes that made the series so much more interesting and it provides more material to keep the series running longer. As with DS9, Atlantis has had such a loyal fan base that they should have extended that show instead of ending only to start with a new series sometime in the future. Like Voyager of Star Trek, it had viewers but was never as popular as the other series. In fact, some people downright hated the series. I hope that Stragate Universe does not go too far out on a limb with wild stories and situations that really stretch credibility further than can be plausible. I will still be sad to see Atlantis end and I hope the movies they plan to make will be good and in some way include Dr. Weir (it could work, I think they left that open!)
In the mean time, I will wait for the finale and hope it ends well.