Stargate Universe Discussion: ‘Air’ Part 3
Oct 10, 2009 by Bruce SimmonsThis is a short follow up to the second episode of Stargate Universe (SGU). The 2-hour premiere of SGU was counted as 2 episodes. That’s …
This is a short follow up to the second episode of Stargate Universe (SGU). The 2-hour premiere of SGU was counted as 2 episodes. That’s why last night’s (Friday, October 10th) episode, ‘Air’, is noted as part 3.
Without much character development needed in this episode after what was established in the premiere, the story moved forward and I found the pace of this episode a bit easier and more enjoyable to follow.
If people came back to give the show a second chance, I think they will be pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed the episode this week and thought it was much more engaging and worth my while.
There are some form of SPOILERS following the break, so be warned.
Stargate Universe expounded on the use of the communication stones and it was odd trying to wrap your mind around the idea of the character we were seeing actually being in a different body. It looks like we will have ample opportunity to see the operations on Earth, if the creative forces behind the show do indeed employ the stones more often.
Though we know the crew only has 12 hours to go off-ship when the Destiny stops, I felt it was awful early on in the series to see how the teams will be constantly rushing against the clock.
Now tell me, if Dr. Rush had asked you to stick your arm in the event horizon in the hopes of engaging a safety feature of the ship, would you have just told him to do it himself? I’m just saying.
My new hero: Now tell me that Msgt Greer (Jamil Walker Smith) isn’t your new hero, the way he was kicking Dr. Rush around on the planet? LOL. Sure, he might be a little off his logic-rocker, but I’ll give him this one, for now.
I found it fascinating that when the Destiny drops out of FTL flight, it knows what Stargates are safe and not by locking out the dangerous addresses. Though the crew found a work-around and it seems we lost 2 crew members as they disregarded the idea of a dangerous gate address.
We also have a new mystery of sorts to look forward to in Stargate Universe – Anyone notice the blue shuttle / ball / probe thingy launch itself off the ship while the Destiny was in FTL? Any thoughts on what that was? I have an idea but I’ll share later on in the comments!
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Ken and Dac1, I can understand you do not like this particular type of show cause I, for instance, didn’t like SGA that much and watched it only because it was Stargate.
You don’t like flawed characters, you think that sci-fi consists of “main bad guy”, technobabble and other things introduced by Trek, you like to see action etc. I can understand it.
In my case, I despise typical Trek sci-fi type with stupid nonsense technobabble and pointless and unrealistic heroes and action all the time. As said as it was for me to admit, I enjoyed BSG more than SGA in the last years and now I’m just happy that Stargate people are trying to incorporate the best of SG-1 and also Atlantis ideas to make show seem more realistic with more realistic characters and story. They ain’t perfect yet and I don’t necesserily think they’ll ever be but, at least, they are trying.
@Pryor
Uh, OK. How about when he was VERY threatening toward the character Ming Na plays on the show back on the ship prior episode? I don’t care if you’re military – if you have a chip on your shoulder and an uncontrolled attitude like that you should NOT be carrying around a gun, and if a superior officer allows it I have just lost a lot of respect for that superior officer.
Vic
This episode was better but it’s still not quite at the level of Sg1 and SGA for me. The swirling sand could be an ascended ancient or some other alien, or maybe it was the spirit of the soldier’s adopted father. Only time will tell. The pod that detached could be the ship sending help for the other soldiers or maybe Rush programmed the ship to send the pod for some selfish reason. I will give this show a chance but it hasn’t shown me very good reasons to keep it on my DVR.
I have to agree with almost all of the above comments. I’m sure we all were expecting something more STARGATE and not BSG. “Spin up the FTL” and all….
Hopefully the writers are looking at these comments and starting a full re-write of the show. I think I will only give it one more episode and if it doesn’t grab me right by the crotch, I’ll be writing Stargate off.
I am a long standing fan or SG-1 and SG-A hell I grew with it, and I have to say even tho you all are expecting something more heroic and Stargate like, the show isn’t bad, nor is it going to be bad just because they use some of the ideas or moods of other shows, e.i BSG, I’m pretty sure alot of shows shared ideas and changed over the years along with them.
The new overdramatic feel is a bit much, however I can dig it I watched alot of farscape and newBSG (tho I grew up watching alot of old school BSG dvds)they still do well to set the realist portion of the show, its like this, we don’t continue on we die, its emphasized well, I admit there needs to be alot of work on some “flaws” of the show but that again its been 3 episodes dudes, let it at least hit a season before you point out flaws, they all might have a explanation coming.
As for FTL and all you people bitching about it, FTL has been used as a universal term long before it was on newBSG, and SG-U picking it up was inevitable.
The pod in the end of Episode 3 looked like ship or at least something that deploys something else, it had “strings” all around, could be a Stargate inside, as we all saw the gate are different then that of the Milkyway and Pegasus; they include the platform and spin through it, So I reckon they are prode launching entering normal space and finding planets to land on “seeding”.
I can’t spell by the looks of it, (probe launching)* for the last sentence.
“Hopefully the writers are looking at these comments and starting a full re-write of the show. I think I will only give it one more episode and if it doesn’t grab me right by the crotch, I’ll be writing Stargate off.”
So far I think this show is better than SGA. SGA was often silly, and I for one didn’t like that considering the serious situations they were constantly in.
They’re shooting the last episode now, so don’t get your hopes up about them re-writing the rest of the episodes.
Rush is reminding me of Dr. Smith of “Lost in Space.” Maybe not as devious but just as whiny. Second, the shuttle engines were red where as the ship had blue light. The puddle jumpers in Atlantis also blue.
Somebody else on was on the ship.
I figured the destiny uned FTL for exploring purposes, maybe it couldn’t scan the planets or comunicate with the seeding ships in hyperspace. It doesn’t seem plausible that the ancients should have invented stargates before hyperdrive.
When it come to the shuttle in the final seen, in think it was alien because it didn’t look much like the rest of the ship. It would be great though if the ship had a stargate making facillity.
@Jamil
Um… actually, I’ve NEVER been a fan of Star Trek… The ONLY Star Trek I liked is the latest movie, and that’s only because it’s not like what I remember from all of the Star Treks before it… And I don’t have a problem with “flawed heros” either. I have a problem with the ACTORS and their ability to ACT, not the characters themselves. And I have a problem with them trying so hard with all of these gimmicks, like that pointless sex scene that was really just there so they can be like “ooh look how edgy we are.” And all of the cued music segments that screamed “oh, this is supposed to be sad!” or “this is supposed to be dramatic!” along with all of the unnatural dialog that is nothing close to how real human beings would respond in that situation, it’s like every character is trying to come up with some witty or dramatic one-liner as a response to everything. Very annoying… And the music they used seemed like it was trying to be cool but just sounded really cheesey and even out of place at times.
If you watch the old SG-1 episodes, namely from seasons 1-6, you’ll see plenty of examples where it gets really dramatic and intense, but it’s a result of the story, they don’t force it down your throat with some character giving a dramatic look and a dramatic one-liner with the appropriately dramatic sounding music cueing…
Personally, I actually found the actual story to be quite interesting, it’s just the way it was executed that annoyed me. Like how they used that stupid camera technique where even though there isn’t any action, the camera is still shakey, zooming in and out, shaking, going in and out of focus, etc. and all that’s happening on screen is someone sitting down and opening a drawer… Seriously, that required shakey cam??? So many gimmicks in this show…
Anyway Jamil, I have my reasons for not liking the show, and it’s not for the trivial “oh, it’s not the typical Star Trek technobabble” reason you tried to pin on me, because I actually don’t like that…
well for those claiming that the kinos would be useless in this scenario seem to be missing the point. They mentioned in the dialog upon getting onto the planet that they were searching for a dry lake bed or a stretch of land that would be different from the sand dunes that they are in to a place where there may be alkalai deposits. Well couldn’t they have been scouting for said geographic locations versus people trekking “aimlessly” in the dunes. For a bunch of people that are from the future that have supposed scientific backgrounds, coupled with people with military backgrounds these guys aren’t exactly shining examples of the species. I’m okay if that is the approach that they want to take, but it would seem to be sad when I can outwit the math genius and the doctor of alien artifacts and a junior military officer while sitting on my couch. Maybe I’m wrong about the remotes themselves, but if they can be operated by someone, it would seem that proximity isn’t exactly a limiting factor here. If it is, what about trekking for 30 minutes, scouting around and then proceeding, just seemed way too obvious to me.
I just remembered that the first few episodes of SG-1 were bad compared to the rest of the show. But not THIS bad.
Uh Huggybear you are missing the major point and missed all the major details in the first 2 shows (the first 3 hours) of the show.
The ship was in need of a raw element that would purify air (remove carbon dioxide and other toxic elements) for a air purification system that was past is expatriation date. Buildings would not do that.
The Kinos searching or “scouting the area, to see if maybe there are some buildings or oasis or something other than desert around” would be redundant. The ships before Destiny did those duties and Destiny has that information already.
Everyone is talking about “no dominant race goal”, where is this theory of “jeopardize the whole no dominant race goal” coming from?
The way I see it is fair game. Yes, it is true in the previous Stargate series the ancients said there were no races that were a match for “THEM (the ancients)” except the Wraith. However, we are talking about humans from earth who went from using an enlarged versions of a fire cracker to get into space to using wormhole travel developed by another civilization. Now we are talking about humans on a rust buck of a ship that is several thousand years old, damaged, and appears to travel at warp speed or travel at hyper speed in hyperspace. Sounds like trouble to me.
Yes it was a little slow in some places, but personally, I like the show.
From various conversations, it appears that passive viewers and the less science and science fiction knowledgeable viewers will most likely stop watching the series, but the more active viewers and the more science and science fiction knowledgeable viewers will probably continue to watch.
I was a BIG fan of sg-1,a smaller fan of Atlantis (Elizabeth really did it for me) but stargate Universe is not going to last even 1 season if it doesn’t get a bit more interesting quickly but i did like the fact that Greer put the miltary in a positive light by pushing that Egotistical arrogant rush around ( dialed him into reality((no pun intended)).Since i beleive in the fundamental concept of ALL the stargate series i hope Universe’s death wont be a lingering one,It’ll kill the likelihood of future spinoff’s
I like your ideas on the sand thingy and the pod and personally I’ll just wait and find out. I’ve been watching SG since the very beginning and most certainly will keep it up with SGU. It is much too early to judge on the show in any case but I like it this far. No heros yet, no teams yet, no friends, very little information on the ship etc. It looks like the writers are doing a brilliant job on working up to the cool stuff. Not giving everything away and keeping the characters mysterious makes the series much more interesting and makes me curious of more. I’ll start judging more when season one is over…
T
I’m a huge SG-1 fan … so-so for SGA … having a lot of trouble getting into SGU. I don’t like Rush, and I find the constant whining irritating. I understand they want to go home, but shouldn’t they end up banding together to try and figure out a way to be useful instead of whining about who is in charge and all that stuff?
I believe that the pod launched at the end of episode 3 was from an alien entity. If you recall in the beginning of episode 1, the lights were turning on as if someone or something was walking down the hallway of the ship. Ancient technology with lights turn on when people enter, like motion sensors … is it possible that there was an alien presence on the ship in the beginning and it left to report what was going on with the new “invaders”?
I do like where this show is going, and the 3rd episode was way better than the 1st/2nd so maybe it will turn out good in the end.
Here’s hoping!
Tod stated: “I figured the destiny used FTL for exploring purposes, maybe it couldn’t scan the planets or communicate with the seeding ships in hyperspace. It doesn’t seem plausible that the ancients should have invented stargates before hyperdrive.”
Interesting point! I really had to think about your point.
I thought in the Stargate Atlantis series it was discussed that a ship using wormhole technology to travel was too dangerous and consumed a tremendous amount of energy. Atlantis has wormhole technology but could only be used in a emergency. So all ships had to travel at a slower speed.
@piratedan
I agree, or one thing they could have used the kinos for is to fly really high in the air to give them a bird’s eye view of the place, they could have probably seen the lake bed that way and at least knew in which direction to trek. I also found it weird that nobody got lost going back to the gate. It’s not like there are roads or landmarks, you might think you’re traveling in a straight line but not really, very easy to get lost in terrain like that… And before you guys say it, footprints are not a reliable way of keeping track. Sometimes they don’t last very long, and even if they do, in bright white sand like that and an overhead light source, it’ll probably be pretty difficult to keep track of them constantly…
@Steve
I don’t think Greer put the military in good light. He has a real bad temper that only tells me that he has a chip on his shoulder for some reason, like him wanting to confront that IOA girl just because she challenged who was in charge, which is actually a very legitimate concern, since so far it seems like it is between a military Lieutenant (which is the LOWEST officer rank) or Dr. Rush which nobody trusts. If it had been Colonel Young, there wouldn’t be a quesion, but in that situation, if I was in her position I would have raised the same questions. But Greer was so quick to want to show how mighty he is to a little defenseless 110lb woman… What a tough guy… I like Colonel Young’s character and the actor isn’t too bad either, but all of the young characters get on my nerves, every one of them. I forgot to mention TJ and her open shirt policy, WTF? That’s not the proper way to wear the uniform is it? Doesn’t look like it…
Doddas:
That is an awesome point. I never put that together before.
About Greer:
I don’t like him so far, but we have to realize he was in the brig for a reason, and is only out because of the attack on the original base. He probably doesn’t deserve to be out, but necessity made it so.
Dust Devil:
Keep in mind, the creators promised us aliens that weren’t humanoid. I feel this dust devil was their first attempt at that promise and done well.
Blue Ball / Shuttle
At first, my HOPE was that this might be an auto retreival system for staff left behind. But since the 2 other folk stepped through the gate to an unknown hazard, I’m writing them off.
Plus a few of you made some good points and observations. Now I don’t know for sure. A few good options there.
Overall:
This episode helped me decide to stick it out and go from there and as one other person pointed out, I’ll probably stick it out to the end of the season to make a concrete decision on the show.
I think the floating YouTube balls can be interesting or frustrating. We’ll see.
Those alien communication stones are going to confound me to some degree. I’ll adjust, but dang…
THANKS FOR CHIMING IN GANG!
Big disappointment. Definitely underwhelming. I will stick with it for a few more episodes but I am sure there will come a point in the show that will turn me off completely.
One question – what’s with the senseless sex?? I have no problem with sex – I have a problem with sudden scenes of two people ‘at it’ when we have had no story line or lead into it. Just straight from a commercial!!
Could this be required by the network in order to ‘sell the show’? It happened to JMS when the first 13 episodes of Crusade were pulled by TNT for lack of sex and violence. Do the networks really think that scifi fans are that shallow?
@Cindy
I agree, it was a pointless scene, just them trying hard to be “edgy.”
Well, I am a big SG fan, but I came late to the franchise. While I did like the original Stargate movie (Russell), I did not watch the TV Series until season 9 when they brought in Browder and Black. I bought and watched all the older seasons and loved them and I was an enormous Atlantis fan. When it was cancelled I was definitely disheartened but said I would give SGU a chance. Well, I did and I can say I definitely don’t like it. I was quite surprised, I like character development like on BSG which I loved, but this show for me is a failure. The tension, which seems to only come across through bickering seems forced. Personally, I would like for them to cancel this, and put all that money towards more SG1 and Atlantis movies.
So far, i really enjoy this show, its taken off of the typical sc-fi fantasy sort of feel of SG-1 and SGA, and has become more serious and deep. I also like that it hasnt dived right into all kinds of rediculous fighting and random alien encounters that only last for one episode and then its done and gone and you’ll never see it again in the future, which was something sg-1 and SGA did quite often. I will deffinitely continue watching each episode as it comes out.
This episode was better. They have just scratched the surface about what’s on that ship. Remember they still have to find food, water, medical supplies, and other necessities. This is a show that as a Stargate fan we’ll have to give a little time.
@ Vic:
I agree with yo Vic. Greer was just in the stockade and now is being free reign on away missions. No commanding officer would let that fly. And we don’t even know why he was locked up for in the first place.
@ All:
It appeared the keno’s were on some kind of conveyor system. An earlier comment stated something about an automated production facility and the way the keno’s pop out it appears that this is what’s happening. Although the crew jumped to a quick conclusion that this is happening and they are not waisting resources.
The logical plot-line for the two crewmen left behind is that some harmful, violent super-race will find them, interrogate them, then brainwash them and begin hunting the destiny wanting it’s ancient technology thus threatening the crew. The pod released at the end of the episode could be a plot device allowing the aliens another way to track the destiny. If this is what’s going to happen I hope the writers don’t rush into it and worry about obvious problems first.
The senator was obviously dying anyway so his sacrifice to me was an acceptable story element.
What bothers me so far is that I can remember most of the lead characters names already but the most important… The commanding officer! It appears the writers are trying to make a gruff Adama like figure and yes I have seen and like the actor playing him in other TV series so I feel it’s the writers who need to develop his character more in the coming episodes. Since it appears he has a seizure disorder he will need medications and treatment. It’s possible the writers are trying to combine elements of commander Adama and president Roslin in his character since the show is clearly trying to resemble the darker, grittier story elements of BSG.
Like I said that’s a big ship explore so lets give the show time. If it was NBC it would already have been canceled! lol!!!
Cindy, the pointless sex (no figurative “foreplay” or “postplay”)kinda through me for a loop simply because i was expecting something germane to the storyline to come of it instead all it showed was that their human which i believe was obvious. Like you I’ll continue to watch the show but i doubt i’ll be bummed if the satellite goes out & i end up missing it unless the show pick’s up the pace.
thank’s Galvatron, didn’t think of cancelling the show to use the money to make SGA’s, Cant bring Woolsey back though he just drives me up the wall with that wussified demeanor of his.
@todd-m
really? no need to use the probes because they had to be searching for the one geographic landmark which would be the key to successfully completeing the mission would be redundant? While dropped in the middle of a desert? Destiny has all that information already? Is that why they were all armed with compasses and maps so they knew exactly where to go? So the split of the search party into two groups to make it faster would accomplish exactly what? Let me know just when you want me to stop widening plot hole canyon?
we watching the same show? They popped out onto the planet, knew that they needed to find alkalai deposits, Rush stated that they would most likely be found along a stretch of beach or a dry lake bed and they had 12 hours to get there and back. No one had a map, no one had a compass, no one used the tech that they had brought with them onto the planet. It’s like these guys have some really interesting ideas and simply don’t know what to do with them.
I like science fiction in most forms, books, movies and tv series, I frequently lament the lack of intelligent sceince fiction and applaud them when they get it right, I really do. I have been hooked since The Outer Limits when I was a kid, but this show could stand some serious rethinking based solely on common sense. I don’t blame the actors, but the writers, it’s like they want to do another show but had to fit it inside this setting.
Actually, they weren’t looking for alkali, that was the biproduct from the scrubbers lack of maintenance that was causing everyone’s headaches. They were looking for high concentrations of calcium carbonate. Sorry, just a nit pick, doesn’t really affect the point you were trying to make, hehe.
How incredibly disappointing BSG, oops I mean Stargate Universe, is. If I want to see BSG, I will go buy the dvds. However, to take the Stargate legacy and remove its uniqueness — the likeable characters, the humor, and the exciting storylines — well, that is a tragedy. Why fix something that is not broken? I wouldn’t mind this show if they didn’t pass it off as a Stargate. It has the barest similarities to the Stargate series that obviously did well and garnered many years of fans. It simply screams Battlestar Gallactica, however, except that show at least had likeable characters! Even the Universe music is reminiscent of BSG. Sooooo disappointing…..Apparently the “powers that be” are only looking for new fans and don’t care to retain the fans that built the Stargate success.