Stargate Universe/YMMV


 * Alternate Character Interpretation:
 * Doctor Nicholas Rush: Grieving widower who presents a facade of Insufferable Genius because he feels he needs to suffer, and is consumed with his genius and research so much that he can no longer comprehend social behavior? Or arrogant asshat who with one act of arrogance marooned over eighty people on the other side of the universe with a barely functioning ship facing constant danger?
 * Colonel Young: Is he The Hero, an Anti-Hero, or just another damned Cowboy Cop?
 * Wray: Obstructive bureaucrat with a hidden agenda or concerned administrator trying to keep everyone out of the way of the politicking of the heads of the military and the heads of the scientists?
 * Broken Base: Oh so very much. From your "more realistic" camps to your "soap opera in space" camps, this series has a divide wider than the Grand Canyon. Even in the people who LIKE the new series, there is a gap between Young supporters and Rush supporters; this is probably deliberate, however.
 * Complete Monster: Simeon. See Moral Event Horizon.
 * Crazy Awesome: Vanessa running into an electric deathtrap to hit the manual breaker certainly qualifies.
 * Crowning Moment of Awesome:  Nicholas Rush, you've officially taken a level in badass.
 * Amanda telling everyone to shut up and let her fly the ship.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome: Goldsmith's work on the series in general. The climactic soundtrack of "Air, Part 3" is a frequently cited example.
 * The music that plays during Destiny's flight through a star.
 * Engaging Chevrons: Used when the Destiny is first dialed, but mostly ignored after that. There's also this: "Chevron Nine... Chevron Nine... Chevron Nine..." Makes a return in "Earth" when they attempt to dial, you guessed it, Earth, but one might excuse this as going slow because they were afraid they'd blow the ship up.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: Greer in the main cast, Riley in the supporting players.
 * Fanon Discontinuity: Many fans preemptively disowned the show as non-canon before it even aired.
 * Gateway Series: Some of the show's most vocal proponents are people who never watched the first two Stargate series or weren't big fans of them. IGN's Ramsley Isler is one such individual, as is Tycho of Penny Arcade. Some of them, true to this trope, have even decided to start watching the old series just to see what all the fuss was/is about.
 * Growing the Beard: Season 2 made tremendous strides forward with the show's formula, trading off much of the criticized Wangst for more action and exploration. "The Greater Good" is commonly seen as a turning point, resolving the ongoing Young/Rush conflict and setting off the series' Myth Arc. And then Syfy canceled it.
 * High Octane Nightmare Fuel:
 * The galaxy is a truly terrifying place, and it only gets worse with each episode. Chestbursters, giant spiders, and killer bugs, oh my!
 * Never more apparent than in "Pain" when ticks causing very vivid hallucinations latch onto the Destiny's crew -- James hallucinates herself killing Scott, Volker hallucinates being trapped in a coffin, Greer and Rush go Ax Crazy in an attempt to rid the ship of mutinous civilians and invading aliens respectively, and one Marine tears open his own arm because he thought there were snakes under his skin.
 * Cloverdale... Sentient plant/fungus that's looks incredibly resilient, aggressive as hell and apparently reproduces by stinging a nearby creature and slowly growing spores inside of it, while turning the host half mad.
 * Macekre: The German dub, apart from having atrocious voice acting that did not fit the characters at all, also contained several translation errors, some of whom completely change important plot elements. For example, in the German dub, it is literally said that Destiny is flying "with lightspeed connected through hyperspace", while actually the exact and complete opposite is true.
 * Magnificent Bastard: Rush, although it backfires big-time in "Justice".
 * Memetic Badass: B.A.G., the Balding Asian Guy. He's the shit. (*Faith-Spoilers*) Word of God already hinted at his return in Season 2. Twice. And an interview!
 * Moral Event Horizon: Pick one to Simeon: killing, rampaging through the ship killing and wounding multiple security guards, taking Dr. Park hostage and attaching a bomb to her back, and finally Any one of those could qualify, but all of them put together put Simeon far beyond the MEH.
 * Not to mention it makes things a heck of a lot worse for the other LA members who are genuinely trying to cooperate and play nice.
 * Needs More Love: After the cancellation of Caprica, SG-U fans started a movement to try and get more people to watch it, in hopes of preventing it of suffering the same fate.
 * Paranoia Fuel: The communication stones. They allow their user to take control of another body over any distance. Of course, it only works if that body has a communication stone of its own, of course, but the potential for abuse is there.
 * The Scrappy: Chloe
 * Squick: The unfortunate way that Red Shirt Gorman gets sliced by the cloud of alien bugs in "Water". Followed two episodes later by large worm/squid-like creatures that burrow through your skin to eat your yummy insides then eat their way back out. Brrrr.
 * Straw Man Has a Point: Telford's rant makes some sense, at least on the surface, if we consider him a Straw Traitor. It falls apart when you actually take a good look at the people he's arguing on behalf of.
 * Tear Jerker:.
 * in "Twin Destinies". His reaction is just heartbreaking.
 * temporal duplicate from Lou Gehrig's disease in Epilogue
 * The ending of "Gauntlet", made all the worse by the likely possibility that this is the last we'll ever see.
 * Park being blinded, apparently permanently.
 * has a major impact, especially how he goes out. And everyone in the crew is hit pretty hard; his death gets mentioned in the next episode, to boot.
 * Tethercat Principle: It's stated in "Gauntlet" that Then the show was canceled.
 * They Changed It, Now It Sucks: There was already a great deal of complaining that the show would be vastly inferior to previous incarnations of Stargate before airing. Then it aired, and the complaints kept coming.
 * They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Nicholas Rush is an Insufferable Genius; Rodney McKay is an insufferable genius. The two never share a scene together in "Seizure".
 * This is also a potential opinion of the series as a whole. An Ancient ship with mysterious retro-advanced technology, exploring unknown parts of the galaxy with more truly alien creatures and forms of life than the original two series ever had... and the characters are the bunch of whiniest, least curious, least suitable twerps you could ask for.
 * Too Good to Last
 * Ugly Cute:
 * Not to mention the adorable sounds it makes, reminiscent of baby raccoons.
 * The Untwist: Telford is a mole. So unsurprising it's surprising.
 * Visual Effects of Awesome: The ship is a thing of beauty, as is its so-far-exclusive hyperspace window effect. Also, the Stargate surface is so pretty it's hypnotic (and it ain't just down to advances in special effects tech - Stargate: Continuum's isn't as pretty.)
 * As far as the gate is concerned, this is probably due to the much more varied environments and angles we see the gate in compared to previous shows. To initially save money, the gate effect was filmed (for the original SG-1 show) from a number of angles and these stock pieces used over and over.
 * Wangst: Chloe
 * The Woobie: Everett, Future!Rush in "Twin Destinies", Eli, Chloe, Vanessa
 * Jerkass Woobie: Nicholas
 * TJ after "Epilogue". Really everybody is one.
 * TJ after "Epilogue". Really everybody is one.