Stargate Universe - Who fired first?

[SKyOdin]

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.

I highly doubt it. Much of the episode involved Eli becoming less and less happy with Col. Young's orders. This culminated in Eli's big exclamation to Young during the big battle: "You should have thought about that before you decided to get rid of Dr. Rush." That was a critical moment in the episode and can't be overlooked. Young managed to make Eli even less happy when he ordered Eli to fire on the ship with Chloe still on onboard, even though Eli was telling him that it would risk blowing up the whole ship.

Yes, Eli was still helping Young spy on everyone during the final montage, but there was something in there that caught my eye. There was a moment where the camera was on Col. Young, and he made a quick glance away from the screen towards Eli. To me, it looked like a nervous or even suspicous glance. I don't think Col. Young is 100% trusting of Eli anymore. After all, Eli had actually stood up to him for the first time earlier. The main reason Col. Young has always depended on Eli is because he has always seen Eli as the only scientific mind on the ship that he could reliably control. The fact that Eli is seriously questioning him now will probably put a big dampener on that.

Eli has always been the character most caught between Dr. Rush and Col. Young. While he respected and obeyed Col Young, he has always been the person who respected Dr. Rush the most, and was the person on the ship closest to Dr. Rush. Now that the next episode is going to involve an actual power struggle, I bet we are in for an Eli-centric episode.

 

[SKyOdin]

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.

What actually happened is pretty simple and straightforward. The telepathic devices are one-way, exactly as Rush told Young-in-an-Alien. Rush used the device to read Young's mind, then, immediately after Young got disconnected, he was able to read the mind of the alien Young was possessing. From that information he was able to find out where Chloe was and how to escape the ship.

Later on, Rush lied to the other crew members on the ship about how the mind reading device worked in order to cover up the fact that it was Col. Young who sprang him. This was part of his set of lies protecting Col. Young.

So no, there is no evidence in the episode that indicates Rush was working with the aliens. He seemed perfectly happy killing one with his bare hands after all.

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.

I seem to remember lots of battle against hostile aliens in those series. The idea of a rogue scientist joining up with the hostile forces fighting against a rag-tag group of survivors is the entire plot of the original Battlestar Galactica too. The idea that the rogue scientist is a villain is even more cliche. I think what Stargate Universe is doing is a little less cliche. Just the fact that Dr. Rush is morally ambiguous instead of simply evil is a nice change of pace from the usual cliches.

 

[theT0rmented]

What actually happened is pretty simple and straightforward. The telepathic devices are one-way, exactly as Rush told Young-in-an-Alien. Rush used the device to read Young's mind, then, immediately after Young got disconnected, he was able to read the mind of the alien Young was possessing. From that information he was able to find out where Chloe was and how to escape the ship.

Actually, the only information we have on how they escaped the ship is Rush's explanation. We did not see their actual escape; we saw Rush find Chloe, and then we saw them board Destiny. It may have gone down as Rush told it, but it may not. It gives the writers two possibilities for further use: it happened as Rush said, in which case nothing more is needed for this, or it's a bit more complicated (Rush coerced an alien; or promised them technology; or another human subject (Young maybe); etc.)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I got to listen to the episode, but haven't watched it yet.

Still, I liked the "fog of war" and all that- nicely done.

And the Wray-Rush-Young mess is, IMHO, being nicely done. Rush is clearly an egotist, Wray seems power-hungry and unable to see things from any viewpoint but her own, and Young is a competent military officer who has lost control of himself at some level.

It reminds me a bit of the internal conflicts within the Minbari culture in Bab5.

 

[coyote6]

Was the video Eli was showing the Col. of Young & Wray, or the video they showed him watching earlier, of Wray talking to the other scientists & civilians?

Either way, it's Wray plotting, so Young is unlikely to be surprised by Wray when she makes her move.

 

[BrooklynKnight]

I highly doubt it. Much of the episode involved Eli becoming less and less happy with Col. Young's orders. This culminated in Eli's big exclamation to Young during the big battle: "You should have thought about that before you decided to get rid of Dr. Rush." That was a critical moment in the episode and can't be overlooked. Young managed to make Eli even less happy when he ordered Eli to fire on the ship with Chloe still on onboard, even though Eli was telling him that it would risk blowing up the whole ship.

Yes, Eli was still helping Young spy on everyone during the final montage, but there was something in there that caught my eye. There was a moment where the camera was on Col. Young, and he made a quick glance away from the screen towards Eli. To me, it looked like a nervous or even suspicous glance. I don't think Col. Young is 100% trusting of Eli anymore. After all, Eli had actually stood up to him for the first time earlier. The main reason Col. Young has always depended on Eli is because he has always seen Eli as the only scientific mind on the ship that he could reliably control. The fact that Eli is seriously questioning him now will probably put a big dampener on that.

Eli has always been the character most caught between Dr. Rush and Col. Young. While he respected and obeyed Col Young, he has always been the person who respected Dr. Rush the most, and was the person on the ship closest to Dr. Rush. Now that the next episode is going to involve an actual power struggle, I bet we are in for an Eli-centric episode.

I'm getting a different vibe from Eli. He's under a lot of pressure, and a lot of stress and wears his emotions on his sleeve but I think in the end he respects and looks up to Young and is going to back him up. He knows Young is his best chance to survive.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm getting a different vibe from Eli. He's under a lot of pressure, and a lot of stress and wears his emotions on his sleeve but I think in the end he respects and looks up to Young and is going to back him up. He knows Young is his best chance to survive.

He also knows Rush is probably their best chance of getting home because he's at least somewhat systematic in his study of the ship and is competent in a variety of fields regarding the Ancients...like his proficiency in their language.

Which sets up a NICE dramatic tension, both internal to Eli and to the show as a whole.

 

[Felon]

What actually happened is pretty simple and straightforward. The telepathic devices are one-way, exactly as Rush told Young-in-an-Alien. Rush used the device to read Young's mind, then, immediately after Young got disconnected, he was able to read the mind of the alien Young was possessing. From that information he was able to find out where Chloe was and how to escape the ship.

Later on, Rush lied to the other crew members on the ship about how the mind reading device worked in order to cover up the fact that it was Col. Young who sprang him. This was part of his set of lies protecting Col. Young.

So no, there is no evidence in the episode that indicates Rush was working with the aliens. He seemed perfectly happy killing one with his bare hands after all.

Yep, you're batting 1000. Indeed, the notion that Rush could be working with the aliens given everything we were shown is rather peculiar. The alien also seemed pretty happy to throttle Rush, who was previously unconscious and trapped in a tank just like Chloe.

 

[Orius]

And the Wray-Rush-Young mess is, IMHO, being nicely done. Rush is clearly an egotist, Wray seems power-hungry and unable to see things from any viewpoint but her own, and Young is a competent military officer who has lost control of himself at some level.

It reminds me a bit of the internal conflicts within the Minbari culture in Bab5.

Wray I think right now is looking to be the worst of the three.

Rush was pretty bad, but given what happened to him in the last two episodes, I wonder if he was scared straight, or at least scared enough to cut some of the manipulation. First, he got marooned on a planet that was at least in the vicinity of the stargate pretty barren. Then these aliens capture him. While Rush isn't very sociable, I suspect being held by the aliens wasn't at all pleasant for him. I think the whole experience probably scared the crap out of him, and he's either too corwardly or smart enough not to want to experience that again.

Young's problems are the conflict between the civilians/scientists on the ship and his own personal weaknesses. He's flawed to begin with. But his current situation, being stranded on the ship, having marital problems with his wife, the problems with Rush and the other non-military, his problems with Telford, and being in close proximity to T.J. are obviously putting him under a lot of stress. Another problem is that this is a crisis situation, and Young's acting like his order need to be obeyed without question. That works okay with the military, since they're trained for that, but some of the scientists clearly resent it.

Wray at first was kind of neutral, but in the last two episodes, she's gotten more assertive thanks to that IOA dufus who encouraged her to challenge Young. She has the least amount of power too of the three, Young's got the chain of command in his favor, and Rush as the biggest expert among the scientists has some respect there. Wray doesn't have that and she's already abused the authority she has. She's also letting herself fall into a trap by thinking there's a military vs. civilian situation going on here, and she's probably exacerbate this problem, where she should be trying to neutralize it. Some of the civilians and military are getting along the best they can in spite of the situation, but I think she's going to end up driving a wedge between the two groups.

I'm getting a different vibe from Eli. He's under a lot of pressure, and a lot of stress and wears his emotions on his sleeve but I think in the end he respects and looks up to Young and is going to back him up. He knows Young is his best chance to survive.

I think Eli's the type that needs an authority figure to tell him what to do. I don't it's respect, rather Young gives him the direction he needs. Also, Eli doesn't really have a sort of knee-jerk mistrust of the military personnel that some of the scientists do.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Said it before and will say it again, Eli is Will Robertson, he sees Young and Rush as father figures, well Young as a father figure and Rush as the Dr. Smith figure.

Wray is not going to know how to deal with Rush, he will direct her like a puppet. I hope they do not resolve the revolt in just a single show. Be interesting to see how long it take before Wray leave Rish on a planet!


I do think they are going to end up with a neutral party in control, that will act as go between.