Welcome to the episode 4 recap. When we last left Dr. Rush, Eli Wallace, Colonel Young and friends aboard the starship Destiny, they had just figured out that whole breathable air thing. Oxygen is good.
Other than the life support conditions aboard the Destiny, there’s not a lot of other things going on as far as moving the story along. In this episode, it’s power and darkness that the crew has to deal with. People have been wandering around the ship and pushing buttons. This is a logical thing for them to be doing. I like logic. Unfortunately however, the Destiny doesn’t have, or doesn’t seem to have, a lot of juice for these sorts of activities. Dr. Rush spends a lot of time wandering around yelling at people. He’s really cranky. The crew is still doing things like they were fishing around at the buffet on the Love Boat. I know I’m harping on this, but to me this is the single biggest story problem Universe has. It would be so easy to scary up the ship. How much better would this show be if people were not only worried about power, food and air, but of some brain munching critter or, better yet, some spooky sound or quick glimpse of something unknown, capering or gibbering in the darkness?
On the whole I’d have to say that this episode was a little tighter than the previous few. On my cringe meter, I barely registered any readings. This is an improvement. We have begun to meet a few of the other castaways in more depth via Eli’s roving, floating, alien-cam. Eli interviews a few people to basically allow them to give their last words alive. This seems a little pointless to me, since they don’t say goodbye to anyone and otherwise the only entities that will see the footage will either be aliens who won’t care or people that already know them. Still, the interviews serve us, the faithful viewers, in getting tiny little glimpses into some other characters stuck on board. I think they were mostly entertaining.
Also in this episode we return to the sexy Sci-Fi stuff and once again, it’s pretty gratuitous. We have a tease shower scene, of all things, with the Senator’s daughter Chloe that doesn’t reveal anything at all and a big boob moment with the character Vanessa James who I had barely registered before. I want to say that I was not affected by the camera at boob level, all boobs in frame moment, but I won’t lie, she is a spectacular looking woman. So much for logic. I don’t mind sexy Sci-Fi as long as it’s intelligent. Sticking boobs in my face like this only distracts me temporarily. Sexy people in the regular storyline is what we’re after here. Let it flow naturally and not just out of nowhere.
Despite the cluelessness of the castaways, the Destiny itself is obviously under some kind of intelligent control. With it’s power draining, the ship plops out of FTL and aims for a gas giant to aerobrake itself into a solar system with a crazy abundance of planets within the, water is liquid, habitable zone of the system. We are treated to some decent science here. Imagine that, real science in a Sci-Fi show. The special effects remain pretty good. The ship looks good too but I’m going to be tired of seeing the same ships corridors pretty soon. After the pretty and turbulent light show, the Destiny slings itself around and instead aims itself straight for the systems Sun and not for any of the planets. I would hazard that, if the ship is capable of deciding to drop out of FTL and aerobrake around a gas giant it can probably be trusted to know where it’s going. Judging from the next episodes preview, called Light, the castaways are short of faith.
This was the best episode yet in my view. I’m interested in what is going on. I am easily distracted. The acting was better. There were fewer cheesy moments. There were big boobs. Once they get the Destiny under some semblance of control we can only hope there will be a larger story up ahead to keep us occupied. How about some nasty villains? Where exactly is the ship supposed to be heading? It’s on a journey someplace obviously. We’ll soon know. I leave Darkness optimistic. There is hope.
