I thought 'Light' was an improvement over the previous episodes. There was still no story, but the episode seemed to do a better job with the characters. While I'm still not convince the series will be good, 'Light' was a tiny step in the right direction. Now if the writers can come up with a real story, then there'd be something to look for. For now, I'm holding on just for the Stargate label the fans have come to love.
Destiny continues to barrel towards the star, so Colonel Young comes with a plan that will save some of them. There will be a random lottery to see who goes on the shuttle to one of the planets. The shuttle takes off, leaving everyone else to cook. When all is lost, the ship appears to be fine. Power turns back on and the ship actually goes inside the star. Destiny is solar powered. I was waiting for someone to yell psych as everyone realized they were saved.
That's the story. Straightforward and able to be summarized to great accuracy in a few sentences. While story is usually an importance of scifi shows, Stargate Universe focuses on the characters and has story as filler. This clearly won't work in the long run and I'm still waiting to see something develop unrelated to the characters.
A large part of the episode was dedicated to the characters waiting for themselves to die. Chloe sleeps with Scott in the beginning and Eli sees this. Scott is piloting the shuttle, so Elie and Chloe spends lots of time together. They hold hands and Chloe puts her head on his shoulder. When Scott gets back, she goes running off for him. And so the love triangle begins.
Rush declines to be in the lottery, knowing that the journey to the Destiny was his doing. Young speculates at the end of the episode that Rush may have known the Destiny would never have be burned which is why he refused to be in the lottery. While from the scenes of Rush alone in his room, we can see he is agitated and doesn't want to be in the situation, the crew, notably Young, clearly distrusts Rush. This superficial insertion of tension was patently artificial. Everyone saw how Rush reacted, so why would they distrust him on this point?
This was perhaps the closest everyone has come to dying, so the tone of the episode was good. We knew they wouldn't die, but the acting overall was better than the previous episodes. The ensemble cast is working nicely so far and hopefully, SGU will stray from the everyone's going to die episode. If it does, we may have a good show on our hands.
Score: 8.6/10
3 comments:
Now that they've realized they are better off than something (ie being dead), I'm hoping the crew will stop being so whiny and actually be productive, even if they are not particularly qualified for it all.
It was kind of silly. I think the writers forgot that they had Scott sleeping with someone else in the first episode.
Clearly Scott is just a slut. Also, I found the statement from Cleo that she was so close to Scott to be odd. Did they even have any scenes together? (besides the dead parent discussion)
I thought the idea that Rush knew that was going to happen was also silly. The crew almost lost 17 members and a lot of supplies. If Rush knew the ship would survive why would he put those neccessary crew members and more importantly supplies at risk.
Of course I knew that was going to happen. No one on the ship thought to themselves that it was odd that this ship made a major miscalculation just now. I mean, the ship has exsisted for 100,000 years, but today it forgot to carry a one or a decimal point so into the star it goes. It was just silly. TRUST THE SHIP. It doesn't need you.
Two things that bother me. 1) If they have those communicators can't they get specialized crew to come up and help. Possibly just swap some useless people out; Bring in a real doctor for medical emergencies. Maybe bring in one of those scientists from Stargate Atlantis to help Dr. Rush (OR REPLACE HIM!) and 2) If the ship is now at full power can't they go home?
It would be great if they got a new crew. This show wants to be BSG too bad. It needs to accept that it isn't and work on be a stargate show.
"Idiots In Universe" - for girls and boys instead of toys.