SGU S02E07 The Greater Good (SPOILERS)

[PREDATOR490]

4

Compared to most of the shit SGU has pulled in slow-pacing this one was at least decent but even then I really fucking hate what is coming.

Giin getting killed was telegraphed from the first episode simply because any relationship that goes into 'overdrive' like that usually ends up being of the 'short lived' variety. Throwing Eli's shirt in her room and his scene with Chloe just upped the ante because now we have 'established' Eli is 'close' with her and now can fall further when she gets offed.

There better be some seriously good reasons for this happening because I find it beyond stupid an LA member can pull this stunt especially when Greer supposedly has an eye on him. Oh right, we spent a good time foreshadowing Greer looking to take him out and suddenly the plot requires everyone to turn a blindeye. Then again, this entire crew seem like a complete bunch of retards when it comes to noticing things to suit the script.

'Hey, wheres Rush ?'
'Fuck knows, hasnt he been disappearing alot lately ?'
'Yeah and the ship keeps acting all fucking wierd lately, Connection ?'
'Nah, I'm sure Rush is just in that corridor writing on the walls and would have NO reason to lie to us'

Contrived and ultimately a pointless waste of TWO decent characters. Instead we can now have Rush AND Eli becoming angst driven nutcases. Frankly, I dont give a shit if the 'nerd' manages to 'get the hot girl' but this has all the makings of taking out decent characters, generating more angst and generally putting bullet holes in whatever chance Eli had at being non-whiny Chloe-obsessed bitch. Joss Whedon did a far better job at pulling this stunt with Tara in Buffy by having the character around for a good amount of time. Incidentally, leading Willow to go apeshit and having a fairly decent end to the season. Here it seems we are going to have a character get knocked off in time for the mid-season break.
Who wants to bet they are going to pro-long the angst generated for the rest of the season ?

However, all that can really be done is say a royal fuck you to the writers but well done for creating a situation that is going to emotionally hit a lot of SGU watchers.

Beyond that:

Centre of the universe, complex code...

Sorry, hearing that shit just made me think of Mass Effect Reapers and I would find that one of the ULTIMATE storylines imaginable if they pulled that off.

Ancients / Earth: 'Hey, we sent out a ship to make contact with the maker(s) of the universe because we think a supereme being(s) like that MUST be benevolent'
*We are the Reapers, we are now going to purge your entire existance*
Rest of the Universe: 'Thanks a fucking bunch Tau'ri / Ancients, as if it wasnt bad enough you keep sticking your noses into shit and bringing down wrath on the poor bastards around you. Now you go and do it again with 'god' like beings. What the fuck didnt you learn from your 10+ years of experience in contacting beings with 'super' powers ?'

I never really liked Ascension but compared to what this episode is trying to convey, I would take ramblings about Ascension happily.
Seriously, your trying to find 'God' / 'Meaning to life' ?

I have serious reservations about how thats going to EVER pan out and NOT suck. Alternatively, they are going to try and do the same thing Andromeda did ' The universe is alive, we have Avatars of Suns, Blackholes, Light, Dark, Moons... *puffs heavily on the drugs they are smoking* and somehow our 'valiant' explorers find themselves looking for the meaning to life ?

SGU was really in a shitty position at trying to one-up over the previous shows by having some 'grand' mission for the Destiny but come ON. THIS is what your going to try and pull ?
If they did introduce somesort of Reaper Gods... that might be fun with the potential for seriously good battle-porn like Mass Effect but I'm finding it more likely this show is going to chicken out quickly and do a lame 'nobody knows, make your own conclusions'.
The alternative: The show tries to force some mythic 'God' like nBSG that ultimately makes an utter mess of everything.


Another thing to note: The situation with the spinning ship was completely underwhelming and frankly insulting.
Our Kino is damaged but another one is floating around the ship somewhere - Uhh, use the fucking remote to bring it back ?
OR
Have folks on the Destiny send up another Kino - Its a good thing you have a shit-ton of them and neither ship is GOING anywhere, eh ?

Oh no, instead we will rely on Eli to do his 'math superpower' that lets us jump out of the ship and hopefully land on the ship and not fly off into space. This episode was heavily contrived on every level and while contrivance is to be expected in any show... doing it like this just makes your 'tense drama' look utterly stupid.

[Kamakazie Sith]

However, all that can really be done is say a royal fuck you to the writers but well done for creating a situation that is going to emotionally hit a lot of SGU watchers.

If anyone is emotionally effected by that episode the emotion should be anger for horror movie level execution. Seriously, these people are starting to display competency of Jason movie victims. You can't really feel sorry for anyone that is just oblivious to the obvious.

Oh no, instead we will rely on Eli to do his 'math superpower' that lets us jump out of the ship and hopefully land on the ship and not fly off into space. This episode was heavily contrived on every level and while contrivance is to be expected in any show... doing it like this just makes your 'tense drama' look utterly stupid.

I got the sense that they were trying to imply that Eli was attempting to murder Col. Young because Eli says "he jumped early". I thought he jumped right when Eli said jump.

[JME2]

I got the sense that they were trying to imply that Eli was attempting to murder Col. Young because Eli says "he jumped early". I thought he jumped right when Eli said jump.

Why this interpretation? As far as I can see, Eli has nothing to gain by getting Young killed.

[PREDATOR490]

Oh no, instead we will rely on Eli to do his 'math superpower' that lets us jump out of the ship and hopefully land on the ship and not fly off into space. This episode was heavily contrived on every level and while contrivance is to be expected in any show... doing it like this just makes your 'tense drama' look utterly stupid.

I got the sense that they were trying to imply that Eli was attempting to murder Col. Young because Eli says "he jumped early". I thought he jumped right when Eli said jump.

I actually got the same vibe funnily enough.

It might be a problem with the cutting but the way it played out Young seems to have jumped exactly when Eli said and Eli's reaction when Young said he was fine... seemed more 'Fuck, he made it' rather than 'Phew, he made it'

Barring the fact Eli has no reason to actually do this, if your going to try and kill Young... I would hope Eli would be SMARTER at doing it.
Even with Young jumping early... he still manages to be hitting the Destiny unless your SERIOUSLY telling me Eli is capable of planning the entire outcome of the jump to the point Young will bounce off the deck and fly off into space.

Only to be undone by Rush...

If you really wanted to kill Young, just tell him to jump at a point where he dosent hit the deck at all...
Although I still dont see how that is an instant K.O. for Young.
The shot makes it look like Young MIGHT just manage to fly all the way down the hull to the rising superstructure or simply pass it.

In which case, they bring the Destiny around / park the thing and send a Kino / Rush to get him.
The only issue that might occur is Young getting fried by the Engines as it overtakes him but otherwise the entire situation seems overly done for no reason but to promote 'drama'.

[Kamakazie Sith]

I got the sense that they were trying to imply that Eli was attempting to murder Col. Young because Eli says "he jumped early". I thought he jumped right when Eli said jump.

Why this interpretation? As far as I can see, Eli has nothing to gain by getting Young killed.

It's probably what Predator pointed out that it was just the way the scene was cut. I agree, there is nothing to gain. If anything Eli seemed to be part of Col. Young team if you divide them into Rush vs. Young.

[CaptJodan]

4

Good god, if that was a 4 with that kind of rant afterward, I don't think I want to see what you put for what is coming.

If anything, I thought, the way it was cut, Young stepped off a tad late. I was surprised they went with "early" in that scene.

[adam_grif]

with the potential for seriously good battle-porn like Mass Effect

Mass Effect doesn't have any good battle-porn. The only good thing about the battles is that they have great music, but that is drowned out by the stupid space dog-fighting, pew pew "guns" and the beached whale cruisers flinging glowing blobs at each other.

[PREDATOR490]

4

Good god, if that was a 4 with that kind of rant afterward, I don't think I want to see what you put for what is coming.

If anything, I thought, the way it was cut, Young stepped off a tad late. I was surprised they went with "early" in that scene.

I disagree with the direction they are taking this show but the episode itself isnt that bad relative to some of the other episodes.
At the very least this episode is moving things forward and being somewhat more clear-cut rather than the slow-paced crap S1 kept doing. If I am going to watch a show I would at least like to know what the fuck is going on or if I MUST turn my brain off be visually entertained.

Watching dream scenes that do fuck all except waste time or endure awkward 'romance' arcs that just make you want to switch the show off out of boredom are considerably more annoying to me than watching Young beating Rush up or getting some half-decent indication the writers intend to have this be a SCI-FI show and not a soap drama.

As for the scene, Young definetly stepped off early from what I can see.
I presume if he had jumped off later he would have flown at the Destiny hull at a much more direct angle and hit the deck with feet down like Rush.
Instead, by jumping early he appears to hit the deck with his back and bounce.
Either way, I still think the situation was rather silly.
They have another Kino and a remote control but apparantly making it go 'search mode' makes it unreachable...
or they are on such a deadline they cant wait to get it back / send up another one.

If the timer was running, ok that makes sense but since they have control of Destiny now they should be able to stop it from jumping. They have as much time as the suits have air and there is no way those things should be running out of THAT from what we saw on-screen.

[CaptJodan]

If the timer was running, ok that makes sense but since they have control of Destiny now they should be able to stop it from jumping. They have as much time as the suits have air and there is no way those things should be running out of THAT from what we saw on-screen.

I actually agree with this. When they said "We have no time to look for the Kino" I thought "wait a minute...what?" Rush claims to have complete control over Destiny's systems now. That means no more countdown clock. The alien ship wasn't going anywhere. The characters didn't know of any hostile threats on the way.

The suits were said to drain power while the wearer wore them, but they didn't have them on that long. Nor was the ship's life support so far out. I'm really not sure why they said "we don't have time", other than lazy writing.

It says something about Ancient engineering though. Build a hover device that can independently search an area, but make sure it can't retrace its steps back home if requested to do so. This is, after all, at least the second time this has happened.

[NecronLord]

It says something about Ancient engineering though. Build a hover device that can independently search an area, but make sure it can't retrace its steps back home if requested to do so. This is, after all, at least the second time this has happened.

Why on earth are you blaming the keno, and assuming they know how to operate all its functions? Ancient engineering is pretty good. Note that the kenos still work.

[CaptJodan]

It says something about Ancient engineering though. Build a hover device that can independently search an area, but make sure it can't retrace its steps back home if requested to do so. This is, after all, at least the second time this has happened.

Why on earth are you blaming the keno, and assuming they know how to operate all its functions? Ancient engineering is pretty good. Note that the kenos still work.

Because it's obvious that the Keno is a simple technology. It was mastered by Eli in the first few minutes of the first episode. They've found functions on the Keno that are more complex than "hover here", such as recording and the actual search mode. You're suggesting that either the Ancients made it much more complicated to push the "come back" button than it is to record, fly around, or search on its own, or that the characters are too stupid to figure this out after months of Eli fucking with it.

If the Ancients created an interface that has "go search on your own" easy to find, but then in that sub menu didn't put "return" as a easily found function, then the ancient who designed them sucks at human factors. More likely is that the Keno, for some reason, has to be manually flown back.

[hongi]

The extreme negative of Ginn's clear demise is balanced out by giving a bit more clues to the question that has been bothering me since the start, ie why do people like Rush and the LA want this ship. I think the answer so far is still a little too vague, and if I were Young, I'd probably say "screw the meaning of the universe bullshit that may or may not create something practical, assuming we're even close enough to our destination for us to be alive to see it, I want to go home". From what little Rush said, there's really no reason to believe that they will even be alive long enough to find the answer to the puzzle. But it still is a significant enough answer to justify why other groups have such a hard-on for the ship.

Rush said that finding the answers to what the Ancients were looking for would allow them to 'right the wrongs'. Rush wants to bring his wife back. Or is that just me?

I liked Mandy. Damn. I actually liked seeing a disabled person on tv, and she was practically the only one who liked being on Destiny because she had full use of her body there. That dynamic was really interesting. Oh well.

Also, I didn't realise that the end scene meant that they were going to kill Ginn/Mandy off until I read it here, although I guess it's the only thing that makes sense. I thought that Simeon would torture Mandy to find out if she betrayed any info, because he didn't really believe that she was who she said she was. Good job writers, it blindsided me.

[PREDATOR490]

I really dont get that logic...

Rush clearly knows about Ascension, as a scientist he should have access to research and data about SGC's encounters with Ascended beings & technology. Becoming an Ascended being grants you an unknown amount of power but certainly more than anything a human can do. If Rush wants to 'right the wrongs'... it would be more prudent to try and Ascend or build a fucking time machine, hell the Stargate has even been demonstrated to have this kind of functionality and Rush knows about it.

Instead, Rush apparantly decides to vest his hope on an unknown chevron on the far reaches of fuck knows... because its going to... fuck knows... to discover fuck knows. Rush hasnt exactly been the most coherant individual but this entire premise is insane. Unless Rush knew what Destiny's mission was before they even arrived.
In which case we have spent 1.5 seasons sitting in the dark when logically Rush AND the SGC should know what Destiny was doing.

The only other conclusion is the SGC are so fucking retarded Rush was the ONLY one allowed to research whatever information they got about the Ninth Chevron and where it lead to. If the SGC and Rush knew... there really is no excuse for it taking this long for anyone to be told.
Information which seemingly the Lucian Alliance gained access to by preparing an expedition months to a year in advance and then 'convieniently' attacking right as they solve the ability to dial the gate.

Even with all that aside, I find it bizzare the SGC would be so incredibly stupid to undertake ANOTHER expedition like this when the last time they dialed an 'unknown' address it resulted in a monumental shitstorm with Atlantis or attempting to communicate with some 'Ancients' via the stones resulted in an Ori invasion.
Yeah, I'm sure its a REALLY good idea to have a bunch of misfits on the edge of the universe on a ship that is supposedly trying to find 'GOD'

[CaptJodan]

I'm not at all convinced yet that Rush or the SGC knew what Destiny's mission was. It seemed when Rush started looking through the pages, he was learning about the mission for the first time. "ship is aptly named" and all that. Rush probably knew Destiny was monumentally important for some reason. He probably got hints about what it might be. Remember that the LA dudes had some information as well, though the info Ginn gave was just about as vague and ultimately meaningless.

No, I don't think the SGC or Rush had the whole picture. And I don't think the SGC ever really intended this expedition to go without knowing they could come back. It seemed like it was probably going to be a more reasoned and thought out expedition before the naquadria planet went boom. What actually gets me is the part you talked about in the beginning, that Rush would go this far for a lot of "fuck knows". He's clearly unstable, and it's clear that the hope of Destiny was always something he put a lot of...dare I say...faith into.

Man, so far, he hasn't treated any version of his wife nearly as well as he treated Perry. At this point, I have a hard time believing he loves her as much as we are supposed to believe.

[PREDATOR490]

I would love to see the conversation that takes place in SGC when Rush is made to repeat what the Destiny's mission is...

If that dosent cause the SGC to go into SERIOUS overdrive, then they really are a bunch of morons. A bunch of misfits stuck on an out of control ship - fair enough, we can take our time. Worst case, they all die and we lost a ship.

A bunch of misfits stuck on a ship thats supposedly heading towards 'God' or discovering secrets that can grant super powers - I would think every single resource imaginable would be slapped into fixing up Destiny and figuring out a way to fix the entire situation. I cant believe anyone would think having people like Rush, Everet or Lucian Alliance personnel becoming the 'ambassadors' of the human race to God or becoming Gods would be a good idea.
Worst Case: God turns out to be unimpressed and goes genocidal or these misfits become superpower freaks like the Ori or Goa'uld

The reality is, SGU is really dooming itself to becoming a train wreck if they continue with this sort of thing. If it turns out Rush is lying AGAIN, seriously... why the hell arent they using the stones to get QUALIFIED and TRUSTWORTHY personnel on site ?
Even if he ISNT lying, I would STILL be getting anything he says triple checked and Destiny worked over top-to-bottom. The SGC clearly wanted to go to Destiny at some point and one would suspect they thought whatever was on the other side would be worth investigating. Now you have the possibility this ship has some real significance which would warrent investing time and personnel via the stones to figure out if Rush is actually correct.

[Sarevok]

By the way is there any word on if Telford is coming back or not ? No one seems to mention him anymore. They lost a major character and...just forgot he existed.

[Adrian McNair]

By the way is there any word on if Telford is coming back or not ? No one seems to mention him anymore. They lost a major character and...just forgot he existed.

This summary seems to imply that he'll be back-
Spoiler

2.10 - RESURGENCE

All is not as it seems when Destiny follows a remote energy signature that leads them to a sea of damaged and lifeless ships.

Destiny detects a remote energy signature originating from an area outside its set course. Dr. Rush believes it could be coming from a potential new power source or could be a sign of intelligent life arguing that whatever is out there could prove to be of great benefit to the crew and Destiny's mission. Col. Young reluctantly agrees and permits Dr. Rush to manipulate navigation and take Destiny off course.

After a day in FTL the ship reaches a sea of wrecked ships, the carnage of a centuries old battle. With no visible signs of danger, Lt. Scott, Msgt. Greer and Volker set off in the shuttle to take a closer look. Eli uses Destiny's systems to recreate a simulation of the battle only to discover the debris is not what it seems.

Chloe succumbs deeper to the alien infection, knowing she poses a greater risk the longer she stays aboard the Destiny. But when a lost friend comes to the rescue it's no longer Chloe's alien abductors the crew has to worry about.

On Earth, Eli struggles with how to tell his mother the truth about what has happened to him. Wray (MING-NA) takes leave to visit Sharon but finds the distance is starting to take its toll on their relationship.