“You’re the ancestors,” would have been a much better blow-your-mind kinda line if we hadn’t seen it in the previews. I’m all for the previews teasing us with what’s going to happen, but, in this case, don’t you think the “You’re human?” line would have worked just as well setting up the intrigue just as well? No? Well, nobody asked you anyways (except for that part a couple of seconds ago, where I asked you … but other than me, nobody asked you).
I’m not entirely sure why Stargate: Universe didn’t catch on. I get that, as a continuation of the Stargate … erm … universe, it was widely panned by the pre-existing fandom (Especially in the wake of the Stargate: Atlantis cancellation). But SGU was my first experience in the collection of shows, and I was hooked from minute one.
This story — this idea that a civilization evolved from the alternate crew of the other Destiny — is the perfect example of why SGU worked well, and why it was, in many ways, a closer brother to Star Trek: The Original Series than its Stargate lineage. As much as TOS was about exploration (the more natural connection to SGU), it was also a collection of amazing science fiction stories told with the crew of the Enterprise. This week’s story on SGU was the perfect example of the kind of story telling you’d see on TOS.
The directions this story can could go, as the crew explores Novus, are pretty much infinite. I always was a big fan of seeing, at least hypothetically, how relationship dynamics could evolve, and how that affects the characters in the now. As much as TJ might have been getting further and further away from Young recently (and, slowly, closer to another certain someone), that relationship found a way to prevail in this future. The tear that rolled down TJ’s cheek, with Chloe’s hug and Eli’s shoulder, was heartbreaking; seeing these characters accept — if only for a fleeting moment — a happy future that they will never get to experience (especially because the show is cancelled now. …)
I would be remiss if I didn’t compliment SGU on a different note: Sometimes, sci-fi shows have to spit out technobabble and exposition at an alarming (and somewhat annoying) rate. In this episode, SGU proved that they are the kings at telling us a bunch of stuff all at once without destroying the rhythm of the narrative. The editing on the scene where the away team explained the history of the civilization was outstanding.
Notes & Quotes
Clacked by Ivey West 
on Apr 20, 2011 @ 11:00 EST5EDT
This particular episode was actually more Stargate-like than usual. The space battles, the drones attacking the settlements, the people running through the Stargate to escape, even the humor – all of it was very reminiscent of SG-1.
A couple things bothered me about the episode:
1) The whole “You’re the ancestors!” thing has been done before, and not by TOS but by DS9 (5×22 “Children of Time”) and Voyager (2×01 “The 37’s”). As a result, it felt very anticlimactic.
2) I like the fact that Scott exclaims, “You speak English?!” It’s something that Stargate has never been good about explaining – in Atlantis, for example, there is absolutely no explanation for how Teyla and the other people of the Pegasus galaxy speak English. (In Star Trek, at least they have a universal translator.) I was wondering what SGU would do if they introduced a humanoid species that speaks English, so I like the fact that they had a reasonable explanation in this episode. It still bugged me though. Apparently everything else evolved over the millenia: political systems, religions, cities, nations. But the language is exactly the same. There’s a disconnect there, because if the language was preserved so perfectly as a result of technology, the knowledge and beliefs of Destiny’s crew also should have been preserved by that technology. I don’t know if I’m expressing the thought clearly, but do you know what I mean? Like English is still evolving, but it’s not evolving as much because it’s preserved through recordings, the Internet, etc. Our collective knowledge is also preserved the same way. It just seems weird to me that the crew’s language was preserved pristinely, and yet the rest of their knowledge was not. Not a big deal, I guess, but it’s the little details that take a show from okay to great.
Farscape’s explanation of everyone speaking English via the translator buggy injection is the best I’ve seen.
I get the English evolving argument. I watched a Russell Brand interview the other day and marvelled at the difference in word choices from British English to American English. Still, I’m willing to forgive quite a bit in the sci-fi fantasy I enjoy.
I agree. This second half of the season was very thoughtful.
Over all, I think SGU tried too hard at times to be almost an indie movie version of a space opera mixed with the darkness of BSG with a dash of SG.
In many ways, SGU would have been better off if Atlantis had run concurrently during SGU’s first season. Having more tie-ins would have drawn more fans to it.
On the other hand, the show veered a lot from SG-1 and Atlantis by being realistic. For instance, on the recent episode, the crew finds their ancestors and are shocked that they all speak English!
Woah! Stargate actually dealing with a common sense question like people on different planets not derived from Anglo-culture speaking English!! That’s totally too logical!
Of course, having the descendants of the Destiny speaking perfect 21st Century English was also odd because one would think that after 2000 years, there would have been language drift (like the difference between 15th Century English to 21st Century English).
I’m sad that SGU is coming to an end. I think with both SGU and Caprica, SyFy tried to grow the sophisticated sci-fi drama. Caprica failed because it was too planet-bound, melodramatic, and moved too slowly. There’s nothing wrong with a sci-fi drama being a soap opera. BSG did it very well as did Lost. Caprica showed how not to do it.
Dorv, I thought the purple fruit seed deal was an inside joke about birth control. I could be totally wrong, and probably am, you see Wray was involved in the conversation……
I thought they were inferring that it was some kind of an aphrodisiac. They had those knowing, yet slightly naughty looks on their faces.
Or my mind’s just in the gutter.
so exactly how many people are on Destiny (not including the “descendants” they just picked up … I thought they said only 18 or so … would make it difficult to create a civilization with only that many people wouldn’t it?
By a Baltar projection, they’d be extinct in a flash.
If Novus is close enough to gate to the outpost, then the Destiny could have flown to Novus and then used the ship’s gate to translate all the people at the last minute, without using up all of the oxygen.
I hate it when an obvious solution is ignored for the purpose of dramatic storytelling. WHY did no one think of this obvious solution? Because they couldn’t set up any logical way of blocking it?
*POST AUTHOR*
I’m with you … This bothered me so much more than the question Ruby posed about the language of the planet’s residents.