Nerd heaven

This is my reaction to the announcement trailer for Stargate Timekeepers, a real-time strategy PC game in development by Slitherine.

Today's episode is a turning point in the first season of Stargate Universe. It starts out as a murder mystery. Who killed Spencer? But it quickly becomes something much bigger. There are conspiracies taking place on board Destiny, and various camps are vying for control of the ship. I've really enjoyed the show up until now, but this is where things start getting even more interesting. Join me as we dig deep into "Justice".

----more----

Transcript

Welcome to Nerd Heaven

I’m Adam David Collings, the author of Jewel of The Stars

And I am a nerd.

This is the 59th episode of the podcast.

Today, we’re talking about the Stargate Universe episode “Justice”.,

The description on gateworld reads

Colonel Young cedes command of the ship after he is implicated in the murder of a crew member.

This episode was WRITTEN BY: Alan McCullough

It was DIRECTED BY: William Waring

And it first aired on the 4th of December 2009

One of the biggest adjustments the crew of Destiny are going to have to make, being so far from home, is eating alien food. They managed to find some vegetables on a planet that are chemically safe. But it all comes down to the all-important taste test. These plants were never meant to be eaten by humans. So there’s no reason to believe they will be in any way palatable to us. It’s just lucky that they’re not poisonous, and they contain nutrients that will keep us alive.

Greer is the first to try it. Everyone looks on with baited breath as he puts the first bite in his mouth. His verdict, “That is one sweet potato.”

But of course, when everyone else tries they nearly vomit. Greer is a tough-guy military type. He’s got the self control to hold back his revulsion and pretend it was good. Not an easy feat, I would imagine.

He makes a good point, thought. It will keep them alive.

And that’s when they notice that Spender is supposed to be on kitchen duty. He’s late for his shift.

Ah, our old friends Spencer. A jerk, no doubt about it, but he’s been facing some very real mental health difficulties lately. He’s not coping with being stranded here in a distant galaxy. Things have been coming to a head with him for a number of episodes.

So what’s he up to now?

Turns out, he’s not up to anything. He’s very dead. Mercifully, we’re not shown anything close up, but from the blood spatters it looks like it was a gun to the head.

Just before Young gets the call from Greer, he’s talking with Camille. She feels Young is pushing people too hard with their training. After all, this isn’t boot camp.

Young agrees. This isn’t boot camp. At boot camp, you have plenty of chances to learn from your mistakes.

Camille is making the point that he should be going easier on people than he would if they were going through boot camp. Young’s position is that he should be even harder, because out here, one mistake could kill you, and maybe everyone else as well.

TJ believes it was suicide, which definately fits. He was depressed and unstable.

This leads to a debate about whether he should have had access to a gun. Young’s position is that he was a trained soldier. It was required of him to carry a gun. But I imagine a soldier with the emotional troubles he had anywhere on earth would be put on medical leave and have no access to a weapon.

But out here, do they have that luxury? Or do they need every able body to do their job?

Personally, I tend to think that Spencer should have been taken off duty, at least until a military situation that required him to act came up.

But all this becomes moot when Greer says it wasn’t suicide.

There’s no gun in the room. Whoever shot him took the weapon.

The thought that somebody on this ship could be a murderer is a truly shocking idea. One that is hard for Young and Eli to wrap their heads around.

Rush points out that he had no friends. Nobody liked him. He was involved in a bunch of confrontations and he was hoarding water and food. Nailing down just one person with sufficient motive could be a challenge.

A bunch of people were playing cards together at the time. They can all corroborate each other’s whereabouts. Young has no alibi because he was asleep in his quarters. So he’s turning the investigation over to Scott, who was one of the card players.

Most science fiction shows do a murder mystery story at one point. Whenever you do a story like this you need to decide which character will play the role of the detective. On shows like Star Trek and Babylon 5 it tends to be the security chief. They’re considered the police officer of the ship or station. Stargate Universe doesn’t really have that role. 

But given the circumstances, Scott seems the logical option.

I do like the sci-fi mystery story. Mystery is one of those genres that blends nicely with basically any other genre in existence. It’s like salt, it adds to and enhances the flavour of everything else.

And personally, the mysteries I enjoy most are those that are mixed with sci-fi, or fantasy, or a historical setting. Taking the typical cozy mystery tropes and putting them in a place or time where you’d not expect to see them. I eat that stuff up.

The primary focus is on finding the missing murder weapon. To that end, Scott is going to methodically search every room on the ship, starting with quarters. Most people want to be present when their quarters are searched, demonstrating the immediate lack of trust that everyone is feeling. This whole thing has them all shaken.

Camille thinks Greer should be the primary suspect. He was the one who found the body. He’s the one who claims the gun was nowhere in sight. But there’s really no evidence that points to Greer at present. Scott counters by saying Greer is one of the few people that can be eliminated from suspicion, but he doesn’t give any basis for that statement either.

Rush has completely disregarded the instruction for everyone to remain in the gateroom until their quarters have been searched. He’s in the control room uncovering interesting new things about their chair device. He makes the extraordinary statement “Obviously, colonel, neither you or I have anything to do with all this. I thought this would be an opportunity to still get some work done.”

At this point, I’d have to say that Rush has painted a big “suspect” sign on his back.

Young makes a point of not needing to be present when they search his room. He’s trying to show people that he trusts Scott and Eli to do their job.

And that’s when Eli finds the gun hidden behind a grate in Young’s quarters.

Scott is ready to say they found the gun in a storage locker. He has absolute confidence that Young is being framed. Eli is uncomfortable with this. I would be too. I’m not saying I’d believe Young was guilty, it seems pretty obvious that somebody is trying to undermine his authority, but I’d be uncomfortable about subverting the proper process of law. Whatever that means on this starship millions of lightyears from home.

In the end, Young agrees with Eli. They have to be above board with this.

He orders them to give the gun to Camille and tell her the whole truth.

This also takes Scott out of the investigation. He can’t be expected to investigate his immediate superior officer.

So wray is now in charge of the investigation.

Young wants everything above board and out in the open. That may be the best way to uncover what is really going on.

Camille has talked to her IOA superiors and they have told her to hold a hearing.

Young is going to have to defend himself, and he expects Camille to come after him.  The IOA want one of their own in charge, and this is their best shot.

They basically pulled this same thing with Atlantis a number a few years earlier. The city started with civilian leadership under Elizabeth Weir, but after she was lost to them, Colonel Carter took over. But after one year, she went on to captain the starship Hammond, and the IOA finally got one of their own in charge. Richard Woolsey, famously portrayed by Robert Picardo from Star Trek Voyager.

There seems to be this really uneasy peace between the IOA and the US military. Remember last episode, Camille’s boss told her to create her own camp to try to wrestle control of Destiny from Young and Rush.

Anyway, all this to say that Young needs a lawyer. He picks Chloe.

And I agreed with his choice. She;s the obvious candidate.

She studied political science at Harvard, and while I’m sure there’s a sizable gap between that and law, this trial is mostly politics anyway. He doesn’t want Scott to do it because then it will look like the military vs the civilians.

I don’t blame Chloe for being hesitant about this. She isn’t close to being qualified for this, but Young is right. She’s his best hope.

So now the episode  changes from a mystery to a legal show.

The first witness Camille goes after is Franklin, who saw Young hold Spencer up against the wall last episode. Of course, he was defending Franklin at the time. As Franklin says, Spencer was out of control.

Interestingly, Young leaves the hearing during this exchange. I guess there’s no rule that says he has to be present. 

Volker and Rush remember a conversation where Young implied he might have to take drastic action in regards to Spencer, if things didn’t improve. But he didn’t explain what drastic action meant.

Rush is very interesting in how he answers the questions. He lays out exactly what he thinks Camille is trying to imply. That they’re all better off without Spencer and Young might have come to the same conclusion. He says that would be pure speculation and he’s having none of it, but as Eli says, that didn’t stop him from saying it out loud. Remember this moment.

But let me ask you that question.

Are the people on board Density better off without Spencer?

From a purely practical point of view, maybe they are. He was a disruptive influence who caused nothing but problems. 

But he was a human being.

And as such, his life had incalculable value. 

So, in my opinion, no. they cannot be considered better off without him. He was one of their own, who was an unbelievable jerk, but he was suffering and struggling, 

and he needed help. 

And now he’s dead.

And we finally get confirmation that the tablets Spencer was taking were sleeping tablets. He may have been addicted, which could lead to suicidal tendencies. Poor TJ wishes she’d known. She might have been able to help him.

This is a good reminder to all of us that we should be checking to see that our friends are okay if we see anything that concerns us.

But Chloe reminds us all of something that’s been conveniently pushed aside and forgotten. Other than the missing gun, all other evidence points to Spencer’s death being suicide. TJ confirmed this earlier.

Camille gets a bit touchy when she realises that Chloe is taking her job seriously. It’s like she expects Chloe to just roll over and play along with her because they’re both civilians, and obviously, Young is the bad guy here.

In Camille’s mind, what she’s trying to do is get to the truth because they can’t afford to have an unsolved murder. Maybe that’s her job. But Chloe’s job is to represent her client to the best of her ability.

Personally, I think Camille is a bit out of line here.

Camille wants to gather all the evidence and then have everybody on board cast their vote for innocence or guilt.

Greer is ready to storm the hearing and end it by force. Many of the other military are with him, but Scott and Young talk them down.

In the end, none of it is necessary. Young and Camilla have an agreement. She’ll call an end to the hearing for lack of evidence, and he’ll stand down as leader. She’ll be taking over now.

So the IOA have what they wanted. One of their own in charge of the ship.

Rush is looking very cheerful when he goes to offer his congratulations to Camille on her new position.

He says he wants control over his science team, but is happy to report to her.

And then, the very next shot, the door opens on the ancient chair device.

So suddenly, Rush has the authority to put someone in the chair.

That’s what he wanted all along.

He has his whole team meeting him there. He’s trying to convince them that this chair, as an earlier version, is likely to be safer than the one that almost killed O’Neill.

But I love how Eli points out that the 1.0 version is usually the buggiest.

He stops short of asking for a volunteer, but he’s put it out there.

Scott isn’t happy about any of this. As far as he is concerned, Young is still his commanding officer.

Young comments that he won’t rule this ship by force. If the people don’t have confidence in him, he’s not going to throw his weight around and lay down the law with his gun.

In the end, Franklin is the one to take the plunge in the chair. He sends Eli off to get him some food and then sits in it.

It really doesn’t look healthy. It drills holes into your head.

Franklin was convulsing until they removed him from the chair and now he’s in a coma.

Things get pretty headed between Young, Rush and Camille.

Scott’s had enough. He wants Eli to find evidence in the kino records of who is framing Young.

It’s at this point when Destiny drops out of FTL. They’ve got a gate connection to a planet.

A team goes through to explore. Volker, and a couple of no-names.

And they spot a crashed spaceship!

Rush is excited. I would be too.

This is the first sign of intelligence life they’ve found in this galaxy since they arrived on Destiny. 

But before he can get to the gate room. Young grabs him. Eli has found something.

It’s a suicide note, recorded on a kino. The footage was deleted from the computer, but Eli had a backup for his documentary.

So not only does that prove Young’s innocence, it means that Spencer took his own life.

And that’s terrible.

Camille wants to recall the off-world team while they re-assess their situation but Rush argues. The alien ship is too important. They have to learn what they can before time runs out.

And Young agrees.

I would too.

As Rush says, “this mess isn’t going anywhere.”

And this is their one and only opportunity to check out the ship.

Young’s going too. And I think he knows exactly why.

The ship is not ancient, which means it’s from a completely new species.

Young sends the rest of the team back to the gate.

Rush is still geeking out over the ship when Young says “I know it was you.”

There was one thing he never told Rush. The kino kept recording until Rush entered Spencer’s room. He heard the shot and found the weapon. In his mind, he wasn’t really framing Young for murder. He knew there wouldn’t be enough evidence for that. The aim was to create just enough doubt to force him to step aside.

“You’re the wrong man for the job, Colonel,” he says.

“You don’t believe in the mission. You stepped down because you couldn’t make the hard calls. That makes you a liability.”

Rush says he isn’t proud of what he did, but he did it for the good of everyone on board.

So there you have it. Young has sometimes doubted whether he’s good enough to be leading this expedition, but lead it he has. But Rush outright believes he’s not up for the task, so much that he did this.

But let’s think about this.

When I first started this re-watch, I was of the opinion that Young was not a good leader, but I respected him because he wanted to be better. He wanted to become a good leader. To be worthy of his position.

But going back through the show, I’ve become convinced that Young is actually a pretty good leader. He’s a good military officer.

Young has failings, some serious ones, but those are failings as a person, not as an officer.

His failings are emotional and moral. He sometimes lacks maturity and good sense in his personal life, but he’s made some good calls as leader of this expedition.

As much as I like watching the character of Rush, I can’t agree with him. He’s wrong about Young.

And it’s looking like he might have been wrong about the chair too. So far, Young’s concerns are proving to be justified.

So Young punches Rush a few times and they get into a fist fight.

Obviously Young is gonna win this.

When he thinks Rush has had enough, he asks “Are we done?”

And Rush says, “We’ll never be done.”

At that moment, Young really has little choice, does he.

He knocks Rush out and leaves him there on the planet. To die alone. With no hope of ever getting back once they leave the system.

Young emerges from the gate and tells the others that Rush didn’t make it. Now he’s playing Rush’s game. He’s lying.

Can you believe this? This is really full on. We have the two main leads of the show. The stars. The heroes you might even say. And they’re so at odds that one frames the other, and then the other abandons the first on a planet.

This kind of thing was still pretty rare on TV at the time. 

Babylon 5 came close to this kind of conflict between the characters. Farscape as well.

I was blown away the first time I saw this episode.

And I was wondering, had Rush been written out? Was this the last we’d see of him?

But let’s think about what Young has done. He’d probably tell you he left Rush behind for the good of the crew. Did Rush represent a danger for the crew? Or did he just represent a danger to Young? I think Rush’s tendency to put his own selfish needs ahead of everyone else represents at least the potential for danger to the entire crew. But the primary threat he represented was to Young himself. Ultimately, it was that statement “We’ll never be done,” that made Young believe he had no other choice.

But the big question is, can Destiny cope without Rush? He’s a very smart person and he knows more about ancient technology than anyone else. Eli is also extremely smart, but he doesn’t have the knowledge of the ancients that Rush does.

By leaving behind one of their most brilliant minds, Young is taking a huge risk. Next time they encounter something that only Rush could have gotten themselves out of, he may regret his decision here.

Camille informs the crew of the new evidence and returns command to Young.

Young wants a copy of the footage that incriminates Rush, and then wants Eli to delete it from everywhere else.

Eli just gives him this look. I think Eli knows, or at least suspects, that Rush didn’t die in an accident on the way back to the gate.

Our lost shot is of Rush waking up at night time, looking up into the sky. A lone human on a planet. An entire solar system.

Nobody has ever been as alone as Rush is in this moment.

Stargate Universe started really strong for me, with that 3-part pilot. And it continued along well enough. But this episode here, this was when I knew the show was going to continue to be really good. The creators had made something special.

The story continues to go into some interesting places in the coming episodes.

But amongst all this interesting stuff with Young and Rush and the mysterious alien shuttle, let’s not forget Spencer.

He died. He took his life because he saw no hope and he didn’t think anybody could help him.

Suicide is a truly tragic thing. If you’re feeling at all like Spencer, read out to someone who can help.

You can call Lifeline Australia on 13 11 14.

In America, you can call the national suicide prevention lifeline on 800 273 8255

There are services like this in other countries too. They’re contact details are just a google search away.

Next week, we’ll talk about the episode Space.

Until then, Live long and prosper.

Make it so.

In the latest episode of our Stargate Universe Rewatch Podcast, we take a look at the first season episode "Life". This is very much a character-driven episode. We explore elements of character with Scott and Camille as they return to earth via the communication stones. The conflict between Young and Telford intensifies, and Rush makes a startling discovery. That's right, the chair device makes its first appearance in Stargate Universe. This episode is of note because it features no great threat to the crew. In fact, the lack of any great danger is what finally gives the crew time to reflect on their situation. And that causes its own problems.

----more----

Welcome to Nerd Heaven

I’m Adam David Collings, the author of Jewel of The Stars

And I am a nerd.

This is episode 58 of the podcast.

Today, we’re talking about the Stargate Universe episode “Life”

But before we do, I want to acknowledge the tragic passing of Cliff Simon, who played the Goa’uld System Lord Ba’al in Stargate SG-1. From my perspective, this was just announced yesterday, but you won’t be listening to this until the 19th of April, just over a month away.

He died in a kiteboarding accident. In addition to being an actor, he was also quite an athlete. He was only 58 years old.

My heart goes out to his wife, his family, all those who loved him.

Today’s episode of Stargate is called “Life.”

The description on gateworld reads

Lt. Scott and Camille visit their loved ones using the communication stones, leading Colonel Young to a discovery about Telford's activities. On the Destiny, Rush discovers technology he believes may be able to get them home.

The episode was WRITTEN BY: Carl Binder

It was DIRECTED BY: Alex Chapple

And it first aired on the 20th of November 2009

The episode opens with an unconventional choice of music for a sci-fi show. It’s a country-kinda sounding tune. The line that clearly stands out in the lyrics is “It’s been the worst day since yesterday.” That’s kinda thematic to the episode, and the show as a whole. This song is by a band named Flogging Molly.

The characters are starting to come to terms with the fact that this is their life now. They’re on this ship and they’re not leaving any time soon. This is how it’s gonna be. It’s not what any of them wanted (except maybe Rush) but they can’t change it . They just have to try to find a way to get through each day. To find the positives. To make a life for themselves.

So we’re starting to see activities taking place. A bunch of them are exercising together, while Chloe exercises alone.

And then, of course, there are those who have managed to hook up with someone. You can have a relationship with somebody no matter where you are. That actually reminds me of Tom and B'elanna in Star Trek Voyager. They found happiness. They were married and even had a child. In late season 7, Harry asks Tom “Don’t you want to get home?”

And Tom replies “I am home, Harry.”

These Doctor Park and Greer are not at that stage. She seems to just be using the activity as a stress-relief, although I think it means more to Greer. But I can definitely see how building a more committed relationship and family would change your perspective on the place where you are.

Spencer is in his quarters. I don’t think he’s still confined. He’s taking the last tablet of some kind of medication. Not sure what it is, but I imagine it’s important. Let’s hope he doesn’t rely on it to stay alive for his sake.

Telford is still obsessed with stone duty, so that he can get back on board Destiny, but when O’Neill orders him to take a break, he calls up Young’s wife.

They’re having dinner together, but it seems he’s being himself at the moment, not pretending to be Young.

He says he feels an obligation to tell her something about her husband.

Young wants everybody on the ship in shape. And that makes sense. They don’t know what dangers they’ll face in the future. Physical fitness isn’t everything, but if you’ve got it, it’s one less disadvantage you have in a situation.

Eli isn’t overly keen to take part. IT seems he’s less enthusiastic about losing weight than the actor who plays him.

Young also wants TJ to do psych evaluations on everybody on board. And again, that makes very good sense. With all the stress they’re under, the hardship of being stranded so far from home, nobody is going to be in peak mental health. Some could be really struggling. Spencer seems to be one of them. Perhaps the pills he was taking were antidepressants or sleeping pills.

Rush has opened a new section of the ship and is exploring it. Eli can’t help him explore because working on a secret mission for Young. Rush is amused by this. From his perspective, Eli isn’t military, and therefore doesn’t have to do what Young tells him. Eli still sees Young as the leader of this community. The question of who is running this ship, and who should be, will come up again. We’re building toward something.

Anyway, the mission Eli is doing is research to see if there is any hope that Telford’s plan to get Destiny home might work. So far nothing.

Rush and Greer make a significant discovery. It’s a chair. Looks like a dentist chair, but if you are at all familiar with SG1 or Atlantis, you’ll recognise it as an ancient control chair.

Back on Earth and on Atlantis, the ancients created these chairs to operate a very powerful weapon that fired drones. These drones can rip through a Goa'uld or Wraith ship like it’s paper. But only somebody with the ancient gene can use it. The ancients all carried this gene, and a few modern day humans carry it as well. It was a security feature so the weapons couldn’t be used by their enemies.

Doctor Carson Beckett developed a gene-therapy that could give this gene to any human.

But with a little research, Rush believes this chair is actually closer to the ancient repository of knowledge that got downloaded into Jack’s mind back in The Fifth Race. He calls it a neural interface. This is a precursor to the device SG-1 found. Within the knowledge contained in this chair could be the master code for this ship’s systems.

Young immediately recognises the danger the chair represents. The ancient repository almost killed Jack. It would have if he hadn’t found his way to the Asgard galaxy so they could remove the knowledge.Rush can study the chair, but nobody sits in it.

Rush thinks the effects will likely be less severe. The only way to know for certain is if somebody sits in it. Of course, he’s not willing to volunteer to do it himself. Because he’s Rush. He’s too important in his own mind. This should be no surprise to anyone who knows Rush. He’s a coward at heart, but is perfectly happy for other people to risk themselves on his behalf. It is probably his worst quality.

Greer is almost ready to sit in it now if there’s a chance it’ll help them find a way home. But Young is adamant. Rush needs to prove it can be used safely, and that it can do something useful to them.

This chair will be an important element in the ongoing story so it’s pretty exciting to see its first appearance.

Lieutenant Scottt and Camille Wray are both using the stones to visit their families. This is the one break that the crew get from the drudgery of life on the ship. Well, that and exploratory missions through the gate.

Telford is back on duty again because Scott has swapped bodies with him. He’s eager for some of Eli’s test results. He has people back on earth that want to help with the plan. But Young doesn’t trust Telford any more than he trusts Rush.

Camille has a quick debrief with her IOA superior before heading home. She explains how Rush and Young are at odds, but right now Young seems to be winning. He has control of the ship and crew. She’s stuck between them and not sure which is the better camp to join. Her superior makes an interesting suggestion. Why don’t you start your own camp?

Again, this is sowing the seed of something interesting to come. This episode is doing quite a lot of set-up for the future, which is really cool.

Scott has received an unexpected letter. Remember back in the pilot, the flashback of a teenage Scott confessing his sins to the priest that raised him. He’d gotten a girl pregnant and she wasn’t planning to keep the baby.

Well, she’s made contact with him, but she doesn’t have clearance to know about the Stargate program, so he has to use a cover story.

Camille on the other hand, has gone home to see her partner Sharon, who apparently has just been told about it all. She’s skeptical at first, but Camille speaks to her in, what I assume is mandarin, asking if she’s thrown out the ugly chair yet. I’m not sure the exact rules they use to determine who can have clearance, but it makes sense that somebody’s next of kin would be informed, whereas an acquaintance from a long time ago would not.

Every now and then we cut back to TJ doing psych evaluations on the crew. Like the kino interviews back in Darkness and Light, these scenes give us little flashes of insight into the various characters. Of course Rush isn’t willing to participate.

Greer seems to have a real sore-spot where it comes to his father. This will be explored deeper in a later episode. Again, nice foreshadowing.

Brody thinks somebody should be allowed to sit in the chair if they volunteer. Franklin thinks it’s politics. Young is resisting at first, so if the chair works, he gets the credit, but if it fails, Rush gets the blame. Brody and Franklin seem to be feeling a bit of kinship with Rush at the moment. All scientists together against the overbearing military colonel. There’s a lot more subtle foreshadowing of things to come happening here than I remembered from previous viewings.

Camille is enjoying the simple missing pleasures of life, such as a hot water shower, and catching up with Sharon, enjoying time together. She makes the interesting observation that food doesn’t taste quite right in someone else’s body.

She has an emotional moment when she realises that she’s forgotten the rowboat in a picture that hangs on their wall. She’s been trying to recreate the image back on Destiny, but she’d completely forgotten the rowboat. This is a very uncomfortable reminder of just how far she is from home most of the time, and it causes her to break down. It’s a pretty moving scene.

When it’s time for Camilla to go back, Sharon has some encouraging words for her, and promises she’ll be here waiting when she makes it back to earth. But when Camille leaves, all the bravado drops. I think the big theme here is that life may be hard for those stranded on the Destiny, but it’s also hard for their loved ones back on earth.

Originally, Camille wasn’t going to see her parents. They don’t have clearance, so what’s the point. In the end, at Sharon’s suggestion, she visits them briefly and tells them Camille is okay. At least she gets to see them.

Meanwhile Scott has found a child, all alone, at his old girlfriend,  Annie’s house. It’s been hours and no sign of Annie. Scott’s military chaperone is ready to call child services.

Then finally, she arrives home.

Scott pretends to be Telford. He tells Annie that Scott is away on a mission. She invites him in. And then he hears her call her son Matthew. She confirms that the boy is Scott’s son. She couldn’t end the pregnancy. 

This must be a moment full of many conflicting emotions for Scott. I mean, I remember the moments when my wife told me she was pregnant. It was a huge mis of excitement, anticipation, and fear.

For Scott, there’s the added complications of relief, that she kept their son, but also anger, that she didn’t tell him he was a father.

It’s the anger that finds expression. And Annie is understandably taken aback. “Why didn’t you tell him?” He demands. Not the way a co-worker would usually react.

But they get talking. It turns out life as a single mum is pretty hard for Annie, especially since her own mother died. She works as a dancer, and by that, I assume she means stripper. Scott is horrified. Annie had planned to go to college and become a lawyer. But those dreams never happened. 

So Scott organises to have her financially supported so she can quit her job and go to college.

But she says she’s happy with her job. She doesn’t see herself as a lawyer anymore.

This is really hard for Scott to hear. He wants to save her from the life she’s living, of course he does. But I guess she doesn’t want that help. She’d be glad to receive some financial assistance, but I guess she feels it’s not Scott’s place to come in and dictate what she should be doing with her life after all this time.

Rush has made a discovery in the computer. He’s managed to contact one of the seed ships that went ahead of Destiny to place stargates on planets. He now has information on thousands of stargates out there. One in particular is interesting. It’s a planet with naturally occurring naquadrian. Apparently that’s what made icarus base able to generate enough power to dial the 9-chevron address. Naquadrian is a rare mineral, even more powerful than naquada, which the stargates are made out of. It’s very very rare. There’s only one other planet in the universe known to have had naquadrian at one time. Jonas Quin’s planet. Of course, there are problems. The planet is a year away, and they’ll need to learn how to steer the ship and take the ship into orbit. Not to mention, how to use the mineral to dial the gate.

I think it’s pretty obvious that Rush has been looking for just this. Not this specifically, but something he can use as leverage to convince Young to let someone sit in the chair.  This is a strong case, but it’s not enough to convince Young. He says the chair is still off-limits and Rush has a year to figure out the master code for the ship.

Young wins another round.

Most people react to the news positively. There’s a way home, even if it is a year away. But Spencer freaks out. He can’t manage a whole nother year. He nearly kills Brody when they collide in the hallway. Things are not looking good for that guy.

Scott has a dream of sitting and talking with Young’s wife. He knows it's her because he met her once. Young theorises it’s a residual memory from Telford. There’s no proof, of course, but Young now suspects that Telford is hanging out with his wife.

Young takes the next opportunity to use the stones and follow Telford to his house to confront him. His wife claims Telford never pretended to be Young, and that they never slept together. That may be true. Unless he only told her who he really was some of the time. She says he’s a friend supporting her through all this weirdness. You’ve got to admit, though, it’s a little weird. Telford’s biggest crime here seems to be that he’s told Young’s wife that Young is still involved with TJ, which is a lie. While I don’t doubt the wife here, I have no illusions that Telford’s motives are pure in any way.

Some of Stargate Universe’s detractors have said the show spent too much time focusing on character drama instead of science fiction. I don’t feel that way, I never have. I appreciate all the character stuff the show puts into episodes like this, and SGU is very much a science fiction show in the truest sense of the word,  but I do have to admit that this particular storyline is getting a little soap-opera-ish. None of these three are behaving like mature adults.

And now the truth comes out. Rush lied. The whole thing about an icarus type planet was fake. He planted it in the computer. It was all a ploy to get someone in the chair.

Rush justifies it as a way to give people hope, but we all know the reason he did it.

Eventually, Young tells Rush, if you want to go sit in that chair yourself be my guest.

And Rush shows his true colours. He’s not willing to risk it on himself. He wants to risk somebody else.

As Young says, “That’s what I thought.”

The episode closes out with a repeat of that same song from the beginning.

It’s been the worst day since yesterday.

After everything, they’re all still in that same situation. Nothing has gotten better. There’s been new heartaches, but also a few glimmers of hope, such as the plant that one of them has finally managed to get to germinate.

In the end, they still just have to pick themselves up each morning and carry on.

This episode has a bit of a depressing tone. But that doesn’t bother me. It’s a day in the life kind of episode for the characters on this ship, and right now, life is pretty hard for all of them. They’ll have good days and bad days, but lately, there’s been a lot of bad ones.

But there is still hope. There is always hope.

Next time, we’ll be looking at the episode Justice. Things are really starting to heat up with the arc of season 1 at this point. Some of the things that were set up in life are going to pay off in a big way next time. Especially in regards to the Rush / Young relationship.

I look forward to talking about it.

Please consider leaving a review wherever you listen to podcasts, and spread the world about Nerd Heaven to anyone you think might enjoy it.

Have a great two weeks, and I’ll see you next time.

Live long and prosper.

Make it so.

In the latest episode of our Stargate Universe Rewatch, we check in with "Time". This is Stargate Universe's first time travel episode, and one of the best of the franchise. Part found-footage episode, part deep character piece, part monster horror. This episode combines a number of genres and does them all justice. This is one of my favourite episodes. Listen to find out why.

----more----

Welcome to Nerd Heaven

I’m Adam David Collings, the author of Jewel of The Stars

And I am a nerd.

This is episode 57 of the podcast. Today, we’re talking about the Stargate Universe episode Time.

The description on Gateworld reads

A team from Destiny arrives on a jungle planet, where they find a kino with footage of themselves they haven't shot yet.

This episode was written by Robert C Cooper

It was also directed by Robert C Cooper

And it first aired on the 13th of November 2009.

Much like Star Trek, Stargate has not always handled time-travel consistently. The rules have changed from episode to episode.

There’s three main theories of time travel that fiction generally uses.

One is that there is only one timeline, but you can go back and change things, re-writing history. This is the type that was used in the first Back to The Future. It’s the way most of us grew up thinking about time-travel.

Then there’s the closed loop kind of idea, where you can’t change the past as such, because if you go back and do something, the consequences of whatever you did would already have been seen and experienced before you left. This is the type of time-travel I’m using in my fiction.

And then there’s the more modern idea, popularised by the Star Trek 2009 movie and Avengers Endgame, and often used in Stargate Atlantis. This is where an incursion back into the past creates a new timeline.

There’s two main ways to travel through time in the stargate universe. The first is when a stargate wormhole intercepts a solar flair. That can cause the wormhole to loop back to the same gate, but at a different point in time. This was first discovered in the SG-1 episode 1969.

The other way to time travel is by using technology. The ancients spent a lot of time researching time travel, trying to go back and prevent a cataclysm that wiped them out, those that didn’t ascend, of course. But their experiments were unsuccessful. All they did was create a groundhog day machine. So they gave up.

But one of their scientists eventually figured it out, and built a time machine into a puddle jumper. Because, you know, Delorians hadn’t been invented yet.

This episode introduces time travel into SGU for the first time. When they launched Destiny, the ancients had not yet cracked the secret of time travel, so as you’ll see, this episode makes use of the solar flare idea.

The episode opens with keno footage of a large team emerging from the stargate. The keno appears to be damaged as the image fritzes a little. They’re in a lush jungle.  So far, we’ve yet to see the typical Canadian forest planet that became almost a meme on SG-1. But then, they manage to avoid doing that constantly on Atlantis as well. This planet was actually shot on a soundstage.

This is certainly a big group. A whole lot of scientists. It’s like they’re doing a planetary survey. I mean, they might as well. They can’t get off this ship, but it does give them a chance to stretch their legs from time to time, and most of them did sign on to be explorers, of a sort. Who could resist the lure of an alien planet. It actually makes a lot of sense that they’d send a bunch of people. Everyone would be clamouring for some fresh air, I imagine.

Even Chloe has come to this planet.

And again, it makes sense for those who aren’t scientists or explorers to begin learning new skills. There’s not much call for political science on board Destiny, so Chloe would be wanting to make herself useful.

Apparently, it’s very hot there. Suddenly this planet sounds less appealing. I really struggle with the heat, and we’ve had some really hot days around here lately.

This actually gives the feeling of a found footage episode. The entire episode isn’t kino footage, but a good chunk of it is. It’s a bold move, given they always portray Kino footage as having all these artifacts on the edges of the screen.

And that’s kinda weird when you think about it. I mean, I get why they do it. It’s common to degrade the image in some way to make it clear to the audience when they’re watching a recording. But the kinos were invented by the ancients. They could construct an interstellar starship, and stargates, but they can’t make a camera that records a decent image?

Of course, the kinos are millions of years old, so maybe they’ve degraded a bit over time.

And there’s an important production reason for this. Because this is all kino footage, it meant they had to do a lot of big long takes. That can obviously be more challenging for actors. The occasional fritz of the kino allows them to do a subtle cut to a different take occasionally.

They found a bunch of alien vegetables on this planet. Eli is keen to try them out to see if they might be edible. But he does it in a very un-scientific way. He just takes a bit and is gonna try another. But if he reacts, they won’t know which one it was.

This does raise an interesting question, though. How do you test whether a plant is safe for human consumption other than having a human try it? Are there tests you can do in a lab? Possibly. I mean, you can probably test for known poisons, but are they equipped for that? In the end, the best way might just be for have everyone try a different vegetable and see who reacts. It’s pretty risky. But I guess that’s how humans figured out what was poisonous in the old days.

But Voker is sick. He threw up recently. He hasn’t eaten anything, and then he passes out. Several others pass out too. Chloe is starting to get affected too.

The natural inclination in this situation is to want to gate straight back to destiny, but TJ is a little smarter than that. She raises the important fact that if they return to the ship, they might be taking whatever this is back with them. IF it’s a virus, they could infect the rest of the crew. They’ve got 36 hours before Destiny jumps away. That’s over a day, so they get a reasonably generous timer. 

After the title card, we’re still watching Kino footage. At this point, first-time viewers are probably expecting the entire episode will be found footage.

We get an interesting little exchange between Rush and TJ regarding the way she’s using the medicines. One theory is that they’re suffering from something similar to bacterial meningitis. By the time she confirms this, if she hadn’t already given them antibiotics, it could be too late, so she’s injected people just in case, based on what Rush describes as a hunch.

He has a valid point that she could be wasting their antibiotics. They have a limited supply. Once they’re gone, that’s it. They can’t get more from earth.  But as TJ rightly points out, it’s her call. And she’s following her instincts in her attempt to save lives. I can see both sides of this argument, but isn’t it just so like Rush to be the one to employ cold-hearted pragmatism here. He’s definitely a man without much compassion for others.

The limited medicines are a serious concern, though. They’ll be wanting to find plants that might have medicinal properties on these planets. Eventually, they’ll have to try to make their own drugs or go back to a medieval level of medicine. And that’s scary.

They’ve found some tree stumps spewing some kind of smoke. Could that be the cause? Maybe.

And then it’s night time, and it's raining.

I love it when Eli says “it couldn’t get much worse,” and Rush says “That’s just a failure of imagination.”

He’s right of course, but that’s when we hear screams. Soldiers are frantically shooting machine guns into the dark. We don’t see what they’re firing at.

I’m not usually a big fan of the ‘hide the monster’ trope. I prefer to just see the monster, because, you’ know, monsters are cool.

But this is really effective. Oh we’ll eventually see what they’re shooting at, but in this scene, just seeing their reactions, wondering what it is, and hearing Rush yell to Eli “Dial the gate,” is very creepy. And that’s actually the purpose of the ‘hide the monster’ trope.

It also helps that the characters themselves can’t see the monster. I think this trope annoys me most when the characters can see the monster, but for artificial reasons, the camera won’t show it to us. That bugs me.

Anyway, there’s something wrong with the gate, so they have no escape route.

It gets really bad when the kino falls over, we see everyone getting taken down, and then Chloe comes into shot. Some kind of worm things burrow into her and out the other side.

The camera lingers for a moment on her very clearly dead body.

That’s sobering.

And that’s when we cut to the real world. This is the first scene in the episode that isn’t kino footage.

A bunch of our characters are watching the same footage we’ve just seen. Eli is horrified.

And so is Chloe. Yes. Chloe is watching footage of her death.

This drives her to run away and throw up, as well it should.

Eli turns away from the footage and says. “Okay. What….the. …..”

And then we cut away.

Fair enough., I think we can forgive Eli for saying what we all know he was about to say, given what he’s just seen.

We’re quickly given some context. They dropped out of FTL. The gate opened. They sent a kino through and then followed, only to find there was already a kino there. The data store was full.

Now this is a weird little moment. Brody says “The data store was full.” Then we immediately cut to a flashback of Eli picking it up saying “it looks like the data store is full.”

Why that redundancy? If this was a book, the editor would have pounced on that.

Honestly, you don’t need both, so I find that really odd.

We also learn that the team found human remains on the planet. Rush picks up a skull. That’s pretty disturbing. Unlike the Milky Way and Pegasus galaxies, this galaxy is not populated by humans, so that must have seemed a huge mystery in itself before they started watching the footage.

Given the skull was dry and free of any flesh or skin, they must have been there a long time.

We haven’t seen all the footage yet. Evidently Eli and Rush survived the night. A few others. The aliens are nocturnal, so they’re relatively safe for now. Other than the disease, of course.

As usual, people are whining at Eli for spending his time talking to the Kino.

“Do I have to remind you again that documenting this could be important?”

“Who do you think is ever going to see that.”

I love how Eli turns to them all and says “See!”

Some wonderful vindication for him in that moment. I really like that.

The Kino was damaged during the night and can no longer fly, so Eli strapped it to his helmet. From this point on, actor David Blue actually did a lot of the camera work himself. He walked around the set with a massive camera rig attached to his head. I imagine it must have looked pretty funny.

We get another good character scene between Eli and TJ. Eli is noticing how hard it is for TJ when she can’t help people. And I get that. In my work, if I fail, the worst that usually happens is that somebody can’t use a piece of software. IF she fails, people die. That’s a heavy burden that all medical people carry.

And then Eli shares a little about his mother. We learn that she was a nurse but she got stuck with a needle trying to restrain a junkie in the ER. She got HIV.

That really sucks.

So that’s the health problem his mum has. I wonder if you’re allowed to work as a nurse if you’re HIV positive. It could be considered a risk to patients. I should ask my wife. She’s a nurse.

This explains why she’s got a serious health problem but she’s able to do things around the house. 

Actually, come to think of it, didn’t we see her in a uniform in a previous episode? That means she probably is still working.

But she probably has to take all kinds of expensive medicines.

Honestly, for such a massive fan of this show, I’m embarrassed at how many details I have forgotten since my last watch-through. And I apologise for that.

Anyway, Eli’s dad couldn’t handle it so he left. And that also sucks.

Eli was only 14 at the time, so his mum has been living with this for quite a few years.

It’s a really emotional moment. Eli might not have chosen to reveal this intimate information about himself to all these people watching. He chose to open up to TJ on the planet. David Blue does a great job of just looking down and trying to cope with the emotion of all this stuff coming out.

Chloe looks at him with such sympathy and compassion. It’s touching.

And then, when Eli says he’s afraid his mum will give up if he dies out here, Scott puts his hand on Eli’s shoulder.

And that really moved me. I know I give Scott a hard time but that just shows the good but flawed man he is. And in a ship full of deeply flawed people, he does stand out as a good bloke.

In the end, all these people are family.

This is immediately followed by another great character moment as Eli shares a moment with Rush, talking about how he first came face to face with his own mortality at his grandfather’s funeral.

And Rush is being surprisingly human. Rush has had to face mortality as well. We know he lost somebody he loved.

But his way of responding to this is, “did it change you? Did it inspire you to do something worthwhile with the short time we have in this life?”

That is such a Rush response. But I like it. I think that until now, Eli has been taking life for granted. He hasn’t done much with his life. But ending up here on Destiny has given him a chance to really do something that matters.

Rush also mentions ascension. The process the ancients went through to transform their consciousness into an immortal form.

When Eli asks if he really thinks that’s possible, the way he says “I know it is,” with such determination, suggests strongly to me, that this is Rush’s ultimate goal. He wants to learn how to ascend.

He admits it may not be possible for him personally, but that idea is the reason he’s out here.

Again, this is a believable obsession for somebody with Rush’s personality, that has lost a loved one.

He wants to defeat mortality.

And then another wonderful character scene. Seriously, they just keep coming. This time we finally see a little past the cracks in Greer. He’s really shaken by the idea that all those people died under his watch. But it didn’t happen. And so he refuses to acknowledge it as a thing. And yet, he’s still sitting here in the gate room, wrestling with his demons.

This is the big difference between SGU and other Stargate shows. They’ve all done time-travel shows, but SGU taces that sci-fi concept and uses it to explore deeper character issues.

And don’t get me wrong, SG1 and Altantis both did some good character stuff, but nothing that compares to what Universe did.

This is when things get bad. Chloe collapses. It’s about 3 hours since they jumped out of FTL. That’s about the time people started getting sick in the recording.

So the team that went to the planet and found the kino have brought whatever it is back to the ship.

Back in the recording, Greer is teaching Eli how to shoot a gun. They try to even the odds a little by blowing up one of the stumps where the aliens sleep. They probably took out more than one.

But night time eventually comes and they’re all on guard ready to defend themselves.

Rush decides that somebody should try going through the gate. If he makes it to Destiny, he’ll radio back, and then he jumps in.

He quotes a line from the 1969 movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It turns out to be a favourite of both him and Colonel Young. So, those two actually have something in common.

Eli hears nothing back and the wormhole closes.

Then we get the twist. TJ has found the cause of the sickness. It’s nothing to do with the jungle planet. There’s a microorganism in the water that Young and Scott brought back from the ice planet (glorious continuity).

So everyone on Destiny is infected.

And that’s bad news.

Next morning, on the recording, and Eli is dead. Scott is the only one left. And he gives this gut-wrenching scream of anguish, which is totally the correct response for a real living person. 

Of course, he’s also a professional soldier, so after he’s had his moment, he picks up the kino and records his final thoughts, detailing what has happened.

Destiny will be jumping soon, but the stargate is still not working properly.

He plans to send the kino through the wormhole to Destiny in hope that they can at least see the message.

And here’s the moment that explains it all. It goes through the gate and seems to land in the same place. Except it’s daylight. And Rush is lying dead on the ground.

Rush understands immediately. The Kino went back in time. It’s the old wormhole through a solar flair thing. The exact same phenomenon that caused SG-1 to go back to 1969 all those years ago.

That’s why the wormhole was unstable.

So that skull they found was Rush.

Here in reality, the solar flair hasn’t happened yet. So they can still gate to the planet.

TJ has a good theory, based on Scott’s last message. The venom from the aliens could cure the disease.

Now they have to go back to the planet to recover them. It’s night, which means they’ll be active and dangerous.

TJ has run out of antibiotics and the first patient has died.

Then another nice character scene. Eli wonders why we always wait until it’s too late to tell people what we really feel. And think. So he opens up to Chloe. Fully. Sadly, she’s unconscious.

But contrary to what you might expect, it’s not a profession of undying love. It’s not really even about him. It’s about her. He talks about how amazing she is. How her presence in his life makes him so much happier.

He talks of never having had a best friend before.

Right now it doesn’t matter what kind of love they share. It doesn’t matter that she chose Scott rather than him. What matters is that they do share a form of love. A very special friendship.

And he begs her not to die.

But she can’t hear him.

And she dies.

It’s a moving scene.

In fact, it’s TJ’s reaction that is the most moving.

This is a great episode because it really lets us live in these gut-wrenching moments without having to lose the characters long term. Not many TV shows can pull that off.

Farscape did it in a very unique way. And if you’ve seen that show, you know what I’m talking about.

That had even more impact and lasting consequence than this did.

Rush reports the news to the team on the planet. We’ve already lost 4 people. I guess he does it to reinforce the sense of urgency. But now Scott has to hear that the woman he loves is dead. How do you just keep going after hearing something like that?

Young just says “Lieutenant, we need you.”

And he’s so professional that he’s able to carry on. I guess that’s what it means to be a soldier. You put aside your grief until later. Because right now you’ve got a job to do.

The aliens attack. And within moments, it’s just Scott.

Alone. Again.

Greer and Young are dead.

He’s probably not going to make it very long.

So he does the one thing he can do.

And it’s clever thinking.

All hope is lost for this time around, but things could be different next time.

He records a message, detailing the disease in the water and the cure that the alien creatures represent.

Then he sends the kino through the wormhole, into the distance past. So that it can eventually be found by Destiny.

This is where the episode closes. We don’t see the crew curing the disease in the next timeline. But we don’t have to.

This is a fantastic episode. It mixes three genres. Science fiction, drama, and horror. And it does all three really well. It has some interesting twists and turns, and some really heartfelt moments.

We get to see some hugely emotional tragic moments, and those moments have real weight to them. Yes, we kind of pull a reset button at the end, but not a full hard reset. Those deaths still happened in their respective timelines. And they were treated like they mattered.

This is one of my favourite time-travel episodes, and probably one of my favourite episodes of the entire franchise.

I love it.

The interesting thing is that this episode works whether you use the traditional type of time-travel, where there’s just one timeline, but it can be altered and re-written, or the more modern type, where each incursion into the past creates a new separate parallel timeline.

So there you have it.

Time.

Next time, we’ll be talking about the episode “Life”. It’ll do some more delving in to character, as well as present yet another potential way home. So our second, “will they get home” episode.

Don’t forget to click like if you’re on youtube, or leave a review. Tell a friend, share on social media. Anything you can do to help spread the word about Nerd Heaven would be greatly appreciated.

Have a great two weeks. Live long and prosper. Make it so.

The long-awaited Snyder Cut of Justice League has finally arrived. So was it worth waiting for? My answer is an unequivocal yes. Listen to this bonus episode of Nerd Heaven to find out why. This is a quick review. I'll do a full detailed analysis on this movie later on.

#ForAutumn #UsUnited

In the latest instalment of my Stargate Universe rewatch, we find Colonel Telford (Lou Diamond Phillips) taking over command of Destiny to enact a plan they hope will bring the crew back home. Meanwhile, Eli and Chloe have some character development as they visit family and friends via the communication stones.

This is the first "Will they get home" episode that Stargate Universe has attempted. A staple of Star Trek Voyager. But how does SGU handle this trope? This episode also explores the theme of how you treat another person's body when you are just a guest inhabiting it.

--

Get my book 1 of my series Jewel of The Stars for just 99 cents at http://books2read.com/jewel

Or the free prequel at http://www.adamdavidcollings.com/free

----more----

Welcome to nerd heaven

I’m Adam David Collings, the author of Jewel of The Stars

And I am a nerd

This is episode 56 of the podcast

Today, we’re talking about the Stargate Universe episode Earth

The description on Gatworld reads

Colonel Telford takes over Young's command in order to enact a dangerous plan to try and get the ship's crew home. Back on Earth, Young, Eli, and Chloe visit their families.

The STORY was BY: Brad Wright & Robert C. Cooper and Martin Gero

The TELEPLAY was BY: Martin Gero

It was directed by Ernest Dickerson

And it first aired on the 6th of November 2009

Remember how Young told his wife how much he wanted to get home to be with her, how he still loved her?

Well, this episode opens with him in sickbay being tended by TJ, and he tells her she’s beautiful. To which she immediately replies in a stern voice, “Don’t.”

So this is the first we learn that these two have a history together. An illicit history, given that Young is married.Suddenly Young’s words to his wife sound hollow. Not so much because of the mistakes of the past, but because he’s now telling TJ she’s beautiful. You don’t just tell a woman she’s beautiful unless you’re wanting something to happen, not the way he said it.

But just as they kiss we realise this is a fake-out. Young was dreaming. Yes, he’s got TJ on his mind, but he’s not necessarily actively pursuing her.

It is believable that he’s dreaming about her. She’s within reach. His wife isn’t.

Given the fact he might be stuck on this ship for the rest of his life, that presents quite a strong temptation. Let’s see if he’s strong enough to resist that temptation.

Clearly, whatever went on between those two caused pain for TJ, because Young apologises in his dream. I think he probably realised he was doing the wrong thing by his wife and called the whole thing off. And that’s what hurt her.

So Young and Camille are using the communication stones to attend a meeting on earth at Homeworld Command in the Pentagon.

And for once, Young has not body-swapped with Talford. Talford is here standing next to him.

Telford is the one to give them the news that they may have found a way to get everyone on Destiny home.

I love the way Jack says “Suprise.” That’s so Jack. I really enjoy his inclusion in this show as a surprisingly regular guest. In a lot of ways, Richard Dean Anderson IS Stargate, and I always get a thrill when he shows up in Universe.

So, this is what was often referred to on Star Trek Voyager as a “Will they get home?”  episode. Voyager did a heap of those. They seemingly find something that might get them home, and they try to make it happen, only to be foiled at the end of the episode. Afterall, it was the 90s. You didn’t make a status-quo changing shift like getting Voyager home before the series finale.

The inherent problem with these episodes is that you know the crew are not going to get home. 

Episodes like this CAN work, if you find drama and stakes in something other than the question of “will they get home.” But Voyager overused the concept.

But this is Stargate Universe. It’s much closer to modern TV in its construction. So status-quo changes CAN take place. But the whole premise of this show is that these people are stuck on a spaceship far far from home. I think it’s pretty safe to say that nobody in the audience is buying that they’ll get home. It’s not gonna happen.

So … does the episode still work? Let’s keep going and find out.

After the title card, we cut to post-briefing discussions. The episode chooses not to reveal to us, yet, what the plan is. All we know is that it’s risky. Talford thinks it’s worth the risk, given how dire the situation is on Destiny. Young’s not so sure. He wants more calculations, but the only way to get more data is to actually try it.

Young wants to get everyone on board a voice. Jack’s not going for that. Young is in command of that ship. He can, and should, make decisions on behalf of those he commands. And JAck is giving him a direct order to do so.

Young wants to treat this like a democracy. I can understand why. This is a decision that could cost all of them their lives. This is not a normal command situation. A lot of the people at risk are civilians who aren’t part of the chain of command. Nobody signed up to be on that ship to begin with.

Who do you side with here? I can see both men’s perspectives. Of course, it’s hard to form an opinion without knowing more about what the plan entails, but we probably know as much as we need to.

Anyway, regardless of the risk to his career, Young says he’ll give Jack his decision tomorrow.

I suppose he feels a little bit of freedom, being so far from home, and he probably deserves a little extra latitude, but Jack can have him replaced. All he needs to do is use the stones and order someone else to relieve Young. So he’s taking a big risk by defying a direct order.

In a real-world military situation, he’d probably be relieved on the spot. I dunno. I’ve never been in any military, but I do know they take orders very seriously.

We learn a little about Camille through her conversation with the IOA bigwig. He’s her boss. By the way, the IOA is the International Oversight Advisory. Basically a multi-nation civilian organisation that oversees the Stargate program, which is run by the US Airforce.

We learn that Camille was passed up for promotion a number of times. She and her boss don’t seem to have a great deal of regard for each other. He really wants this mission to happen, and he wants Camille to use her influence with the people on Destiny to ensure it does.

She may be able to pull that off.

We also learn she has a personal stake in getting home, but she’s no more convinced that young that they’ll survive the attempt.

Already, we can see that the episode has replaced the question of “will they get home” with a new question. “What is the plan?” and “Will they attempt it?”

Of course, in the very next scene, we learn the nature of the plan. The crew are discussing it in the mess hall, so clearly Young and Camille have returned.

The idea is actually pretty simple, and sounds logical.

The reason they can’t dial home is because they don’t have enough power. The only known power source that could do it was the core of the planet where Icarus Base was constructed.

Destiny recharges its power by flying through the outer edge of a star.

At that moment, incredible energy is available to the ship. Enough to power a shield that can protect the ship to begin with.

They believe that if they dial while they’re in the star, the power of the entire star will be available to them. They have to use the ship as a conduit and channel it into the gate.

Sounds feasible. But I can see a potential problem. Last time the ship recharged in a  star, it didn’t get up to full capacity. It basically half-charged the batteries. 

Rush and Eli have no idea why.

Could whatever caused them to not fully charge also prevent them from getting enough power to the gate?

Seems likely.

The ship won’t recharge itself for a few more months, but they could try to drain the power manually.

Rush doesn’t agree with the scientists back home. He thinks it’s too risky. Of course, the people back home suspect Rush doesn’t actually want to go home. And they’re right. Of course he doesn’t. So is he being honest about the risk, or is he sabotaging the idea because he wants to stay on Destiny?

Chloe and Eli are heading to earth. This is Eli’s first time using the stones and he’s pretty nervous. Not so much about the technology, although it’s gotta be weird swapping bodies with someone else, but about what he’s gonna say to his mum.

Okay. So this time Young is back in Telford's body again.

Eli remarks “I wonder what they’re doing in our bodies.”

And as soon as he says it, Young just gives this look. Like he’s really worried what Talford might do. We’ll come back to that look.

Talford is under orders to execute the rescue plan. He’s brought two scientists with him to make it happen. And they’re going to drain the power to force Destiny to recharge by firing the ship’s weapons.

In this case, this isn’t just Talford throwing his weight around. He’s acting under Jack’s orders. He didn’t wait for Young’s answer, but he didn’t need to. And Young was gonna ask for more time.

I’m not saying I agree with Jack. But he’s within his legal rights here.

Of course, Young is right to point out that Jack often followed his conscience against the chain of command, which is exactly what Young is doing. Those renegade heroes, when they get promoted it sometimes comes back and bites them, doesn’t it.

One of Telford's first acts as the new commanding officer of Destiny is to confine Greer to quarters. Greer, to his credit, doesn’t make a fuss.

Eli doesn’t think his mum is going to be able to handle the truth, so he opts to pretend to be somebody who works with Eli, rather than Eli himself. It means that he can see her, and spend time with her, but not fully. They can’t really connect because she doesn’t know who he is. But interestingly, it allows him to say some things to her that he might not usually be able to say. Because he’s hiding behind a mask. Kind of like how ventriloquists often say things through their puppet that they’d never say themselves.

So his mum gives him a coke. Eli tells her that her son quit, and is on a bit of a crash diet. She may not recognise him when she sees him next.

This is interesting.

Eli was somewhat overweight. That’s probably one of the many reasons I identify with him so much. I’m a fat nerd.. Actor David Blue looks quite different today. He recently talked about this in an interview with Dial the Gate. He’d actually put on some weight for a previous role just before this show. But he wanted to lose that weight. He actually made sure the producers were okay with that before he took the job. After all, he said, Eli is in a survival situation on a spaceship with limited food. It makes logical sense he’d lose weight. The actor wanted to be healthier himself, plus it made good sense for the character. It would have been cool to see the change take place over the course of the show, had it continued.

Anyway, she talks about how he was always brilliant but never applied himself. So..maybe Eli’s lack of work, lack of finishing university was more about some personal laziness and less about his mother’s health. I dunno. We never really find out what her health problems are, but they don’t seem to interfere with her day to day living.

This is a really good character scene. David Blue does a great job of showing how emotional he gets when his mother asks him to tell ….. Himself … that she’s proud of him. But he can’t let himself tear up too much or she’ll be weirded out. She shows just enough so the audience knows what he’s feeling, without too much.

Rush is wanting the scientists to be much more methodical and careful than they want. They say doing it his way could take months. More stalling? Well, he’s proved right almost immediately when things go badly. Riley is badly injured. TJ says it’ll be touch and go. Not good.

I tend to side mostly with Rush on all of this, but Talford is right about one thing. Rush is worried that with everything that’s happened, he’s worried they’re not going to let him come back. He has a vested interest in this rescue attempt failing.

Chloe told some of her old friends that she’s her own cousin. They’re taking her out of the town and Eli is gonna join them. This whole thing, spending time with your friends and family without them knowing who you are. It’s gotta be awkward.

Eli is loving this, because now that he's in a body that’s slimmer than his, and probably more attractive, he’s catching the attention of the ladies. They’re approaching him, and agreeing to dance with him. This is new territory for him and he’s loving it. 

Chloe’s not having as much fun, though. One of her so-called friends moans about how it sucks that her dead father is no longer able to hook him up with some wall-street connections. She does well not to punch him in the face.

Another so-called friend has basically stolen her old boyfriend.

This scene is actually quite a turning point in Chloe’s story. She realises how shallow her friendships have always been. 

And then Eli takes care of her while she’s drunk, being a good example of a real friend. This is another good character scene.

Chloe tells Eli that he’s a good friend. And she really means it.

Eli knows he is too, and he always will be, but he takes it as a bit of a slap in the face. Because that’s all girls ever want him to be. A friend.

Meanwhile, Young pays his wife a visit but she won’t even let him in the door.

But says his peace and she comes out to him.

And they do more than talk. They have sex together.

Now there’s nothing wrong with a married couple making love, but remember, he’s not actually there physically. He’s in Telford's body.

So she’s having intercourse with Telford's body.

And I have major issues with this.

This is a terrible violation of Telford. His body is being used for sexual activity without his knowledge or consent.

That’s not okay.

You might even say it’s akin to rape.

There was actually a bit of controversy surrounding a similar circumstance in the movie Wonder Woman 1984 recently.

I get Young’s desire to be close to his wife. I get feeling this need as well.

But in my opinion, what they’re doing is wrong.

Stargate Universe will continue to explore the theme of how you treat another person’s body when you’re a guest in it.

To make things even more awkward, Destiny chooses that moment to drop out of FTL and that causes a momentary interruption to the stone connection.

So Talford suddenly finds himself in bed with Talford’s wife...and well, I don’t need to describe it in detail. You get the idea.

So he now knows exactly what Young has been doing with his body.

Young’s wife explains one of the reasons she’s found it so hard to accept Young back is that he’s trapped on that ship with HER. And that, of course, meaning TJ. So she knows he had an affair with TJ. She also knows that it’s over. And it is. Despite that dream he had at the beginning of the episode, it’s over.

Camille has just as many doubts about this plan as Rush does, but she makes a good point. It would be safer if he was involved. IS she just appealing to his vanity or does she really believe all of this? In the end, it doesn’t matter. She’s right.

Rush has found some ways to increase the odds.

So Destiny enters the star and stars charging. They begin dialling the gate.

The gate is starting to spark with. There’s too much power going through it.

Eventually Talford agrees to try shutting it down, but they can’t. It won’t respond.

Talford and his cronies show their true colours by running for the stones. They don’t want to die on this ship. And they’re the only ones with an escape route.

Turns out a lot of this was staged by Rush. The ship would have exploded if they’d kept trying to dial, but Rush put safeguards in place and arranged for the alarms to go off.

It was all to get rid of Talford, which I think everyone agrees needed to be done.

But what I really like is that Rush is upfront about it all. He doesn’t try to hide it.

And that’s kind of refreshing.

Although Young wants Eli to go over the data and make sure Rush isn’t lying about the dangers that plan represented.

The crew are now coming to the realisation that they could be on this ship for a long time. There’s no quick and easy way home.

The final scene of the episode is Talford showing up at Young’s house.

The implication here is that he’s going to pretend to be young inhabiting his body. That way, he gets to have sex with Young’s wife.

This, obviously, is no better than what Young did. Young violated Telford's body, and now Talford is sleeping with another man’s wife under false pretenses, essentially violating her.

What a mess.

Neither of these crimes is justified by the other.

It would be all so much simpler if people would just do the right thing, wouldn’t it?

So that was Stargate Universe’s first “Will they get home?” episode.

Let’s evaluate how they did.

The conflict of the episode wasn’t really about will they get home. It was more about trying to stop Talford and his cronies from destroying the ship.

In that regard, I think this episode worked much better than the typical Voyager episode.

SGU doesn’t do these types of stories often. And that’s good. While they definitely did it right this time, had they continued to do “will they get home” stories, it would have gotten old, just like it did on Voyager.

But here’s something to think about. The IOA boss told Camille that if this rescue was successful, he wanted to try to duplicate it with a ship in our galaxy. They could get to a point where they could actually travel between Earth and Destiny on a regular basis. They could send a proper team out to explore the ship.Take supplies.

It would have been wrong to bring people home this early. It’s only the third regular episode. But what if they’d done this in a season or two, and it worked.

That’s kind of what they did on Atlantis. During the first season, they were completely cut off from the Milky Way. But by the beginning of season 2, they had the ability to travel between the galaxies. IT wasn’t convenient, but it was possible. As the show went on, it got easier and easier until it was like going across the road.

They could have done something similar with SGU. AFter a few seasons those who wanted to go home could leave destiny. They’d be replaced with other characters who were better equipped. The survival aspect would have lessened and it would have focussed more on completing Destiny’s mission (which we’ll learn about in season 2, I believe).

It might have been an interesting way to go. I dunno. It’s just fun to speculate on what they might have done with this show, had it run for more seasons than it did.

So that was Earth.

Next time we’ll be talking about the episode “Time.” It’s quite a fun one.

Don’t forget, you can get the first book in my Jewel of The Stars series for just 99 cents wherever ebooks are sold. It’s also available in paperback. Or, you can launch on with my free prequel at AdamDavidCollings.com/free

Have a great two weeks

Live long and prosper

Make it so

In the last of the resource-gathering episodes of Stargate Universe, we head to an icy planet in an attempt to find drinkable water for the crew. Meanwhile, back on board Destiny, the mysterious alien swirling wind from the desert planet has stowed away and is stealing what little remains of their existing water.

Let's dig in and see what we think of this episode.

----more----

Welcome to Nerd Heaven

I’m Adam David Collings, the author of Jewel of The Stars

And I am a Nerd

This is episode 55 of the podcast

Today we’re talking about the Stargate Universe episode “Water.”

The description on Gateworld reads

Severe rationing can't save the Destiny's dwindling water supply, forcing Colonel Young and Lieutenant Scott to seek out drinkable water on a deadly ice planet.

The story was written by Brad Wright & Robert C. Cooper and Carl Binder

The teleplay was written by Carl Binder

It was directed by William Waring

And it first aired on the 30th of October 2009

It’s no secret that this show was heavily inspired by Battlestar Galactica. It had a similar tone and shooting style. The stories are very different, of course, but if you look, you can see some commonality in the early episodes. Both stories find a group of people, many of them civilians, on a long-term space journey they weren’t planning for. This brings certain practical problems. The need for things like air, food, water, power.

Both shows dealt with these issues early in their first seasons. In fact, Battlestar Galactica had an episode dedicated to providing for the fleet’s water needs. Like this one, it involved going down to a dangerous ice planet. The difference is, that episode focussed on recruiting the people who would do the work, in that case, criminals on a prison ship. Here in Stargate Universe, we focus on the mission down to the planet.

Similarities like this are to be expected when you’re dealing with a space setting, but it’s interesting to note them.

So we’ve solved the air problem, and the power problem. But water is still a concern. Greer is chatting with Riley who tells a story of some trapped miners who survived by drinking their own urine. That’s gotta be a bad idea, since it’s all the waste product your body wants to get rid of.

But it’s even worse. The water levels are going down faster than they should. Young has guards on duty making sure nobody takes more than their share. It’s a bit of a mystery.

They’ve actually got half of what they had when they first arrived. Rush and Eli can’t explain where the water is going. There’s nothing wrong with the system.

As far as Young is concerned, this is all moot. Now that the ship has recharged itself, they should just be able to dial Earth. And that’s when Rush reveals that the ship has not charged itself up to full. It’s about 40% of original design capacity.

Young thinks it’s pretty clear Rush is just pulling that number out of his butt, he doesn’t say butt.

But Eli admits he was actually the one to pull it out of his butt.

It’s an amusing moment. Yet another episode that has humour in it.

The humour in SGU is a different kind of humour. It’s more character-based humour. Moments that we laugh at, but they could believably happen with the situation the characters are in.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always enjoyed Jack’s pithy one-liners, and Teal’c’s awkward turns of phrase, but this type of humour fits much better in a more serious show like SGU.

The show is not devoid of humour. It’s just a different type of humour.

Anyway, the point is, Rush is not making this number up. The ship is charged and functional, but it’s not full. And they still don’t have the ability to dial Earth.

Remember, it took the core of a planet to power the gate to travel from the Milky Way to Destiny. Even a zero point module wasn’t enough. So it’s not surprising that dialling back from this spaceship is not so easy.

Young wants Rush to bring Brody in on the problem because he’s an engineer. Meanwhile, Young wants to borrow Eli.

And the conspiracy theories are still running rife. One of the other civilians is telling Volker he thinks there is more water than they’re being told. He reckons the military are hoarding it, so they can control the civilians. I’m really curious what it is that leads people to this kind of thinking. I’ve never been one for conspiracy theories. 

Anyway, Young wants to know who among the crew he can trust, so he has Eli using the Kenos to spy on people throughout the ship. If people are planning sedition, Young wants to know about it. 

I’m of two minds about this. On one hand, I can understand Young’s perspective. This is a desperate situation, which is likely to bring out the worst in people. There might be a real danger from people trying to overthrow the command structure. Not conspiracy nuts like the guy talking to Volker. Young knows he’s harmless. But others. So it makes sense he needs to keep a tab on what’s going on.

But it feels kinda icky. Eli hates what he’s being asked to do, and I don’t blame him.

And then we see a wispy breeze full of particles blow past Eli. That should look familiar. You remember Scott’s strange encounter back on the limestone planet? It blew about the sand, taking the form of the priest who raised him, and ultimately helped him find water.

This would appear to be related.

Destiny drops out of FTL and dials the gate. This is a common pattern. This is what the ship is programmed to do. It enters a system and drops out of FTL for a time. It sets a timer, letting the crew know when it’ll jump away again.

It seems the ship can sense that the crew need water, so it’s found them a planet with water ice. But it’s pretty cold down there. Eli gives us a nice little Star Wars reference. It seems he’s an original trilogy purist. He refuses to call Empire Strikes Back Episode 5.

I’m kind of the other way. I love viewing those movies as a 6-part whole in chronological order. I know, most people will call me a heretic for that. I don’t care.

The bad news about the planet is that it doesn’t have much of an atmosphere, and what little there is, is poisonous. They’ve found some spacesuits onboard Destiny. They’ll have to use them. The suits look pretty cool. They’re metal and look like armour. They probably doubled as combat suits.

So the gate we see in this show is different to what we’ve seen in the Milky Way and Pegasus galaxies. There’s the obvious difference that the entire gate spins. I really quite like that. But there’s more. I don’t think I talked about this in the pilot, but after the wormhole disengages, the gate vents out steam or gas, or something. It’s like it builds up heat while it’s running and has to dissipate it. IT gives these stargates an old-fashioned feel, like they were a prototype before the milky-way gates were perfected. I like it. It’s a nice touch.

Young calls for Scott but he’s not answering his radio. Turns out he’s too busy sucking face with Chloe. And who should be sent to find him, but Lieutenant James. She’s not too happy to find him in this position. She has a right to be annoyed with him. He shouldn’t have his radio off. Remember, it was a radio call that interrupted the intimate liaison between these two back on Icarus. There’s a time and a place, and Scott seems to have little concept of that. IF he’s on duty, he shouldn't be getting busy with the ladies.

I love the stinging remark she gives him as he walks past. “What, you couldn’t find a broom closet?”

Then she looks at Chloe, who I think is feeling embarrassed at being caught in the act, so to speak, and probably sensing the tension between Scott and James. I don’t know how much Scott has told her about them. and kind of gives her this half smile. Anyway, I think the smile conveys a kind of “be careful, I’ve been where you are,” kind of sentiment.

So far they only have two working suits. It’ll take more time that they have to repair any more.

Doctor Lisa Park makes her first meaningful appearance on the show. She’s been seen and mentioned in the past, but hasn’t had much to do. The Stargate Command wiki refers to her as a scientist, and she clearly has a doctorate. She seems to be an engineer, given the work she’s doing. She was helping Rush repair the life support system back in Air, and here, she’s repairing EVA suits and equipping the away team with ancient tools like a plasma cutter.

Of course, there are plenty of engineers with doctorates. I’ve worked with a bunch in my day job.

Young pouts TJ in command while he and Scott are on the planet. That gives us some insight into the chain of command. I would have expected Greer to be the one, but I guess, despite being a medic, TJ has the highest rank.

Rush isn’t impressed, but he doesn’t argue. In his own mind, he sees himself as the most important person on this ship, but I don’t think he needs Young to validate him. He cares nothing for military chain of command. Let the soldiers go do what they do, while he gets on with the important stuff.

Is this the first time we get a first-person view of travelling through the wormhole in SGU? I think it is. They’re using the same visual effect that they used in later seasons of SG-1 and Atlantis, although they may have recoloured it. I’m not sure.

The visuals of the gate on the dark icy planet are pretty spectacular to look at, given how dark it is. The glow of the event horizon and the wisps of snow catching the light are quite beautiful.

The first thing they do when they come through is test the ice. Which is smart. Sadly, it’s full of dangerous chemicals. They’re going to have to explore further into the planet to find pure water. Luckily, Eli has invented an anti-grav trolley, like in Star Trek, using ancient technology. It’ll allow them to carry a lot more ice than they could manage in their hands.

Now more bad news. The water level has dropped again. Nobody has been using water, and nobody has been allowed in. So what’s happening to all the water?

They’ve ruled out a leak in the system, which only leaves one option. Someone, or something, is stealing the water.

Young and Scott are a long way from the gate but still haven’t found any usable ice.

This seems a little familiar. The expedition to the desert planet went a similar way. They had to travel a long way from the gate to eventually find what they were looking for.

And this makes perfect sense. A planet is a big place. The ship shows there is water somewhere on the planet, but it may not be right next to the gate.

TJ sees the wispy wind thing, and it mimics her face, which is creepy but cool. There is clear intelligence behind it.

Meanwhile, Spencer has been hoarding food and water, so they dump him in the brig for Young to deal with when he gets back. Remember, he’s been a bit of a loud-mouth problem since the beginning. He was one of the ones who cornered Eli, believing that Young and Rush were hiding things from the rest of the crew. He’s also the one who tried to incite a riot when they were holding the lottery when they thought the ship was gonna burn up in a star.

The water still doesn’t come close to explaining the losses, though. I think TJ is already suspecting the wind monster.

Good news, though. Young and Scott have found a frozen waterfall. It’s pure. They can carve it up and haul it back to the gate.

Greer is searching everyone’s quarters for stolen rations. Chloe understands why this is necessary and doesn’t complain. Franklin is pretty annoyed when he sees it, though. He was the one spreading his conspiracy theories to Volker earlier.

Eli’s response is pretty amusing when TJ shares what she saw. Tiny alien organisms that fly around in a cloud. Rush just takes it at face value and nods like it’s another day in the office.

But these are Eli’s first aliens. He’s never encountered a Goa'uld, a wraith, an asgard, a Nox or a Reetou. So he’s a little freaked out. Again, this is logical. Psychological realism. And he deals with it the only way he would - as a sci-fi geek like the rest of us. He references a movie. “What if they start bursting out of our chests?”

I’d probably try to calm myself in the same way.

Rush thought Scott was delirious when he saw them on the desert planet, but now, he freely admits that he was wrong. I like that about Rush. For all his faults and his arrogance, he is capable of admitting he was wrong. He wouldn’t be worth anything as a scientist if he couldn’t do that.

There’s a nice little moment between TJ and Rush. He acknowledges she’s in charge, and she says she wants his advice. This whole thing is quite outside her area of experience.She’s handling it pretty well. I wonder if she’s ever had to be in a position of command before.

Gorman spots the alien cloud and shoots at it with a pistol. Pretty silly thing to do. OF course, it does nothing to hurt the cloud, but it senses hostile intent and attacks the guy. Hundreds of little creatures, the size of a grain of sand, attacking you, ripping apart your skin. It looks like a horrific way to go.

But he’s apparently not dead. TJ is treating him. They’re not sure if he’ll come to or not.

They seem to have a good system for unloading the sled so they can get it back through the gate as quickly as possible.

Rush and Eli have a significant disagreement about how to deal with these creatures, and what to tell Young about them. I’m afraid I have to side with Rush on this one. They desperately need the ice. That’s vital. There’s not a whole lot that Young can do on the ship that isn’t already being done.

Greer is ready to go hunt down the cloud and kill it with a flamethrower (Assuming that does any good). Eli seems to kinda be on the same page. TJ thinks the cloud may have acted in self-defence, which of course, it did. I think they all need to take a deep breath and cool down for a second. IF they go attack those things now they could just make it worse.

Maybe this is the Star Trek fan in me talking, but what they really need to do is understand the creature and try to find a way to communicate. The primary danger it represents right now is the stealing of the water. It’s only ever attacked when provoked.

Attack may become necessary, but they’re a long way from that right now.

Rush seems to understand this.

The aliens can make themselves seem invisible, like vapour. That means there’s a lot more of them on the ship than we realised. And they’re growing exponentially. That’s a big problem.

Now Rush agrees they have to get them off the ship. But he still counsels not to antagonise them.

I find it amusingly ironic that Scott is talking about how maybe they’ll find a planet later on with a lake right next to the stargate because they deserve a break. And at that moment he falls through the ice.

Now this has become a rescue mission.

He’s wedged in so good that Young can’t pull him out. And to make things even worse, the ground starts to shake.

Eli points out that they’re all lying to each other over the radio. Downplaying the severity of their problems. And it’s silly because they all know each other is lying.

There’s no reason they can’t be honest about how their situations are, they just need to be wise regarding what they do about it. For example, Young not hurrying back when he needs to be harvesting ice.

Scott’s situation gets worse when another tremor hits and now he’s losing suit pressure.

James tells Chloe the bad news. She thought she’d like to know.

Now Chloe joins Rush, Eli and TJ. 

That’s actually the last thing anybody needs.

She reacts just like you’d expect her to, when she hears Rush suggest that Young might have to leave Scott behind.

Of course Young picks up on the truth. The only thing Rush cares about is that the ice makes it to the ship.

Greer traps the cloud in an air-tight room.  They can’t get out. It doesn’t take long for them to get annoyed. They’re starting to escape. Probably cutting through the metal door like they cut through Gormon’s face.

Young and Scott are facing the very real dilemma of when it’s time to leave Scott behind. They both know it may come to that, but Yong hasn’t given up yet. There’s still time to get trying. But they have to think. They need a new approach.

When Scott loses consciousness, Young just reverts to the old plan. Trying to pull him out. I guess with all the rumbling going on, the pressure might have loosened a little. Young managed to wake Scott by talking to him through the radio, and he helped climb out the last bit. 

If Scott had passed out from lack of oxygen, I doubt  Young could have woken him just by yelling. It seems a bit unlikely.

TJ is going to use the water as bait to lure the cloud off the ship.

There’s a tense moment between TJ and Greer, where she admits that she doesn’t trust him. He’s a little too trigger happy.

They send the bugs though the gate to the ice planet. That’s actually a good place for them, given how much they like water.

As they go, they form the shape of Scott’s face. Maybe a final farewell to him after their encounter on the desert planet.

I’ve gotta wonder though, they don’t seem to have been suited for that planet. There wasn’t much water there.

So they’ve solved both their problems just in time before Destiny jumps back into FTL.

Young goes to see Spencer in the brig. He says if you step out of line one more time I’ll have to deal with you. Spencer claims to understand but Greer doesn’t think he does.

Do I understand? What exactly is Young saying here? Is he gonna space the guy if he acts up again? Maybe.

The episode closes with the sad acknowledgement that Gormon died from his injuries.

So as far as I remember, this is the last we’ll see of the wind aliens.

So here’s a question. Do you think this was the originally planned pay-off of Air part 3, or do you think they had something else in mind? The reason I ask that is that the behaviour of the alien swarm seems very different in this episode.

When we first saw them, they seemed highly intelligent, as well as benevolent.. They saved Scott’s life and helped him find the lime he needed.  We also saw they had the ability to telepathically project images into Scott’s mind. Kind of an attempt to communicate perhaps.

In this episode they seemed more animalistic. Their only concern seemed to be reproduction and the consumption of water.

But that raises another question in my mind. Was the swarm actually responsible for the visions? Is it possible there was another alien presence on that desert planet? In air Part 3 we saw the swarm spin around in the sand and draw up the water that woke Scott. But perhaps the swarm was being controlled by something else. Something much more intelligent.

Our characters will be experiencing some powerful forces as the story continues, so who knows. We may never get the answers now.

That was a good episode. A good solid science fiction story.

Honestly, there are very few, if any, episodes of this show that I don’t like.

I think this is the last of the survival stories we’ll have for a while. We’ll be moving into a new phase of Stargate Universe from here.

Well next week we’ll be looking at the episode Earth, which does some interesting character stuff, and serves as our first “Will they get home” episodes. Let’s see if SGU can do a better job with this concept than Star Trek Voyager generally did.

Please consider giving this podcast a review on iTunes. Even if you listen elsewhere. I’m an android guy myself, but iTunes reviews are especially helpful to podcasters. And if you are an iPhone user, it’s apparently really easy to do directly from your phone.

Have a great two weeks.

Live long and prosper.

Make it so.

In this mini news update:

* Zack Snyder's Justice League to show day 1 in Australia

* First look at Star Trek Prodigy Characters

* Spiderman No Way Home title announcement

The second half of this Stargate Universe 'two-parter' brings a lot of emotions to the surface as the crew deal with their own mortality. With Destiny on course for a star, only 17 of them will survive to struggle on a barely habitable planet. The rest will burn up. This episode has some fantastic drama. I love this episode. Listen along with me to find out why.

----more----

Welcome to Nerd Heaven.

I’m Adam David Collings, the author of Jewel of The Stars

And I am a Nerd.

This is episode 54 of the podcast.

Today we’re talking about the Stargate Universe episode “Light”. This one picks up directly where we left off last time with “Darkness”.

I’ve been holding off recording the intros and outros of these podcasts, so that I can comment on any topical nerd stuff that might happen. But that’s preventing me from uploading and scheduling them ahead of time. I'm thinking of switching to do little mini-updates in between episodes to use for that purpose. That might be especially effective now that I’m on a fortnightly schedule.

Speaking of things to comment on, by the time this episode goes live, we’ll have seen the trailer for Zack Snyder’s Justice League. So I may have already done the first of these mini updates.

The Description on Gateworld reads

With the ship on a collision course, Young conducts a lottery to determine who will escape certain death and try and find a habitable planet with the shuttle.

This episode was written by Brad Wright.

It was directed by Peter DeLuise

And it first aired on the 23rd of October 2009.

This is a very emotional episode. It’s got some fantastic drama in it.

The random Keno interviews continue to be interspersed through this episode. 

Greer’s interview allows him to show an uncharacteristic moment of vulnerability.

Young has gathered everyone together to explain the situation. They’re on a collision course for a star, and there’s nothing they can do to change course. They still haven’t figured out how to take control of the ship. Its flight path is all completely automatic.

They have one day before burn up.

Destiny has a working shuttle and there are three planets in this system that may be habitable.

Young believes the ship dropped out of FTL here to give them a chance. It has shown intelligence and even care for its passengers before.

There’s only room and life-support for 17 people on the shuttle. Young will choose two people. The remaining 15 will be decided by lottery.

Can you imagine having to give this kind of news to a group of people? I certainly wouldn’t want to be in Young’s shoes right now. Of course, I wouldn’t want to be in any of their shoes right now. Imagine knowing that unless you were one of the 15 lucky ones, you would be dead within 24 hours. It’s unthinkable.

When Young announces he’ll be choosing 2, one to fly the shuttle, and one necessary for survival, somebody makes a smart-alec comment. This is when Young chooses to reveal that he’ll be taking his name out of the lottery. Confirming he’s going down with this ship no matter what. He then invites the smart alec to keep talking if he wants his name removed as well.

Young currently holds the power over everyone’s lives. That’s another hard thing to imagine, the threat of having your name removed. I tell ya, I’d be very well behaved.

Eli is looking for Chloe, but he finds her in Lieutenant Scott’s arms. So this is when it starts.

They’ve chosen to spend their last hours alive making love. They’ve been getting close since episode 1, when Scott offered Chloe comfort after the death of her father.

This is a common trope in stories, having sex at the end of the world. On one hand, I kind of get it. You might as well end it all doing something nice with somebody you love.

But when I really think about it, the prospect of certain death doesn’t exactly fill me with sexy feelings. I suspect I’d find it quite a turn-off.

But then, I’ve been happily married to my wife for 17 years. I have no regrets in that department.

But for Chloe, this may seem like a case of now or never.

But what about Scott? What does this act mean to him? Is Chloe just one last notch on his belt before the end?

Ever since I saw the scene in episode 1 where Scott and James are having sex in the storage room, I’ve had a pretty negative view of Scott. I misremembered that he and Chloe got together at the end of the pilot, in the wake of Senator Armstrong’s death, further confirming to me that Scott was a dirty-rotten womaniser who chewed women up and spat them out, taking advantage of Chloe’s pain.

Well, I was wrong about that. He just comforted her in the pilot. And this is when they officially get together.

I can’t know Scott’s heart. But I do know that this relationship is going to continue. He’s not using Chloe in the same way he used James. I still can’t shake the feeling that he’s taking advantage of this situation a little, but it’s all clearly consenual.

I still have this feeling that Chloe deserves better than Scott (and better obviously means Eli) but maybe that’s not fair. Maybe that’s just because I like it when the nerd gets the girl, like I did.

The next scene is really interesting. Camille comes in to see Young. She thinks he should choose all 17 people, and he should include himself. The survivors will need leadership. She feels this would be more fair than sending the wrong people because they were randomly selected.

Young makes the point that they are all the wrong people. None of them were selected for a long-term mission aboard Destiny. They were all assigned to Icarus Base, to solve the mystery of the ninth chevron. 

When he asks her how the decision would be made, she switches from saying “you” to saying “we”.

“We’d make a short list, taking into account skills, age and sex.” Inherent is the idea that she wants to be part of the group. And making the decision seems to be within the purview of the HR Lady (which is what she was on Icarus.)

“Do we just pick those we like?” he asks.

That’s not what she’s saying.

And then Young says those blood-chilling words.

“Get out or I’m going to take your name out of the lottery. I may just do it anyway”

And Camille goes silent. And her attitude immediately goes from aggressive to passive.

She begs. “Please don’t.”

She holds in her tears as best she can and leaves the room.

I think in that moment, she would do anything to convince Young to leave her name in the lottery. Whenever I watch this scene, I can’t help but put myself in Camille’s place in that moment, and it horrifies me.

It’s very powerful.

Eli has a flashback dream of being back home. His mother is hassling him about a job interview. It seems he pulled out of it. I found this scene confusing because the pilot seemed to suggest that Eli couldn’t study or have a career because he had to be at home caring for his sick mother. Here, we see a mother that is quite able. She’s walking around the house picking up his laundry. And she’s telling trying to get him to get a job.

Clearly, she has some kind of medical condition that involves a lot of financial cost, but she doesn’t seem to be the invalid we were lead to believe she was.

So …. Is Eli just lazy? That’s what this scene is implying.

Or am I reading too much into this? It IS a dream, after all, not an actual flashback.

Scott is convinced he and Chloe are the two that Young has chosen. He makes sense. He’s the only one that can fly the shuttle, given that Young has withdrawn himself from consideration. Chloe points out that being a senator’s daughter might make her sound important but it’s not going to help anybody on the planet survive. She’s not one of the two.

But she’s felt closer to Scott in the last few days than she’s ever felt to anyone.  So this whole thing is real from her end.

In Chloe’s keno interview she talks about how her father gave his life so they could all live another day. Then she chuckles at how that’s turned out to be more literal than he might have hoped. It’s been more than a day, but not many days. The unspoken question in her statement is, “Was his sacrifice worthwhile, given most of them are going to die now anyway?” Perhaps she’s not so sure. But I’ll bet I know what her dad would have said. Because if I were him, and I could let one of my kids live just one more day, it would totally be worth it.

Young and Rush have a very calm and very reasonable conversation. The first two planets are proven to be uninhabitable. One is too cold, covered in frozen methane. The other is too hot. The third planet is behind the star and they’ll have to launch the shuttle before they get close enough to determine habitability, so it’s a gamble. A massive leap of faith. Chances are good, though, because it’s in between the other two worlds, in the goldilocks zone. But as it stands, there is no guarantee those chosen to go on the shuttle will survive any longer than those on destiny.

Rush wants his name taken out of the lottery. Coming to this ship was his destiny. His life’s work. He’s happy to go down with her.

And then there’s a moment of almost reconciliation between the two. Young admitting that Rush was right, and he should have listened to him earlier. Rush admitting he wasn’t himself at the time, too irrational to be taken seriously, and it wouldn’t have made a difference. There’s a tiny sliver of mutual respect going on here. And it almost chokes me up. Their relationship will go through a whole lot of ups and downs as the show progresses, but I really like this moment.

Young reveals that he has chosen lieutenants Scott and Johansen as the two. Makes sense. The pilot and the doctor. Essential personnel.

Rush suggests he could rig the lottery to choose people like Greer. There will be some who’ll assume he did anyway. I think he’s briefly tempted. Why not? But no, he’s firm on his principles with this.

The moment of truth has come. Scott and Johannsen are on board the shuttle, ready to go. Young is gonna draw names out of a box. Those chosen will go up the stairs directly to the shuttle. Those whose names are not called must remain in the gate room until the shuttle is fully boarded and ready to leave.

It’s gotta be a tense moment. You know those reality shows where they drag out who is being kicked off, or who is gonna be the winner. It would feel like that, except a million times worse, because if you’re not chosen, you’re going to die. I tell you, there must be a lot of hearts beating very fast. I try to put myself in the shoes of these characters, and I just get so overwhelmed by the thought of it.

If your name was called, I imagine you’d feel a great sense of relief, but also some guilt, that you were one of the lucky ones, and you’d be leaving so many behind to die. Plus also a little mix of fear and excitement at the prospect of going to this new world to make a new life.

Many of the names chosen are unknown to us, but Camille is chosen. Obviously Young left her name in the lottery. She’s sobbing as she arrives. All those mixed emotions. Probably some gratitude that Young didn’t exclude her too. 

Lieutenant James is chosen. That could get awkward with Scott. Do you think, if Chloe isn’t selected, that he’ll try to get back with her? Are these people going to try to populate their new world with a new generation, or just let themselves grow old and die? Anywy, Scott wisely stations James at the rear door of the shuttle. She needs to guard it in case anyone else tries to force their way on board.

We don’t really know Doctor Park yet, but she’ll become a bigger part of the story over time. 

Brody is another we’ll get to know more about.

We don’t hear all the names. The names that are not called are perhaps more important at this point.

So that’s it. That’s fifteen. Anybody else still standing there to hear this has to face the reality that they’re going to die on this ship.

Spencer, one of the military isn’t gonna stand for it. He says you can fit more people. He tries to get the others to rise up with him but Greer puts him down nice and quickly. I kinda like Greer in this moment.

They close the shuttle, Eli’s keno in place so that they’ll get one last look at the outside of Destiny. It contains all their messages. It’s unlikely anyone will ever find it, but it’s still meaningful.

Some of the remainders go to watch the shuttle leave from the viewing lounge.

Eli is most interested to get images from the keno.

This is the first time they’ve ever been able to see what the ship looks like from the outside. They all crowd around the tablet to get a glimpse.

Rush’s expression of thanks is particularly heartfelt.

It hits me right in the heart when Young and Rush shake hands.

Rush apologises for getting Eli involved in this. But he’s not sorry. He’s got to see such wonders. He jokes he might be sorry by the end of the day, though. Yep, another little moment of humour.

Rush explains to Chloe how the destruction of the ship will go down. He hopes it will be quick, but he can’t guarantee that. He doesn’t know.

There are so many great character moments in this episode. I’m so glad they chose to take their time and do this properly, rather than jamming the whole thing into just one episode.

We learn that the reason Greer was in the brig back on Icarus is because he hit Telford (a superior officer.) I can think can all assume Telford probably had it coming.

Different groups of people are choosing to spend their final moments in different ways.

Young is walking the ship and thinks about his wife. 

The “fun people” are playing cards. There’s a group reciting the Lord’s prayer together. It’s a very ritualistic kind of prayer, but also a very inclusive one. It’s pretty core to all flavours of Christianity.

Rush finishes a mediocre book while listening to music.

Eli and Chloe watch the star together, holding hands as friends.

Greer takes off his shirt and sits on his bed. He’s meditating.

Do you think any of them are planning to end things early? I’d be surprised if some of them didn’t at least think about it that.

How would you spend this time, if you were on that ship?

I would probably be praying, but probably something a bit more personal and heartfelt that the recital of the group we saw earlier. I’d like to think that I’d express gratitude for the many blessings in my life. Probably also praying for courage for what’s about to come. Not the death part. But fear of how it’ll happen. Fear of any pain or discomfort I might feel as the ship tears itself apart and the heat increases.

In all honesty, I’d probably be trying to do anything to distract myself from that fear.

The shuttle crew get their first readings of the planet. There’s very little vegetation and the temperature won’t be spending much time above zero, but they’ll technically be able to survive.

It’s gonna be a hard life for them.

Rush finishes his book and stands. You can tell something is going on in his mind. He goes to his lab and looks at a computer. Then laughs.

Such a heartfelt genuine laugh of relief.

The laugh of hope.

He goes to the viewing room where Eli and Chloe are waiting. He laughs out loud and tells them they’re gonna live.

The turbulence and heat should have happened by now, but the shield is protecting them.

How can it be doing that? They’re out of power.

Rush has never been so glad to be wrong in his life.

Of course, being wrong is part of life for a good scientist. You more just as much, maybe even more, from being wrong than you do from being right.

But this isn’t just an experiment. This is their lives.

Then there’s that wonderfully triumphant moment as the ship’s solar collectors deploy, and the ship stars sucking in power from the sun.

This is what destiny intended from the beginning. The ship draws its power from the stars. When it gets low, it flies through the corona of the star, protected by the super awesome magic ancient shields, which are powered by the star itself.

This is such a great pay-off.

But there’s still a problem. Those 17 people on the shuttle.

TJ announces that the people on the ship will all be dead now. She wonders if they’re the lucky ones. Scott tells her not to think that way.

That’s when they get a message from Young.

Scott sets a course for Destiny, but the ship is accelerating away and the shuttle can’t match its speed. The computer can’t figure out an intercept solution and Scott can’t come up with a manual solution.

Rush’s solution is the classic sci-fi concept of sling-shotting around a planet to accelerate.

Rush tells everyone they need to trust him, but it’s Math-Boy Eli who figures the numbers out first. Now Rusi s the one who has to trust. It’s hard for him. Rush is used to being the smartest person around. But credit to him, he sends Eli’s numbers.

This episode is such a roller coaster. We’ve gone through all that emotional character stuff, and then the triumphant bit, and now it’s really tense and suspenseful.

It’s a great sequence. They manage to get back to the ship and dock.

There’s a tiny moment of bittersweet for Eli and he realises that now Scott is back and he and Chloe will be together. But he doesn’t let that hold him back for long. This is a moment for celebration.

Young tries really hard to reach out to Rush in the mess hall. He genuinely wants to praise Rush as a hero. 

And then a dark thought crosses his mind. What if Rush took his name out of the lottery because he knew Destiny would make it.

What kind of a person does that make Rush?

Eli is convinced that Rush didn’t know. He saw his face. And I agree with Eli. Rush didn’t know. He was surprised and elated.

Greer and TJ both tell Young to let it go, but he’s not quite able to.

The episode ends with that line again - “A lot of work.”

In a way, I think that sums up both Rush and Young. Certainly their troubled relationship.

So that was Light. I love this episode. It was fantastic. A beautiful character piece that examines how we all deal with our mortality, but then also an exciting action-packed story at the end.

Episodes like this are one of the many reasons I’m a fan of Stargate Universe.

Next week, we’ll talk about the last of the “resource gathering” episodes. And we’ll revisit the swirling wind alien from Air part 3.

Please consider spreading the word about this podcast. Tell a friend who likes Stargate, or share episodes on social media. There are a lot of SGU fans out there, I just have to find them.

Have a great two weeks.

Live long and prosper.

Make it so.

Today we discuss the first regular episode of Stargate Universe after the extended pilot. Destiny now has breathable air but there are a lot of other problems. The most immediate is the mysterious lack of power. As the crisis pushes our characters toward breaking point, can they find a solution?

This episode, and the next, closely tie together. They were originally intended to be one single episode. I'm glad they ended up splitting it in two because it allowed them to really take their time and delve into the characters. It's a great mini-arc.

----more----

Welcome to Nerd Heaven.

I’m Adam David Collings, the author of Jewel of The Stars

And I am a nerd.

This is episode 53 of the podcast.

Today we’re talking about the Stargate Universe episode Darkness.

MGM have just released the whole of Stargate Universe and Stargate SG-1 on Blue-ray. Previously, the first season of SGU was available on blu-ray but the second season wasn’t. That makes this the perfect time to watch along with me

Of course, these are American releases, but it will hopefully lead to releases in other countries as well.

The early seasons of SG-1, which were shot on film, have been re-mastered for this collection.

And speaking of re-mastering. There’s big new about Babylon 5.

We fans have spent years talking about how a remaster is unlikely to ever happen because Warner Bros doesn’t seem to care about B5 as a property any longer. And now we’ve just learned they’re spent the last 6 years re-mastering it. It’s a shock, but I’ve never been happier to be wrong in all my life.

Babylon 5 was shot in widescreen but framed for 4:3. All the CGI was done in 4:3. The DVD transfer of the show was terrible. They used the full 16:9 frame of the live-action footage, and then cropped and stretched the CGI to fit the frame. That made it look terrible low-res. The scenes to suffer most were those that included both CGI and live-action elements. You could literally see the pixels in these shots. It was horrible.

This new version is back in the original 4:3 so none of those problems exist. But more than that, they’ve re-scanned the film at a higher-resolution, plus they’ve upscaled the CGI. Note, this doesn’t mean they’ve re-rendered the CGI, but from all accounts, the show looks better than it ever has. And that’s very exciting.

One final bit of news before we launch into today’s episode of Stargate Universe, we have a release date for the Snyder Cut of Justice League. The 18th of March.  STill no indication that HBO Max will be available outside of America by them, but Zack did say he’d make sure there were international distribution options in place. Let’s hope they’ll all be ready to go on day 1. I’ll admit I’m pretty nervous as I wait for more news.

Anyway, let’s talk about Darkness.

The description on Gateworld reads

The Destiny suffers a power crisis, putting the lives of the stranded crew in jeopardy when even the emergency reserves run dry. Dr. Rush pushes himself to the breaking point.

This episode was written by Brad Wright

It was directed by Peter Deluise

And it first aired on the 16th of October 2009.

So we’ve solved our most immediate problem. The need for air. But this is a multi-million year old spaceship that hasn’t been maintained since it was launched. There are plenty of other problems. This episode will address the next of these.

They’re eating some kind of group. Powder mixed with water. It could just be protein powder. At least that would give them some calories. But water is very limited. They have to ration it carefully, and they certainly can’t use it for washing. But Eli has found a shower. It doesn’t use water. It sprays some kind of mist.

There’s a nice camaraderie that has already started to build between these people, as they banter about who smells the worst. I really like it.

Also, nice to know they’ve figured out how to make the toilets work. Very important.

But it’s not the water, or the food, or even the toilets that has Rush concerned. It’s the power. Their power reserves are extremely low and Rush can’t figure out why.

They’re been turning on systems since they arrived, sure, but this ship had power to last millions of years of interstellar space flight until now. It seems very coincidental they'd arrive just as its batteries finally give out. There’s got to be more to it.

Rush has been working through the night and he’s getting really testy.

Eli is still playing with the kenos. He’s wanting to get people to say a little something about themselves, to document, not just the circumstances of their situation, but the people involved.

And already, we get a joke, as Eli quotes Planet of The Apes. Once again disproving the notion that Stargate Universe is without humour.

The Keno interviews are interspersed through the episode, and they’re really nice little glimpses into the characters. I especially like Voker’s as it ties in with the episode. And what he says makes sense. We can’t all be mozart, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a good astro-physicist.

In Scott’s interview, he says he wants to say a prayer for the crew, although what he actually does is recite Psalm 23, which kinda works as a prayer. Anyway, this shows that he still does have some genuine belief in the faith he was raised with.

Actually, we get a second joke. The officer making the goop asks Young what his assignment is. Young replies “Recipes. For the love of God, recipes.” That got a laugh out loud from me.

Young has had people turning things on all over the ship. They’ve found a  charging plate that can adapt to earth technology, which is really cool, but the minute Rush tells him they have power issues, he tells people to stop. He doesn't try to argue it out. Young doesn’t let his personal issues with Rush get in the way of important matters. And I like that.

He tries to reach out to Rush. They need to be on the same page. And Rush needs to inform Young of anything important that may affect people on the ship.

He offers someone to assist but rush declines. At this point it would take longer to bring somebody up to speed. So Young just picks someone.

Rush isn’t just being arrogant and annoying here. This is a real principle.

I know in my day job field of computer programming, there’s a very real principle, that you can’t just speed up a project by adding a new team member. Adding a new person will slow things down initially because you have to stop productive work to educate the new person and get them up to speed. We’ve known this since the 70s. Probably longer, but that’s when a book was written about it.

So I don’t doubt Rush here. I can understand Young’s desire to add extra resources given the urgency and importance of what Rush is doing, but it probably won’t help.

But the way Rush treats Volker is very rude. Rush is clearly not operating at his best. He hasn’t slept. But is it just affecting his disposition, or is it affecting his ability to do his job? It’s a tough situation because their lives depend on solving this before it’s too late.

But there’s definitely a point of diminishing returns when it’s best, no matter how little time you have, to grab some sleep and try again after. Even if he just takes an hour or two.

Chloe doesn’t know what to do with herself. She’s a political science student, Assistant to a senator, her father, who is now dead. She has no role on this spaceship. She’s a smart young woman but are any of her skills useful in this situation? It’s all a bit frustrating for her.

And of course, Eli is kinda following her around like a lost puppy, because, well, she’s the only person on this ship his age, and he really likes her.

She wants to use one of the showers Eli found, so he agrees to show it to her.

Poor old Eli. He’s standing guard so nobody barges in on Chloe in the shower. With his back turned like a gentleman, of course, but there’s a lot of teenage horniness going on here.

So from his perspective, it’s really bad timing when Lt. James appears and asks him to come have a word with her. She sees right through him, of course. I mean, when it comes to hormones, she’s not exactly above adolescent behaviour herself, right?

Turns out, James doesn’t want to talk to him alone. There’s a whole bunch of people who kinda mob him. The lower downs, the junior officers are feeling left out. They think Young and Rush may know more than they’re telling, about whether they’ll make it back to earth. They think the higher ups are hiding things from them.

Eli thinks this is a load of nonsense. And is almost offended at their suggestion. He promises that if Young and Rush tell him anything of note, he’ll pass it along to these guys, totally not believing in their little conspiracy theory.

I love the way he’s so sarcastic in how he talks to them.

Now, you could argue that Eli is being a little naive here, but I tend to side with Eli in thinking these guys are all just being idiots.

There’s some nice dialogue between Young and Voker, regarding whether it’s worth trying to stand up to Rush.

And then the ship drops out of FTL, and the lights go out. Rush says their power, all of their power, is gone.

So they’re dead in space.

FTL was the last system to fail, and now it’s gone.

Things get pretty awkward with Eli and Chloe when he goes back to help her in the dark.

At first she wants privacy but then calls him back. He fails to hide the delight when she wants him to stay, but then she tells him to turn around while she finishes dressing.

There’s no actual nudity shown in any of this. You could say that this whole thing is….not so much gratuitous, but … needlessly sexy, I suppose.

But I contrast this scene with one in Star Trek Enterprise. You probably remember it, when Hoshi is climbing through the jeffery’s tube and slips, and somehow her shirt stays up there, and she slips down without it. And of course, for some reason she’s not wearing a bra.

That scene was really bad. It was clearly made to titillate. It was an extremely childish attempt to get ratings with meaningless sexiness.

Compared to that, this scene looks really good. It wasn’t so much made to titillate. Maybe a little bit, but this is just a portrayal of young people, as they really are, in a situation that is believable. So I think this scene is a lot more justified.

Rush’s rant to young about how his order to try dialling earth robbed him of the time he needed to solve this problem before it was too late.

But Young makes a good point. With all the mistakes Young has made, ordering people to do things that have wasted power, it doesn’t add up to a result this dire. They’re missing something.

But Rush is too frantic to hear it. He’s given up hope because there’s nothing more he can do. And then he passes out.

This was some fantastic acting from Robert Carlyle. I love it.

Young wants to use the communication stone to visit Earth, and Telford is volunteering for stone duty again. We get the impression he does this often. He really wants to be on board Destiny as much as he can. It’s amusingly ironic that the one person who managed to avoid getting stuck on that ship is the one who really wants to be there.

Telford is quick to blame Young for the situation on Destiny. Yes, Rush saw this coming but it wasn’t in Young’s power to prevent this.

Debriefing on the current situation doesn’t take long, so Young decides to go visit his wife while he’s on earth. Of course, he’s visiting her in Telford’s body, which has got to be weird for her.

I think she has just been given clearance to know about the stargate program. It would be a lot to take in.

Aliens exist, we have a stargate. Your husband is stranded in a galaxy so far away we don’t have a name for it. But his spirit can visit you in another man’s body due to an alien communication technology. Oh, and he’s here to see you.

Her uncertain response to him is completely believable.

Their marriage was on the verge of being over before he left for Icarus base. His job was one of the issues between them, but not the only one.

Now that she’s completely out of his reach, he wants to make things right with her. He wants to get home somehow, and he wants her to be here waiting for him when he does.

And that’s a big ask.

But...I can understand him wanting to ask. When you love someone, you do all you can to hold onto them.

Of course, she still has the option to say no, and that’s what she does, at least at first.

His wife takes some time to think about it, and then finally comes back outside to talk to Young about it.

She’s willing to consider that this might all be true, and I think she’s believing that Young genuinely wants to patch things up with her, to get home to her.

But she asks “How does this change things?” In the end, she can’t see that this makes any difference. He still put his career ahead of his marriage, and she’s not yet able to forgive him for this.

Young leaves defeated, but I think, there’s some stuff going on in her mind. She’s not ready to forgive yet, but she’s closer than either of them realise.

While Young is off failing to save his marriage, Telford is busy ordering Scott to use the stones to report that Young needs to be replaced.

Young’s response, when he returns to his own body, “well, he’s probably right about that.”

Colonel Young knows his shortcomings as a leader, but he wants to overcome them. He wants to be better, and he really does try.

And that’s what I love about his character. The more times I watch this show, the more Young grows on me.

And, of course, the more I love to hate Telford.

Anyway, they’ve learned that Destiny dropped out of FTL in a solar system with several potentially habitable planets. The odds of them running out of power that close to a star, rather than out in open interstellar space, is so ridiculously astronomical, that it has to mean something. It’s like the ship deliberately came here. Again, all very logical. And we know the ship does things for a reason, like when it dialed the stargate to the planet that contained the limestone that saved their lives.

This information is delivered to us through one of the Keno interviews. I don’t know the name of the character but she delivers it in a delightful way. The episode takes a bunch of exposition and infuses it with lots of character. It was a wonderful decision on the writer’s part, and the actress sold it very well.

Rush is finally awake after passing out, in what Scott called a nervous breakdown. His body desperately needed sleep. Plus, he’s going through caffeine withdrawal. All the crew who have addictions are suffering right now. Anyway, no matter how understandable Rush’s ranting was, he’s very embarrassed by it. He likes to be in more control than that.

He still has the same concerns about their power situation, but at least he’s capable of being more rational now, despite his withdrawal headache.

When Rush goes to talk to Young about his previous ranting, he can’t bring himself to use the word apology. Instead, he says “I want to explain that I was suffering from withdrawal symptoms.”  You see, there’s a not quite subtle difference in emphasis. An apology could include an explanation of how he wasn’t himself, of course, but he’s more interested in justifying his behaviour, rather than expressing remorse for how that behaviour affected others. Rush almost behaved like a decent human being here, but he blew it. I suspect there’s some really interesting psychological stuff going on with Rush.  As Young says “A lotta work.”

So Destiny is on a trajectory to slingshot around the gas giant, taking it close to the planets that are believed to be habitable. Clearly, this is not a coincidence.

Things are starting to look up a little for our crew.

There’s gonna be a lot of turbulence as they pass near the planet’s atmosphere.

Eli is excited to see this. Who wouldn’t be? Chloe understandably has other things on her mind, like the recent death of her father, but when Eli drags her out to see it she’s mesmerized by its beauty.

It’s an exciting moment.

The ship comes out of the slingshot and Rush is horrified to learn that the manoeuvre has changed their trajectory more than they’d hoped.

They’re headed straight for the star.

That’s not good.

This episode, and the next one, were originally conceived as a single script, but they were broken apart into two. I think this was a good move. It allows a lot more time to deal with the characters as the main plot progresses, plus it gives us time to really build up some strong tension regarding the ship’s predicament.

I love the serialised nature of this show. SG-1 and Atlantis were both serialised, of course, but Universe just takes it that step further.

So this was the first regular episode of SGU after the 3-part pilot. And I think the show has well and truly established itself as something special. Something strong. I can’t wait to dive into the next one, Light, which will be filled with a whole lot of emotions.

Next week the story picks up right where we left it with the episode Light. It’s a great one, and I can’t wait to share it with you in two weeks.

If you’re enjoying Nerd Heaven, please consider leaving a review on iTunes, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I endeavour to make sure the show is available anywhere and everywhere, but if it’s not available on your favourite app, just let me know and I’ll do everything I Can to make sure it gets there.

You can contact me by emailing  [email protected]

And spread the word about this show with all your stargate-loving friends. The hardest thing about creating content is getting that content in front of the eyeballs of people who would like it, if they only knew it existed.

I want to thank everyone who takes the time to listen to me. There may be few of you, but you are greatly appreciated.

Have a great two weeks.

Live long and prosper.

Make it so.