To add "realism" they've put all the non-whites and/or non-male characters back into non-leadership roles.

Yes, I have watched every single Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. Yes, I have watched all 5 hours (so far) of the new show, Stargate Universe. My verdict: cheapest Stargate series, ever.

I guess the producers figure since consumers are tightening their belts and just about every commercial nowadays emphasizes frugality, they can get away with a show that costs as much to produce per episode as ten minutes of the originial Stargate SG-1 series.

How can I tell that the budget is smaller? Simple: The entire show is set on a single spaceship that the characters are stuck on.

There's a few additional locations, such as a desert they gate to, an "ice world" (previewed for ep 6), and a few scenes on Earth. But it's something that sci-fi producers discovered long ago: going to a different planet every week costs too much. If you throw in actual aliens (albeit humans or human-ish), it costs even more (you know, different costumes, makeup, guest stars, etc.). Creatures either look terrible, or take oodles of 3D artists to pull off convincingly.

Fortunately for the executive producers, this show has none of those things. For the rest of this entry, I'll detail how they've saved money, and give my suggestion for how to better save money.

(Caveat: the show features a lot more space-shots (CG) than previous Stargate incarnations, which do cost some money, but it's hardly more than your typical Star Trek show)

Your mileage may vary.

Inhuman Aliens

The only thing "alien" encountered so far is a questionably intelligent whirlwind on a desert planet. Having dabbled in 3D animation, I can assure you that dust particles are a lot easier to animate than flesh-and-blood creatures.

Instead, come up with an alien creature that will recur through the series, possibly have a civilization / culture / characters that go with it. I'm not talking latex masks, but a full-CG creature. The thing is, once you go through all the trouble of making a photorealistic model, rigging it, and so forth, why not use it again? It's not like cartoon animation, where everything needs to be redrawn for each frame -- once the process of getting a character from sketch to compositing is done, there should be a streamlining or even automating it; the work left to do is motion-capture and foley (sound).
The real payoff comes when you use the same aliens throughout the whole series -- and realistically speaking, why should there be a million varieties of intelligent aliens in a single galaxy, rather than just a handful?

Re-usable Sets

Obviously, the plan is to eat up as much time on the spaceship as they can. I've identified these sets:

1. Gate room

- the biggest, this is where you can see every character at once, where big action can take place, etc.

2. Computer / command room

- tiny, where the scientists "work" on consoles around a glowing stack of technical-looking stuff.

3. Observation room

- remember the "forward lounge" from ST:TNG?

4. Shower room

- really just a dark room with shower stalls. They can get a lot of milage from this (almost-nudity).

5. Bed room

- they can use the same room for everyone, just move the lights and few props. Also doubles as the conference room.

6. Corridor

- The oldest sci-fi-show trick ever.

7. Shuttle

- They've already used it as two different locations!

"Wait, did we take a wrong turn somewhere?"

Unfortunately, the ship they're in is enormous so as the characters start to repair it, they'll discover yet-another-room-with-a-special-purpose-that-becomes-a-plot-device, like a big greenhouse or something. I can already see them swapping out a planet / stargate-of-the-week with a mystery-room-of-the-week, which was a HUGE part of Stargate: Atlantis. So much for saving money on the set.

Not only that, you start to have continuity overload -- cool new toys and rooms just means there's tons of more stuff to keep in mind as the series goes on; conversely, if they come across something as powerful as a clone-o-matic, for example, they would have to destroy/disable it pretty soon before it takes over the plot. SG-1 did reasonably well with this: as alien technology was discovered, the series would integrate the new technology at a slow but believable pace.

I would rather make the ship MUCH smaller, and restrict the characters to working / repairing what they have. Not only that, I'd do what Ridley Scott did with Alien: build the entire ship's interior as a single sound-stage. When characters move from one room to the next, the camera can follow them, which greatly heightens immersion . Right now, you'd see somone jog out a nondescript door, then a shot of the same overused corridor (shot from a different angle of course), and somehow wind up at some destination in the ship, but the audience has no idea how the rooms relate to each other spacially.

Now, what I'm suggesting isn't any cheaper, (because you would have to build EVERY bedroom rather than use the same one dressed differently) but as far as storytelling power, it goes a lot further. If a character personalizes/trashes their bedroom you can just leave it that way, instead of having to meticulously re-create it every time. For a serial series (which SGU is attempting to be), continuity nods like this helps the audience's suspension of disbelief.

Gee, do you think this character's excessive drinking that was established early on in the series will affect the plot?

Focus on Characters

All the positive reviews rave about this, and I won't knock it; SGU has refreshingly atypical characters. You can get a lot of plot mileage out of this: instead of villains-of-the-week or strangers-in-need-of-the-week introducing conflict, you can just plant the seeds of discord early in the series, and friction between the characters can make it exciting.

But how much conflict is there, really? Let me identify the major character conflicts so far:

1. Dr. Rush is an eccentric, egotistical scientist that is hard to get along with.
2. Eli Wallace is an awkward nerd who pines after the only hot girl his age on the ship (but obviously she thinks of him as just a friend).
3. Col. Telford, (Lou Diamond Phillips, WTF!) despite being literally billions of light-years away, is a control freak who undermines the military leader's authority (which is NOT something a military organization will just let continue as it has).
4. Msgt. Greer is hot-tempered and spiritual, which is the obvious foil to any science / bureaucratic type of character.

That's it for the major character conflicts (at least, conflicts that have or could span multiple episodes). Sound familiar? That's because they're cliches. The only difference is the way they're played (overexaggerated, in fact). This involves a lot of dramatic lighting and extreme close-ups (you know, like the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica).

My solution: get rid of the cliches, create more real characters. Real people naturally get into conflicts with each other, so just trust them to do so, rather than set them up to do so at the beginning. (I mean, explore the characters as the series goes on, rather than make them conform to plot points.)

Don't let machines make interior design choices!

Tailor-made Problems

Most of the "conflict" comes from the built-in problems of the ship itself: no CO2 scrubbers, no power, no control, not enough water, etc. The characters are just along for the ride, trying to interpret the ship's "intentions," because so far, the ship itself has led them to all the resources neccessary to fix these problems. That's what we call a deus ex machina in the literary world (and in this case, you might call it a machina ex machina - the characters relying on some non-character entity (gods/intelligent ship - same thing) to save them. Ugh.

Besides, isn't the situation just a little TOO contrived? A bunch of problems that need solving, like a puzzle-game that spans 13 episodes; isn't it enough to put a bunch of characters in a conflict-packed situation and see what they do? Like this:

New Trek is same as the old Trek, but with more pixels. Is Hollywood remaking movies just because of the advent of Blu-ray?

So do you like the show or not?

Given the abundance of utter crap on SyFy to compare it to, I have to reluctantly say "yes." I like watching it - mostly because to me, science fiction is supposed to be fiction that stimulates your thought process and imagination as well as entertains. Even if my thought process is focused of picking the show apart, you could at least say it engages me. When I watch shit like Sanctuary or Doctor Who the utter disregard for any kind of science whatsoever is too distracting for me to enjoy it.

Also, I like the spaceships and pretty lights.