TV: Stargate Universe

[Assassin]

i think the the burning light was that scientist who disappeared into the chair. Im pretty sure he's the cause of the ftl 'failure' as well.

As for Telford, i think he'll end up sacrificing himself at the end of the season to finish this lucian alliance business.....its predictable and cliche, but i dont like him so i dont mind.

[David75]

i think the the burning light was that scientist who disappeared into the chair. Im pretty sure he's the cause of the ftl 'failure' as well.

As for Telford, i think he'll end up sacrificing himself at the end of the season to finish this lucian alliance business.....its predictable and cliche, but i dont like him so i dont mind.

Other than the stargate, it doesn't seem like the ancient managed rings or teleportation devices when Destiny was built. But we do not know for sure. Teleportation would explain how Eli and Chloe already are almost at the front of the ship, when it doesn't seem like they used a moving cabin.

The question is where he is, and why he only acts now.
I just hope they will not tell us his body has been vaporised and his mind transfered into Destiny's system...

[David75]

I was damn right about the Pulsar.
First time in a while I was able to pinpoint something.
It was easy though, since we've had star bursts, black holes and many other things.

Hopefully for them, they were not in the firing zone of a massive Blazar, or they would have been killed immediately.

I'm also a bit surprised the ancient didn't insert a delay for such occurences in the procedures for the ship's gate. Of course when just built, Destiny was able to easilly cope with a Pulsar or probably even the firing zone of a Blazar. But usually you try to think of worst case scenario. Here the idea would be: what about a ship that is at its limits, with just enough for life support and a connection to the gate happens and will stop the ship near a lethal celestial object?
Since FTL is so fast, a delay of about a milisecond would probably be sufficient to have the ship out of the danger zone. Yet, they are exactly where they shouldn't with the ship's condition.
Of course it's great for drama, so I guess we can't complain that much.

Regarding the rest of the ep, building of a massive cliffhanger for the end of the season, nothing I could'nt really expect.

So now, given what we've seen till now, the only way out of the crisis are the blue aliens. That's what I thought when watching the ep and it would fit with my idea they are not hostile at all. Might be a weak idea though.

Well, now we'll have to wait for season 2 premiere this fall (I've seen no trace of a precise air date)

[Penner]

I liked the episode alot, and Rhona Mitra is excellent as Commander Kiva.

I also just now realized where i recognized "Eli" from, he was in Ugly Betty, i think he dated the gay assistant..

And the guy playing Kiva's second in command Varro played a "tracker" (like Ronon) that was hunted by Wraith's in Stargate Atlantis.

Edit: All i could get from IMDB/Wiki is that Season 2 starts in October 2010

Also from Wikipedia is this:

According to Brad Wright, the show will "hopefully explor[e] the truly alien, and [avoid] the rubber faced English-speaking one[s]". There will be aliens, but not a single dominant villain race like SG-1's Goa'uld and Atlantis' Wraith.

I bolded the part that i found most interesting :P

[David75]

Varro already was a villain in the stargate franchise.
I don't know if you remember that episode of season 9 or 10 with Vala and Mitchel at his Highschool prom meeting.

Regarding the multirace comment, they had a horribly slow start on that front right now.

By the way, for some reason I always assumed Destiny was a one and only ship, maybe because it was said in the show.
It could be amusing that it's in fact one of many others. After all 9 chevrons enable a huge number of adresses and it would be strange to have only one ship exploring the vast universe. Thing is, it could be the last one still alive...

[Assassin]

Thats an interesting point, and it would be kool to have them discover a sister ship later in the season....if such a thing exists. Alternatively, they can maybe catch up to one of the gate building ships.

As for the episode, it had a lot of thrills and edge of your seat drama. I still hate the asian chick (Ray?)....its like her sole purpose is to be a pms-ing whore who just fucks shit up and doesn't realize she's wrong all the time. Her only saving grace is that shes a lesbian.

One other thing i liked, was the fight scene where one of the military personnel does a 360 with an uzi. It was good to see a choreographed fight like that...it adds to the realism since you would expect military personnel to be trained in some forms of martial arts. I hate when you have military tough guys having a bar fight like any joe blow.

[David75]

Well, the "Destiny class" ship idea was totally out of the blue on my part. It would probably just diminish the core plot power.
It's just that having only one ship for an entire race and for all of the universe seems a bit short.
That idea had me thinking about others:
What is the real purpose of the gate system?
The ancients send automated ships that build gates in galaxies they will never visit ever.
Destiny goes through those galaxies
Destiny was built by the ancients to find a way to ascend, or at least evolve.

In a previous season, there was a problem with earth's gate and Teal'c was stuck in the gate's buffer and would have been erased should anyone dial in or out. We were told then that the gate buffers anything in and out for transfers. But we were never told they do not store stats or data about transfers, organisms, materials, energies... After all ascended ancients can use gates too.

My guess is that gates can monitor anything traveling through the network, and Destiny harvests data from the network. Before jumping to another galaxy, Destiny can choose a galaxy with interresting data.
That way, after many centuries, ancients bording Destiny would have found lots of data about the inhabitants of the universe and potentially more advanced civilisations. Eventhough one could argue such an advanced race could just refuse to use the gate system, avoid it, prevent it from installing itself in their region (which is probably an even better signature of an advanced civilisation)

Regarding the ship itself, the new views we had this week shows us how huge it is.
I have other remarks regarding that.
First is, every time teams roam around the ship, they almost never go up or down. Intriguing as at the back the ship seems extremely high. The gate system seems to be near the center of gravity, more to the rear, maybe one third from the total length, so they should have to climb stairs or similar function means.

Another point is that this ship isn't compact at all. It's design, like a spike is a bit strange for a ship, even more so when it has to cope with massive gravity fields as it has to enter star coronas to refuel.
It's also a design that is less resistant to inertial constraints, less efficient against radiations, heat loss etc. The only reason to build it like this would be fluid dynamics. So that would explain that mist evolving around the ship at FTL? That design is due to the fact that the way it moves, at the speed it moves, it still meets enough resistance from particules that it needs to be "aerodynamic"
Then there are the consoles, I was quite surprised there are some in that part of the ship, more over one able to control all of the ship.

Last but not least, why only 2 shuttles on such a large ship? I know Destiny was not meant to be inhabited for a long time and the gate is enough to board or exit the ship, yet two shuttles seems a very small number.

Random questions again. After all, the ideas are so huge. A race that travels through all of the universe installing wormhole travelling gate systems and a ship visiting each of these system is an idea that defies imagination capabilities when you take numbers/sizes/distances into account.

[Assassin]

SGU is back for season two. I just finished watching the first episode, and i think it was pretty good. The at the previous season finale is resolved and some new plot lines are introduced. I like that they've brought back the star system building aliens, even if its just briefly. Seems like they'll have a part to play in this yet.

The one thing i dont get though is, were the aliens responsible for healing chloe's leg? or are we looking at something else?

[Penner]

I just assumed it was something the aliens did to her when she got captured and held in the watertank thing on their ship.

[Assassin]

hmm, ya that is a possibility....if thats the case, then we can expect something similar with rush, should the need ever arise.

[David75]

Yup, I thought Chloe had some kind of "optimisation" .
Hard to tell why the aliens would do that though.

On one hand you could say that it's a way of helping humans survive by strenghthening them.
On the other hand, it's just messing with another living being biology without their consent when they also are a "civilised" race.

But all in all, I still think the blue ones might not have ill objectives. They have their agenda, but it might be inline with what SGU crew needs and they'll end up cooperating once the communication barrier is breached for good.
They were almost there...

[David75]

Rush always wanted to play Captain Kirk:
"Kirk to Enterprise"
No wait, he doesn't want the crew, he wants the ship all for himself.

I'm a little surprised Destiny's control room is so small compared to the shuttle's.
Also, It's very exposed, yet does not allow for 360° natural panoramic view at all.
And by contrast, it's a place very hard to find, hidden even, from inside the ship.

Another thing I mentionned before is that we never see anyone climbing steps, or using elevators or other similar means, when clearly the control room is in a very high structure. So I guess many other parts of the ship are in layers. That could give some dynamics to the camera movements from inside the ship and I'm surprised they never used that.

Other than that, the contents of the ep where the usual almost useless storylines placed to give some vibes so that a part of the audience remains watching.

I guess that what interested me are the reasons why Rush does not want to share Destiny with the rest of the crew... Or why Mankind should not get their hands on the Ship would be my real train of thoughts.

I guess that in months, with proper specialists, you could get full control of the ship and set course to the Milkyway and then Earth.
But what would Mankind do with the ship and its knowledge and technologies?
What is mankind doing with Atlantis, that is probably already on Earth in the San Fransisco Bay?

Once you ask this, I guess you can understand why for a scenarist a good option is to find lots of events and people preventing that from happening, as it takes time, create story and enables seasons to exist in the first place.

[Assassin]

my question is, was rush hallucinating, or was the missing scientist actually communicating with him in some way?

[David75]

my question is, was rush hallucinating, or was the missing scientist actually communicating with him in some way?

Rush asked himself that one too. There's no answer we can really guess.
Because even if the shuttle hint was spot on, you could always say it was Rush's idea in the first place.

[David75]

So we get to see a new race.
Seems like they are a "NoKill" one, since they use stun energy guns.
We'll see wether they really are of the "NoKill" philosophy if we get a followup on Telford's predicament.

I'm a bit surprised that in the two races they get to see, both aren't ready to kill immediately.
But I guess it could be just because they need to get more intel on the living creatures that operate Destiny.

We also get to see a gate installer ship, that happens to be a dock for Destiny too.

Rush should not be able to hide his full control of the ship for much longer.

It's a bit hard to see where the show is going, because everything seems like a huge intro to something bigger. But boy we have to endure the painfully slow developments to get there.

[David75]

Eli character development has been stalling from the beginning, and it's starting to be uterly disapointing.
He's one of the top five members of the crew, yet appart from unlocking the ninth chevron and playing with the flying sphere cameras... he's useless! He's to be both a geek and a math genius.
I understand he didn't have any experience with ancient tech or any alien tech, as Rush did.
But he should be able to adapt in time, and he doesn't show any progress, doesn't get anything. And we already knew about everything displayed in that episode regarding his personality developments.

On the contrary, Chloe started with a very boring character type/synopsis but is slowly getting more and more interesting, even if with a now overused plot device in sci-fi shows.

Other than that, pretty boring ep, we already had a very similar scenario last year. The only thing it did is show that everyone moves on, on Desitny and on Earth too. And both places have their problems/shortcomings/fate...

[David75]

Another totally useless episode, with an instantCupOfScenario overused over the years and that crappy "someone has the right blood, just transfer" pseudomedical solution that would kill in real life...

And there's really nothing added to the season/show. Only screentime.

[Penner]

Yeah, i didn't like this ep at all.. seemed like some sort of filler crap -.-

[David75]

Episode 6 was better.
Not very good or the like.
But somewhat entertaining, or at least with meaning, progress, nice interaction with Destiny, and Eli isn't a virgin anymore... or so it seems. Seems he is useful too, at times, which wasn't that obvious up to now.

[David75]

Is that show finally getting into motion?

That has to be one of the longest show intro of all times... no seriously.

Thing is, with all that waiting, the core mission and the deck felt a tad to mediocre. But well, I guess that won't be the main focus as we've already had Star Trek and its many seasons. We do not need a main deck and a commander on a ship visiting many worlds with a motive.

The pre-BigBang signature thing, well at least they have a scientists staff. It might be related to a paper studying a very low magnectic field signature whose size, age and structure have scientists think it might indicate pre-bigbang phenomenons are responsible for it. At least that's what I understood from the vulgarised article I read at the time.

Now I can say I wait for more. Not that much for what will happen to Eli and Rush girlfriends with their lives at stake with that psycopath and their stone link implying they both die if one of them does...
Eli, isn't that hard to see you GF frenchkissing someone you do not like and could be your father

More about the alien interactions with the crew, the aliens interact in that part of the universe... and we know there are fights at a several galaxies range. Incredible if you ask me, because I tend to believe that once you achieve intergalactic travel, you should have a society that has evolved enough that it must have found a solution to eradicate war instincts along the way. But that's just what I believe. After all I can not even believe in aliens, since I've never met some.

Oh, and nice salvaging they've done, not even a little piece back to Destiny. Just Rush pushing all buttons to light all beacons and tell the aliens where they are. At times these geniuses have no sense or reality.

Well, as I said, I'll wait for next ep, and I hope it won't be a let down.