Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

Goop. Enjoyable goop but goop nevertheless.

Not for the first time, I come away from Stargate Universe having enjoyed the episode but wondering what the heck actually happened. Did anything happen? In fact, a lot happened in Lost as it showcases the attempt to rescue Team SGU left behind at the end of Human while using its subplots to deepen the back-story on Greer and move things forward in terms of the TJ/Young arc. Yet perhaps like Life, the whole ends up feeling slightly rudderless and lacking in tension.

It’s the lack of tension which is actually the main issue here. There are attempts to create tension inherent in the story; the knowledge of the ticking clock before Destiny jumps into FTL, Greer racing towards his leaving team-mates having been left behind, the dinosaur coming out of the fog. But except for the last Stargate dialling sequence, there is no tension. None. The flow of the story just doesn’t create it and the music doesn’t underscore it. As a result, everything turns into a mush.

It’s not a bad mush. It reminds me of squishing good ice-cream until it’s all squidgy; it all tastes OK, it’s just hard to appreciate the individual flavors. And there are individual flavors here: the TJ/Young dynamic, Greer’s back-story and the need to get Team SGU home. Because of the lack of tension in what should have been the main plot – the issues with Team SGU’s attempt to get back – the rest gets folded in and everything just becomes same-y. And yet individually separating these threads out after the fact, they’re all interesting; all very valid in terms of driving the story forward or focusing on a character to reveal motivations.

The TJ/Young dynamic and the baby announcement is well done in the main. I loved the scene with TJ and Park showing a little female solidarity and support. I actually really liked the reveal scene where Young slowly discards his CO persona and becomes the man who had the affair with TJ and having to deal with its consequences. Both Louis Ferreira and Alaina Huffman are very good, but Huffman once again stole the scene for me.

I love Greer. I love Jamil Walker Smith’s portrayal of Greer. And I liked that we had some focus on Greer’s back-story to show why Greer is the man he is. Cameron Shang Forbes does a good job as young Greer in the flashbacks. Smith does a great job with adult Greer digging himself out of the tunnels and dealing with his abandonment on the planet: it was very touching and I felt moved. If I’m being very critical, I don’t think there is enough difference in teenage Greer to Master Sergeant Greer in terms of body language and facial expression but then I don’t think the teenage flashbacks are particularly helped by the horrendous hair. Was it a wig? I hope so.

The remaining plot is also interesting in parts, with teams from Destiny trying to backtrack through the Stargates to find Team SGU, and the remaining members of Team SGU trying to travel forward through the Stargates to Destiny. It’s great to see the Stargate being used; great to see the team formation. It’s nicely Stargate-y in feel. Some of the dialogue in the tunnels though, sounds more like Team Atlantis than Team SGU, particularly, Eli’s freak out about using the ‘Gates which could have been written for McKay. This happens again on the spaceship when Scott chooses 15 minutes as the arbitrary time allocated to searching the database and Eli questions it; the arguing over time thing was very much a McKay/Sheppard thing. Possibly the similarity is because writer Martin Gero, as a Stargate Atlantis alumnus, was more used to writing for those characters than Eli and Scott. He may have thought these scenes were nice homages; for me it smacks of a lack of confidence in characterization of Eli and Scott beyond their “roles.” I will say, though, that Chloe at least gets, and fulfills, a role in Team SGU, giving her character a purpose beyond Scott’s sometimes-girlfriend at last.

The one thing that did jolt me out of the enjoyable stupor I had sunk into in watching the episode was the ending. SGU is turning the expected on its head. Of course it has to be careful that it doesn’t start making the unpredictable, predictable. My jaw fairly dropped when Scott, Chloe and Eli failed to make it back to Destiny. But this is great. I like the believability of it and the surprise of it.

In conclusion

Lost is not a bad episode and it’s nowhere near the worst episode of Stargate Universe’s first season (Earth has that honor to date for me). It does have interesting things happen in terms of content but it has no tension and everything melds into a pile of goop. It’s enjoyable goop, but goop nevertheless.