"Yes, that is planet Earth. And yes, you are on a spaceship."

Appreciating that if you were trying to sell your brand new science fiction series to the world you're hardly likely to prime your trailer with the cheap bits, MGM's new promo for Stargate Universe doesn't give the impression of a show that's skimped on a few quid. Certainly by the time the back end of the trailer kicks in, there's a cornucopia of effects been thrown at the screen. And they're good ones, too.

But it's the cast that's perhaps more interesting for the third, and perhaps pivotal, series in the Stargate franchise. While it's hardly struggling, Atlantis isn't going to run as long as SG-1, and that means that the torch will need to be adequately passed on in a way that Star Trek used to do really quite well for Stargate to live on.

The smart move may yet be the central casting of Robert Carlyle, and we do get to see him at work in the trailer. Likewise, the move to following a band of survivors has facets of Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek Voyager, and it remains to be seen just what Stargate can mine out of such a scenario, or whether it's content to be a derivative.

For now, though, the trailer seems to tick the right boxes, and we look forward to checking out the show when it premieres on the SciFi Channel (we still can't call it by its new name) in the US on 2nd October.