Talk:Nemesis (Stargate SG-1)/GA1

GA Review

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Overview

Overall, this is a strong article. The prose needs tightening up or clarifying in places to enhance the article. I've placed some comments below. Don't worry if it seems like a long list; most are small, simple items. Once you've gone through these, making any necessary changes, we can move forward. Please feel free to ask about anything you're unsure of. –Whitehorse1 11:25, 13 February 2009 (UTC).

In the paragraph above this was implied, but for sake of clarity the GAN assessment is on hold. I'll update the article's GAN page entry with same. Whitehorse1 16:37, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Well written requirement

You use "and" a lot. (26 times.) There isn't an arbitrary appropriate number, of course. The prose though sometimes has a "foo and bar, and then this happened, and ..." feel.

A slight nudge like this always makes me aware of how much I love excessivly long and complicated sentences. :-) – sgeureka ^t•c 21:13, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Plot

• "(voiced by Michael Shanks)". I'd remove this from here. You repeat this point in the last paragraph of the Production section anyway.
• onboard => on-board. Or, you could mention Thor beamed him aboard in the previous sentence.
  • I can't make it work without spoiling the whole what-the-heck-is-going-on surprise of the teaser act, so I just added the hyphen
• "...and now have to be stopped from landing on Earth." Weak phrasing.
• "and requests explosives to be beamed aboard" Wordy.
• "shuttle may be send to". Proofread! ;) ("sent to").
• "plan to ... subsequently crash the ship in the atmosphere" Not exactly. An atmosphere is a layer of gases. The plan was to vaporize the vessel during reentry.
  • Fixed. I hadn't noticed the subtle difference between Carter's "Then all we have to do is to crash the ship into the atmosphere" and "in the atmosphere" (Carter and Thor did mention the burning up of the ship in the atmosphere.)
• "...Carter and Thor suggest to put..." Wordy.
  • I can't figure out a way to trim this. The only option is to put all the information into the next sentence, but that makes it sound like Teal'c came up with the idea.
• "Carter manages to beam him back onboard despite some complications." Omit needless words.
• "Because the energy output of the transporter attracts the Replicators to the Stargate..." The flow of this is incorrect. The output of x didn't attract them to y, which was inanimate when just transported.
  • I've just rewatched the episode, and this correlation was never stated in dialog. It's therefore safer to just remove it as original research. – sgeureka ^t•c 21:13, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
• "Carter needs to cover for O'Neill and Teal'c ..." As-written, this makes it sound like they're fast-food restaurant employees who've slipped out for five minutes, while their boss has his back turned. Try lay down cover fire, or something.
  • The chronology of the sentence wasn't quite correct, so I changed the complete sentence. – sgeureka ^t•c 21:13, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
• "O'Neill blows the bomb, the ship tumbles out of control and crashes in the Pacific Ocean." Slang and awkward phrasing. Rejig the sentence. Try 'detonates' for 'blows' and 'crashing' for 'crashes'.
  • Good advice. – sgeureka ^t•c 21:13, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Production

• "After the first three seasons of Stargate SG-1 had been filmed on 16 mm film (except for effects shots, where 35 mm proved to work better)..." Lonnng sentence. The "where 35 mm proved to work better" part needs clarifying. Broadly, better for what specifically, or better how?
  • Better? The visual effects producer wasn't that clear himself: "That was because we started the first three seasons... we actually shot the show on 16 mm. Except for the effects shots. For various technical reasons, the effects had to work better on 35." – sgeureka ^t•c 21:13, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
    • Yup looks much better. I think lots of film/TV commentaries have crew assuming others know what they know. –Whitehorse1 21:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
• "the show's new arch enemy". Arch means chief; eminent; principal. The Replicators may have been a formidable enemy, but did not supplant the Goa'uld as primary foe; the Ori, later, did.
• It's not clear what 'highlighted' means in the last sentence of the initial paragraph.
  • In essence, 'highlighted' means 'look at me, I'm trying to be such a cool visual effect'. I tried the words "do not call attention to themselves", but there may be a better phrase. – sgeureka ^t•c 21:13, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
    • Ohh I get it – subtle is more effective. Looks fine. –Whitehorse1 21:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
• "significant hairdo changes of Daniel and O'Neill " Please massage the wording here. Right now it sounds like they're two elderly ladies fresh from the salon down the street.
• "bald-shaved actor Christopher Judge ... wearing a small blond chin beard" I can't quite put my finger on what's wrong with it right now, but the wording or phrasing doesn't seem to work.
  • I removed "bald-shaved" as insignificant and replaced "wearing" with "sporting", but have difficulty with finding another thing that readers may find odd. – sgeureka ^t•c 21:13, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
• It might be nice to expand the point about Daniel Jackson's appendicitis, touching on how those producing the show, thrown for a loop, began dreaming up convoluted scenarios to explain his absence, before realizing instead of perpetuating unrealistic eternally-healthy characters 'why don't we just write his appendicitis into the script?'. I think it's a nice insight into the production process and reinforces the character-actor blend. Up to you though. It's on one of the 'making of' documentaries^*.
   ^*Secrets of the SGC - Personnel Files
  • Watched and added. The problem is always remembering where I heard the information before, but in this case, I didn't even remember the availability of the info in the first place (i.e. good memory on your part). Do you also happen to know where on a DVD I can find the information that Carter was given some of Daniel's lines in the holo scene in the briefing room? – sgeureka ^t•c 21:13, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
    • I don't unfortunately. It sounds like the sort of thing an actor/actress would say in an audio commentary when or just before the relevant scene comes up; nothing comes to mind though. –Whitehorse1 21:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Changes so far. Points where I didn't comment were fixed without hassle. A major LOL @ the comments about fast food restaurants and the ladies' beauty salon. I'll leave the remaining issues for a later session, probably tomorrow. – sgeureka ^t•c 21:13, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

*g* Thanks. :)  –Whitehorse1 21:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Reception section

• "... first aired in the United Kingdom on Sky One ..., and later on the American subscription channel Showtime ..." Both are subscription-based channels.
• "In some countries like Germany, "Nemesis" was held back from season 3 and aired as the first hour of the season 4 premiere."

You're either missing a comma or have one in the wrong place here. The sentence reads: (in) some (of those) countries (that are similar to) Germany.

• "Airing in syndication during the 2001 May Sweeps"
  • You need to make this (jargon) clear. Many readers won't know what the "2001 May Sweeps" are/were.
  • Likewise: "Nemesis" had a 2.7/2.8 household rating – Is that good? You need to explain a bit more in the text so it's reader-friendly. Many readers will be unfamiliar with the ratings system. Mentioning which body administers that rating system may also be helpful.
    • I linked the jargon. The information following right after the household rating already explains if that the ratings were good, and the only other option I see is to remove the numbers. – sgeureka ^t•c 15:12, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
• The last couple've sentences would benefit from tweaking. In particular the one about Emmy nominations is something of a run-on sentence; it's not immediately clear if 'latter' refers to the last episode mentioned or the second set of episodes.
• "in the category "Outstanding Special Visual Effects" in 2000." Seems a roundabout way of phrasing. I suggest "in the "Outstanding Special Visual Effects" category.
• "Jo Storm wrote in his book Approaching the Possible..." In the previous section you wrote "Critic Jo Storm speculated in his book Approaching The Possible". Perhaps this second time you could just say "Storm $verb the..."?

References

• When I click on the ""Stargate finishes strong in May sweeps – SG-1 takes fifth place overall in U.S. syndication" reference, the Gateworld page has little text and error "[an error occurred while processing this directive]". Perhaps the page has moved or its address changed. Please look into.
  • That's a just an error that an ad couldn't be loaded properly. The GateWorld article is still there if you highlight the text; GateWorld had a dark background texture with white text color in 2001, but the texture got lost in when GateWorld changed their page design in 2006 without thinking about their archived articles. – sgeureka ^t•c 15:12, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
    • Ah that explains it. I thought it could be a temporary error or something. –Whitehorse1 21:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
• You mix and match date formats, which can be jarring for readers, in the References: E.g. July 20, 2000. Retrieved on 2009-01-11.
  • It seems like there are still major discussions about date formatting at Template_talk:Citation/core. Until they have developed a consistant style, it's almost futile trying to keep up with the ever-changing template code and date conventions. – sgeureka ^t•c 15:12, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
• For future (no pun intended) reference, when using empty reference elements like this <ref name=ac_401_jt>, you should place a closing slash without a space at the end: <ref name=ac_401_jt/>. The tags are XML, rather than XHTML – like <br />. Because the backend parses them, no space for browser-compatibility is required. Attribute values (text after the = sign) should be quoted ("").
  • I'll keep that in mind. – sgeureka ^t•c 15:12, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Other items

• This article has no images. A free-to-use image (like a photo taken at a fan-conference of the cast alongside a replicator) would be nice. I appreciate it's doubtful you'll find any. Still. Worth a look if you haven't already.
  • I don't remember any usable free images from my flickr search for free Stargate images about a year ago, and I can't think of a usable free non-Stargate image like I used in Small Victories. Uploading a non-free screencap is not very high on my priority list, so the article will have to go without an image for the time being. – sgeureka ^t•c 15:12, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
    • Not a problem. I thought it unlikely, though it's always worth mentioning in a review.
• Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (numbers), there should be a non-breaking space &nbsp; between a number and the unit of measurement. For example, instead of 35 mm, use 35 mm, which when you are editing the page, should look like: 35&nbsp;mm. It's not obligatory for GA but worth fixing, since the article refers to film stock a few times.

External links

• Are both the Nemesis at scifi.com and Nemesis at mgm.com links necessary? They appear to just contain an identical or near-identical plot summary.
  • Some editors believe that plot summaries should be sourced like any other info on wikipedia, while others believe that a film or a TV episode already serve as their own primary source. I have found external plot summaries in the EL section to be a good trade-off between these two camps, but I have no strong opinion otherwise. – sgeureka ^t•c 15:12, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
    • Nor me. But they both say virtually the same thing. –Whitehorse1 21:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
• Of the four links, you have the first italicized, 2nd and 3rd unformatted, and the last in quotation marks – which doesn't seem to fit.
  • This was the result of a recent attempt to bring some standard into SG episode articles (before, there was none). I tried to introduce some consistancy in formatting, but {{imdb title}} will always stick out like a sore thumb since it automatically italicizes the entry. – sgeureka ^t•c 15:12, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
    • Could always italicize them all I guess? –Whitehorse1 21:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I've tried to address the remaining concerns,[1] but I intend to re-read the article for overlong sentences and for another copyedit. – sgeureka ^t•c 15:12, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Excellent. I'll have another look through; should be able to pass it soon. –Whitehorse1 21:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I think you've done a great job, Sgeureka! I believe the article meets all of the GA criteria, and so pass this as a Good Article. –Whitehorse1 21:05, 17 February 2009 (UTC)