Stargate Universe (3rd stargate series!) - Page 4

Quote: Speaking of security, I'm surprised they were given as much freedom as they were without any protections.  I wonder if they are going to have an episode when someone from the ship visits family and has an accident back on Earth.  They could do without the stones, but the main purpose appears to continue to tie the show in with the others, providing guest appearances and so forth and giving Lou Diamond Philips' character something to do.

Regarding the plot of trying to get them home, there should more of an effort to find another planet from which they can dial to the ship.  I can't remember if it has been mentioned whether that effort is going on. 

No comments on the latest episode? Personally, I loved it. Very stargate-y (in stark contrast to last week's "let's go clubbing!" scenes) and cool. The ending became somewhat predictable as the episode went on, but not so much that it ruined the episode. IMO, probably the best episode since the pilot.

Just to show that you can't please all of the people all of the time, it's probably the episode I've liked least for the following reasons:

- Time travel is always a headache and better have a huge payoff if I'm expected to invest myself in trying to make sense of it.

- I hate jerkycam quick editing. There are people who consider it exciting, so I get why they do it, but it's completely not my cup of tea. I've already had my workout. When I finally plop down to veg out in front of a favorite show, I don't need another one. There's one caveat to that, though. I've always said in war movies that are trying to give the audience the feeling of what it's like to be there, jerkycam quick editing makes sense because it's disorienting, and that's exactly what you feel like in that type of situation. I'm allowing room for the possibility that's what they were attempting here. In which case, I still don't like it, but I'd get it. Just not my cup of tea.

- Geek boy getting up the "courage" to tell Chloe Armstrong how he feels about her -- while she's unconscious.

I actually felt no sense of wonder in the whole episode. For me, if the episode is going to be really compelling, it's needs some Dr. Rush and some Everett Young. And not just as characters other characters pass in the hallway.

Things I liked:

- Consequences for just jumping onto planets without thorougly "testing" them. I think in the original series, they had the MALP's they'd send out to test the desired destination planet for all kinds of things before sending people. As near as I can tell, they currently just send one of those camera things, which is no where near the same. I'm sure I'm missing something, but I'm not even sure how they know there is a breathable air mixture on these planets. Somehow they're figuring out which are "Class M planets" capable of sustaining life. But there could be a million pathogens just waiting to infect them.

- Dr. Rush's few lines. At least he points out to people the recklessness of always looking while mid-leap.

- Character exposition brought about by looking at the recordings of people who were dying and wanted to leave something of themselves behind.

 

 This was a fairly entertaining ep, but it wasn't definitive in any way due to the "reset button" at the end.  Heck, as far as I could tell, the characters in the "prime timeline" were never even exposed to the recorded footage of their counterparts dying in the alternate realities. (Presumably, they just caught the last recorded message and acted on it.)   This series seems to want to be linear in nature.  And in a linear series "reset buttons" are frowned upon.  To be fair, I suppose they did at least expose the pathogens in their water supply.  But that was it as far as any meaningful plot and character development which furthered the overall arc.

(On the plus side, we *did* get to see the "Geek Guy" fire a gun -- even if it was in an alternate timeline.  And the way that was filmed was "funny as all get out"  .)

EDIT: HTF ALERT:  We *did* get at least a partial list of "Geek Guy"'s Desert Island DVD's!!  
 

True. And every geek I've ever seen has considered whether trilogys count as 1. Because geeks push the envelope.

Totally missed this and I'm trying to find the first few episode online. Syfy.com seems to have Darkness as the earliest episode, they don't have Air at all.  Anyone know anywhere else I may find them?

If you're willing to pay, iTunes has them.

Thanks Greg, just found them on iTunes.  I checked Hulu and they didn't have them either.

Count me as one that thinks this was the best episode since the pilot, and perhaps so far.  I agree that this was the most 'stargate-y' - it had exploration, and dealing with the issues that come from that exploration, not the politics nor the excessive backbiting that has driven the show so far. 

The group worked together; they're not friends by any means, but they worked towards a goal. 

And I thought Dr. Rush was used well here - while he's still not overly commendable (showing oh-so-like Baltar "survival skills" - which failed alternate Rush, by the way) he at least started showing some signs of connecting by liking Butch and Sundance, same as Young and his life/death talk with Eli.

This would have been a good episode to remove some of the dead weight, character-wise.  I'm afraid with all of the people involved in this show, we're going to get more club scenes in order to keep costs down.

Overall, a nice episode, and one that raises hopes for this show.

My comments have tapered off because I think I've decided I enjoy this particular show in a bubble.  I watched all of SG-1 and Atlantis on my own recently and it would have been weird to me to have been watching all along and commenting.  "Well, Rodney was a little off this week, and I don't know what they're doing with Todd."  Etc.  I think I just enjoy it better if all of the shortcomings aren't pointed out to me.  Just on this particular show.

But, for my last go-round: I didn't mind the club scenes.  One of the almost unique strengths of Stargate is that it's happening right now and we just don't know it.  It's our earth.  Not the future.  Not some alternate reality (except for the fictional politicians).  You don't have to have Tom Paris explaining cars and rock music to the rest of the characters.  So, connecting back to earth life is fine with me.

The club scene worked in the episode but it's my hope that the creators/writers don't overuse the stones/visiting Earth device to keep costs down on the show.   Right now, I'd rather have less episodes or less characters than having a majority of several episodes where the storyline is political and/or takes place on Earth.

I think the stones are a major problem with the show.   This week, Ming Na's character went home and her partner at her house responded with "is it really you?"  At this point, cultural awareness of the Stargate program is wide.

The even small use of the stones slowly blows up any "undercover" nature of the stargate program.. which may have been doused some time ago (I'm trying to remember how they covered the fight over antartica) but the use of the stones is just so over the top, frequent and just annoying.

Somehow, they need to ditch this convenience, because it really works as a crutch.. and a bad one.  If they could use it so that the stones suddenly didn't work and they were cut loose.. it would be more intriguing.. but if the stone use keeps up, I'm less likely to keep watching.

Ditch the stones. They are a crutch indeed.

I have to agree.  I am not liking the use of the stones. 

I said I wasn't going to discuss the show, but I find the stones pretty disturbing.  It seems like a pretty major violation to use someone else's body to have sex.  What if the officer whose body Ming-Na used isn't a lesbian?  No offense to anyone here, but I wouldn't want to come back to my body and find out I'd been up a man's ass or vicey-versey.  And, to be perfectly frank, I wouldn't want to find out I had been with a beautiful woman, either.  Because, I hadn't been.  And, if I was Young, I wouldn't want to use Tedford's body to make love to my wife.  It's just creepy and wrong.  And what's even worse is the show doesn't even seem to consider any of this to be maybe possibly a problem.  If someone was saying, "Wait a minute.  Should we be using these peoples' bodies in this fashion?" it would at least show that someone considers it an issue.  As tender as the music was when Ming-Na was with her partner, I don't think they do.

Or, is it only me who does anyway?

It's not just you, Greg, there's been some amount of fan outcry over this (though mostly over spoilers for an upcoming episode in which it seems hetero people may get together while one of them is in a gay persons body, which somehow is more offensive than the other way around?). From what I understand, there's supposed to be an "understanding" by the characters that when you use the stones you "forfeit" your body. But yeah, it's still kinda creepy.

I thought of that as well.  If the officer with whom Wray switches secretly has a boyfriend back on Destiny and Wray comes back to find out she's had a penis inside her, I doubt she'd be too pleased.  Any use of the penis is violative.  If a hetero woman jumped into another hetero woman and had sex, the host would be outraged.  And then there's the question of pregnancies and STDs.  It's just a really icky road they are traveling down.  Call me prudish, but I was okay with Stargate being a rather sexless franchise.

This show is starting to feel like Dollhouse....

I had high hopes for this show,but frankly loose the home front it just slows down the storyline and is just plain nuts. lets get on with seeing whats out there

I'll have to agree there, I think. It doesn't ruin the show for me or anything, it's just an aspect to it that I could live without.

I think the problem is, looking at the next few synopsis in my guides, we continue to use a lot of the stones. 

 

The problem with the stones is that the more you use them, you lose time away from showing us anything about this ship they are on, giving that ship any purpose (where is it going, why is it going there, etc.?) central questions I thought we'd spend a lot of episodes trying to figure out.. instead they just don't come up.  

When they do discover something about the ship, it's brushed over so fast it just doesn't make an impression.  Patrick's right, it basically in the past few eps has been "Dollhouse in Space"

You'd think it'd be a lot easier to transmit a communications signal over such long distances a whole lot easier than trasmitting (actually, swapping) a whole consciousness. It'd be easier for me to suspend my disbelief if they weren't doing this so often, but it keeps being thrown in my face. I'm also comfortable with Stargate being a sexless franchise. If they weren't swapping bodies all the time, we wouldn't have to deal with this icky stuff. As far as I'm concerned, once the body swapping occurs, it should be a phone call or video phone contact with their significant others. Visiting while in another body and making out is just creepy on too many levels.

Anyway, I thought the purpose of this unmanned ship was to explore places the ancients hadn't been and to also take stargates there so the ancients could eventually visit these places. But we don't see the ship delivering any gates, and the planets seem to already have stargates (how?). Also, there has been mention of planets being in the planetary database. Again, how? If this area has never been explored, how are these planets in a planetary database?

There are ships further ahead that have already seeded the planets (unless that was a part of Dr. Rush's lie (which it can't be, since the gates are already on the planets)).

Which leaves me with the question... so why again did they send this particular ship out? It's not doing anything.

Seriously? They have explained numerous times that there are ships traveling ahead of Destiny that are seeding the planets with gates and sending data back.

The Ancients intended to at one point gate to the ship and use it to explore the previously seeded planets but they never got around to it.

Is there any indication as to when they'll get back to the little ship that left at the end of the pilot?

Thanks for the refresher, Arild.

According to the producers, that ship's departure will play a big role in the first two episodes of the second half of the season (the mid-season hiatus is after next Friday's -- Dec 4 -- episode "Justice" -- no episode this Friday).
Edited by AlexF - 11/25/09 at 4:54pm

Thanks.  I'm really looking forward to that.