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STARGATE UNIVERSE |
Dr. Nicholas Rush - Robert Carlyle 1st Lt. Matthew Scott - Brian J. Smith Eli Wallace - David Blue Colonel Everett Young - Justin Louis Chloe Armstrong - Elyse Levesque MSgt. Ronald Greer - Jamil Walker Smith 1st Lt. Tamara Johansen - Alaina Kalanj 
OTHER STARGATE SERIES Stargate Continuum OTHER TREKS THROUGH SPACE Star Trek The Next Generation Voyager Enterprise Battlestar Galactica Space1999 
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Air- Part 1Eli Wallace is disappointed when the video game he cracks doesn't reward his success. He is less disappointed when the military show up, beam him onto a spaceship and offer to take him to another planet where he can help eminent scientist Dr Rush figure out the meaning of a new symbol on that planet's Stargate. An attack by unidentified forces means that the base has to be evacuated, but the only way off is through a Stargate that nobody knows the destination of. STARGATE UNIVERSE is an attempt to revitalise the franchise by reinventing it in the image of Battlestar Galactica. This isn't a series about exploration, it's a series about survival. That's the message in the prepublicity and it's clearly the message in this opening episode. It's a small group of people, survivors of an attack, lost in the universe, tension between civilians and military, not to mention tension between individuals. Any BATTLESTAR GALACTICA fan will recognise that summmary straight away. They'll also recognise the washed out colours of the filming and the attempts at fusing gritty realism and special effects together into a believable whole. Unfortunately, STARGATE UNIVERSE shoots itself in the foot from the off with the whole 'videogame is really doorway to secret space stuff' plot line (which is, incidentally, ripped off from THE LAST STARFIGHTER anyway. The opening sequence is also ripped off from from ALIEN with the camera roaming the empty ship corridors until a single computer screen comes to life. This leaps straight into a startling evacuees arriving on the derelict spaceship scene that sets out the show's intentions from the off. It then flashes back to the show the story leading up to this event and to introduce the characters. Robert Carlyle's casting is clearly the prize for the show as he can make any character come to life, but the rest of the mis-matched crew couldn't be more stock characters than if they had come in a box from central casting. It's early days, of course, and they will develop - we hope. STARGATE UNIVERSE's desire to be gritty and real is laudable and this opening episode promises great things for the future. Time will see if the promise is honoured. TopAir- Part 2Now that everyone is over the shock of being dumped on an alien ship further from Earth than anyone else has ever been before with no way home, the agenda turns to survival. The first order of business is air, which is rapidly running out, not least through a breach in one of the two shuttles that the ship possesses. The breach can be sealed, but only by someone on the far side of the door and there are no spacesuits available. When adversity strikes the majority of the human race descend to the lowest kind of self-serving sods that we can imagine, but there will always be those who rise to the occasion and whose sense of heroism and self-sacrifice will be an example to us all. That’s the moral of the second episode of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA meets LOST IN SPACE and it bangs it home relentlessly. Suffice to say that there’s not a lot of joy to be going on with here. The act of self-sacrifice is, though, well handled and comes from an unexpected source. TopAir- Part 3With the only hope of survival lying with finding a source of lime to restart the air purification system, a small team go through the Destiny’s stargate to a planet in range. The place is a seemingly endless desert, but there are things there stranger than are dreamed off in Rush’s philosophy. The cast of characters wander around a desert getting annoyed with each other. It’s not much of a premise to hang a science fiction story on, and it proves to be not much of an episode as a result. The swirls of dust that prove to be lifeforms of some kind, capable of inducing an hallucination from Scott’s past, are intriguing for a while, but in the end this is just a bunch of grumpy people on a big beach being grumpy. It’s almost as though the writers thought that after two weeks locked up in the small space of the ship’s interior that providing an outside location, especially a big one, would be enough. Well it isn’t. TopDarknessThe sudden arrival of the refugees has placed a strain on the power reserves of the Destiny, causing the systems to fail until all that is left is the life support. There are rumblings of discord amongst the crew, but the appearance of a planetary system with three possible new homes provide new hope. Considering the situation that they find themselves in, discord is something that you would expect to set in sooner or later and STARGATE UNIVERSE chooses the sooner route. Everyone, it seems, it at odds with everyone and nobody can agree on the right direction to follow. It doesn’t help that the struggle for survival is the only thing going on. There are no clues about the ship, what its purpose is, what its destination might be. An unremittingly dark story is one that is likely to alienate its audience. The addition of the talking heads to camera gimmick doesn’t help anything at all. If this is really the best that the top secret Icarus project could summon up then they really wouldn’t be worth saving. TopLightOnly one of the planets discovered by Destiny is likely to be able to maintain life and so Young orders a shuttle launch to take 17 survivors and supplies there, leaving the rest to fry as the ship descends into the sun. Hardly an original story (it’s WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE on a small scale), but at least there is some real drama going on in this episode, allowing the actors to do a bit more than simply shout at each other. The lottery of choosing who goes and who stays would have been more affecting had we met more of the survivors so that we might care about them. And we’re not talking about the stupid video diary for posterity idea that is merely a way of filling out the time. Justin Louis’ Colonel Young is starting to emerge as a more rounded character, a competent commander with real skills. When Chloe and Lt Scott get it on it’s supposed to be an act of intimacy, but since we don’t know or care about them too much it just becomes a pointless bit of soft (or supersoft) core sex. Even Robert Carlyle is struggling to make anything out of his shouty, impatient and arrogant superscientist. Fortunately, there is dignity as people prepare to die, drama in the shuttle choosing and a resolution that is so obvious that it’s hard to believe that anyone on board didn’t think of it themselves. TopWaterSupplies of water aboard Destiny are disappearing at an alarming rate, certainly a rate that is faster than the survivors can be drinking it. Young and Scott go through the Stargate to an ice planet to mine some drinkable water, but fall foul of a crevasse. On the ship, meanwhile, Johansen and Rush have to try and deal with the alien creatures responsible for the water loss. First a desert planet in Air Part 3 and now an ice planet. STARGATE UNIVERSE seems to be set to follow the STAR WARS pattern of ice building. Hoth even gets a name check in the script. What next, the forest moon of Endor? Events on the ice planet are pretty dull until the crevasse falls through, but don’t really pick up that much even afterwards. Events on the ship are far more interesting as the crew try to find a way to deal with mosquito-like aliens (stowaways from the desert planet in Air Part 3) other than just wiping them out. It’s a fairly standard STAR TREK type plot, but it adapts well to the format here. TopEarthThe authorities on Earth have come up with a risky plan to bring the survivors home. Commander Young isn’t too keen on running roughshod over the views of the rest of his people, so he is trapped on Earth in another man’s body through the Ancients’ communications stones whilst Colonel Telford tries to force the plan through in Young’s body. The stones that allow body transfer are a bit of a cop out for the show, which would have been more interesting had it been the survivors working on their own. The story of Young, Eli and Chloe enjoying their ‘holiday’ on Earth is about as dull as they come. All three are feeling sorry for themselves one way or another and that’s not a lot of fun to watch. The highlight is when Young and Telford switch back to the their bodies momentarily whilst Young is in the middle of a passionate tryst with his wife. TopTimeAfter Water we wondered if the forest moon of Endor would be the next STAR WARS planet to be visited but we were wrong - it turned out to be the jungle planet of Dagobah. This version, however, is much more inimical with killer diseases and nasty parasite and slugs with lots of teeth. The fact that the crew are watching events on one of the kinos, the floating cameras, makes this one of those 'point of view' shows that have been so popular since the likes of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT or CLOVERFIELD. It's a gimmick that has been overused (usually with a tv journalist as an excuse), but its natural fit into what has gone before allows it to last longer into the episode before it gets annoying. The sequence where it uses a night mode (a la CLOVERFIELD) in the middle of a desperate gun fight runs out to the be most striking moments that the show has produced to date. Of course, it's a time travel episode so there's a great big reset button waiting at the end, but viewers who don't know the rules of time travel sci fi shows may be drawn in more by the shock death toll. TopLifeAboard the Destiny, the survivors find a chair that might plug the user directly into the ship, but then again might be and electric chair, so nobody's too keen on trying it out. Several of the crew use the ancient communications stones to visit their loved ones in the bodies of others. This is absolutely the dullest hour that the show has come up with yet. Some people deal with emotional issues on Earth whilst having a few arguments on the ship in between times? Boring. There is no other word for it. Even the scene where Young and Telford momentarily switch bodies whilst Young is having sex with his wife does nothing more than make us laugh at how ridiculous it is. If this is the best that can be told about a bunch of people stranded millions of light years from home then it's a very poor showing. TopJusticeA soldier is found dead and the gun is located in Young's room. He steps down whilst the investigation to clear his name continues, but who could have wanted to frame him. Definitely a step up from Life, this at least has a story. OK it's not a new or original story, but that doesn't matter. How the survivors deal with law and order is a pertinent question and should have been more interesting than it is, but it could also have been a lot worse. At least it ends on a development that is definitely unexpected and it will be interesting to see where at least one character goes from here. Top |
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