Loved this episode for a lot of the reasons other people have stated. I loved the way it ended as well, allowing the viewer to logically conclude that the second time-traveling kino got its point across. It avoided a "groundhog day" feeling of "do we have to do this
again?" that I often find in time travel episodes of other shows.
I actually got a big grin on my face when the credits started rolling after the kino went through the gate. I feel like this was just the perfect spot to end the episode. Sometimes if there's too much time after a climax it can lessen the impact. If you can do it right and end just exactly at that climax and still give the viewers the impression that everything got wrapped up then that's a great ending.
And I do think that it was definitely implied that everything got wrapped up simply because of where it ended. If things had gone wrong again there would have been some hint of it, like, I dunno, the kino rolling onto Destiny in front of the confused Eli and Rush instead of into the past. It would've taken five seconds to imply further problems that would require a resolution, and the lack of those five seconds indicates that all is well.
And like others have said, extremely good use of the kinos as the point of view. At first I thought they were just being a little creative by telling the story purely through the kino, and I was not terribly impressed until we realized that the characters were watching the kino footage, just like us.
Here's something else that gets me. When Destiny jumped out of FTL before, it was for 12 hours. This episode, Destiny stayed at the planet about 36 hours instead. Why the change?
There's obviously some sort of AI in Destiny that's able to calculate things like the nearest source of what they need. It may not be self-aware like a lot of AIs in science fiction, but it's obviously a powerful computer. I think it made some sort of calculation that determined a reasonable amount of time for them to get what they need. Of course, Destiny may not realize it's dealing with humans and not Ancients, and we may be different enough that it can't accurately predict how much time we'll need, but I think it's at least making an effort.
And yes, I believe that Destiny discovered the water contaminant before the crew did, and this is why it went to that planet. Presumably the scout ship that seeded the gates and recorded information about the planets ahead of them would have gotten a sample of those creatures, and Destiny could probably have realized they had a high probability of providing a cure. Perhaps that was why it gave them three times the "standard" time of twelve hours, because it knew not only did the crew need time to gather these creatures, they needed time to figure out what they needed to gather.
The Destiny itself seems to almost be playing a god figure so far, kinda like the "Father" part of the Christian Trinity. It is aloof, inaccessible, and impossible to understand for the most part, but it tries to provide for its "children". It doesn't give handouts, though. The crew has to work for its rewards. There's a sense when they stop at a planet that Destiny has a plan for them on that planet, but it gives them no indication of what that plan is. I kinda like it.
