It has taken me a couple of days to put together my thoughts about this week’s episode of Stargate Universe. When I’ve been so excited about the last half of this last season, and I see an episode that doesn’t live up to the quality of the last couple, then the only word to use is “disappointed.” Disappointed doesn’t make for the most fun post to write, nor to read. What is more frustrating is reading the vast multitude of positive reviews. I’m not saying they’re wrong (or stupid, as I’ve been known to do when I’m … heated). I get that the writers didn’t know that “Blockade” was going to be the penultimate chapter to the entirety of the Stargate Universe story, but it just didn’t have the mythic feel that the previous two episodes did.
But disappointment didn’t mean that the episode was bad … that is not what I’m saying at all … because there was a lot to like about “Blockade.”
First, is Eli. I’ve been watching the first season of SGU again recently, and it is remarkable how much the characters have evolved in two short seasons. No one is more of an example of that Eli. Mr. Wallace has come a long way since he was pulled out of his house wearing pajama pants. From Rush’s admission (second, actually) that Eli is a genius (how many times has he come up with the plan that saved the day now?) to his damn near heroic response to Park’s predicament, Eli has earned his place on the crew of the Destiny.
Park, too, is now solidly ensconced. It took a lot of guts to stay back on the ship during its journey through the hot blue mess. Once she was left alone in the hydroponics, you had to know things were not going to end well. When she survived, I was surprised (if for no other reason than SGU just wants to continue to screw with me about Greer … after nearly killing him twice, killing off his new girlfriend would be cruel). Survival, though, did not come without a price … it will be interesting to see if her blindness is permanent (not that “temporary” would be healed in one episode anyways).
There is a theory working its way around comment threads and message boards across the internet; something I wish I could take credit for (or even be able to credit the first place I read it). It makes for a very interesting twist in the whole descendants plot arc. What if the drones were the product of Mr. Brody’s Futura? We’ve had fun these last couple of weeks thinking about all of the positive, and negative, impacts of the creation of the society on Novus, but this is one eventuality that I never really gamed out. I laughed at Brody’s “get off my lawn” mentality, but the possibility that it led to the attacks on the Destiny gives those scenes a much greater meaning.
I know I’ve said it before, probably too many times now, but it is a crying shame we only get one more hour.
Notes & Quotes
Clacked by Ivey West 
on May 04, 2011 @ 11:00 EST5EDT
I don’t know about Brody’s Futura being the creators of the drones. Didn’t they establish that the culture never discovered FTL? If so, how could they have created these ships that obviously have FTL? Maybe I just missed something, but if the inhabitants of Novus never managed the FTL accomplishment then the only way I could see one of the societies on an ancillary planet doing so would be by discovering alien tech and reverse engineering it.
*POST AUTHOR*
That’s a good point, but it speaks to my confusion about something … I know Futura existed as an opposing nation-state on Novus, but didn’t they say, ast some point, that they never heard from the Futurians again? So they could have left the planet, and with their forked technological development timeline?
Or, as bsg states below, maybe the tools that the Futurians developed gained enough technological advancement to gain sentience, destroy Futura (Skynet style, natch), and advance, technologically, on their own, at a faster rates because their machine.
I don’t remember any mention of never hearing from the Futurans again. I do remember them saying that both sides decided to come together and pool their resources to make those huge interstellar ships, so I assumed that meant the original settlers and the Futurans. Again, unless I missed something and there was yet another fracture in their group, but I thought Futura was the only other settlement/country on the planet. If it was, then the statement that both sides joined forces could only mean that the people of Futura joined with the originals to get the heck off the planet.
On top of all this speculation we know that the drones were created as part of some larger war. None of the descendants seemed to know anything about a huge, to-the-death war and if they were the “other side” then none of them would be left alive at this point.
*POST AUTHOR*
Well, by throwing these things that most logical people call “facts” into the discussion, you’ve completely killed this fun little theory.
:P
LOL…I’m sorry, I don’t usually pay attention to the details of a show so closely, especially since I do a lot of my TV watching late at night. I guess it’s because I know there are precious few episodes left and, as Steven Tyler sang, “I don’t want to miss a thing.”
I am *seriously* going to miss this series though. In the last several episodes it’s become one of the best things on the air. Too bad it couldn’t have been like this from season 1, we’d probably not be lamenting its cancellation. (Although since it’s on Syfy I’m not so sure about that last sentence.)
*POST AUTHOR*
I actually don’t get the beef that most people have with Season One. I was a fan of all of the characters very quickly (Well, the ones we were supposed to be fans of … Wray was not set up to be a sympathetic characters), and LOVED the logline. Much more realistic portrayal of what the central story to Voyager should have been.
People say it was too much like BSG, and not enough like SG. Well, I didn’t like SG before, and loved BSG, so I guess I was their demo.
Look, I loved season one with a passion. My lament only stems from the fact that the huddled masses didn’t seem to enjoy it. When the show started, all four members of my family were glued to the TV, but halfway through season 1 one of my daughters gave up because she expected something more like the previous series. By the end of the first season my wife was about to bail and she did early on in the 2nd season.
My oldest daughter and I still adore the series and love it even more now. If my family could stand as a microcosm for overall viewers then it’s safe to say SGU could currently have double the audience had it begun with stories like it’s ending with. My complaint isn’t with how the series played out, just with the fact that it seemed to play out in a way that was unappealing to many viewers.
Even so, I wouldn’t mind it ending, having told a quality story on its own terms instead of pandering to the masses except for the fact that we’re going to be left with a huge, honkin’ cliffhanger that will never get resolved. I can take a quick ending, but I need closure. That’s been a very common complaint amongst genre fans concerning their beloved shows for a very long time.
Maybe they evolved Tom? Maybe the have a plan! *deranged laughter!!!*
Gonna miss this show terribly. Even Eli and Wray grew on me and I could not stand them in the beginning.
I hope some of the RX from the pharmacy works on ALS and flash blindness.
And – Am I sick for wanting the outfits from the drycleaners to be Hotdog on a Stick uniforms?
BSG, that would be hilarious. My first thought was “Weinerlicious” outfits from “Chuck.”
I couldn’t stand Wray at first, but now I love her. I always liked Eli, though, but I was not so fond of Rush. I’m getting to a point where I like the guy even though he’s a complete ass.
*POST AUTHOR*
I second Tom here … Have always loved Eli (I always identify most with characters of his ilk). Wray grew on me (watching S1 again on Netflix recently, and still, knowing what I know now, don’t like her character back then).
This episode somebody said the descendants may have spread out and populated other worlds. This made me think… maybe this could be an explanation for why the people of the Pegasus galaxy speak English. But I don’t know how this would work in terms of the timeline…
Did any one notice the interesting spellings on the signs? “Markit” on one. Oh and the newspaper said “ATAK!” or something similar. I like how it took them a little while to understand what the article said
*POST AUTHOR*
That was a good catch … I thought that was interesting, too, especially in light of complaints that the people from Novus spoke the same English that the crew of the Destiny did. It is unlikely that that the language wouldn’t have evolved with them, and now we see some type of example where it did not?
The difference was on purpose, and thus had a reason behind it; but we’ll likely never learn what that reason was :(
I was happy to see the altered spelling of English words in the papers they found. While it’s unrealistic to think the language would be exactly the same as ours, at least showing spelling changes gives a little more realism to the story. Obviously they can’t go around speaking a completely different language or even one so changed from our original English that it were indecipherable. That would make for difficult storytelling, but that little spelling twist was a good one. I agree with Ivey that it would be interesting to get more story on that.
If SGU isn’t getting saved, I hope they continue it in the form of novels. I don’t mean “graphic novels” which always sounded to me like a way for older people to justify buying comic books. I want real, honest to goodness novels. Okay, what I really want is just one more season that has a real ending to the story.
I guess I’m starting to sound like the guy who’s pooping on everyone’s party, but here I go again. I thought the Pegasus galaxy was relatively near our own Milky Way and the Destiny was like several hundred thousand brazillion light years from Earth. That would imply that the descendants, in only 2000 years, not only developed FTL, which it was established they hadn’t, but that they had developed FTL travel with the power to cross galaxies.
On an only loosely related note: Why is our galaxy named after a candy bar, but others aren’t? I think the human race would be more apt to press for space exploration if our neighboring galaxies were named “Snickers,” “Hershey,” “Kit Kat,” and the like. Agreed?
The drones are a product of alternate Dr. Rush. Did we all forget about him? You know just because he sunk into the sun doesn’t mean he’s dead. Remember the Futura belief, that “Rush would come again.” They repeatedly asked, ‘why did they believe that?’ They never addressed why they felt that way. Also, remember our Rush’s disdain for the people during the evacuations; it goes to lend that alternate rush would feel the same way about those people and would want to rid the galaxy of his mistake. After all, he was willing to kill all of the original crew; it would be easy for him to kill the descendants. The drones didn’t figure out to block the suns, Rush knows how the Destiny works so he blocked all possible routes. I’ll even take it an extra step to say Rush going into the chair became to drones.