What would you actually do all day if you were marooned on a million year old starship, bound for who the hell knows and stuck with a motley band of cranky (or homicidal) crew? The ninth episode of SGU attempts to realistically explain this and also how to tastefully (maybe too tastefully) handle the sticky problem of space lesbians.
What exactly happened last night on the SGU? I guess it was another of those setup episodes where we establish the real people bona fides of our friends aboard the Destiny. Fill in more back story and hopefully build some empathy toward them should they actually face any real danger on the show. I don’t have an issue with a good back story. It’s vital to understand what these people are about. I find the home lives of people in the Stargate Universe, ah, universe to be pretty fascinating. The timeline these folks occupy is only slightly in our future if it’s in the future at all. Modern recognizable human beings, living in leafy Vancouver burbs, dealing with ridiculously advanced and yet ridiculously ancient technologies they can operate but not understand. It’s no wonder that people are into the Stargate mythos.
I only wish that the SGU brain trust would stop dumping so many of these regular people moments in a single episode. I don’t mind a little Grey’s Anatomy in my Sci-Fi soup, but please, moderation. We had three get to know you slices in “Life”. First of all, the moment some of us were waiting for. Camille (Ming-Na) gets to illuminate us on her home life as she returns via those magic stones to Earth to visit with her partner who happens to be another female. I had no idea what to expect here. In the end it was all very tastefully done. Lots of wine drinking, tender kisses and (clothed) snuggling. Camille is forgetting details of her former life. Her partner promises to wait. While I was watching this I had a strange thought. Camille is occupying the body of another female person while she visits Earth. Seems a little cheeky to be using these bodies for getting busy. Man, I would want a minute to minute log of what you used my body for during your, ah, stay. Using the guest body for romance with the same sex is also a little tricky. Wouldn’t you want to ask first? Seems only polite. Kind of hard to do though I guess given the mechanics of the whole body transfer thing.
Colonel Young seems to have the system down pretty good though. When you pop up in your guest bod on Earth, your military hosts only have your word on who you are. Colonel Telford vetoes Colonel Young’s little trip back to see his wife to confront her about her weird relationship with Telford. How does Young handle this? He pretends to be some other visiting Destiny crewmember and uses this ruse to lay the smackdown on the evil Colonel Telford. Brilliant! Brilliant and strange. Young was using the body of Telford to have sex with his wife wasn’t he? Seems only right that Telford gets to continue this. Young’s wife didn’t seem to mind the physical switch.
But I can handle a little weird. It’s Sci-Fi after all. You want normal, easy or safe, watch something else. Matthew Scott visits home to see an old flame of his and discovers he is a daddy. Mom is a stripper. Matthew is bummed out. Yawn. What is going down on the Destiny while all this drama is playing out Earthside you ask? Not a lot. I guess the thrill of being on a gigantic starship hurtling to the great beyond gets old after a while. Folks are getting into a routine. There’s yoga and casual sex going on.
In the only Sci-Fi plot development, Dr. Rush has found a chair, something apparently seen in a previous Stargate episode on another show (but originally a Star Trek idea) where if you sit in it, it holds you down and force feeds you highly advanced ancient learnings. The ancients apparently left these things lying around in case some other species stumbled on them and needed to figure out how all the gears and gizmos went together. Dr. Rush wants someone to sit down and get injected but doesn’t want to do this himself. I think this is completely out of character for Dr. Rush. He is exactly the guy that would sit down in the chair. He’s on the Destiny and it seems like he really wants to be there and has no interest in going back to Earth. Learning this ancients technology is totally what he’s about. He has an agenda and possibly an obsession that requires an understanding of the ancients technology to see it to it’s end. He sits on that chair. He sits on it right now. This seems so obviously his characters course of action that I’m frankly dumbfounded he didn’t do it. Do I seem dumbfounded? Someone is going to be sitting in this chair. Could the character of Dr. Rush stand to be the second most knowledgeable member of the crew on all things ancients? No friggin way. All you Nerds and Geeks out there know where I’m coming from. Dr. Rush’s only real power is in what he knows. He does not give this up to anyone else.
Ok, I got that out of my system. We’ve got ourselves a two week wait until the next episode, which they are billing as the Fall finale. Someone is murdered or dies and Colonel Young is implicated. This is potentially stupid. I’d believe Eli murdered someone before Colonel Young. If Colonel Young thought you were dangerous to the mission he’d either lock your sorry ass up or make a big show out of hurling you out an airlock in ceremonial style. I guess we’ll see. Until next time.
