Stargate Universe (SGU) is the latest series in the long-running Stargate franchise from MGM. The series follows a group of humans who have been stranded in a distant corner of the universe, aboard an Ancient spaceship named “
Destiny”. At this stage, there have been eight episodes screened, with 20 planned for the season.
The series begins with the arrival of roughly 80 military personnel and civilians aboard the ship
Destiny after their evacuation from the somewhat ironically-named Icarus base, where they have been attempting to dial a nine-chevron address with the Stargate. This evacuation is forced upon them by an attack upon the base’s planet by what is thought to be the Lucian Alliance, and leads the humans to successfully dial the address, which brings them to
Destiny. Here, they soon discover that they are billions of light-years from Earth and the ship is in poor condition. Their goal quickly becomes finding a way to survive, then finding a way to get home.
There are seven core characters, as well as recurring characters and guest appearances. Within the core cast are four military characters (including the military command structure), the machiavellian Dr. Rush, a slacker genius civilian, and the civilian daughter of a US Senator. To date, most of the characters haven’t been explored that well, so they still appear quite two-dimensional. The only characters who have provided much promise are the genius (who provides the comic relief) and Dr. Rush (excellently portrayed by Robert Carlyle). I’m sure all the characters will be developed upon over time, but I would have hoped for a bit more after eight episodes.
Destiny is a massive vessel, which is travelling on autopilot at faster-than-light (FTL) speed away from the Milky Way galaxy. It is millions of years old and, accordingly, has a great deal of wear and tear.
Destiny, although unable to be controlled, has intelligent sensors that can determine if something is urgently needed by its passengers. It then determines the nearest resources, drops out of FTL, and dials the Stargate address for the best planet to supply said resource. In the pilot episodes,
Destiny dropped out of FTL in a solar system so the humans could get lime for the life support system before they all died from carbon dioxide poisoning. Every time this occurs,
Destiny counts down a set time before jumping back into FTL.
This raises an interesting point for the series. The humans have no control over the ship, they can only take advantage of when it drops out of FTL to get any supplies they think they may need e.g. food. Technically,
Destiny should be able to determine when they’re nearly out of supplies and stop (as happened in the “Water” episode”); however, the humans may not always know why the ship has stopped. In the episode “Time”, they thought the ship had stopped so they could get food from a planet; it turned out the planet had the cure for a disease that they were unaware they all had. This method and timeliness of resupplying means that the crew will go from crisis to crisis until they can find a way to gain more control over the ship.
Within the crew’s possessions that they brought with them, is the Ancient communication device referred to as the communication stones. These stones enable the crew to communicate with Homeworld Command instantaneously by swapping the consciousness with a person using Earth’s equivalent device. This method enables the
Destiny crew to brief their superiors, discuss matters with peers, and visit their loved ones. While I think the communication stones are a weak point in the premise, it has created some interesting scenarios. For example, during a switch in the “Earth” episode, those transferred aboard
Destiny attempted to carry out a very dangerous experiment, while the crew members on Earth were prevented from returning. The body-swapping aspect of the communication also raises some questions of ethics; what would you do in someone else’s body, and what are the implications for that body once you’ve switched back i.e. what if a “returnee” was having sex with someone the body owner didn’t like?
To date, the episode storylines in the series have revolved around the crew acquiring critical resources, or using the communication stones with Earth. Going forward, the former will obviously be a fairly regular story premise, and the latter will hopefully be a fallback story. It will be a challenge for the writers to find a way to introduce new elements and obstacles for the crew, otherwise the series will become quite stagnant. As it is, the show has relied heavily on the acting and suspenseful build-up to pad out some pretty thin plotlines. Saying that, I do like the series and I will keep watching it. Whether someone who’s not a Stargate fan will like it (as the creators hope), I’m really not sure it’ll have enough to keep their attention.
(also posted on
Murmur under
Stargate Universe: Thoughts Thus Far)
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