When I started reviewing this series, I came in about a quarter of the way through the second season, no prior SGU experience and only having seen a handful of SG-1 episodes. I was not impressed with what I had seen at first, but the second half of this season turned things around. It was coming into its own as good SF, and I can say without reservation I am sorry to see a show with this much potential go.
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I appreciate the writing that’s gone into these last episodes. It’s been tight, with a great long term arc that doesn’t skimp on the small stuff. The sense of wonder and danger, the human element, the spaces between black and white, all of these are why I dig science fiction.
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John Scalzi, the creative consultant for this series, once said that building a world two questions deep helps build sufficient rationale. Unfortunately, in this week’s episode the writers missed that bit of advice.
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Two items from the recent past come back to bite the crew of the Destiny and as I say that, I realize I’m setting myself up for some sort of relativistic pun. I’ll be damned if I can find it, but you might have better luck.
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More than once while watching this week’s episode, thoughts of the film Predator crept into my mind. Fortunately, I didn’t yell “GET TO THE CHOPPA!” at any point in time, but some of the elements were there. It wasn’t enough to draw a parallel, but it made me wonder where the writers got their inspiration.
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Transhuman and posthuman concepts in SF fascinate me — sometimes they terrify me, but that’s another topic all together. What this episode does is touch on those subjects in way that’s not intrusive with either philosophical or technical talk.
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Given the isolated setting of the Destiny, it’s easy to overlook the fact there’s things going on Earth-side. The Lucian Alliance is an outstanding threat to Earth, and an attack is pending. With only one member of the Alliance on the ship, it’s a plot thread that can fall by the wayside. In this week’s episode it picks back up.
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The Destiny is like that abusive spouse that won’t let go. All that hidden knowledge and the drive to continue her mission, and now that she has a crew she’s not giving them up.
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One problem with these mid-season breaks is that I risk forgetting details like character names, and as a result I have to re-familiarize myself when the show continues. While I do have notes to consult, they have inconsistencies, such as using “MathGeek” for Eli. However I do remember the previous episode and its “cliffhanger” ending. I expected the Destiny’s rescue to come at the hands of a Deus Ex Machina, since I had already seen them abuse that with Telford’s arrival with the seed ship.
What actually happened ended up making sense instead.
By Mike Brendan – Let me start off with this: “mid-season” and “finale” are not supposed to go together. It’s just a marketing ploy to make more money in DVD sales. It’s as stupid as it is annoying, and it’s stuff like mid-season breaks that give me less incentive to tune in later.
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By Mike Brendan – This week’s episode is a tie-in/sequel to the Season One episode “Faith,” where the Destiny finds an uncharted system and an Eden-like planet that is found to be artificial. Some of the civilian crew stay behind, thinking that this is their best way of getting back to Earth.
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By Mike Brendan – Think of your favorite cookie. Not just type or flavor but also a specific brand/baker. Now imagine going two months without said cookie — no cravings mind you, just no cookie. Then someone hands you that very cookie, freshly baked. When you take that first bite, you realize what you’ve been missing. That was how I felt watching this week’s episode of SGU. What had been missing from the previous two episodes was tension. “Malice” made up for it.
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By Mike Brendan – If I could sum up this week’s episode in a few choice words, they’d be “predictable” and “coincidence.”
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By Mike Brendan – It was all just a dream. I’ve never been a big fan of that trope — always comes across as some sort of cop out, and in SF it can become a “it was all just temporal mishap/psychic warning” plot device that allows the writers to keep actual plotting for that episode to a minimum.
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I love and hate season finale cliffhangers. On the one hand, it’s kind of exciting to ratchet up the tension that much. On the other, some closure between seasons is nice. On the third mutant hand, I wonder if this sort of cliffhanger is really effective anymore. When Star Trek: TNG did “The Best of Both Worlds” in 1990, my geeky friends and I talked about it all summer. Today on the internet, that summer long discourse can take place in a day.
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What is it with sci-fi villains and black leather? What ever happened to villains with a sense of personal style? Really, if you’re going to be bad, you should be bold with your fashion choices, too. Look at Ming the Merciless. Now there’s a villain who’s not afraid of color.
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“Sabotage” felt like a misstep, an episode cobbled together to hurriedly close out two story lines (the marooned crew members, the blue jellyfish threat) to move on to the next thing. I’m all about moving the show along quickly, but felt that these things needed a bit more time to be resolved in a way that made sense and was satisfying.
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