Stargate Universe S2E15 "Seizure"

[NecronLord]

Somewhat rushed, as my home computer has a really annoying virus at the moment.

This week's poll is themed after 'capture' (I tried to do one with the other meaning of seizure but couldn't get enough) and ordered by how bad things look for Earth in any given episode.

[dragon]

half way and damn cool use for the Stones. Granted hell to pay later though.

[Themightytom]

half way and damn cool use for the Stones. Granted hell to pay later though.

Son of a BITCH! I am in the middle of writing a fan fic that uses that trick as the surprise strategy, they beat me to the punch!

[TimothyC]

4/5, yet more reason to hate Rush, even if it wasn't his fault in this case.

[JME2]

4/5, yet more reason to hate Rush, even if it wasn't his fault in this case.

Yeah, I sympathize with Eli. I'm more than a little pissed that we've lost Ginny and Perry again -- though I had a feeling something like the search parameters would occur now that Perry was in the system.

It was good to see McKay and Woolsey again. Appreciated the mention of Sheppard and the brief reprise of the Atlantis theme when McKay walked in. Sorry to see no mention of Jonas; he can't catch a break.

[Lord MJ]

Wondering if the Ori occupation of Langara happened or was it retconned away?

[Darksider]

something I don't get about this whole undeclared war with the Lucien alliance. Stargate command has never been the solely reactionary type of organization, and Earth has more than enough military resources to at least hurt the alliance a little bit, so why are we seeing entirely defensive measures being undertaken? Shouldn't SG teams be out there blowing up Alliance drug convoys like in season 10, or BC-304's out there using their fancy Asgard beam weapons to hunt down lone Lucien Ha'taks. Homeworld command is letting the alliance decide the pace of the war. The enemy just tried to set off a multi-gigaton nuke in your capital. It's time to hit back with everything you've got.

[NecronLord]

The Langarns were...cool. Turns out that you can't just pull that shit in democratic government. It was a rampantly dickish idea to try and take them over though, and I'd be unsurprised if they join the Lucian alliance because of it. The Langarns also seem to maintain economic and technological relations with the Tok'ra too, which may result in their taking more... precautions against future infiltration.

Shouldn't SG teams be out there blowing up Alliance drug convoys like in season 10

Why would they not be? We wouldn't see them.

Wondering if the Ori occupation of Langara happened or was it retconned away?

Presumably it happened and the Ori guys left.

[Darksider]

Why would they not be? We wouldn't see them.

I'd just like to see some indication that Earth is retaliating is all.

[Chris OFarrell]

Soooo Summery?

[Chris OFarrell]

Why would they not be? We wouldn't see them.

I'd just like to see some indication that Earth is retaliating is all.

Yeah, honestly for all the talk of Earth being vulnerable to various sneak attack options and so on, Earth could utterly DESTROY the Alliance if the order was given for an all out war, and frankly, Earth has been given more then a few reasons to stop holding back.

Or even if it was established that the Alliance is now very factional, with a 'radical' group being the one who keep trying to get access to Destiny because they want that Ancient database to try and give their group a leg up against their enemies, after they saw what it has done for Earth.
Where as the rest of the alliance are far more busy fighting each other, and in fact think that the 'radical' group is going to kill them all by finally pushing Earth one too many times. And even that some of the groups have moved past the criminal thug stage to actually be turning into somewhat decent alliances of planets that Earth just might be able to work with.

There is so much I'd like to see about what is going on with the Alliance and MW politics (to say nothing of all the blatantly unanswered questions the writers are clearly NEVER going to answer) but they are going out of their way to say nothing about them....

[dragon]

4/5, yet more reason to hate Rush, even if it wasn't his fault in this case.

Yeah, I sympathize with Eli. I'm more than a little pissed that we've lost Ginny and Perry again -- though I had a feeling something like the search parameters would occur now that Perry was in the system.

It was good to see McKay and Woolsey again. Appreciated the mention of Sheppard and the brief reprise of the Atlantis theme when McKay walked in. Sorry to see no mention of Jonas; he can't catch a break.

At least they only placed into quaratine and not out right deleated.

[Lonestar]

Yeah, honestly for all the talk of Earth being vulnerable to various sneak attack options and so on, Earth could utterly DESTROY the Alliance if the order was given for an all out war, and frankly, Earth has been given more then a few reasons to stop holding back.

Huh?

There are only 4(ish) 304s by the time of SGU. Overwhelming technological superiority does not mean jack if you don't have enough hulls to go around. Figure at least one in extended maintenance at any given time, that immediately drops the availability to 3. So now you have three on hand for the defense of Earth, Earth's allies, and whatever other missions might crop up. The Milky Way(and outside the Milky Way!) is simply too big for an effective offense to be done with 3 or 4 BCs. The Ori had more and couldn't Blitz the Milky Way.

[TimothyC]

4/5, yet more reason to hate Rush, even if it wasn't his fault in this case.

Yeah, I sympathize with Eli. I'm more than a little pissed that we've lost Ginny and Perry again -- though I had a feeling something like the search parameters would occur now that Perry was in the system.

It was good to see McKay and Woolsey again. Appreciated the mention of Sheppard and the brief reprise of the Atlantis theme when McKay walked in. Sorry to see no mention of Jonas; he can't catch a break.

I'll be rewatching but both McKay and Woolsey were played with all of the Atlantis character development still there, which was nice to see.

Summary:

The SGC wants to use Langara as a forward resupply base, but the Langarans - having seen the two worlds that were used to send people to Destiny go Kaboom don't want to. McKay has a new dialing algorithm that should reduce the chances of a kaboom, but they still don't want to. It seems that the SGC has put listening satellites in orbit around Langara and the Langarans have been talking with the Lucian Alliance, and the thought of the Lucians being able to send large forces to Destiny is something that doesn't fly well - and an infiltration is authorized.

McKay, Wolsey, and unnammed SCU guy go to Langara, Bearing gifts, 'developed by the Ancients themselves' (the communication stones). They swap the Captain in charge of security at the building with Scott, and the administrator with Young, bring in two SG teams, and get to work.

It takes time for McKay to get the Langarans and their "Pitiful excuse for a mainframe" to be set to dial a nine-chevron address, and in the meantime enough things don't add up to cause a number of Langaran troops to be sent to the facility, and as the noose tightens, Young (in the administrator's body) and Woolsey go to the administrator's office to figure out what the Lucian Alliance has been offering. It turns out that while the Lucian Alliance has been offering more and more to the Langarans for cooperation the Langarans have continuously said no - for fear of damaging their alliance with Earth. Ooops. The main plot ends with Earth leaving Langara, the Langaran gate getting removed from the power facility, and Earth agreeing to a technology transfer, but no attempt to dial Destiny.

The B-Plot consists or Rush uploading his mind into Destiny so that he can get some sex with Perry (Perry's idea), but he gets stuck because Perry's end-game conditions were that they loved each other, and this created a glitch or something. Perry blocks out Ginn for all but a brief period because the only way to get Rush out is to put Ginn and Perry into quarantined memory, thus keeping them from interacting with the crew.

As an aside, the McKay-Eli interaction at the start was golden, and it went just how I would expect it to go.

Edit: Oh and Greer was a bit of an idiot and went for a run while still recovering from the surgery (he still has an infection). He gets ordered back to bed by Young and TJ.

[Themightytom]

Vanessa James got a few moments in, first with Rodney being a tool, then a chance tto show her doing her job when the Langarans stoned in, and at the end she is credited with the best idea of the day. Showing the Langarans around Destiny.

Rush... Rush Rush Rush... I don't know whether he lies to himself, lies to everyone around him or just plain can't see the truth anymore.

MAYBE destiny's understanding of love follows the Youngian "Unconditional positive regard" Model. Meaning if Rush loved Perry he'd never want to leave, and would thus be able to. Interesting as a paradox.

Telford's reset is complete. He is back to being a singleminded undercutting douche, made worse by the fact that he STILL feels entitled to command Destiny even though both times the ship was in a sun he has abandoned her.

Nice trickle down clusterfuck. Telfords arrogance triggers Young's poor judgement triggers Scotts lockstep.

I see a rift between Eli and Rush. Good. Because there can't be anything more traumatizing thant Robert Carlysle leaning over a table and talking about sex.

What the hell is going on with the way TJ treats Grear? Little sister? Infatuation? Wtf...

[JME2]

At least they only placed into quaratine and not out right deleated.

True. But we likely won't see them again before the end of the series, so it sucks.

Again, I was expecting something like Perry's search parameters given her character history. She loves Rush and now she has full mobility, albeit in a limited capacity.

[dragon]

TJ is the medic. I've know a few medics and nurse like that as soon as you become a patient they tend to smoother you. One medic I knew used to always curse me out hated my guts, I then spent a week in hosptial with pneumonia, but while I was waiting ambulance to pick me up from the base clinic she all smoothering like. Then when I came back from the hospital she was a bitch again.

[tezunegari]

There are only 4(ish) 304s by the time of SGU.

Earth has build a total of 6 BC-304s.

• Daedalus
• Odyssey
• Korolev (Russia, rushed into service and destroyed during the Ori arrival)
• Apollo
• Sun Tzu (China, damaged in the Atlantis finale)
• George Hammond

So, at the time of SGU they should have 5 BC-304s.
Three active, one as defense in the home system and one off-duty for repairs.

I'm now going to hide in a dark corner of the cellar for knowing this stuff without the help of a wiki.

[PREDATOR490]

5

Pretty good episode and much better than I expected storywise.
This episode pretty much indicates dialing Destiny IS possible now but the political aspect is there. Thus the show has ample opportunity to develop a nice bit of homefront drama between Earth and the LA competing to win over the folks that have the keys to the supply line. Overall, the failure was guranteed but the way this episode was done was entertaining enough to make the journey worthwhile.

Still no indication about Atlantis or anything beyond brief glimpses of the Milky Way / Pegasus which is a disappointment.

Mckay / Woolsey - Nice having them as cameos but that is all it was. I would have been more impressed if McKay said yes to going to the Destiny when he was offered. Not to mention the show skipped out on a McKay vs Rush scene which I find outright shameful.

Yeah yeah, Rush was 'tied up' elsewhere which just reeks of the show trying to avoid the situation with McKay and Rush going at it.

The Perry / Rush aspect was a bit weak and the ending really pisses me off to no end.
Okay, they needed to be zipped up to get Rush free but that dosent require them to be locked up permanantly. Just dont enter the simulation again which allows Perry and Giin to continue interacting with the crew.

Even then, the simulation is only broken because Perry made a mistake in her programing from what it seems. Change that and the simulation can potentially work without issues. Just dont put 'Love' as a requirement for the simulation to be completed.

How about just making it: Ship gets destroyed = simulation over

All this episode really accomplishes on this front is the lazy writing out of two characters that could easily provide massive amounts of help to the Destiny crew.

However, with the series going into the bin anyway and the ability to dial Destiny being tied up behind politics.
Seems rather obvious the ending to Destiny can be summed up with:

Earth dials Destiny, sends loads of folks over including tons of equipment. Maybe a ZPM etc.
Equipment is used to dial back and voila - Series over

Simple enough fanfic could pull this off without much issue. It just becomes a situation of how long you want to play out the drama with conflicts and political wrangling from the LA etc.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Does it seem to anyone else that Earth is putting a lot more attention/resources into Destiny than they should? If they're fighting an 'undeclared war' then perhaps fucking over one of your few allies to get people onto a ship is NOT something you should be doing.

[Themightytom]

Does it seem to anyone else that Earth is putting a lot more attention/resources into Destiny than they should? If they're fighting an 'undeclared war' then perhaps fucking over one of your few allies to get people onto a ship is NOT something you should be doing.

Yeah, prior to this my perception was that Earth seemed Destiny centric because we were only seeing the support team for destiny, which was essentially Telford, some schmuck airman for disposable bodies, and the odd consultant. You never REALLY saw Earth over invest directly in Destiny until very recently.

When Colonel Telford Returned To Earth. the guy is driving the movement. They committed two SG teams and that was it, in terms of SGC personell. They endangered an alliance that was really not providing anything, and they did so under the impression that the Lucian Alliance had reached the Langarans. under those circumstances,
Telford's impression.

If they have a nonproductive alliance suddenly becoming a liability and it does seem reasonable to either a. Take the chance while they have it, or b. try to persuade the langarans who are not listening, they're going to act accordingly, but it seems apparent that Telford set that situation up, either as a result of being overeager to return to Destiny, or some other motive I don't know.

This was what Woolsey was opposing. he saw that they were jumping the gun, he realized that Telford was pulling the strings and he tried to avert it within the scope of his authority.

On that note, this is a plausible direction for Woolsey's character. He is not necessary as Commander of Atlantis, given that they are no longer in the Pegasus galaxy and no longer in need of his diplomacy skills. This confirms my suspicion that whatever else happens to Atlantis in the movie is supposed to be shoe horned retroactively into the time line, it wasn't moving Atlantis back to Pegasus.

With Atlantis on Earth, anybody can run it as essentially either a research base, or an SGC. I favor research base personally because you know what, they blew up ten thousand year old relics on a regular basis, and even if they managed to get it repaired good as new every time, that's advanced technology they should really not be putting in harms way unnecessarily, especially when they could be scouring it for technology and knowledge and what not. If they ever DO reveal the stargate program, Show Everyone Atlantis, that is the best justification for expense and secrecy ever.

McKay was actually likeable the whole episode. I actually felt bad for the guy when he eagerly began his presentation and the fucking Langarans cut him off.

That was fantastically rude, and a major part of why I wasn't feeling bad for them when they got body snatched. How in the hell the SGC concluded stealing a body was going to go over well is just beyond me, that's like the worst kind of violation, and a clear demonstration that Earth is ready willing and able to compromise their security whenever they feel like it. I cannot figure out why General O'Neill would sign off on it, and how Woolsey wasn't able to deep six the operation via the IOA.

[NecronLord]

Why would they not be? We wouldn't see them.

I'd just like to see some indication that Earth is retaliating is all.

Yeah, honestly for all the talk of Earth being vulnerable to various sneak attack options and so on, Earth could utterly DESTROY the Alliance if the order was given for an all out war, and frankly, Earth has been given more then a few reasons to stop holding back.

The writers seem to be operating on the assumption that the Lucians have up-teched to a point where it'd not be a roflstomp. They should of course, show, not tell, this.

[Lonestar]

Earth has build a total of 6 BC-304s.

• Sun Tzu (China, damaged in the Atlantis finale)

So, at the time of SGU they should have 5 BC-304s.
Three active, one as defense in the home system and one off-duty for repairs.

I'm now going to hide in a dark corner of the cellar for knowing this stuff without the help of a wiki.

As far as we know the Sun Tzu was a completely loss(at least damaged enough that the crew had to be evacuated), which is why I only counted 4.

It doesn't matter if you had more warships at one point, All we know for sure is that there are 4. So one off duty for maintenance, with the other 3 being used for whatever(for all we know one is on regular deployment in the Pegasus Galaxy to track Wraith activity).

[Chris OFarrell]

The writers seem to be operating on the assumption that the Lucians have up-teched to a point where it'd not be a roflstomp. They should of course, show, not tell, this.

Its still extremely sloppy writing honestly. Especially when we look at the Lucians and who they actually are, and the fact that the few sceintists they actually get their hands on will just get a bullet to the head if the local leader is feeling miffed for whatever reason. The odds that they could even START to close the gap between Earths ROFLSTOMP level and their grabbing of as much leftover Goa'uld crap as possible is just stupid, when the Odyssey should be able to cheerfully go hyperspace jumping through Lucian space and simply vaporize anything it comes across, drop the occasional horizon on the few major Lucian planets...

But even if the Writers DID want to handwave them as more powerful, its absurdly EASY.

Just have a flashback where Telford gets into the Odysseys Asgard core and politely asks Thor to download onto a standard Goa'uld crystal some upgrades for Goa'uld Ha'Tak based shield, hyperdrive and engine core technology, while he was brainwashed.

End result, oh crap. Telford then was unable to gain any more access to the core due to new security procedures, but the Lucians were VERY interested in this kind of technology...and this whole 9 Chevron theory where they might be able to get access to an Ancient database of the same type gets them VERY interested...

[NecronLord]

There are a ton of ways to make them into something that could stomp earth to the kerb, or anything between, not least, say, having them have flat out captured Odyssey, accessed another Asgard database, have them run by some mercenary priors who took over...

As you say, sheer laziness that they've never justified this.