SGU Episode 28 “Malice”
Reviewed by Terry (Colonel_Ez)
Spoiler Potential High

Malice currently holds the title of my favourite episode of Stargate ever, which is really all I should need to write to express how I feel about it, but that’d be a touch lazy so I’ll write more!

Unfortunately anybody who wasn’t spoiled by the promo last week now learns fairly quickly that Ginn is dead and while that is a totally sucky thing for us to discover (especially with a character with such great potential) the payoff this event provides is so amazingly good that in a way, at the end of the episode you find yourself being glad of the event, because if it hadn’t then the developments of this episode wouldn’t have happened.

We discover early on that Ginn is dead, because she was connected to the stones that Dr Perry is also dead and that Simeon escaped his guard, killed her and is currently on the loose aboard the ship.

For me this episode splits into three stories at this point, each interconnected and each featuring smaller stories within themselves but the primary focuses from this point on are Eli and his grief, Rush and his revenge and Simeon and his escape, to an extent, everybody else is along for the ride.

The character moments here are nothing beyond stellar, on all accounts (although I still think Chloe is being underutilised) the individual groupings and how people try to help (or hinder) Eli, Rush & Simeon and what we learn along the way.

Episodes of this sort are the ones I find most difficult to talk about as it gets to a point where I feel that im just gushing about how awesome I think everything is, so im going to try keep this brief and cover some main points.

The first thing that comes to mind is the second attempt at selling the mission to the non techie viewers, I still don’t think they’ve nailed the importance of the mission to those viewers who couldn’t spend hours speculating the possibilities – im not sure whether this is because they cant or because its going to be part of the mid season finale but as of yet I still don’t think they’ve got it.

I’m really bummed that Dr Perry is dead, she was quickly becoming one of my favourite guest starts and I wonder when we’ll get to see the more softened Rush now that she is gone.

Eli’s journey through this episode was the first time since the first episode that I’ve seen the Eli character as what I feel he was meant to be, a representation of the typical sci fi viewer – its no secret that as the show has progressed the one character I have grown more and more disappointed with is Eli, but in recent episodes he has been great and I loved how, in his grief he sort of channelled Rush, rude, arrogant and controlling while on the bridge with Volker – it wasn’t something I’d like to see more than once or twice but it was certainly entertaining in this case.

Young’s speech to Eli when he wants to go to the planet was also great, for him to be giving it made it all the better because he does have it in him to kill and he knows better than most on the ship just how much it changes you.

Rush on the planet was amazing, every time you think Rush is softening, mellowing and opening up to the idea of working as a team he keeps something to himself for those few seconds longer than he should and people get hurt.

When he broke off to chase after Simeon I had concerns about any showdown they could possibly have – Rush a scientist and Simeon a military man, when it got down to the shoot out I was really wondering how they could possibly make it work – but as always they have you looking left when they do something to the right and this was amazing, the alien “beastie” when it was first shown was something I thought we were just going to see, just to show that these planets have life on them I had no idea they were going to use them as they did with the stampede and it couldn’t have been done better, Rush beat Simeon with his mind and that for me was totally believable more so than any military solution.

I found myself wondering in the few seconds it took for Rush to kill Simeon whether he would allow him to live for the information he could provide, fortunately I didn’t have to wonder long

Whether the threat to Earth and the fallout from not getting Simeon’s information will come into prominence for the Destiny crew as the season progresses remains to be seen, personally I hope not but we’ll have to wait and see.

For this week, that’s all folks!

Colonel_Ez, Out!

SGU Episode 27 “The Greater Good”
Reviewed by Terry (Colonel_Ez)
Spoiler Potential High

Once again, I find myself watching each episode and saying to myself “no, now this is my favourite episode” at some point the statement will become redundant as I make the statement almost every week.

However this wouldn’t be one of my reviews without a niggle so im going to start with that and then get onto the rest of my review (which is both positive and extremely late!)

This episode was touted on the internet in the weeks leading up as the episode that revealed the Destiny’s mission, a revelation that promised to change things for the rest of the season, personally I feel that the revelation was huge but, I worry whether it was big enough for the more casual fans or the fans who have come to SGU for its more dramatic themes rather than its Sci Fi.

Bear with me, SGU has made a point of scaling way back on the science and the technobabble in favour of character development and dramatic themes, based on this I was expecting the Destiny’s mission to be a bit more obvious to the fans that aren’t science minded, for me – this mission was good when it was revealed and has gotten more and more awesome in the time since the episode when I have been able to speculate on what this revelation could mean for the future.

But for those that don’t have that interest, the mission I think has the risk of seeming anticlimactic right up until the point of its climax.

But, that’s enough about that.

The episode was the perfect balance of positives and negatives, we see a more stable Colonel Young (at least on the surface) an air of co-operation between him and Rush, at least until the point where it all came crashing down, the progression of the Eli/Ginn relationship (which I find myself surprisingly happy with) and the reintroduction of Dr Perry.

The discovery of the alien ship was enjoyable, that it contained the same pods as those we saw on the seeder ship was really interesting (although I know a lot have assumed that it was “their” ship I find myself wondering whether it was just another ship the Aliens had boarded)

A Rush/Young confrontation is always fun to see, I again find myself really enjoying the idea that they are never going to be the best of friends but they are always going to have a relationship that will reach a pressure point and then reset itself – twice now we’ve seen the characters discover the worst about eachother, have a violent confrontation and then go back to a level of co-operation, early on in season 1 I had speculated as to how long this could continue and how long it would stay entertaining, I now find myself feeling that if this happened at least once a season I’d be fine with it, in fact I’d be more than fine.

This episode also brings us another revelation in the discovery of the bridge by the crew at large, I had speculated before this episode that the discovery of the bridge and the mission would occur at the same time, providing a situation where the crew “could” begin working towards getting home but would choose not to in favour of completing the Destiny’s mission, that was not the case with this episode but the discovery of the bridge in itself was great – especially the scene with Dr Perry steering the ship with Eli, Volker & Brody back-seat driving!

In the confrontation scenes with Simeon and Ginn/Perry we are treated to a foreboding of what is to come, learning that Ginn was doing something for the Destiny crew and then seeing that she had done a stone exchange and gone to Earth – It becomes somewhat obvious what is to come (although, none the less suspenseful when it actually happens at the end)

So we are left at the end of this episode with a renewed spirit of co-operation between Young & Rush (for however long it lasts) the discovery of the bridge (and the discoveries left to be made now that we are getting control and the events that have transpired within Ginn’s quarters left to be revealed.

Next week is gonna be bumpy…

For this week, that’s all folks!

Colonel_Ez, Out!

SGU Episode 26 “Trial & Error”
Reviewed by Terry (Colonel_Ez)
Spoiler Potential High
With A Personal Title Of: “It’s never gonna stop hurting, that’s the whole point…”

Trial & Error is perhaps one of the best episodes of Stargate I’ve ever seen.

There, I said it…

There is so much about this episode that is awesome that I don’t know how to properly cover it.

The first thing that I want to talk about is the ship, I’ve secretly (ok, not so secretly…) hated the idea of the Destiny being aware – when Franklin disappeared and it started rushing around the Internet that he was “part of Destiny now…” I cringed a little, because I really didn’t see a way that a self aware ship would work.

This episode gave me a glimpse of not only how it would work, but how I would love seeing it and crave seeing more.

As you should know by now I love speculation, I love getting new information about the stargate universe and those that inhabit it so that I can speculate on what might happen to them in the future, so I was particularly tickled at the idea that the Destiny was doing the same – the idea that the ship was learning about the crew in order to “factor them in” was possibly the most excited I’ve been about SGU ever – because it had me asking all sorts of questions, who has it figured out already, where does it gather its information – the possibilities are quite possibly endless.

The focus of this episode is really the ship testing Colonel Young, running a Kobayashi Maru scenario in his head to see how he would cope in what seems to be an unwinnable scenario and, when he stops trying to cope – bringing the ship to a halt.

Does this mean that the ship considers Young to be a vital component, also how did the ship know that Young needed testing (is it listening to conversations, monitoring his blood alcohol level or is it just a routine procedure for the commander of an ancient ship that they need to constantly prove their command fitness)

The Young characters downwards spiral has been entertaining to watch but almost as soon as it started we all knew that it was going to have to come to a conclusion sooner rather than later, most likely resulting in Young being removed from command.

This episode may prove to be the final resolution of that storyline, or it may be a band aid with more to come in future episodes, we don’t know right now but the good thing about confronting the issue at all is that it gives the SGU cast the chance to do what they do best and that’s act up a storm.

I could talk about everybody’s individual moments but I’d be here all night, the one standout moment was of course the Young/Scott confrontation – it was perfectly played out, perfectly acted and beyond compelling to watch.

The good thing about an episode that requires a character to be bogged down is you can use it as an excuse to get a lot of storylines moved forward at once, in any normal circumstance it would be too much story for one episode in this one, Young’s divorce, TJ’s confession about the baby and the Faith planet all information that we needed out there but in this episode they serve a double purpose as they also overload Young.

The other main story in this episode is of course the Eli/Ginn romance, or the beginnings of it – personally I wasn’t expecting to enjoy these scenes at all (going by past experience of Eli romance scenes) but I found the whole thing entertaining to watch, funny when it was meant to be funny, touching when it was meant to be touching.

The good thing to see, I think is that the show is learning – much like the ship, in the case of the show they are learning what works and what doesn’t and fixing it as we go, last year had there been an Eli romance it would have almost certainly been more like the Eli/Chloe scenes we were subjected to in “Earth” which I think I can go out on a limb and say would not have been as much fun to watch (in fact for me, they would have been the complete opposite of fun)

The end of the episode urked me, but in a good way (if that makes any sense at all) when it seemed that Young assuming command properly again restarted the ship, I was excited – but when it was revealed that Rush actually managed to bypass the program I felt cheated, will we ever get the chance to see a situation like this again, to understand it more fully, to know whether the ship in fact would have restarted on its own – who can say

I can assume that it’s more likely we’ll see the repercussions of bypassing the scenario program before we get answers to those questions, but if each episode from now on is as good as this one – im happy to wait for the answers.

For this week, that’s all folks!

Colonel_Ez, Out!

SGU Episode 25 “Cloverdale”
Reviewed by Terry (Colonel_Ez)
Spoiler Potential High
With a personal title of “Don’t worry, they bounce at this age”

I’ll start out by saying I loved everything about this episode, it was nice to have an episode that’s sort of separate from the ongoing story arcs because as readers and podcast listeners will know I’ve been having a little bit of frustration in regards to how much we have going on and how promptly it is being addressed.

None of those problems in tonight’s episode though, for two reasons – firstly the only real connecting thread to last weeks episode was Chloe’s ability to resist the Coral-Creatures effects, but secondly they addressed the repercussions of the discovery that she saw still “infected” in the episode – in short, how it was handled in this episode is how I’ve been banging on about it being handled for weeks – small, simple scenes that show that the crew aren’t just ignoring what’s happening.

I think the last episode that had a killer opening like this one was “Time” and even though the premise is entirely different I found that this episode had a lot of similarities with that episode and that in itself can only be a good thing.

First thing I want to start with is a little goofy but I cant have been the only one thinking it while watching, how crappy for the Eli character – even in an infection fuelled hallucination his chances of a relationship with Chloe are scuppered – im sure a therapist could have a field day with the Scott psyche and tell us exactly what him hallucinating Eli as Chloe’s brother means for his real life opinion of their relationship, because we all know Eli doesn’t want to be her brother…

I rarely feel sorry for the Eli character but last week I did and this week I did again, im hoping this isn’t becoming a pattern! But anyway, in this episode Chloe decides to risk her life so she can stay with Scott, Eli is once again given a harsh reminder of the pecking order in the “triangle” if you can even still call it that, even though Chloe was fairly certain she would be ok she wasn’t sure and Eli definitely didn’t know – Personally im hoping that shun will be the beginning of the end for the Eli/Chloe relationship – as I deplore will they, wont they stories in any show, especially Stargate (I may be one of the only SG-1 fans who hated the O’Neill/Carter crap)

But anyway, in any show my all time favourite episodes, the ones that are still favourites years after the show is no longer on the air are the episodes where they go back or forward in time or they play different versions of themselves.

Because of this, seeing the cast members playing altered versions of themselves in the hallucination was a particular treat for me, as was seeing Lou Diamond Phillips back for an episode.

I started thinking about writing this episode wondering how much the hallucination was meant to tell us, or more importantly how much we were meant to read into it as viewers boiled down to the simplest form, Scott knows there is something wrong but cant place what, his father, Young tells him everything is fine, his discussion with the Justice of the peace Rush, focuses on his relationship with Chloe and whether he is sure about it, even down to his interactions with James in “Brodys” everything from the basic premise of the hallucination could be applied to life on the Destiny right now, Young is telling everybody everything is fine when we know decisions he is making are tearing him apart, his doubts about Chloe and their relationship were touched upon last week and Rush, being the person who has shared some form of bond with Chloe since their joint abduction and more so recently with her alien infection is the person he would talk to who has an insight into what Chloe is going through beyond what Scott himself can see.

I don’t know if those parallels are intended or whether there is as much there to read into things as you choose to but it’s definitely interesting to ponder the possibilities.

I loved the MGM movie parody, possibly one of the coolest things I’ve seen in SGU to date, as always so were the effects, so much I could say about the graphics each week that it almost seems pointless to say it, they are consistently amazing and personally, if I think I’ve seen my favourite visual scene this week its almost a sure thing that next week something will knock it off the top slot.

With an episode like this the character work is key, I felt that everybody did amazing work as usual but stand out performances from Brian Jacob Smith, Louis Ferreira and surprisingly for me Jamil Walker Smith (although somebody in wardrobe needs to be fired for choosing his party shirt)

I hope that everybody noticed the pictures of Scott as a child strewn about the house during this episode, Sherry (Brian J Smiths Mom) had to provide those months ago and I know she was excited to see which episode they would appear in and how.

I could say so much more but im not going to here, im going to say tons more on the podcast as its so much easier to gush about the show there than here, I hope you all listen already but if not – maybe this week is a good time to start, im sure myself and Brian will have loads to say!

For this week, that’s all folks!
Colonel_Ez, Out!

SGU Episode 24 “Pathogen”
Reviewed by Terry (Colonel_Ez)
Spoiler Potential High

As a viewer, I constantly worry that SGU keeps to many threads ongoing, has too many balls in the air – since the show returned I have found it hard to swallow that some topics have gone unaddressed as long as they have, this episode addressed two of them quite nicely, but I feel – as im sure is the intention, that this episode was just throwing us a bone, it was a band aid of coverage rather than a fully fledged focus on the topics.

These topics of course are the Chloe transformation and the Lucian Alliance, for me Chloe’s transformation was the more critical element that needed focus because, as I have said in the recent podcasts – nothing was said about her basically recovering from a life threatening injury in minutes and then when something was said it was treated as an every day occurrence.

I understand that the writers couldn’t have Chloe’s healing be the primary focus of three episodes before dealing with it in the forth but I also cannot help feeling that much of the exchange we got between Chloe and Eli, then Eli & Scott could have been seeded throughout the earlier episodes as a precursor to this one, in short – it should never have fallen to Eli in episode four to say “Nobody heals that fast” and it be the first time anybody had said it, I don’t want to go on about this (but I could, trust me) but there must have been other ways of dealing with it other than ignoring it until episode four because that’s when it was to be dealt with.

Whether there had been some doubt shed on whether she had been shot as badly as Eli believed or, like the inability to find Franklin if they had expressed their inability to explain why she had healed so well in an earlier episode it wouldn’t have seemed so shocking to everybody involved in the first 4 minutes of this episode when I (and im sure countless number of you guys) have been screaming it at the screen since the show returned.

But anyway, that’s enough about that – I found myself really enjoying the Earth stuff for once, I haven’t been shy about expressing how much I haven’t enjoyed the trips home in the past but I found this episode to be a nice balance and for the first time I can honestly recall I enjoyed the Eli character and his interactions with his Mom, almost as if somebody in the writers room knew that we didn’t want him around while Chloe was going through stuff because we’ve been there, done that and we’re over it (or is it just me?)

As always Camille & Sharon scenes were great, the theme of the Earth trips this week were less about what we miss about being on Earth but what those we leave behind miss about us not being there, a nice change around I felt.

Part of the reason I mentioned too many balls in the air is because I felt with the Chloe transformation (and I have felt with other arcs throughout the show) that detail is sometimes lacking as there isn’t enough time to cover everything.

Now im not saying I would have wanted them to devote a large chunk of this episode to explaining the transformation in more detail, but I did feel that the jump to Blue Alien was a bit sudden and from my perspective a bit random, I hope this is being done this way because it will later be revealed that its not the blue aliens but something else that’s causing her transformation, however I think that her apparent understanding of their computer system (from season Ones “Lost”) will probably mean that she is in fact turning into a Blue Alien, but If and when that is revealed for certain I’ll be a little miffed, because her level of understanding of the Destiny (as displayed from solving Rush’s wall problem) is far beyond what we understand the Aliens knowledge of the Destiny to be.

It’s also been months (at least) since her encounter with the Blue Aliens and apparently changes in behaviour have only recently started to occur, changes that only seem to affect her and not Rush who was held captive by the Aliens for longer than Chloe.

I dislike picking at the story too much because its not fun to watch then but, as a viewer I found the culprit for Chloe’s transformation a little hard to swallow and I hope that the Blue Aliens are either ruled out as the culprits or that we get a lot more information on them to make it more plausible.

But on the positives this was a great bit of Directing from Robert Carlyle, and even though I had some issues with storyline I cannot fault the performances at all, everybody was on form character wise, especially the Lucian Alliance boys and Greer, who I’m still not completely sold on but am growing to find his character more entertaining than annoying.

For this week, that’s all folks!
Colonel_Ez, Out!

SGU Episode 23 “Awakening”
Reviewed by Terry (Colonel_Ez)
Spoiler Potential High

This weeks episode was a great piece of television but it did leave me with some issues that bugged me immediately after viewing.

My first issue was Telford, and how after getting him onto the Destiny and taking steps towards him being able to support Young and at some point temporarily replace him (come on folks, we all know it’s coming…) we lose him.

This is a minor issue because the curse the Internet has already revealed that he will return at some point this season so as long it’s not next week I can live with it (personally I feel that losing people one week to find them then next was ok once, maybe twice but now we need to lose people properly)

My second issue is more of a personal gripe that Is always in the back of my mind when I watch SGU and that issue Is this – as great as this episode was there is still part of me that longs for these episodes to be traditional stargate episodes, episodes where we make a discovery, learn about a ship or a new culture – it’s a small issue that as the series progresses slowly fades away (it was a bigger issue for me last year than this year and won’t be an issue for me at all next year) but the traditionalist inside me feels cheated when these episodes where we encounter a new alien race or new technology are just the backdrop rather than the focus.

As I said though, only the traditionalist in me feels this, SGU is a new format and is not Stargate of old and nine times out of ten I couldn’t be happier that this is true, this episode was just that niggling tenth time when, deep down I wanted a nod towards old stargate.

As much as I’m loving this season so far I worry that there are too many balls in the air at once and as a result none of them are getting the best coverage, I have major issues with nobody being concerned with Chloe’s ability to heal from a gunshot wound, last week I had issue with the topic not being addressed at all, this week I would happily go back to that as at least then ignorance could be an excuse, this week TJ the closest thing we have to a Doctor barely reacted to the news that Chloe was completely healed – I know that this storyline is a major part of this season so I can excuse the slow buildup to a point but I feel it really does need to be addressed in some more detail quite soon.

Anyway, if those have come over as a few overly negative paragraphs I apologise and to say sorry I’m going to put my niggles behind me and go onto what I loved.

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about it but I want to talk a little about how much I enjoy the music of the show, I don’t know quite what it is but there is an 80′s cartoon feel to the music, synthetic and electric guitar that I really love, so different to the more operatic scores of SG-1 and Atlantis.

I loved the aliens and the work Mark Savela and his team put into bringing them to life, the scenes with Scott trying to communicate with the sick alien and passing the fruit over was amazing work and definitely worthy of an award or two when the time comes.

Stand out character work this week came from Lou Diamond Philips, who made his temporary exit all the more difficult by giving such an amazing performance as Telford, seeing how he was able to support and regulate Young’s decisions it was almost obvious that he wasn’t going to be around for long – as Young’s unspooling is obviously going to be a continuing theme of the season.

That’s all for this week I think, until next week folks!

SGU Episode 22 “Aftermath”
Reviewed by Terry (Colonel_Ez)
Spoiler Potential High

Well, this was a strange episode for me, much like when Spencer died back in Season one, strange because I find myself feeling torn.

As we all know, I watch a lot of Sci Fi, hell TV in general and science fiction/action series have a terrible habit of hardly ever killing off people we know and when they do its rarely permanent – so having Riley dead by the end of this episode was both a positive and a negative to me, positive because we killed somebody! (jury is still out on whether he will stay dead, current galaxy seems full of aliens determined to keep our crew alive and well so Riley may be off on the Faith planet in a brand new log cabin for all we know) but a negative because we killed off somebody who I personally felt had real potential as part of the recurring cast.

But I won’t go on about that, especially since the more I talk about it the more im aware that im just the viewer that wont be pleased (kill somebody! … Aww, im sad that you killed somebody!).

To follow on slightly from last weeks episode I had some issues with the title of this one, Aftermath implies that we’ll be dealing with the fallout of events of previous episodes and while we did somewhat, we spent more time moving on to new things – personally as much as I did enjoy this episode and the season premier I feel both would have been stronger had they been more focused on the fallout from the end of season one.

I loved that this episode revealed that Rush had found the Bridge in such a casual way, he just strolled in – if there is one constant in all of SGU it’s that just when you think you have Rush figured out, he changes the game entirely and you have to start all over again.

I loved how he talked about not wanting to drop out in range of another pulsar in a way that implied he may have had control since the end of season one and that he may have been the reason the ship dropped out of range of the pulsar.

An unfortunate bi-product of podcasting on and reviewing the episodes is that you spend a lot longer thinking about them than you did when you were just a slightly obsessive fan, this episode deals with a lot of hallucinations, Rush sees his wife and he sees Franklin while on the Bridge and throughout these scenes tries to establish whether they are part of the ship or tries to convince himself that they are rather than believe that he is imagining them.

We’ve seen hallucinations of sorts since the beginning of season one, I very mistakenly believed that hallucinations coupled with the wispy things in the sand we saw following Scott in Air part three to be signs of an ascended ancient but what if all these instances of hallucinations are just a minor part of a larger issue.

We’ve had a number of strange and unexplained instances on board the ship, Franklin disappearing, TJ seemingly leaving the ship and her baby being taken and Chloe being healed – we now learn that we’ve been watched since we set foot on the planet (Faith) and that they know what’s happening on the ship, is it possible that these Aliens are responsible for everything and these hallucinations are them communicating with us, (we don’t know yet whether Chloe was removed unconscious and healed, it wouldn’t be too hard to believe that the Aliens removed Franklin from the NIC and just haven’t returned him yet)

If we believe that do we go as far as to say the hallucinations Scott had in Air were also from the same source (although we can probably discount the hallucinations in “Pain”, the mind altering Tic episode!)

I found the Lucian Alliance a little hit and miss this week, I worried in last weeks review and/or the podcast that we had contained them too quickly and that they ran the risk of being declawed, they were not as impressive this week as they had been in previous weeks but im hoping that can be chalked up to how they were playing the situation and that in future weeks what remains of the Lucian Alliance contingent will be a bit more bad ass.

The events on the planet with the shuttle crash (amazing graphic work there once again Mark Savela and team) were shocking, Young makes an impossible choice that you really do feel in your gut as you watch it, but is it the wrong choice, do you end a life to save suffering, as the leader is it right to take that burden on yourself for the sake of the crew.

Knowing that Riley wouldn’t survive if they did get him free and knowing that he would probably live for hours, on his own in pain before he died, was it right to end his life rather than leave him to his fate, I honestly don’t know – but I love that the show had the balls to go there, although I think for some of the more traditional viewers of Stargate (the ones that thought O’Neill crossed lines whenever he went off for an adventure with Maybourne) this was probably one more nail in the coffin for Young’s character in their eyes.

I could go on about the episode loads more (and likely will when we record our podcast discussion over the weekend) but for now, let me just summarise by saying that I felt the episode was good, with amazing moments littered throughout – as a whole I did feel it lacked some stuff and I maintain the belief that we have moved on too quickly from the events of the season one finale – but I enjoyed the episode and Im eager to see what’s coming next.

For this week, that’s all folks!
Colonel_Ez, Out!

SGU Episode 21 “Intervention”
Reviewed by Terry (Colonel_Ez)
Spoiler Potential High
With a personal title of: “Just another day in outer space”

Ok all bear with me on this one as I’m blogging this from an iPad, unfortunately due to time issues it will likely be short and sweet, however I’m hoping by now that all of you that read our reviews also listen to our podcast (cos that’s always plenty detailed)

Firstly, it wouldn’t be a Terry review without a gripe about something, this one is mostly small but i’ll get it out the way early.

One of the things I begins to dislike about the three episode finale/opener when introduced in Atlantis was the way the main points of peril were wrapped up so quickly, with SGU I expected the last few minutes of the finale to take us through the first ep, in a way they did but in a way they didn’t, I would have liked the show to gamble a little on keeping us in the dark on some issues beyond the first 5 minutes (Scott & Greer specifically)

Of course is this a small personal gripe because the peril of last season pails in comparison to the new peril introduced, as well as the new set of questions.

I loved the fact that in one form or another, the people left behind on the Faith planet are back, myself and Brian speculated that we hadn’t seen the last of them, Caine specifically but I was totally unprepared for how they would return, I almost certainly know the answer to this is no before I even type it but I cant help but feel the whole vibe on that planet has a distinctive Ancient feel.

I loved the Lucian alliance here, words I never expected to utter because they were always a Mickey mouse villain in SG-1, but since they got SGU’ed… They have balls and it was nice to see that just like us, they were fractured and they had shades of grey – I’m excited to see how things progress now they are on the ship, we have already been introduced to members who would fit in better with the earth camp than they do on the Lucian alliance camp.

I have a few minor issues with the planet and the “you decided to leave so you can’t stay” thing, right now it just screams Lost and I’m hoping (in fact I’m as good as certain) that this niggling feeling will go away as soon as we get more information as to the nature of the planet.

I found the final 20 minutes quite erratic, the fractured groups and people from both camps being put off the ship, I honestly feel that things would have been better if this episode had been spread over two, which I know sounds weird given that it’s a certainly that issues from this episode will continue through the season, but I personally feel that with the storyline on the planet and the recapture of the Destiny from the Lucian Alliance all taking place in a 45 minute period things felt too cramped, but I can shrug that feeling off, safe in the knowledge that this episode sewed the seeds for story lines that will continue for the next 19 episodes and beyond.

I usually write a little about favourite character moments, this was one of the episodes where everybody did great work that if I were to list them I would just be listing every moment of the episode, I even felt that Eli’s whiney moments (as annoying as they were) were well played and provided excellent counterpoint to Rush.

Well that’s probably enough from me for this episode, remember that Brian (@nunchux) also reviews each episode and his reviews can be found in the other SGU section and we both discuss the episodes in our weekly podcast so if you aren’t reading his reviews or downloading the podcast yet – give it a go!

Until next time
Colonel_Ez, out

SGU Episode 19 “Incursion Part 1”
Reviewed by Terry (Colonel_Ez)
Spoiler Potential High
With a personal title of: “their coming!”

The first thing I’ll talk about is the issues I have with the brainwashing, however since I covered it somewhat in the last review I’ll just skim it here.

It all seemed too clean, too quick and far too easy – almost so easily that part of me hopes that Telford is only acting as though he is “cured” but as much as I hope that is the case my gut feeling is that this is one of those issues where the dramatic tension the traitor/brainwashing story provided in Subversion didn’t have a place in Incursion and needed to be resolved quickly.

I can forgive it though, because if the somewhat easy resolution of this plot point is what needed to happen to give us the action packed 40 minutes that was the rest of Incursion part one, then so be it!

I really am loving the Lucian Alliance, which is something I never thought I would say because they were never a serious villain in SG1 – the revised alliance has some balls that the old Lucian Alliance could only dream of, but in a way that isn’t dramatically overstated I’m starting to feel that they may be the perfect SGU villain, in a way that the Goa’uld or Wraith could never be and the Fish-Aliens couldn’t be without significantly taking away from their air of mysteriousness.

There is almost too much going on with this episode to write about it and not leave something out, im going to kick off my raves with one about Eli, as people who read my review and listen to our podcast will know – myself and Brian aren’t the biggest fans of the Eli character, or rather how the Eli character is being used currently – so it is rare for him to be in an episode and us not have a complaint about his conduct – in this episode I felt he was perfect which kind of annoys me because it makes it all the more apparent that the character can be great if he isn’t used incorrectly.

His reluctance to leave his little control room in the crisis and his interactions with Chloe after their escape and her shooting were perfect, the character is the only one there and Chloe the girl he loves (or at least has a serious lust for) is in danger and he mans up and deals with it, while still maintaining enough of “the geek” to allow somebody like me to identify with him (yes, the last time I climbed a mountain was in middle-earth and the time before that was on Lok in Star Wars Galaxies…)

My issue with the Eli character is usually to do with what the writers do with him after a moment like this, we call moments like this a forward step, a progression in the character where they move beyond what they were and accept what they are now – these moments are extremely important to me as a viewer, unfortunately with the Eli character they often take larger steps backwards immediately after a forward step, I class all of his time in Incursion as a large forward step and I really hope they don’t make him take steps backwards as season one ends and season two begins.

As much as I may have complaints about the Telford character and how easily he was broken of his brainwashing, I cant fault Lou Diamond Philips for his portrayal of Telford, he’s always perfect in the role and this episode is no exception – part of me feels cheated or will feel cheated if his brainwashing remains as one dimensional as it has been portrayed so far – when he gave that impassioned speech about the Lucian Alliance in Subversion, asking what we expected after we left these people high and dry and what made us better – I was ecstatic, he sounded like somebody who had gone out into the galaxy, seen the plight of the people and actually been changed by the experience (They did a nice episode of the Next Generation focusing on this with Ensign Ro and the Maquis) he could have played that converted character so well, he has a spark of bad guy in him and now that the Lucian Alliance & Telford are on the Destiny it would have been so interesting to watch, im still hoping it turns out to be the case.

Young and Scott and the ever growing divide between them, cant think of anything yet in SGU that I’ve as happy to watch and as annoyed to watch at the same time, the Young character has become my favourite character over the last handful of episodes and seeing him and Scott have a confrontation of sorts was great viewing, If a little annoying because It shows (at least in my eyes) another example of where Young fails as a leader, where he is inclusive at one point and then closed off at another, we all know by now he isn’t up to the job on his own, he needs support and every time he closes himself off to support and advice It gets frustrating, it gets even more so when he has to resort to threats and intimidation to lead, I love the moments like this for the story elements they open up and the way they change character dynamics, but I also hate them because they takes Young further and further away from where we know he needs to be, a leader people follow because he leads, not because they fear not following.

I loved how prepared the Lucian Alliance were for being on the Destiny, how they knew the crew and were prepared for the most likely response to their incursion, I have questions about how they happened to have mechanisms that unlocked the Destiny doors that almost appeared to be old ancient tech themselves, I imagine its going to just be a convenience as far as prop design goes rather than a plot point but those mechanisms and where they came from would be of interest to me, if only for the possibilities it opens up – see I’ve not yet resolved myself to the fact that the Lucian Alliance just happened to get bitten by the Destiny bug by learning about it from us, I’d much rather believe that they got access to some ancient tech or information of their own, maybe the same place they found the door mechanisms and we’ve had some form of “space race” going on to see who can get their first, it would explain the refocused Lucian Alliance some more, in a way that fits with the story and isn’t just a production decision because the original Lucian Alliance were shit.

Not sure what to make of the events in the corridor that lead to a Lucian Alliance trooper being cremated, I’ve heard some interesting speculation and come up with some myself – the obvious answer is that it’s the ship/Franklin, a hybrid theory for those that believe the ship is aware, or that Franklin is now part of the ship – both hold weight but open up as many questions as they provide answers – as to what happened to the computers at this point I have no real theories, not enough information to speculate beyond saying its got to be the ship and/or Franklin fighting back.

So we’re left gearing up for what im told is an excellent finale with a frustrating cliff-hanger, which as was pointed out to me yesterday isn’t too surprising as all cliff-hangers are frustrating – but given SGU’s cliff-hangers so far (Justice anyone?) im expecting to be equal parts excited and annoyed by this coming Friday night.

For this week, that’s all folks!
Colonel_Ez, Out!

SGU Episode 18 “Subversion”
Reviewed by Terry (Colonel_Ez)
Spoiler Potential High

So this is a touch late, unfortunately real life is getting in the way lately but let’s move on.

This episode was almost perfect, really my only area of complaint would be about the stones and the convenient memory flashes, but my complaints about the stones are becoming so repetitive by now that im as bored of writing them as you probably are of reading them – its safe to assume that whenever the stones are used for anything more than a quick hop back to Earth to report – there is going to be an issue with them for the more sci fi among us, I can only assume by this point that it continues to happen because the writers don’t want to over-science their viewers new to SG, because the show has so much required story to show us that giving over any time to explaining how these things work isn’t possible, that keeping the stones a grey area allows for them to develop a new convenient use in the future or a combination of all three.

But we can move past that and once we have, the episode is amazingly good.

It never made much sense to me that the Lucian Alliance attacked Icarus, I was the guy expecting there to be some big reveal down the line that we had just assumed it was Lucian Alliance as they were using Goa’uld tech and it was going to turn out to be somebody else, because the Lucian Alliance were never really the best SG villain – from the overly dramatic characters to the dodgy uniforms to the complete ineptitude of most of their plots right down to those two bumbling alien brothers – they were, in my eyes at least quite the Mickey Mouse villain.

It episode answered most of my questions, firstly (and weirdly almost most importantly) they had uniforms that actually looked like something somebody would wear, secondly we got some scope on what they have been up to since we last saw them – we had no motive for the Icarus attack, we had no idea why and to the best of our knowledge the most aggressive move the alliance had made against Earth was trapping and boarding the Odyssey that time, for them to attack an Earth outpost for no clear reason didn’t add up at all at the time.

So it was nice that a little time was spent framing some of this stuff, explaining that for starters this wasn’t the first earth base they had attacked and that we had spies inside the alliance, one being Colonel Telford.

Its not entirely clear how they knew about Destiny, as far as we know the only information we found about Destiny or rather the 9^th Chevron was in the Atlantis database so its safe to assume that they got that information from us, wanted it for themselves and knowing we were nearing a breakthrough – attacked Icarus to prevent it from happening, I know given the distance between the Destiny crew and the Lucian alliance for almost the entire first season it would have been impossible to do so but, I feel it would have been beneficial to have some of this information earlier – establishing the Lucian Alliance as a threat right before we need them to be really does seem to be far too convenient, I try not to do this because I’m not a writer but surely there could have been time for a dialog exchange at some point (using the stones) that alluded to the Lucian Alliance and giving us some of this info, or at least a character speculating what we as viewers have speculated over the season “Why did they attack a research outpost?” or something along those lines – don’t want to dwell on that however im personally just not a fan of blatantly convenient plot devices – I prefer there to be groundwork laid over the course of my shows – sometimes SGU hits this on the head, sometimes they do the complete opposite.

But moving on, it was great to see both Jack and Daniel again, personally more Jack than Daniel – I feel Daniels character was underused, doing a little bit of surveillance and the warm up to a preachy speech in Jack’s office about Telford’s rights and Rush’s life – I would have liked to have seen more from him, but I did enjoy the feeling that the old gang was still up and running – Jack telling Daniel what Sam had said, all that was missing was Teal’c getting back from a doughnut run for the stakeout and it would have been just like old times, I love stuff like that – like whenever they used to cross over characters between Star Trek shows, or have somebody we knew as a Captain turn up as an Admiral later on, its always nice to remind us that these characters didn’t cease to exist when their show ended.

Richard Dean Anderson brought the funny as he always does and surprisingly it worked, SGU is by far a much darker show than SG-1 and this episode was dealing with some pretty serious subject matter but the funny still worked, it wasn’t overstated and it was perfectly played against by Louis Ferreira, he didn’t skip a beat or exchange a glance during these little bits of humour, it showed that the characters are used to eachother, Young is used to Jack’s way of dealing with things.

I was hoping going into this episode that Telford’s deception would turn out to be on the level, that he had betrayed Earth without brainwashing or some other method of coercion that he could repent for later on, I wanted the bad guy to be bad – unfortunately even though it isn’t 100% clear in this episode, im going to go out on a limb and say that he has been brainwashed and that Young effectively killing him by removing atmosphere is going to be a simplified version of “the right of Mal Sharran” (SG-1 5×02 “Threshold, SG-1 9×14 “Stronghold”)

While brainwashing allows Telford somewhat of a clean slate (which is a good thing as Lou Diamond Phillips is amazing in the role and we don’t want him going anywhere) I would prefer to see him play a bad guy who’s actually bad, brainwashing also doesn’t explain away why he made a play for Young’s wife or was generally just an asshat for most of the time we have known him.

The character moments were great in this episode, I love how Telford and Young play against eachother, I really enjoy the Rush/Young dynamic as it is, its still at the point where they could be civil with eachother, cooperating with eachother or actively trying to bump the other off and it wouldn’t be a shock, its become one of the most interesting things for me to watch on SGU.

Most interestingly in this episode however was the continuing separation between Scott and Young, Scott has spent a lot of the last 10 episodes questioning the Colonel’s actions and in this episode he goes as far as to inform Camille of what’s going on against orders, its really great to watch this develop into whatever it’s developing into – its obvious Scott has great respect for Young but Young is walking making questionable calls and that’s not sitting well with Scott, which sort of makes sense given that Scott has gone from a 1^st Lt among a sizeable group to being the 2^nd in command if you will on a much smaller collective, he’s filling the sort of first officer role (Star Trek Reference) and its really working for me.

Im really itching to see next weeks episode and learn what comes beyond it, how will dynamics change if the Lucian Alliance board the ship, what happens if we cant get rid of them – does this have the potential to further the Voyager comparison (stranded ship light-years from home, two crews, vastly different agendas) but do it without all that annoying Prime Directive hoo haa – at this point who can say, I cant but its probably not surprising to hear me say I absolutely cannot wait for the next episode.

Colonel_Ez, Out!