Stargate Universe - Who fired first?

[Orius]

Yeah, Rush's return felt ... rushed cool... but I guess it kind of works. At least we got some action in this episode and started moving away from the soapy stuff that was dominiating the show.

And Chloe is definitely genre blind here. When you got aliens boarding the ship, you don't get curious and walk up to them! You wouldn't see Eli doing that! Let's hope she knows better next time.

So are we going to have another bout of Young vs. Rush here? Was Rush lying to Young again at the end of the episode, or did he really learn from his experiences with the aliens? It is interesting that for now he's going along with Young's own lie.

And on a related note, looks like from the previews that Wray is going to attempt a coup next episode. That probably won't end well. In the previous episode she handled things very poorly when she was in charge, and that was when she had authority because Rush had framed Young. Pulling a coup and furthering tension between the military and civilian members of the crew probably will not bo good.

 

[Mark]

Honestly? Sounds like a painful rut for the show to swerve into. The great thing so far is how they've told some excellent self-contained one-hour stories, and side-stepped elephantine arcs.

We must be watching separate shows. Thus far, this series has impressed me as one with a good sense of the big picture. A series arc (getting home eventually) along side seasonal arcs makes good sense and seemed to be where this was going. It seems this first (split) season will be about the infighting with a taste of the alien threat that, and I am sad to see them moving toward this cliche, will bring them all together so they can survive, like Voyager but with three factions instead of two. Could have been better, IMO. The only thing that makes it seem like a bunch of self-contined episodes is the checklist they have gone through early to pre-appease potential audience/geek complaints about certain necessities the characters would need consider but it has always been done with a sense of a continuous storyline. There's nothing "self-contained" about the arc between Rush and Young and Wray, the triangle between Chloe, the soldier, and the brain, the steady decline of Eli morally as Young uses his tech ability to spy on everyone else.

I think this series works better as a disaster movie in space. The wrong people in the wrong place. I certainly hope they don't turn this show into another run-of-the-mill military sci-fi show with evil aliens bent on galactic domination and the invariably boring scenes of spaceships shooting other spaceships.

You seem to have also not read my post since I didn't suggest that this show should become like later seasons of SG1. Neither do I believe it should become like early SG1, with "self-contained one-hour stories" centered around their missions through the stargate each place the ship takes them. Doing that on occasion would be fine but building the series around that would be more of the same and fifteen years out of date. No thanks.


The problem of needing two shooting teams and the costs involved that Wycen points out might explain the backing off the expanded plot they set in motion. There are a lot of holes in how they got everyone back together which leads me to believe that they were going in a direction similar to what I suggested above and were told to rein things back in, then scrambled to write something that did so.

 

[Quantum]

By the way, did anybody notice that at least the head of these new aliens look like one of the D&D monsters? I think, but am not certain, it's called a Krell. Just get rid of the lower body and replace it with tentacles and you get the idea of the monster I'm trying to describe.

 

[Felon]

The only thing that makes it seem like a bunch of self-contined episodes is the checklist they have gone through early to pre-appease potential audience/geek complaints about certain necessities the characters would need consider but it has always been done with a sense of a continuous storyline.

For the record, doing the "we must be watching different shows" line in the same post with a "you seem to not have read my post" chestnut is kind of redundant. When it comes to being snarky, less is more. A little is good for perfectly healthy verbal sparring. Too much makes you sound defensive about people disagreeing with you.

At the risk of dislodging additional chips from shoulders, I cannot agree with theorycrafting which argues that self-contained episodes came about merely as a way to satisfy the checklist of some small faction of fanboys. The creators of the SG franchise are likely aware that no sci-fi show has ever died on the vine because they opted to jump straight into the action rather than bog down in technical minutiae. There's no onus on them to devote an entire episode to the water supply or power supply; they can just hang a few lanterns with some throwaway dialogue. The direction chosen is actually kind of risky, because if you ask a sci-fi fan whether they'd rather see a show about restoring life support or a show about alien-blasting, I'm willing to bet the latter will tend to get picked. They did these self-contained eps because they thought they'd try soemthing different this go 'round. Good for them.

The problem of needing two shooting teams and the costs involved that Wycen points out might explain the backing off the expanded plot they set in motion.

Not sure what you guys are talking about with regards to two shooting teams. Consider that they shoot scenes on different parts of Destiny, they shoot on earth in different locales, and they do offworld scenes, and they do so with different groups of actors. If they wanted, they can add some "alien ship" set pieces right next to those for Destiny, and that would seem easier and cheaper than finding a nightclub to shoot part of an episode in, then the next day set up for some offworld scene in a jungle or desert.

My personal baseless theory is a bit simpler. After having done a bunch of establishing episodes, they are looking at where they ought to go next. This episode amounts to dipping a toe in the water to see how fans react to adding traditional alien-blasting elements. I'm also willing to bet that this placates some network execs who want the show have some obligatory evil aliens and basically play it safe by sticking to the military sci-fi playbook.

 

[Mark]

Honestly?

For the record, doing the "we must be watching different shows" line in the same post with a "you seem to not have read my post" chestnut is kind of redundant. When it comes to being snarky, less is more. A little is good for perfectly healthy verbal sparring. Too much makes you sound defensive about people disagreeing with you.

At the risk of dislodging additional chips from shoulders, (. . .)

Ease up, buddy. Didn't mean to hurt your feelings by pointing out that we seemingly are watching two different shows. No need to try and get all personal and rude just because I also point out that you attribute ideas to me that were not in my post.

I cannot agree with theorycrafting which argues that self-contained episodes came about merely as a way to satisfy the checklist of some small faction of fanboys.

(. . .)

After having done a bunch of establishing episodes, (. . .)

This amounts to the same thing.

(. . .) this placates some network execs (. . .)

This echoes what I said with this re-start.

 

[SKyOdin]

The problem of needing two shooting teams and the costs involved that Wycen points out might explain the backing off the expanded plot they set in motion. There are a lot of holes in how they got everyone back together which leads me to believe that they were going in a direction similar to what I suggested above and were told to rein things back in, then scrambled to write something that did so.

I didn't see this at all in the episode. I never thought that the creators were going to turn Rush into some kind of villain or antagonist to the crew. The idea that Rush would join up with some aliens and attack the Destiny seems both out of character for him and rather silly and cliche. I was completely expecting him to be back on the crew in a few episodes (I expected it to take another one or two episodes, but returning the next episode didn't really surprise me).

The reason the creators had Young ditch Rush wasn't to set up Rush as a villain, it was to put Young's morality in question and increase the tension between the civilian and military factions on the ship. This latest episode spent a good amount of time exploring these things. Heck, a wedge has even been driven between Col. Young and Eli. So I would say that the creators have already milked everything they needed to out of the period when Rush was off the ship. Keeping him off longer would have only unnecessarily prolonged the resolution of that plot thread.

 

[BrooklynKnight]

At the end of the episode we see Eli showing Young that Rush and Wray are plotting against him with Keno footage. Maybe the split wasn't as deep as you thought. Or maybe his confidence was restored when Rush came back alive.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Knowing Rush, would you trust him...Young knows Rush like we know Rush, Eli is the only other one and he is outclassed by Rush.

Now they have an alien tech ship to play with.

Oh, I don't get the part about Rush being able to keep the Aliens from his mind, that is why I think they are "concerned" about the humans. Of all the people to mind meld with!

 

[Mark]

We still don't know that Rush isn't working with the aliens. They made an awfully big deal about one device sending and one device receiving thoughts, rather than just having each device doing both. I suspect this was done to reinforce that Rush was going to get some of Young's thoughts and not the other way around. If the aliens were trying to probe Rush's brain for information, they only needed the one-way thought-traffic, too. For Rush to gain information from the aliens, enough to fly one of their ships, know the layout to find the shuttle, understand the devices, they had to use the devices in a way that the thoughts were flowing toward Rush for whatever reason. Further, Rush nearly doubled over in pain using the device to gain information from Young for mere seconds. How easy would it have been to drag all that he supposedly gleaned from the aliens unwillingly without their knowing they were being probed while they were using the devices in a manner that allowed the flow of thought information toward Rush? While I had thought that Rush was going to be working with the aliens but off the ship, I am not convinced that he is not working with them but from within the ship.

Cliche? Piffle. Cliche would be having simple infighting and power struggles among the humans like we've seen on DS9, Voyager, BSG, and elsewhere many time before. This series needs to give us more than that to rise above the cliche and I expect it.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Their first space battle felt... fresh. Exciting.

Seriously, there is a new alien. We know nothing. They speak only one word with us. We have no clue on what they can actually do. The ship is in a bad shape. So, all in all, there was genuine tension on what they wanted to do, how the Destiny would fare against them. In hindsight, we understand that we might not really have seen their full capabilities - they want the Destiny, they can't just shoot it up. At least they now have an inkling on its firepower. And with Rush they might also have gleamed more insights on the ships capabilities itself.