SGU 105: Light (Spoilers)

[Themightytom]

Does that shuttle seem practical? I suppose Destiny has some kind of processing plant on board to make fuel for it, but I still would ahve expected it to be capable of catching up to Destiny on its own OR having more independent features. Admittedly for all we know theres a tractor beam up on the bridge and the team has just been using the gateroom out of necessity. Now that the powers up i hope they do some exploring and identify some more of Destiny's capabilities.

It's a shuttlecraft; I dont think it is designed to do more than go down somewhere and come back up, and certainly not rendezvous with a starship accelerating out-system preparing to jump to lightspeed. It aint the Falcon

I suppose the shuttle is actually really redundant to a people who ahve stargates.

[Bilbo]

I suppose the shuttle is actually really redundant to a people who ahve stargates.

How is that? The stargate quite obviously only goes to planets with stargates. Lets say a crew of Ancients did go to Destiny and got curious about a planet that one of the gate dropping ships had ignored. How would they investigate? I guess they could land the entire Destiny on the planet, hell it it can fly through a star then landing on a planet should be childs play. But it would make more sense for them to have a shuttle for sending small teams somewhere.

[JME2]

Destiny was odd in not waiting to retrieve her shuttle; perhaps they need to be manually logged out from one of the control rooms before she knows they've left?

But honestly, Destiny has demonstrated vastly more complex AI than anything we have seen walking around the the Ancients which wasn't the Replicators. Obviously the Ancients had precursor tech w.r.t to AI, so maybe this is an example?

That or the knowledge was lost during the move to Pegasus and it took them time to regain it. Anyway, I like this AI. It's giving the ship itself a degree of characterization that sadly, Atlantis as a city never really achieved.

And yes, I doubt we've seen the last trouble making from Sergent Spencer.

Overall, a good episode; not much more to add.

5/5

[Xon]

After the mess with the Replicators, the Ancients might have backlashed and removed or nerfed a lot of AI systems.

[Aeolus]

Saw it again on replay this afternoon --- did anyone else notice what looked like structural damage to Destiny`s starboard 'wing' leading edge in the shot where she was boosting clear of the star? (Beyond the wear n tear look, this kind of looked like ragged beams and structural members exposed)

Yeah the whole ship is tore up. It's also longer than I had thought.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Well It's pretty much how I predicted it would go down when I saw darkness the week before...

other then that it was good.

[CaptJodan]

Another solid episode for me. Despite the fact that the solution to their problem was pretty obvious, the episode entertained.

The sex scene grated on me a bit, if only to remind me that they are trying to be more like BSG. However, it wasn't quite as "graphic" (I use the term loosely) than the first episode, and really, I know this dislike comes from being conditioned to look for BSG look-alike behavior, so it can ultimately be overlooked. But damn that religious boy gets around.

The religious bit doesn't annoy me, and I join the others who don't understand the criticisms being leveled here. If this show starts trying to put Christianity as the one, true religion, then I'll freely join in the criticism of the direction the show goes. But what they've done so far seems very consistent with what the majority of the English speaking population would do, and I have no problem with it.

And if we were being realistic about the situation, then people should have been praying during the dire times on Atlantis (Adrift would have been a good place for many to take it up).

The one bit I just don't much understand is the accusation that Rush knew all along. I don't understand the motive Rush would have. I can see if perhaps he suspected that it might be the way the ship retrieved power, but not that he knew with a confident certainty. What would be Rush's motive for lying?

-If getting most of the military personnel off was the goal, then once he saw that most didn't get to leave (IE, his plan failed) then he should have gone to Young and told him there might be a chance.
-If he wanted the crew that was picked gone, then why come up with the idea in time to bring them back? They were on the clock, and all he had to do was not come up with the slingshot idea long enough for them to be unable to return.

I realize that the ship is really all Rush cares about, but I don't see how the entire plan they had furthers his goals. Even if getting rid of 15 people did further his goals, then why help bring them back?

I'm more inclined to believe that Rush might have suspected, but because of morale and the off chance that he was wrong, chose not to bring up the possibility. On the other hand, his reaction when finally figuring it out leads me to believe that he's either a great liar and actor when he wants to be (and since he shows no signs of doing a good job of either most of the time, that's hard to swallow), or he really was surprised the ship could do what it did.

[Gramzamber]

Honestly the ship has been doing what it's done for millions of years, even if they aren't aware of the exact time scale they know it's a really freaking old ship.
Why is it so suspicious that one of them suspects the ship is not, in fact, commiting suicide after so much time surviving? Frankly I think it's odd more people didn't bank on the ship knowing what it's doing.

[Bilbo]

Honestly the ship has been doing what it's done for millions of years, even if they aren't aware of the exact time scale they know it's a really freaking old ship.
Why is it so suspicious that one of them suspects the ship is not, in fact, commiting suicide after so much time surviving? Frankly I think it's odd more people didn't bank on the ship knowing what it's doing.

One can assume that most of the people of importance in the group have read the various Stargate mission reports. In particular mission reports from the Atlantis team would be very important. This being said there would be a mission report form when they found the very old Weir that tells them that only by altering history did the Atlantis Expedition survive. If not for that everyone drowns as the Atlantis shield fails and the city is crushed by the ocean.

If Rush or anyone else had this in mind they may just expect that their arrival would doom the ship by causing it to suddenly expend the last of its energy keeping them alive. I mean an actual crew of Ancients would be expected to return with portable power supplies and other equipment. In fact that failure of Atlantis may have been intentional. Leaving the city to destroy itself if anyone other than a crew of Ancients who bring ZPMs with them is a defense against Wraith gaining access to the city. Janus alters this by reprogramming the city because he has knowlege that is it humans who are the first to set foot in the city.

[Tychu]

I love the names the internet is giving to the characters.

Lieutenant Christfag
Lieutenant Hooters
Colonel Boring
Doctor Lesbian (not actually a doctor)

I don't really remember their names either, I think the Colonel is named Young.

Who is Lieutenant Hooters and Doctor Lesbian? I never had any inklings that the Med Officer Johannson was a lesbian. Just because she has short hair?

[Zac Naloen]

Thinking about it Dr Lesbian could be (don't open unless you want to be spoiled seriously) Spoiler

Camille Wray, was a doctor on ER for years and it was announced her character isn't straight a whileback

[Soontir C'boath]

The one bit I just don't much understand is the accusation that Rush knew all along. I don't understand the motive Rush would have. I can see if perhaps he suspected that it might be the way the ship retrieved power, but not that he knew with a confident certainty. What would be Rush's motive for lying?

-If getting most of the military personnel off was the goal, then once he saw that most didn't get to leave (IE, his plan failed) then he should have gone to Young and told him there might be a chance.
-If he wanted the crew that was picked gone, then why come up with the idea in time to bring them back? They were on the clock, and all he had to do was not come up with the slingshot idea long enough for them to be unable to return.

I realize that the ship is really all Rush cares about, but I don't see how the entire plan they had furthers his goals. Even if getting rid of 15 people did further his goals, then why help bring them back?

I'm more inclined to believe that Rush might have suspected, but because of morale and the off chance that he was wrong, chose not to bring up the possibility. On the other hand, his reaction when finally figuring it out leads me to believe that he's either a great liar and actor when he wants to be (and since he shows no signs of doing a good job of either most of the time, that's hard to swallow), or he really was surprised the ship could do what it did.

Another problem with the accusation is that most if not all the supplies were loaded into the shuttle which would make surviving without them mute.

I'm going to guess the writers and producers thought it was a good idea to create tension and all but they didn't realize to fit it with a complementing situation.

[saveyour]

goddammit mathboy, HOW COULD YOU LET THIS HAPPEN?!



this just goes to show there are worse things then being stranded on a decrepit ancient starship with a crew of obviously "the wrong people" limited food/water and no villians to fight... being freind-zoned on top of it all.

[JME2]

Regarding Rush's motivations, its possible that the Doctor was trying to deflect the stigma surrounding him and instead transfer it to the military. As we saw last episode, many of the civilians and military grunts don't trust Young or his subordinates -- hence why they tried to pump Eli for information. Even if Young took himself out of the lottery, it was still his idea and despite their survival, people like Spencer will likely hold a grudge. Deflecting that mistrust and anger leaves Rush free to concentrate on unlocking the secrets of the Destiny and being able to spend less time watching his back.

Regarding Wray, is anyone else kind of wishing that they had just carried over Shen Xiaoyi from SG1/SGA? I'm tempted to label her again as a stereotypical IOA bitch, but we've barely gotten anytime to explore her character yet.

[Covenant]

You know, there are worse things than having a friend on the ancient starship. One of those things would not be having a friend. Honestly, I hate Chloe as a waste of a character, hate her Dad and the Mom (who I hope we never see again) and wish that entire subplot could entirely disappear. I liked the idea of the soldierboy with his other girlfriend who he was trying to hide his fraternization with a lot more than this "I've failed in the past, I'm too horny to handle myself" subtext that underlies the current out-of-the-blue sex scene, and I hope it doesn't become a love square or anything like that, goddammit. She's not even attractive to me. I would have been more generous to the character if she hadn't given that nonsensical "I feel more close to you..." line, since a desire for last-minute sex is different than instant romance. I would have felt just as annoyed if she'd gone for Eli, who I wish would stop acting like a toddler and quit it with the Kinos.

I think the starscoop, of whatever method, was too predictable. I would have at least liked them to discuss the possibility of it being a scoop before deciding that no, they're going to pancake into the star, not skim it--and then for us to be surprised that it stardives for power. I would have also liked if, though this would have been impossible, the shuttle had been left behind. Filled with useful characters, it would have been hard, but it woulda' made things a bit more interesting if there was a bit of a consequence. Would have also made Chloe feel bad for being so sad about not being picked, and I hate Chloe, so that woulda' improved my viewing experience.

I still like Rush and Greer. The first is maintaining a kind of Doctor Smith status, and I get the feeling that Icarus was not at all like Atlantis, but instead most similar to one of these side-missions that SG:1 often bailed out after the latest "Ancient Research Outpost" with the Universe Saving Device starts to vacuum up spacetime or something. I really want Rodney to connect to someone, like Young, and while complaining profusely about the pain and Rush solve a few of the problems and let us see that while Rush is quite brilliant he's still not the same caliber as some of the people before him. That, more than just telling us, would let us know these are not the "right people," if even Rush is simply not up to the task. And please, someone shoot Chloe, or give her a defining character trait other than bedwarmer and emotional angst dispenser. Oh, and come on, we have the 'son' of a priest and a few people praying, this is not heavy-handed religion. This is showing stress amongst the crew. Give it a little room before we launch into All Your Gods Are Snaaaaakes! reactionary mode.

[Zac Naloen]

I'm not really seeing where all that Chloe hate is coming from Covenant, but you are more than entitled to your opinion

I really like her character, she's useless, she knows she's useless so she's just hanging on to the two Males showing an interest. I'm hopeful her story is how she goes from being useless to being useful and I'm looking forward to that at the moment. Her being the emotional crutch is understandeable at this point.


Just watched the episode again, and going back to the Young accusation towards Rush.

When Young is listing off the all the reasons Rush deserves praise, when he gets the line "I was injured, you made a real sacrifice" Rush actually shakes his head, ever so subtley. Youngs demeanor changes completely after that.

Given what Young knows about Rush, that's he a difficult son of a bitch with seemingly no care for anyone he immediately assumes the worst. Given what we know about Rush (he still wears a wedding ring I just noticed as well) we know he's lost his wife and was quite probably more than willing to die with destiny as the only thing left to him was finding that ship. Staying wasn't a sacrifice to him at all.

[Alyeska]

Funny. Googling LT Nipples and SB.com and SD.net both show up on the first 10 hits as entries.

[Lord Insanity]

For all the complaining about the prayer, I can't believe no one pointed out the joke made about those praying right before that. One of the guys playing cards says when asked where is everyone: "All the fun people are here."

[ZGundam]

Destiny was odd in not waiting to retrieve her shuttle; perhaps they need to be manually logged out from one of the control rooms before she knows they've left?

Alternatively Destiny might have been smart enough to know it was still posible for the shuttle to make it back. It is a little suspicious that a gravity slingshot gave the shuttle just enough velocity to get back.


:edit: Bah, you pointed the same point out just a little later before I read the rest of the thread.

But honestly, Destiny has demonstrated vastly more complex AI than anything we have seen walking around the the Ancients which wasn't the Replicators. Obviously the Ancients had precursor tech w.r.t to AI, so maybe this is an example?

Would it be too much to say that MAYBE he's right? And maybe the AI that runs the ship is either based on an Ancient who built the ship or an ascended Ancient IS the AI?

Farfeched I know, but an idea of where it might go?

[CaptainChewbacca]

For all the complaining about the prayer, I can't believe no one pointed out the joke made about those praying right before that. One of the guys playing cards says when asked where is everyone: "All the fun people are here."

I laughed at that part. I also was glad to see that someone's deck of cards made it through the evacuation of Icarus base.

[JME2]

For all the complaining about the prayer, I can't believe no one pointed out the joke made about those praying right before that. One of the guys playing cards says when asked where is everyone: "All the fun people are here."

I laughed at that part. I also was glad to see that someone's deck of cards made it through the evacuation of Icarus base.

Yeah, it's good to see the ol' Stargate humor -- although it won't officially be Stargate humor for me until they make their first Wizard of Oz crack...

[PREDATOR490]

If Destiny was to be given an AI system like Andromeda had for its ship computer then I could see that working rather well. Even a cheap version like Zen from Blake 7 strikes me as entirely feasible from the way things are going at this time.

Now that the ship is operating at better capacity then we should find out in short order if the ship is simply nicely programmed or it has some element of intelligence.
I'm guessing the former because the latter creates access to an element which would be even more damaging than those stones. They wouldnt need to call up Carter or Rodney when they have the solution to the ships operating problems ready to tell them exactly what they need to do.

I quickly want to see that 'countdown' aspect removed because it serves no purpose except to generate more 'tension' and 'suspense'. SG-1 tried this at the start and I was equally unimpressed then about it as I am now. As the show progresses they will no doubt start messing around with systems, hell they even mentioned looking at the weapons so it strikes me as extremely convienant they will either ignore or be unable to change the automated control of the ship for an entire season at least but gradually learn how to work everything else.
Once they gain control of the navigation systems it is basically a case of telling Destiny to backtrack it's steps all the way home. Incidentally, this allows them to pick up their lost crew members and gets alien protaginists to enter the scene when Destiny comes back into their space.

On the subject of aliens, I'm curious if we are actually going to see ALIENS in this new series rather than having galaxies filled with civilisations seeded by the Ancients. In which case, are we going to get aliens with 10 heads or is it just going to be ST style aliens which are basically all humans with minor face ridges that speak excellent English ?

[Revy]

If Destiny was to be given an AI system like Andromeda had for its ship computer then I could see that working rather well. Even a cheap version like Zen from Blake 7 strikes me as entirely feasible from the way things are going at this time.
Now that the ship is operating at better capacity then we should find out in short order if the ship is simply nicely programmed or it has some element of intelligence.

I mentioned in a previous thread that I thought this might be a possibility, and I'd especially like it if it were like Andromeda (we've even seen Ancient holograms of people, which could open the door to a new actor/character in the show).

I'm guessing the former because the latter creates access to an element which would be even more damaging than those stones. They wouldnt need to call up Carter or Rodney when they have the solution to the ships operating problems ready to tell them exactly what they need to do.

My suggestion was that either the AI is damaged (its memory might have been partially erased or it might have simply suffered physical damage to its components - we know the ship has physical damage to it), or that it doesn't speak english and can only communicate directly in Ancient. If no one on the ship can speak Ancient, getting help from the AI might not be so easy. Imagine trying to understand Jack in the Fith Race episode without Daniel.

On the subject of aliens, I'm curious if we are actually going to see ALIENS in this new series rather than having galaxies filled with civilisations seeded by the Ancients. In which case, are we going to get aliens with 10 heads or is it just going to be ST style aliens which are basically all humans with minor face ridges that speak excellent English ?

They said in one of those behind the scenes specials which showed here after the first two episodes, that they specifically would *not* be doing Trek rubber-forehead english speaking aliens, and that the aliens they (the actors) had seen so far were all CG.

[Ford Prefect]

If there were to be a ship avatar or whatever, could we, I don't know, get a dude for the role? I'm sure there are exceptions, but as a rule all ships seem to be women.

[Dralan]

First of all I gave this episode a 4. I enjoyed it quite a lot, and think this is a nice change of pace from SGA. Getting to know the characters this way is refreshing. And we have loads of potential for development here.

My suggestion was that either the AI is damaged (its memory might have been partially erased or it might have simply suffered physical damage to its components - we know the ship has physical damage to it), or that it doesn't speak english and can only communicate directly in Ancient. If no one on the ship can speak Ancient, getting help from the AI might not be so easy. Imagine trying to understand Jack in the Fith Race episode without Daniel.

My guess is that either the AI is damaged or shut down all non needed functions when energy reserves became low so that it could do a little bit more of its mission before taking a detour to refuel itself. To be honest I think its actually a combination. Some parts of the AI is damaged just as some parts of the ship is. As such the AI probably have an emergency AI support unit that can take over in case of unforseen events but the backup unit is not really designed to run a ship like Destiny for any length of time.

Could be interesting if there really is an advanced AI that the crew can help repairing. Guess we will have to wait and see. And I am also interested to see what sort of threat removal systems the Ancients have put in to deal with potential raiders since Destiny would be crewless for a great many years.


As for characters development this episode will probably change the group layout abit. Lt Nipples and a few of the others who were chosen will probably be greeted with a healthy dose of sceptisism by the others of the group that felt left out of command structure and who does not trust Col. Young.

It brings joy to my heart to se that the IOC member here is just as much an asshole as all the other IOC members I have seen and hated before

As for predictions I have a sneaky feeling that we are going to see a full mutiny led by that useless piece of shit soldier that was knocked out this episode and some of his "friends" soon, that will lead to the death of atleast one of the more likable characters.. I am as always a pessimist