SGU 120, Incursion Part 2 (Spoilers)

[tezunegari]

Aired Wednesday in Germany together with part 1...

SPOILER!!! READ AT OWN RISK

You have been warned!

You should really wait for it to air first! Spoiler

The LA guy that got fried was killed by a shield failure caused by a pulsar close to Destiny's location.
Every 46 minutes a pulse hits the shields and the ship has to reroute energy from all systems to compensate
the rising strength of the pulse.

Young attempts to get Greer exchanged for TJ. It fails because of malfunctioning energy, Greer drawing his 9mm and blowing his cover.
Kiva kills a hostage (soldier named Rivers).
Later Wray agrees to an exchange: 4 LA guys for 4 hostages - Kiva agrees, gives 2 Civilians, 1 soldier and the dead body of Rivers.

Eli and Chloe have a talk. Chloe calls him her first real friend and she knows Eli likes her and accuses Eli to be jealous.

The geeks in the control room find a way to boost shield power by deactivating the shields on the side of the ship not pointing at the pulsar.

PROBLEM: That only works manually... on the outside of the ship... and the only access is inside LA held territory (one of the Blue Man Group holes)

Eli finds a console and makes contact with the control room.

Telford comes up with a plan:
Give the LA control over Destiny...
Surrender...
Let the LA hold everyone in the same location and let Telford remove the atmosphere around that room.
Return control to Destiny's crack commando-team (Rush and Brody) who will be hiding from the LA.


They do it... and everything goes wrong.

And this is how it ends... with thundering applause!

Scott and Greer are on the side of ship and do their shield thing while Telford returns control from the gate room to the control room.
Kiva got suspicious when a console malfunctioned and went to the gate room: enters it with a gun in hand and shoots Telford, who returns the favor.
Both are at least injured.
Kivas second in command orders all military personal to be brought into one room.
Scott and Greer can't get back in and the next pulse is in a few minutes and they are ordered by Rush to get to Elis position. They run with magnetic boots... and Eli leaves Chloe to get to the airlock to save the Greer and Scott.

An injured military hostage attacks the guard in the infimary where TJ treated both LA goons and injured hostages.
The LA goon has an automatic in hand... do the math... half the room is dead, and TJ got shot.

The closing scene show Young standing in front of the other military members while the LA guys prepare to execute them.

Pretty much predictable in what happens but still fun to watch.
And they show once again why Chloe is useless. Spoiler

Come on. She admits to knowing about Elis crush on her. Then - as continuation of the episode EARTH - she tells him that she considers him her first real friend. And with the same breath this: "Everything I give you, you take as consolation price" [roughly translated from the german dub]
WTF?!
She pretty much calls him a bad friend for being jealous about her being with Scott, even though she knows he has a crush on her?!
Pretty narcisstic in my opinion...

P.S.: Again no funny poll.

[Alyeska]

Many thanks on the spoiler warnings and explanation for early viewing. I will wait until tomorrow.

[Batman]

Let me get this straight. We germans got to see this BEFORE you people in the US do?

[CaptainChewbacca]

Let me get this striaght...

Batman is GERMAN?!

[adam_grif]

I'M NINETEEN AND WHAT IS THIS? DAMN YOU GERMANYYYYYY!!!!!!

Let me get this striaght...

Batman is GERMAN?!

CaptainChewbacca: World's Greatest Detective.

[Batman]

I was under the impression that the fact that if I WEREN'T actually Batman (which of course, I am )I'd be german was common knowledge. My apologies.
And if I DID get the season finale before the lot of you that's moderately strange.I'm used to being about a half year or so BEHIND.

[tezunegari]

Muhahahaha!!!
First time ever that Germany got to see an episode from a US show before the American population as far as I know at least.

I'm used to being about a half year or so BEHIND.

Surprisingly since episode 11 they have shown the SGU Season 1 episodes about a week after the US air date.

No waiting for months between episode 10 and 11.
But then again the german dub sucks most of time.

[Batman]

But then again the german dub sucks most of time.

No kidding. I've given up on the translators ever getting the difference between neural and neutral (for ANY SciFi series) but excuse me? 'Leiten Sie die Atmosphäre ein?' That's sort of the EXACT OPPOSITE of what they were actually doing?

[Alyeska]

I told you it was the F*cking star. I knew it.

[Mlenk]

Dammit! We have to wait all the way till October now!

[JME2]

Decent season finale; not really wowed by it.

Still, they're in an interesting place to pick things up in October.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I'm calling it right now, Telford is alive-but-wounded and faking, and they're gonna lose TJ's baby. I liked Eli in this episode, he was being pretty dang heroic for an overweight nerd. That Chloe KNOWS how Eli feels, and HAS known, but hasn't done anything is rather depressing.

And, looking at the promo for next season, it looks like the Luciens are gonna be around for quite a while. Anyone else get the sense that the guy they patched up is going to be the voice-of-compromise in october?

[JME2]

I'm calling it right now, Telford is alive-but-wounded and faking, and they're gonna lose TJ's baby. I liked Eli in this episode, he was being pretty dang heroic for an overweight nerd. That Chloe KNOWS how Eli feels, and HAS known, but hasn't done anything is rather depressing.

And again, it'll make things interesting if he survives. I agree TJ's baby is an ex-baby.

And, looking at the promo for next season, it looks like the Luciens are gonna be around for quite a while. Anyone else get the sense that the guy they patched up is going to be the voice-of-compromise in october?

Varro.

Yeah, it looks like it'll be continuing for at least a couple of episodes. Definitely will make things interesting.

[Alyeska]

I am betting whomever they don't space, kill, or abandon, will join the crew. There are plenty of Lucians for them to decide to integrate some or keep them prisoner.

[Covenant]

1 out of 5 stars, a terrible doormat of an episode after last episode's excellent buildup.

The energy monster is, in fact, magic radiation that sets people on fire. The reason that Destiny hasn't re-entered FTL is the power of plot. And of course the shields are failing.

Young doesn't go in hard like he seemed he was going to, and thus we get no resolution. Chloe is useless again, and her reveal isn't surprising. How could she not know? Eli wasn't bad in this epsiode but I found his plot popping in too early. I would have rather focused on other things until Eli finds the console and emailed Rush his location. Oh well.

I didn't want baby drama and it looks like baby drama is coming, regardless of how, due to shot-to-the-gut. A redshirt or two get killed. If Telford is dead I'll be pissed since he's my favorite character (and actor) for the moment, and what a terrible way to write him out if he does die. Keeva going in alone (the leader going in alone against a possibly flipped agent?) and not telling anyone about her suspicions is just lousy writing to force more drama.

All in all, I'm incredibly disappointed. The mystery is gone too early and too blandly, there seems to be very little chance of cooperation before lots more boring and tedious posturing between these two apes in command, and they wedged in a few moments of pure "ugh" that are sure to leave a messy stain as they're dragged into the next season. When Admiral Adama snarled at someone it felt calculated. When Young yells at his science team it looks like he's having a tantrum. Why couldn't they have shot him?

[AndroAsc]

Young really fucked it up this time... ok and he was damn fucking unlucky too.

Nice to see that our SG heroes can make really shitty mistakes at times. And the LA has been portrayed as decently competent so far. Good to have a competent villian.

[adam_grif]

I told you it was the F*cking star. I knew it.

Wrong! Two stars! You loose!

Of course. It was the negative space wedgie of the week, because if it was going to be the guy they would have totally given it away by including him disappearing on the PREVIOUSLY ON ANGSTGATE UNIVERSE . I wonder if he's even going to be brought up at any point in the future.

[NecronLord]

The energy monster is, in fact, magic radiation that sets people on fire. The reason that Destiny hasn't re-entered FTL is the power of plot. And of course the shields are failing.

You know, I don't find it that hard to believe that radiation can burn people. Nothing really magic about it.

Keeva going in alone (the leader going in alone against a possibly flipped agent?) and not telling anyone about her suspicions is just lousy writing to force more drama.

Why did you get the impression that she suspected him? I thought she was just going in, saw him doing something suspect, and drew on him.

[adam_grif]

You know, I don't find it that hard to believe that radiation can burn people. Nothing really magic about it.

The magical part is that it disintegrates people entirely, but doesn't even give minor burns to the people standing 2 feet to the left, nor does it show any sign of having an effect on the hull of the ship. Now, I know none of this is partiuclarly out of hte realm of possibility given stargate science, but it certainly gave the appearance of something that somebody was doing deliberately, and not crazy random happenstance.

Point is, everything looked as though it had been flawlessly set up to implicate the guy who disappeared as watching over them as part of the ship (somehow). There appeared to be intelligence behind it, and it seemed to be favoring the crew of the destiny (burning a Lucian Alliance guy instead of say, a Destiny crew redshirt). Then, there was the mystery behind why the FTL drive wouldn't work. Wow, maybe the intelligence is also doing that for some reason! No, it's just another crazy coincidence that the FTL drive broke, because the plot says so.

It would have been 10x better than the shit we got, and neatly died up that loose end.

As it stands, this episode was tedious, and a tedious cliffhanger is not something I really care to watch. The character moments with Chloe and Eli were ok, but still fairly awkward to watch. The "action", if it can be called that, was mediocre. The plot wasn't resolved, and instead they put us on another cliffhanger. Great. I know that's Stargate Season Finale standard fare, but unfortunately I found out in this episode that I don't care about any of the characters.

Without context, I'd probably give this episode a 2, but given that I really enjoyed the leadup and this represents a crushingly disappointing middle chapter of a 3-parter, I'm going to rate this a 1. It's the Matrix Reloaded of 3 parter middles.

This is the first 1 I've given so far.

[Alyeska]

The magical part is that it disintegrates people entirely, but doesn't even give minor burns to the people standing 2 feet to the left, nor does it show any sign of having an effect on the hull of the ship. Now, I know none of this is partiuclarly out of hte realm of possibility given stargate science, but it certainly gave the appearance of something that somebody was doing deliberately, and not crazy random happenstance.

Radiation is Line of Sight. In addition, Radiation capable of doing significant harm to squishy human tissue won't necessarily damage metal in immediately visible ways.

Read up on it.

[Covenant]

You know, I don't find it that hard to believe that radiation can burn people. Nothing really magic about it.

My original comment was "set people on fire," since unlike a radiation burn it seemed to actually burn them like the Blaster did to the Flammable Mister Grevious in the star wars prequel. The effects of radiation are pretty fucking horrific and well known as-is, so seeing him go into seizures and collapse on the floor, hemorrhaging and blistering as if he was burned--but not turning into ash or getting visible 'flame out' kinds of effects... that woulda' satisfied me. It just didn't look like radiation burns at all.

I guess I saw it and went "Oh, that's not just normal radiation, that's something really serious!" and got real excited. It really set it up as some kind of really horrible goings-on, so having it just be gamma radiation seemed like a cop-out. I mean, they've flown through a star before and didn't have anything like this happen, so I was kinda expecting some kind of horrible space monster that they'd all have to fight in a bit more literal sense.

Why did you get the impression that she suspected him? I thought she was just going in, saw him doing something suspect, and drew on him.

She pulled that gun mighty fast. He wasn't doing anything suspicious, he was just at the console. The other guy who was in there was just at the console, and he had previously notified her of a power conduit fail. Isn't it reasonable to assume he walked over to look at it? It's not like Telford twisted his arm, so it was probably reasonable.

So that would be a pretty stupid thing to no-comment pull-and-fire on him, as well as for him to do the same. She can't see what he was doing on the console, it's far away from her and it was facing away. Plus she was looking at him. She clearly just walked around the corner, pulled, and fired in one swift motion. Telford did the same so he musta' known his goose was cooked, because that would be a fucking fast reaction time otherwise, and you'd think he'd throw his hands up and go "Keeva, what are you doing!?" instead of shooting her if it were a simple case of "I'm just manning the door-opener until Timmy gets back!"

[adam_grif]

Radiation is Line of Sight. In addition, Radiation capable of doing significant harm to squishy human tissue won't necessarily damage metal in immediately visible ways.

Radation capable of literally disintegrating somebody in seconds is going to do something. That's some serious dosage, and one would expect substantial amounts that hits the floor to scatter, or be absorbed and so on.

Yeah yeah, it can be handwaved away as ancient hulls are special and shit.

As Coveneant says, that it can even get through the shield is fucking astounding given that they regularly fly through stars.

[NecronLord]

The magical part is that it disintegrates people entirely, but doesn't even give minor burns to the people standing 2 feet to the left, nor does it show any sign of having an effect on the hull of the ship. Now, I know none of this is partiuclarly out of hte realm of possibility given stargate science, but it certainly gave the appearance of something that somebody was doing deliberately, and not crazy random happenstance.

Point is, everything looked as though it had been flawlessly set up to implicate the guy who disappeared as watching over them as part of the ship (somehow). There appeared to be intelligence behind it, and it seemed to be favoring the crew of the destiny (burning a Lucian Alliance guy instead of say, a Destiny crew redshirt). Then, there was the mystery behind why the FTL drive wouldn't work. Wow, maybe the intelligence is also doing that for some reason! No, it's just another crazy coincidence that the FTL drive broke, because the plot says so.

So, basically, you want a god-plot in there?

More seriously, while it doesn't equate to the known effects of radiation exactly, it's really not clear what's going on except that bits of his flesh become burnt, cut away, and after that he's cremated. It's not accurate, but it's not as crazy as zat-vaporisation. I for one definitely got the impression of it being some kind of radiation from outside the ship.

It would have been 10x better than the shit we got, and neatly died up that loose end.

I disagree. Personally, I rather like the loose end; I'm assuming the guy ascended, and Destiny is meant to contain the secrets of ascension.

As it stands, this episode was tedious, and a tedious cliffhanger is not something I really care to watch. The character moments with Chloe and Eli were ok, but still fairly awkward to watch. The "action", if it can be called that, was mediocre. The plot wasn't resolved, and instead they put us on another cliffhanger. Great. I know that's Stargate Season Finale standard fare, but unfortunately I found out in this episode that I don't care about any of the characters.

Well, there's no disputing taste, but I like them. Failures though they are.

[NecronLord]

She pulled that gun mighty fast. He wasn't doing anything suspicious, he was just at the console. The other guy who was in there was just at the console, and he had previously notified her of a power conduit fail. Isn't it reasonable to assume he walked over to look at it? It's not like Telford twisted his arm, so it was probably reasonable.

So that would be a pretty stupid thing to no-comment pull-and-fire on him, as well as for him to do the same.

She saw he was up to something suspect, drew, he drew too, and she thought 'gun pointed at me, fire' hardly seems that far fetched. I would assume Telford, whom she doesn't trust, has no business being at a console. People in stressful situations having trigger fingers really doesn't bother me.

[JME2]

She pulled that gun mighty fast. He wasn't doing anything suspicious, he was just at the console. The other guy who was in there was just at the console, and he had previously notified her of a power conduit fail. Isn't it reasonable to assume he walked over to look at it? It's not like Telford twisted his arm, so it was probably reasonable.

So that would be a pretty stupid thing to no-comment pull-and-fire on him, as well as for him to do the same.

She saw he was up to something suspect, drew, he drew too, and she thought 'gun pointed at me, fire' hardly seems that far fetched. I would assume Telford, whom she doesn't trust, has no business being at a console. People in stressful situations having trigger fingers really doesn't bother me.

And to be fair, it looked like she was already suspicious of Telford in the first half of the episode. In my eyes, Telford simply miscalculated how suspicious she was when he took out the module.