Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

More of a Whisper than a roar

Whispers is a step outside the box marked ‘Stargate: Atlantis’ with a story set in the universe but using different characters from the norm to tell it and taking a side-step from sci-fi into the horror genre. However, Whispers never strays too far from the box; lead character Sheppard is fully in the mix, Beckett returns to add another familiar face, and the story while standard horror fare is rooted in the recent Atlantis mythology.

It’s not often Stargate widens the zoom and focuses on characters that are outside of the usual team within its main plot. Usually when it does it gets mixed reviews and Whispers is no different, primarily because it’s difficult to obtain a warm welcome for an entire story focused on characters that the audience doesn’t know and by definition doesn’t care about. The concept has always worked better when the other characters inhabit a sub-plot such as in Heroes Part 1 which successfully peeked at Colonel Dixon and his team.

Whispers is definitely full focus rather than a peek and given the parameters of the story – horror with characters in danger – it had to build support for them quickly for the audience to care whether they lived or died. Whispers doesn’t do a bad job in that regard, primarily down to the actors who pull off good performances to bring them to life. Vega really gets killed off too early and has too few lines for Leela Savasta to achieve anything beyond mild interest, but Nicole deBoer, Janina Gavankar and Christina Cox really do an excellent job.

Gavankar in particular shines as Mehra; a female Ronon but with a tendency to say what everyone else is thinking but are usually too polite to say. Yet, while Mehra could be considered a cliché, there are some nice quirks: her concern for Porter and the more familiar ‘Ally’, her reading when they stop for the night, the bubble-gum chewing during the ambush op. There are hints that there is more to Mehra than the tough cookie front. Quite frankly, if they’re looking for characters for Stargate Universe, Mehra gets my recommendation; she’s interesting and Gavankar is a good actress.

Admittedly, I’m a fan of deBoer. She does an excellent job with Doctor Allison Porter who comes across as a normal person; a warm, compassionate geek unused to the fire-fights but up for the adventure the Pegasus galaxy presents. The hint of possible romance between Beckett and Porter is played up in the writing (and part of what makes Mehra so enjoyable is her poking fun at the two) but, for me, there isn’t enough chemistry between deBoer and Paul McGillion to make it believable. However, the exchange in the lab where Beckett notes that cloning is more of a third year thing is well done.

Cox also does a good job with Teldy. She’s mostly called upon to be Sheppard’s sidekick for the story but she definitely pulls off playing a competent military woman with maybe a small feminist chip on her shoulder. Overall, the team is an interesting bunch and by the end, there is enough interest to worry whether they will survive. But that all said they’re not Teyla, or Ronon, or McKay, and if given a choice, I’d rather have been watching the characters I do know and care about than characters I don’t.

The inclusion of Sheppard and Beckett are presumably meant to ensure interest despite the lack of the rest of the regular cast. Beckett’s inclusion is nicely seamless given the ‘Michael’s creatures’ plot and McGillion does a great job as usual. There were two lovely standout moments – the one in the lab where his evident discomfort at his resurrection is highlighted and the other in the initial conversation with Sheppard and the throw-away comments over their stasis experiences. But as much as it is a joy to see Beckett, with all the other non-regular characters, another regular may have been more appropriate for balance than a recurring.

As the only regular character for much of the episode, Flanigan does a superb job at anchoring it. The story doesn’t call on Sheppard to do anything more than be the leader, and he does lead; he sets traps; he gives orders, and he still puts himself in danger to save the team. But this is a story which really doesn’t call on Sheppard to develop as a character or for Flanigan to show off his acting credentials. As such Sheppard is merely there rather than his situation engaging the audience.

To be fair, McKay does also appear and the scenes with him and Beckett that bookend the episode pretty much are lovely; short, sweet and funny. But these scenes provide a tantalising glimpse of what could have been if the rest of the story had included the full cast. More, the inclusion of a scene at the top with two villagers running around in the fog rather spoils the bookend effect. There was no need for the scene and the episode would have worked better without it – especially given it’s yet another scene that focuses on ‘other’ characters.

Despite this, the overall story is well constructed if standard horror fare (a group of people roaming around in fog avoiding monsters); the lab, Michael’s experiments, the local villager who ends up releasing the creatures…it’s all nicely rooted in the Michael plotline. I’m not a fan of the horror genre although I thought Vengeance was well done; here, I can see the set-ups far too early to be surprised or horrified despite the direction, the great fog and the musical underscore – there is just not enough tension and not enough anxiety about the characters.

In conclusion

Ultimately, Whispers is not a bad episode; its an OK story told using mostly non-regular characters but because it is just an OK story, it needed better balance with the usual regular characters to really excel as an episode. As it stands, the final execution means that the episode ends up being more of whisper than a roar.