That’s more like it. “Time” certainly had its share of points you can quibble about, but it still managed to be my favorite episode of the young Stargate Universe season. Kicking things off with the crew exiting the stargate onto a jungle planet was a great start. We need a little more adventure here. Add in some nasty aliens, some nice character moments, and a save-the-day twist that was rather interesting and you have the makings of a pretty good episode.
The way the team first appeared on the planet, I thought we were finally getting some genuine exploration. There was no impending doom forcing them into anything, so it was finally time for adventure. In retrospect, that wasn’t exactly the case, but I don’t think the characters really knew that. Although, with all the time shenanigans, it does completely depend on which timeline you are talking about. Initially at least, they were there because the Destiny had long since discovered the tainted water supply and knew that the venom was the solution.
I also really enjoyed the way that all of the various timelines played out. The attacks were were exciting. And when the characters weren’t having their chests burrowed into, we got some much needed character moments. For me, that’s still the biggest mark against the show. There are so many characters, and we really haven’t gotten to know much about a lot of them. This was a step in the right direction. We learned more about TJ, saw Rush and Young find some (very small) common ground, and had it reaffirmed just what kind of a guy Greer is.
My only real complaint there is that I would have preferred not so much time be spent on Eli. Not that I didn’t enjoy the Eli-specific scenes. I just feel like we’ve learned much more about Eli than anyone else, and it’s time to spread that around a bit. Ideally, I would have liked to see Camile involved, but I’m guessing budget kept Ming Na out of this one. Fortunately, it looks like we’ll be covering that ground next week anyway.
I did kind of give up on the death part of the story pretty early. It was just too obvious that there was no way they could possibly kill all of those characters. It still kept me involved though, because I had to know how they were going to get out of it. Alternate time lines and sunflares are certainly not new in the Stargate world, and the final solution did call to mind the iratus bug. I’m sure that there are those that didn’t dig revisiting those paths. It worked for me.
On the other side of that coin, I’m sure my big complaint worked just fine for a lot of people. I absolutely hated the busted kino video. I get why it was like that. The kino went back in time and had been sitting around, so the data was corrupted, or some such. Fine, but there was just too much with the pixelation and the jerking. It drove me nuts. I couldn’t help thinking, “Any life form that has engineered a ship that can fly through a star has long since conquered the camcorder.”
Other gripes were small. The team that originally landed on the planet did seem a bit too freewheeling and unconcerned. It is, after all, an unknown landscape that could hold all manner of dangers. That was topped by Eli just biting into whatever kind of alien fruit they found. Really though, whatever. I find that I’m more than willing to let a lot of those things slide with Universe. Maybe because I’m a long time Stargate fan, or maybe because it’s Friday night, the work week is done, and I get to go see Jane Austen’s Emma tomorrow. Whatever it is, for now, I remain content just going along for the Universe ride.
Clacked by Brett Love 
on Nov 14, 2009 @ 02:03 EST5EDT
I finally really liked an episode of SGU. I understand that they are billions of light years away from earth but I get tired of the constant “getting back to earth” storyline and everyone is whining except for Rush who does everything he can to stop it.
I liked the action and science fiction of the episode which is what the show is should be about instead of who is sleeping with whom. The only quibble I have about the ship coming out of FTL at this exact planet is how did it know that the indigenous life forms there would have the venom to cure the illness from three jumps ago? For that matter, how did the ship know that the people were getting sick to begin with. But… for a ship built by the ancients, it probably has some sort of medical scan type thing going on.
I like the Eli portions of the show… it is like watching a younger (do not want to say less mature) form of McKay and a younger, male form of Carter and Daniel rolled into one.
I am hoping that they will continue on with the show like it was tonight, action drama, not drama-drama (if I wanted that I would watch the Amanda is coming back on the CW network.)
The Destiny needn’t have scanned the people. We can assume that it has sensors for the water system as well as the air. Just like it brought them directly to the desert planet for the chalk and the ice planet for the water in the first place, it took them to the jungle planet for the solution to the parasitic infection. Note that it even gave them 36 hours instead of 12, because it knew that the creatures had a nocturnal cycle, and possibly about the solar flares as well.
I agree with most posters that it was the best episode thus far. Unfortunately, that’s not saying much when the bar had been set so low, so it felt like a below-average episode of Atlantis, complete with reset button.
It was great that we finally got character development through characters talking with one another instead of the Kino confessionals. It was awful that most of those conversations were wiped out along with the first two timelines. The audience still knows, but it doesn’t change the character relationships going forward, so this episode can be safely ignored. I would have loved Young and Rush to actually remember the bit about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid going forward.
Each time the castaways fail in the mission, a Kino gets tossed back in time, along with a body or two. Given that these are “the wrong people,” I wonder just how many repetitions it took until they finally got it right, and just how high that stack of Kinos and human skulls grew by the final iteration.
The damaged Kino footage was annoying as hell, in that it was added on top of the normal bad lighting and shaky-cam technique. They could have at least used digital artifacting instead of analog; I highly doubt the Kinos run on Super Betamax.
To be fair, there’s nothing unusual about the away team treating an unknown planet like a walk through Busch Gardens. The Ancients and the SGC have a long tradition of completely disregarding safety precautions for disease and microorganisms in Gate travel, which is probably why most of the Ancients in the Milky Way were wiped out by a plague. SG teams have always eaten local food and drunk the water willy-nilly, so I don’t fault Eli, even though he’s endlessly spouting sci-fi aphorisms and quotations.
Brett, I envy you. I would also much rather be watching Jane Austen’s Emma. I watch the Kate Beckinsale/Mark Strong version entirely too often.
Great review. Another commenter suggested that the Destiny could actually be a living entity in itself. If that would be the case, it would remind me of another show with a similar plot device called LEXX. I LOVED that show! While it may not be for everyone, it is worth giving a look. The leading lady was a knockout too! It was filmed in Germany….(I believe that is Sabastian’s neck of the woods).
*POST AUTHOR*
Tim-1, I would almost completely agree with you about LEXX, but I will make one correction. The leading ladies were knockouts. If you’ll recall, Zev was originally played by Eva Haberman. And then later, Xev was played by Xenia Seeberg. A small point, but I take my half cluster-lizard/half love slave sci-fi babes very seriously. :D
*POST AUTHOR*
This was actually a stage version of Emma, and it was outstanding. Unfortunately, it was followed by contracting the flu bug that is going around these parts late Saturday night. But given just how good Emma was, I think I’m still ahead for the weekend.
Brett: A friend and I used to debate the issue of who was the best….Zev or Xev? I was partial to Zev, who as you know was played by Eva Haberman, and my friend favored Xev. But in the end, we always agreed that there was no need to split hairs with beauty and hotness at that level with those two superbabes. And that robot head was just hilarious! I wish the first four movies were on dvd though.
This was the first episode I actually enjoyed. It is unfortunate I have to say that but it is true. And at the end of the episode when I saw the preview for next week’s episode I just had to moan……….more relationship problems. More “drain-drama”. Without the action there is really no point in making a Stargate program.
The kino video at the beginning was annoying, but once I understood why it was that way…I appreciated it. It helped understand the different timelines. I had a bigger issue with camera work in the Eli-Chloe scene and I don’t normally get bothered by stuff like that.
Have to agree, this was the best SGU ep so far and really the only one I thoroughly enjoyed. It is what I was expecting from SGU.
I, naively, thought are they really killing these characters? Wow. I never watched the previous SG series so time travel didn’t really come to mind until of course we realized they were watching the kino video.
Hopefully more episodes will be like this one and less like the last one.
It would seem that the kino had to be on the fritz to cover up for the poor quality set. If they filmed it normally we would be able to see how plastic everything was. It also gave the episode a gritty feel. So all in all for me, the kino was a good move.
I was much happier with this episode. There was something to think about. I really enjoyed the time travel part. I did not get to see the preview for next week. *fingers crossed*
I saw this webisode referred to on TWoP, saying that what happened offscreen was better than the actual show. In this instance, I’d say that was correct, especially for fans of Greer (like me).
Kino 6 – Don’t Encourage Him
I don’t care enough to actually go watch all the others, though. Someone give a shout-out if they bother to do so and find anything good. :)
I didn’t have a problem with the Kino footage style (and I didn’t think the artifacting was particulatly ‘analogue’). I think the Kinos are actually a great way for recording what happens in offworld (to use an SG1/SGA term) missions.
I really liked the episode overall. The end was well done and doesn’t treat the audience like idiots.
What’s amusing to me is commenters on ‘other’ sites claiming this is a two parter and next week we’ll see how they get out of it. Kind of missing the point.
I would be disappointed if this was a two-parter. It would take away from the overall good feeling I had from the episode. I don’t need to see that. The end was the end. I don’t need the details. But, I do think there will be ramifications from this episode. And, if there aren’t, what a waste of great character development and growth.
I had a date and missed the best episode of the show? haha