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Dr. Beckett, Dr. McKay, Dr. Weir....no this isn't a medical show. This is people's choice award winning Stargate Atlantis. Why would the people choose this? Well just remember this is Science Fiction where ANYTHING is possible...like chairs that fire missiles, cities that fly, spaceships that read your mind, and a dwarf galaxy populated by death metal rejects who prey on primitive human tribes of English speaking aliens.
Join MoleMan as he takes on the pilot episode in his FIRST EVER riff. Be prepared to have your knowledge of parody tested with plunty of Mel Brooks, ZAZ, rifftrax, video game, Family Guy, Star Wars, and Family Guy Star Wars throughout.
(This riff is best viewed using the iTunes version of the episode which can be purchased for $1.99 at the iTunes store!!!)
Good Job!
I watched this last night. Overall great job, Moleman! It can't be easy doing solo riffs. Good job with your voices, some great references and jokes. Good R2 impressions.
I agree (only slightly) with some of the comments about scaling back on talking over the show. The Star Wars summary during the hologram's historical explanation was actually one of my favorite parts though. Very funny and well written.
I found myself saying "I know!" and "exactly, yes!" quite a few times during this riff.
As far as audio quality, this riff is excellent.
$0.75 for a full 1 1/2 hours of riffing is a great value. I recommend this riff.
Very funny!
I thought this was a very funny riff and was most impressed with Moleman's vocal skills. If you've got this Atlantis episode on DVD or Itunes, this riff is a MUST BUY.
You misunderstand
No it wouldn't be punishment not if you're actually genuinely interested. Because if you thought it was punishment you wouldn't care about the details in the first place would you? I think your misunderstanding my intent. Just because I picked this to riff doesn't mean I think this is crap and needs to be made fun of. I'm actually a fan of the show. But I'm not a big enough fan that I get sucked so into it that I don't notice some of its sillyness and "questionable" science to say the least. That's what makes this such a great thing to riff, in my opinion, because you can point out and have a good laugh about its unrealistic and silly qualities but also get a little enjoyment out of the show itself too. I personally enjoy rifftrax done on movies that are decent movies by themselves more because it makes the overall entertainment package better. So that's why I did mine that way. It may not necessarily be what everybody else or even the majority of people feel but that's OK because I enjoyed doing it. And whether you're a fan of the show or not, or whether you like to make fun of movies or make fun "with" movies, I think you will enjoy this at least somewhat regardless.
Yeah, but...
You picked this to riff because you think it's bad-enough (or at least "weak-enough") that a person would need to have some humorous company just to watch it. And then you're saying "Sorry for talking over major sections of this, but just watch the entire episode without the riff track to figure out what's going on!". __p__
Wouldn't that just be a punishment? :-)
Thanks for the comments
Thanks. I was starting to go insane that nobody has bothered to leave anything in comment even though this has already gotten quite a large number of buys. Yah a lot of people have said iTunes videos put a lot of demand on the computer so it takes a faster one to watch at full speed. It sucks and I don't know anything I could do about it. I thought about other places to get the single episode and unfortunately amazon has the episode split in parts and each part costs $1.99 each so it wouldn't work unless I made a new version just for amazon buys. But then at $3.98 you're better off buying the actual DVD on amazon which I saw for as low as $2.19 new. As far as talking over lines, I do acknowledge that I do that quite a bit but I was counting on the fact that either the viewer didn't care about any of the little details behind the story or that they were already familiar with it. The part where the hologram is explaining the story is insanely boring and has no relevance to that particular episode other than "some bad guys beat us". If I was doing the riff with another person I would have probably been asking the other guy about some random fishing trip he went on that weekend that ended humorously during the speech instead. I would say if your curious about the show just watch it without the riff first to get all the details.
A tech note / trivia
Let me also note something purely technical about this. I very much liked the fact that I could use this iRiff track with a single-episode of Stargate Atlantis as purchased from the iTunes store, instead of having to get the DVD set of the entire first season. If you get the TV episode, then you play that in the iTunes application, and play the iRiff track in some other program. I'm on a Mac, so I went with the simple Quicktime Player as the other program. __p__
I own a fairly high-end Quad-core Intel-based mac here at work (running the latest 10.5), and a much older Dual-core PowerPC Mac at home (running the latest 10.4). When playing this at home, I had a horrible time keeping the two tracks in sync. That isn't a problem specific to this iRiff track, as I have now noticed the same problem anytime I try to sync some iRiff track with a TV episode bought from the iTunes store. They work absolutely great on my modern Mac here at work, and are constantly drifting out-of-sync on my older PowerPC mac at home. I do not have this issue when playing iRiff or Rifftrax synced to a DVD or a ripped-DVD at home, so it's something about playing a show in iTunes along with a riff track in Quicktime. __p__
So if you're having problems with this track getting out of sync, that probably isn't the fault of the track itself. I guess it would help if the track had more sync-points so it'd be easier to realize when it's getting out-of-sync with the video. I'd also say that many of the riffs in this track don't work once the riffing gets out-of-sync with the video! That's one downside of perfectly-timed riffs -- if the timing does get thrown off then the riff makes no sense! I came into work today (note: on Saturday!) intending to rate this as a "2", but after playing it on my Mac at work I realized that it was better than it seemed when I played it at home.
Good riffing, but maybe less would be better...
Well, first let me say that I come to this as only an occasional watcher of the "Stargate" shows. I'd watch them if I happened to catch them, and I liked them when I did catch them, but I wouldn't go out of my way to catch the show each week. So, I have some idea of who all the characters are, but I'm a long way from being a diehard fan. __p__
This riff had quite a few good lines in it, but (IMO) it also had too many times where MoleMan is talking over the dialogue in the show itself. And since I'm only a casual fan of the show, there were times when I really wanted to hear what the characters were saying, but he was going on a long tangent which was just distracting instead of funny. There was a long riff where he talks over the entire speech from the Lady from the past, giving a synopsis of "Star Wars" as if SG:Atlantis has the same plot. That's a joke which works well when the plots are extremely similar (such as "Eragon" vs "Star Wars" and "Lord of the Rings"), but that wasn't what she was saying, and the riff ended up annoying me more than anything else. And when a long riff annoys you, it gives you a lot of time to sit there thinking, "Well, this is rather annoying"... __p__
Still, if you get the riff track to line up right with the show, then there are quite a few riffs which work well and are perfectly timed. I'll give this a 3-star rating (note: that means "Good", and not "Merely Average"!). The good sections are worth 4 stars, but the some of the overly-long riffs, IMO, pull the overall rating back to a 3.