Entertainment
The Beloved Sci-Fi Series Destroyed By Battlestar Galactica
By Joshua Tyler
| Updated
The 1990s were a golden age for science fiction, but even in the decade of infinite space awesomeness, no one in 1994 thought that the year’s 15th biggest movie would become the foundation for decades of sci-fi shows. But that’s exactly what happened with Stargate.
For a time, Stargate seemed on the verge of challenging Star Trek and Star Wars for geek franchise supremacy, until it was ripped apart by Hollywood executives determined to turn it into something else. When fans revolted, it ended everything, and it’s only now, 15 years later, that this legendary sci-fi franchise might finally make a return.
This is why Stargate Atlantis failed.
The Perfect Spinoff
Set during and after the events of Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis follows an international expedition that discovers the lost city of Atlantis. The myth is real, but the city isn’t on Earth. Instead, it’s an outpost built and long ago abandoned by the powerful Ancients in the distant Pegasus Galaxy.
Colonel John Sheppard (Joe Flanigan) and scientist Dr. Elizabeth Weir (Tori Higginson) lead a team through the stargate to explore the city and restore it to working order. Along with the team is Dr. Rodney McKay (David Hewlett) and a big ensemble, which would in season 2, even include a pre-fame Jason Momoa.
Rodney McKay Is One Of Sci-Fi’s Best Characters
We need to pause here to talk about just how great David Hewlett’s performance as Rodney is. He is, without question, the best character in Stargate, but also one of the best characters in science fiction. If Stargate Atlantis were given the respect it deserves, it would be mentioned alongside top-tier science fiction characters like The Doctor, Garak, Data, and maybe even Spock.
Rodney McKay is arrogant, impatient, and openly dismissive of anyone he considers less intelligent, but he’s also the person everyone relies on when things go wrong, which is constantly. Despite his abrasive personality, he evolves over the course of the series, showing loyalty, courage, and flashes of genuine humility. The core of the character is contradiction: he’s self-centered but dependable, cowardly but repeatedly heroic, and deeply insecure beneath the arrogance.
Every second Rodney’s on screen in the show is instant fun. If every episode were just David Hewlett on screen for 41 minutes, that would probably work, but the cast is a big ensemble.
Stagate Atlantis Was Killed While Succeeding
The Stargate franchise was firing on all cylinders, doing everything it could to feel like a cohesive, connected universe. It was working, and fans were loving it.
Stargate Atlantis was a hit for The Sci-Fi Channel, back in the days before it changed its name to the inferior “SYFY” with two Y’s. It was getting critical recognition too, in the form of four Emmy nominations.
Stargate’s flagship series, Stargate SG-1, was, by this point, off the air, but the franchise seemed to be in good hands with Stargate Atlantis. Then, out of nowhere, it was canceled at the end of season 5.
Amazingly, for a cable sci-fi series, the crew was allowed to end the show on their own terms, delivering a satisfying conclusion. It’s important that Atlantis does have a clear ending, so for any new viewers worried about yet another sci-fi classic cut short, don’t worry about it. However, ending it after five seasons was not the original plan for the show, and it’s not what the show’s producers really wanted.
Laying Blame For The Show’s Cancellation
The show’s early ending is partly my fault, and partly the fault of people like me. It’s only in the last few years that I’ve gone back to the world of Stargate. I watched SG-1 religiously when it aired, but to my shame, when Stargate Atlantis was first around, I didn’t pay any attention to it; I was too busy with Battlestar Galactica. In the days before easy streaming, catching everything on TV was difficult, and sometimes viewing habits were shaped by when you were available to watch. Many chose Battlestar Galactica.
The people in charge noticed. Execs at the SyFy Channel and Stargate’s production company, MGM, were apparently doing the same thing. They chose Battlestar Galactica, too. In fact, they became so obsessed with BSG that they decided to turn Stargate into it.
Never mind that Stargate had almost nothing in common with Battlestar Galactica, the higher-ups decided that was their direction. So, in 2009, SyFy and MGM canceled Stargate Atlantis after five seasons.
Turning Stargate Into Battlestar Galactica
The show’s ratings were still strong, and so was the response. But the network execs didn’t want Stargate Atlantis anymore, so the series was shut down, and all those resources were shifted to development on a new show called Stargate Universe.
Stargate Universe would basically abandon everything Stargate’s shows had spent decades establishing. It was set aboard a lost alien ship, with no connection to the larger Stargate world.
It didn’t work. Stargate fans were outraged at the cancellation of a beloved show in its prime and even more outraged when it was replaced by something that seemed like exactly what it was: a cheap attempt to cash in on the success of a totally different science fiction franchise.
While there was talk of a Stargate Atlantis direct-to-DVD movie, similar to those produced for Stargate SG-1, it never happened. Those plans were canceled when MGM entered bankruptcy in 2010, killing funding for further productions.
Why Stargate Fans Quit
These many broken promises and tonal changes caused Stargate fans to give up on Stargate as a franchise. Many refused to give the new show, Stargate Universe, a chance. While it did improve over time, the series never received enough support from former Stargate Atlantis viewers to match that show’s ratings. The Stargate Atlantis audience felt they’d been stabbed in the back, and, understandably, did not show back up.
Stargate Universe lasted two seasons before it too was canceled. The Stargate TV franchise, which had been going strong for decades and for a while seemed on the verge of supplanting Star Trek as the biggest geek universe, died with it. All because greedy Hollywood executives refused to embrace the success of Stargate Atlantis.
Stargate Rises From The Ashes Of Atlantis
Now, fifteen years later, work has begun on bringing Stargate back, with a new streaming series. It’s not a reboot, but a continuation. Joseph Mallozzi, along with much of the original Stargate Atlantis creative team, is involved.
It’s a tacit admission by Hollywood that Stargate Atlantis never should have been canceled in the first place. Maybe it’s not too late to right that wrong. In an era where scripted sci-fi television is floundering, it may be up to Stargate to save us all.
Entertainment
The ASUS TUF Gaming F16 gaming laptop is down to a record-low price at Amazon — now $400 off
TL;DR: Amazon has the ASUS TUF Gaming F16 gaming laptop on sale for $899.99, down from its $1,299.99 list price. That saves you $400 on a 2025 gaming laptop with an Intel Core i5-13450HX processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 graphics, 16GB of DDR5 memory, and a 165Hz FHD+ display.
$899.99
at Amazon
$1,299.99
Save $400
Finding a current-gen gaming laptop in today’s economy for under $1,000 is already amazing, but Amazon’s latest ASUS deal is offering you an all-time low bargain.
As of April 28, the ASUS TUF Gaming F16 gaming laptop is on sale for $899.99 at Amazon, marked down from $1,299.99. Price tracker camelcamelcamel has confirmed that this is the lowest-ever price for this gaming laptop.
For that price, you’re getting the RTX 5050 and Intel Core i5 version of the TUF Gaming F16, which is built around an Intel Core i5-13450HX processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 Laptop GPU. It also comes with 16GB of DDR5 RAM and a 512GB PCIe Gen4 SSD, so it should be nicely suited for jumping between games, school work, everyday browsing, and plenty of tabs without causing your sessions to come to a sudden crash.
With those sorts of specs, this version of the ASUS TUF Gaming F16 lets you comfortably run games from the latest graphically demanding titles — including Crimson Desert, Cyberpunk 2077, Black Myth: Wukong, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, and Pragmata.
Mashable Deals
The 16-inch FHD+ display is a big part of the appeal, with ASUS’s fitted 165Hz 16:10 panel with 100% sRGB color giving you extra vertical space compared to a standard 16:9 screen while keeping motion smoother in fast-paced games like Fortnite and Counter-Strike 2. The handy Adaptive-Sync also helps cut down on stuttering and screen tearing when your frame rate starts shifting during intense firefights or brawls with lots of assets moving around at the same time.
Mashable Deals
The TUF Gaming F16 keeps the series’ usual more rugged angle, as well. ASUS has had the laptop tested to MIL-STD-810H standards, while its 2nd Gen Arc Flow Fans, full-width heatsink, and full-width vent are designed to help keep performance steady without making the machine unnecessarily loud.
If you’re after a laptop that’s more for work than gaming, Samsung’s ultra-sleek Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 just got a $450 price cut.
Entertainment
Beloved Star Trek Character Busted Franchise’s Biggest Myth With Single Line
By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated
Star Trek has some of the most passionate fans on the entire planet. For the most part, those fans are unified in their love for this decades-old sci-fi franchise. However, there are a few things the fandom has bitterly debated over the years. One of the most intense arguments involves a seemingly innocuous question: can Vulcans lie? Some fans are convinced that these logic-loving aliens are far too moral and upstanding to deceive anybody. Other fans believe Vulcans are fully capable of lying and have successfully convinced the galaxy that they always tell the truth.
This persistent Star Trek myth goes back to The Original Series and claims made by characters like Spock and Dr. McCoy. Eventually, this myth was busted by Tuvok, who reluctantly told Seven of Nine that Vulcans were capable of lying but generally preferred not to do so. After decades of fan debate, this finally settled the matter. However, what most fans don’t know is that Tuvok accidentally busted this myth far earlier in the show. In “Twisted,” he blatantly lies to Captain Janeway in a scripted exchange that seriously upset Tuvok actor Tim Russ.
The Man, The Myth
First, we need to talk about how the “Vulcans don’t lie” myth came about. Back in The Original Series episode, “The Enterprise Incident,” a Romulan commander asks Spock if it’s true that Vulcans can’t lie, and Spock responds, “It is no myth.” This idea is also backed up by Dr. McCoy, who offered his medical opinion on the matter in “The Menagerie, Part 1” when he says of Spock, “the simple fact that he’s a Vulcan means he’s incapable of telling a lie.” Even the android Data agrees. In the Next Generation episode, “Data’s Day,” he wrote a message to Bruce Maddox about how Vulcans couldn’t lie.
If you pay close attention, though, Spock himself sometimes justified telling blatant lies. In The Wrath of Khan, when Saavik realizes Spock told Kirk that Enterprise repairs would take longer than they did, she confronts him: “You lied!” Spock (who was speaking in code to Kirk) simply replies, “I exaggerated.” In The Undiscovered Country, his apprentice, Valeris, does something similar. When asked to name her fellow Starfleet traitors, she says she does not remember. When Spock asks, “A lie?”, she responds, “A choice.”
A Secret Onscreen Lie
When he began working on Star Trek: Voyager, Tuvok actor Tim Russ seemingly bought into the idea that Vulcans don’t lie. In an interview with Cinefantastique, the actor discussed some dialogue from the episode “Twisted” that he disagreed with. “There’s a line in an episode we just finished, ‘I’ve always respected the Captain’s decisions.’ And that line was difficult to say.” Elaborating, he said, “[The] line was difficult to say when, in fact, we know he […] violated protocols [in ‘Prime Factors’] by taking matters into his own hands.” He’s referring to an earlier incident where Tuvok traded Starfleet technology to aliens for technology that could transport the Voyager crew 40,000 light-years.
To those closely watching Star Trek: Voyager, this settled the old debate: Vulcans can lie, as we saw Tuvok do to Captain Janeway. On other occasions, Tuvok has found ways to (like Spock before him) justify his deception. After he tells Chakotay, “As a Vulcan, I am at all times honest,” the commander says that Tuvok clearly lied when he passed himself off as a loyal member of the Maquis. Tuvok replies, “I was honest to my own convictions within the defined parameters of my mission.” To this Vulcan, it seems, lies are in the eye of the beholder.
A Borg Assimilates The Truth
Later, Star Trek: Voyager would bust this old franchise myth in a much more blatant way. In the episode “Hunters,” Seven of Nine asks, point-blank, if Vulcans can lie. Tuvok reluctantly admits to her that Vulcans have the capability of lying, but that he has never found it useful or necessary. Given Tuvok’s previous moral flexibility, this information might square the circle with the line about always respecting Janeway’s decision. In Tuvok’s mind, he may respect her decision without following it.
With any luck, this helps settle the debate, once and for all. Vulcans can lie. They just mostly choose not to do so. This explains what they are capable of while also explaining their reputation for honesty. If nobody ever sees you lying, why would they doubt you are honest? If you doubt what I’ve written, though, you can always wait until First Contact Day and ask the first Vulcan you see about all this. Don’t worry: I’m sure he’ll tell the truth!
Entertainment
Charlize Theron Is Hunted For Sport In Relentless, R-Rated Netflix Thriller
By Robert Scucci
| Published
Confession time: ever since Mad Max: Fury Road came out in 2015, the fantasy of getting beaten up by Charlize Theron was born. Just two years later, Atomic Blonde hit theaters, and all bets were off. While I’ve always appreciated Theron’s dramatic range, with 2003’s Monster showing her menace and 2011’s Young Adult showing how brilliantly she could portray a woman’s ongoing mental health crisis and alcoholism, I will check out any action thriller she ever stars in because, like Keanu Reeves with the John Wick films, she’s clearly put in the work to be a total badass on screen.
Which brings us to her latest outing, a Netflix Original action thriller that dropped April 24, 2026, called Apex. After watching, the fantasy still stands. I would love to get into a fistfight with Charlize Theron and lose. I’m not a masochist, and this isn’t normal territory for me, but if I found out I only had six months to live, I’d make it a bucket list item and go out on my own terms by encouraging her to fight me on top of a skyscraper or a moving train.
You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
As for the movie itself, Apex is solid. It’s a chase thriller. It’s The Most Dangerous Game for a modern audience. Charlize Theron plays a grieving widow who is hunted for sport in the Australian wilderness by a total psycho with a home-field advantage, and she has to rely on grit and intuition to survive. If you’ve seen one of these movies, you’ve basically seen them all, but the performances here cannot be overstated.
Like The Ice-T Movie, But In The Forest
One of my favorite “hunting humans for sport” plots can be found in 1994’s Surviving the Game, starring Ice-T, Rutger Hauer, and Gary Busey. In this film, Ice-T’s Jack Mason is hunted by a group of wealthy men who regularly get together to let a human loose on their sprawling property designed for exactly this kind of activity. They give him a head start, then roll out on their ATVs, armed to the teeth and ready to kill.
It’s an inherently ridiculous premise, but it’s totally unhinged and worth your time because everybody knows the assignment.
Apex takes a more grounded approach while still exploring that same familiar territory. Context is everything, though, and it plays out as a much more serious film. Here, Sasha (Charlize Theron) takes a solo trip to the Grand Isle Narrows just months after her husband Tommy (Eric Bana) fell to his death during a climbing expedition in Norway.
During her travels, she has an unwholesome run-in with a couple of hunters, as well as a kindly stranger named Ben (Taron Egerton). While briefly talking shop at a petrol station, Ben tells her to start her trip at Blackwater Bay if she really wants to experience next-level hiking and kayaking. She takes his advice, but quickly learns she shouldn’t have when she crosses paths with him again the following day. This happens after she’s harassed by the same hunters from earlier and has her supplies stolen while sleeping in her tent.
At first, Ben is hospitable. He offers her warmth by the fire, food, and water. Sasha quickly realizes he’s the one who stole her bag, and his demeanor shifts immediately. He pulls out a crossbow and a boombox and tells her that her head start will only last as long as the song he’s currently playing. From here on out, the chase is on. Ben is the hunter, and Sasha has to move fast if she wants to avoid getting executed in the middle of nowhere by somebody who’s clearly engaged in this kind of activity before.
Far From Original, But Beyond Adequate
Apex does not offer anything new in this subgenre, but it’s still worth your time if you like movies with this setup. Plot-wise, there’s not much to it. You get some drama leading up to the hunt, and from that point forward it’s Sasha versus nature versus Ben. The real tension comes from the fact that Ben knows the terrain and Sasha doesn’t, while the fun comes from watching Sasha adapt and prove she knows how to survive in harsh environments.
The third act tension is palpable when things stop going according to plan for either of them, forcing a fragile truce when options run out. It’s a small twist on a tired setup that I appreciated. Add in some beautiful nature shots, and you almost forget this is a Netflix Original because the lighting actually holds up.
If you’re a fan of the tried-and-true chase thriller formula, you’ll likely find Apex satisfying. It’s in and out in 95 minutes, establishes its conflict quickly, and doesn’t overstay its welcome. Charlize Theron and Taron Egerton have strong chemistry as things escalate toward the inevitable breaking point.
Truth be told, if you’ve seen one movie like this, you’ve seen them all. But that applies to most subgenres that are this hyperspecific. If you know what you like and this is your lane, Apex should be your next Netflix watch, and you won’t be disappointed.
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