Your weekly dose of Stargate Universe recap is a little late this week. There was some unpleasantness on Friday night involving Christmas intoxicants. I won’t elaborate. Late Friday night has ceased to exist in my buffer. But, thanks to the miracle that is the internet, I have just finished viewing the best episode of SGU thus far, an episode called “Justice”.

I’m never sure what to expect when I tune in on Friday night (or Monday) for my weekly dose of Universe. To be honest, that uncertainty is one of the attractions of the show for me now. You just never know what you’re going to get. Since I must admit some emotional attachment to the show, I feel some nervousness and anxiety everytime I tune in. I want it to be good. I love the fact that the show is gradually getting better. It is getting better and “Justice” was the payoff to all of us stubborn stick-with-its.

The angry bald guy has joined the choir invisible. He has shuffled off. He has been found by Sgt Greer with a bullet in the brainpan that looks by all appearances to have been self inflicted. There’s just one problem. No gun on the scene. Do we have a murderer? ABG was not well liked and it wasn’t the bald part that got him in trouble. In fact, as we are well aware, he even attacked a fellow crew member and had to be physically reprimanded by Colonel Young. Faithful viewers of the show all knew that something bad was going to happen to Mr. ABG or that he was going to be the bad that happened to someone else. We were warned. There was some considerable ham handedness in the way the writers telegraphed this fact but since Justice was so good I’ll forgive them. My, who could have had a motive in the killing of ABG? Greer was the initial suspect since he’s the other angry guy on the show but since he found the body he was pretty well exonerated. Dutifully, Colonel Young starts an investigation that begins with the innocent team (those with alibi) doing a crew quarters search. A gun is found, kinda, sorta, hiding in Colonel Young’s crib. He must have done it!

No. Obviously that’s ridiculous. You’re in this gigantic hurtling ship of mystery, full of dank, dark and alien hiding holes and you put the gun you just used to evacuate the brain of ABG in an air vent in your own quarters where even a height challenged nerd who didn’t have any interest in finding it can see it? Hmmm, you don’t have to be Spock to see that someone wants to frame Colonel Young. But surely, no one is going to buy that he did it. Not really. I think a better name for this episode would have been Doubt. Doubt is the crafty bit of work here. You don’t need Guilt when Doubt gets the dirty job done.

Camille Wray is thirsty for power. Did she frame Young? She is given the job to investigate Colonel Young after the gun is found. She is salivating. The Senators daughter is given the responsibility of the defence. It quickly becomes clear that there is no definitive way to determine what might have happened. Doubt is all the justice anyone is going to get. With this verdict, Young steps down as Commander and Camille Wray is appointed the new big cheese. Now, where is the intrepid Dr. Rush during all this you ask? Well, he is once again in deep study upon his latest fixation, the big chair of knowledge. To sit in the chair means brain cookage. Dr. Rush needs a volunteer for the chair. Colonel Young has forbidden Rush to show the rest of the resident Nerds the chair. Ah, but there’s a new Sheriff in town. Camille Wray is less of a judge of character than Colonel Young. Camille lifts the rules Young has set on the chair and gives the good doctor full command of the Nerds. Does Rush rub his hands together and laugh manically? Perhaps.

The Nerds convene upon the big alien chair of ultimate knowledge. Rush sets the bait. Unless someone sits in the chair and gets power injected, everyone is going to freaking die, horribly. Also, whoever sits on the chair could be alive after AND a hero AND firm and fully packed with wicked ancient nerd powers that would really impress the fellas at the next Dungeons and Dragons evening (relax, I’m one of you). Do we have a volunteer? Oh you bet we do. Eli goes to fetch a snack for Franklyn and Franklyn does the inevitable. A little snap, crackle and pop later and Franklyn is crispy, en-coma-ed, but alive and even now digesting reams and scads of delicious alien know how.

Meanwhile, Eli has stumbled upon a deletion in the Kino showing that there was some footage taken by the floating ball cam during the death of ABG. Who done it? Nobody did. ABG, desperate for the sleeping pills that he was addicted to and jonesing for home, killed himself. So did the Kino show who framed Colonel Young? With Young exonerated from Doubt, he quickly resumes command and just in time, a gate opens up on another dusty world and an away team, shuffling along on the planet has found an alien ship, wreaked or crashed in the dirt. This was an amazing scene. This is what I want to see. Discover stuff! Rush and Young dash to the scene of the craft. Time is running short. The gate is about to close. Is there time to get into the crashed ship? It’s no ancients technology like the Destiny, it’s something new, something different and spiffy. Young faces Rush. Young know it was Rush that did the framing. There was Kino footage showing Rush leaving with the gun. If Rush knew how to delete the part where ABG offed himself you would think he would have deleted his own entry and exit. Maybe I’m being picky. Finally, Rush lets all the venom out. Yeah he did it and he’s not proud but not sorry either. Colonel Young just doesn’t get the big picture. Doesn’t understand his place in the proceedings, a stage where the bright light must inevitably fall on the Scottish noggin of Dr. Rush, a man that just wants the best for everyone. Rush throws down the gauntlet. It’s on and it’s staying on.

Colonel Young makes a decision. One that I might have made myself. Rush has declared himself a mad and evil genius. Young pounds Rush hardily and then leaves him, under the shadow of the derelict spaceship, to presumably die. Great, great stuff. Does Rush know how to hotwire a non ancients busted up spaceship, nose down in pebbles? Oh I’m betting he does. Rush is now highly motivated. StarGate Universe has just reached escape velocity. I can’t wait to see what happens.