 Many reviews focused on the show 's fusion of Wild West and outer space motifs . TV Guide 's Matt Roush , for instance , called the show " oddball " and " offbeat " , and noted how literally the series took the metaphor of space operas as Westerns . Roush opined that the shift from space travel to horseback was " jarring " , but that once he got used to this , he found the characters cleverly conceived , and the writing a crisp balance of action , tension and humor . Several reviewers , however , criticized the show 's setting ; Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle felt that the melding of the western and science fiction genres was a " forced hodgepodge of two alarmingly opposite genres just for the sake of being different " and called the series a " vast disappointment " , and Carina Chocano of Salon.com said that while the " space as Wild West " metaphor is fairly redundant , neither genre connected to the present . Emily Nussbaum of the New York Times , reviewing the DVD set , noted that the program featured " an oddball genre mix that might have doomed it from the beginning : it was a character @-@ rich sci @-@ fi western comedy @-@ drama with existential underpinnings , a hard sell during a season dominated by Joe Millionaire " . 
