Stargate Universe S2E17 "Common Descent"

[NecronLord]

Yeah. I got nothing for fancy poll options this time.

[dragon]

ok now let see a few dozen survivors with no resources thrive and build a civilization of millions but a several hundred survivors with resources are barely making it.

That and the crew of the destiny wouldn't even have enough genetic diversity to not result in problems.

edit hum as weak as those drone blast were against the ground destiny must have crappy shields and armor to get damaged by them.

[dragon]

crap turned my head for a couple of second and missed it, how the hell did the ring get destroyed.
Spoiler

That and Novus had enough resources they could survive a nuclear winter

[CaptJodan]

crap turned my head for a couple of second and missed it, how the hell did the ring get destroyed

The drones took it out....somehow. We saw it happen. I can only assume that the gates the seed ships are producing are far, far less robust than the gates in the milky way. Otherwise, that was perhaps the stupidest thing ever. Stargates are damned robust, and the blasts of energy that the drones fired at the settlement were pathetic. There's no way a shot like that should have taken out the gate unless it was made of much, much weaker materials than the old gates (or their weapons are based on some kind of magic that is really effective at blowing away Naquada, but shit for making large holes in dirt).

The episode seemed rife with technical flaws. I don't know anything about genetic drift so I don't know if their number would have been enough to start a viable colony. The gate's destruction was an oddity. I also wasn't fond of the eventual explanation for why the drones were following them. Really? Gate dialing? That's pretty flimsy. Finally, I found Scott being able to shoot down a drone (from the distance we see, no less) pretty out there. These things must have no shields, though I swore I saw shields flare before they were destroyed in the first episode where they debuted. Maybe not. Still, at that range with a fast moving target just with a rifle...pretty ridiculous.

However, I'd call this episode good despite it's technical flaws. The story itself worked for me. I enjoyed the fact that they pretty much knew that they were going to be screwed bringing all those people aboard, but that they really had no choice after the events of basically bringing death and destruction to their descendants' planet.

Volker and Brody continue to be the comic relief (Rushia had me laughing, as were the jibes about the stupid names).

The implications of having more humans out there creating an entire civilization was good. Assuming genetic diversity could have somehow been maintained, two thousand years, along with the knowledge the people brought to the table, certainly should be enough to get the ball rolling on a civilization that could span millions and have cities. But I guess we'll learn more in the next episode.

Gave it a 4.

[Themightytom]

So, Rush as the Devil was fantastic. That is a total nightmare for an atheist I would imagine, a society of people worshiping you as the Devil.

"Futura? isn't that a font?" was pretty much the line of the episode in my mind, though Rushia was a close second.

Ummmmm why was Chloe stroking TJ's shoulders while they watched alternate TJ give birth? Do girls do that, cause it seemed a little odd. Kind of Awkward for TJ with Young showing up as the daddy huh? Guess Varlo doesn't work out in the alternate Universe, which is odd, actually as his hunting skills would have made him kind of a go to guy.

Grear only got a few minutes, but he used them to blow up drones, as a nice follow up to his... not as good shooting against blue man group ins "Space" and he got third place for one liners "Betty seems nice"

Wray... you... I... did she just dial the charm up to thirty for this episode? OO I have tea! I have a heritage and... somehow...all of that survived
and with WHOM?
It was Eli wasn't it. It was. Siiiigh Eli. lonely Eli.

The drones canNOT be that formidable of they were shooting them down with your average rifle. I'm going to assume that the Stargate's made by the seedships are NOT the Naquedah based ones we see on Atlantis and in the Milky Way. This might explain their more limited range anyway so it's convenient.

Um did they just say "Well we can't use the stargate for a while" on Stargate Universe? Yup, good thing the shows ending, that would have gotten old real quick.

The expedition they found on the planet, clearly had not quite given up on getting back. They were still living in tents? Making no real attempt at a permanent settlement? What the hell people, it's been thirty years, give it a go. The whole
"Well there are two more settlements, but fuck it they're probably dead" isn't really scoring high on the pro activity index.






Why Are The Drone Ships Suddenly A Thing Again? They've been using stargates for several episodes, wtf...

[NecronLord]

Genetic Drift: The Huterites, a fringe religious sect, have remained viable for hundreds of years with a starting group of sixty persons, ostensibly without breeding outside that group (though of course that's probably not as rare as they'd like to say) without becoming deformed or anything, though they've a high insance of genetic conditions.

Some species of animal have survived and recovered from a population of twenty individuals, though obviously they have problems.

Destiny is a reasonably diverse group - especially as this would be when they had nine rather than four Lucian Alliance people, adding a non-terrestrial population to the gene pool.

A controlled breeding programme and, if they're really lucky, Alteran technology or knowledge they may have salvaged before leaving Destiny, would help of course.

Drones: In defence of their weapons power, they seem to have hit technological objects very precisely, it's possible they didn't need to use more power because they only care about it if it's generating electricity.

As for shields, there are at least three CGI models of drones, two of them are about shuttle sized, and one is the small one that they carried inside destiny. Presumably the small one, which I think the one Scott shot, doesn't have shields and (one of) the bigger ones do(es).

[JME2]

So, we enter the final four episodes of not only SGU, but Stargate.

Anyway, Robert C. Cooper has always been my favorite Stargate writer and we knew going in that this would be his last script for the franchise. I was afraid this would be a repeat of DS9's "Children of Time", but it was decent enough.

The "Rushia" and "Futura" bits had me laughing.

I'm still not crazy about the Drones. Again, AI antagonists have worn out their welcome in Stargate.

[TimothyC]

My younger brother: "Stargates do not work that way!" (In reference to the gate being damaged).
Me: "Really? A Futurama reference?"
Him: "What? I've never watched Futurama."
Me: "Still funny."

[Themightytom]

My younger brother: "Stargates do not work that way!" (In reference to the gate being damaged).
Me: "Really? A Futurama reference?"
Him: "What? I've never watched Futurama."
Me: "Still funny."

Little uh... little Irony there that they have visually depicted the Stargate ring broken, and it is thus somewhat symbolic of the franchise's status.

[NecronLord]

Little uh... little Irony there that they have visually depicted the Stargate ring broken, and it is thus somewhat symbolic of the franchise's status.

That may well be the last stargate we see. Wouldn't that be sad but appropriate?

[CaptainChewbacca]

I think I've read some futurist stuff about breeding populations in space colonies. To have a viable population you need at least thirty genetically diverse adults from different backgrounds. If you go single ethnicity, you need to double the population to avoid drift.

[PREDATOR490]

4

Decent enough.

The destruction of the gate really seemed off. Even if the gate is made of weaker materials, it channels considerable amounts of power and can potentially detonate with considerable destructive force. Interesting all it did was cut off the connection rather than cause the gate to jump, detonate.

Drone getting show down - This is exactly what happened with the Wraith getting shot down with small weapons fire. Between this and their shockingly weak firepower their threat level just got knocked down rather considerably. A standard X304 would mow right through these things without much issue.


Kinda saw the 'we want to come with you' thing coming a mile off although it wasnt that bad.

Destroyed civilisation - I was expecting the drones to have exterminated the planet but apparantly not. I'm actually of the opinion some of them got off-world and may be responsible for creating those drones.

The rest of it is mainly trival, standard humour, standard exposition and random bs 'hey, look TJ had a baby with Young'
I find it interesting they left off on the majority of who paired with who. I'm going to assume TJ was shown to create more suspense between her choosing Varro or Young.

As for not using the gates again - I call bullshit on this personnally. If they do decide to do that then I aint shedding any tears for its cancellation when they drop the one thing the franchise is know for. Not that they use the Stargate much ANYWAY between the ship-board melodrama and shuttle traffic.

[CaptJodan]

The destruction of the gate really seemed off. Even if the gate is made of weaker materials, it channels considerable amounts of power and can potentially detonate with considerable destructive force. Interesting all it did was cut off the connection rather than cause the gate to jump, detonate.

Really, we're talking about one flimsy gate here. If anything, gates have a tendency to be more stable when active and under strain. It's only when you really pump them full of energy that they tend to blow up. That level of energy is pretty high, basically gatebuster levels. The fire coming from the drones (at least that drone) was only a bit more than Jaffa staff blasts.

It makes sense that the gates may not be made from standard materials. There's no guarantee that naquida is a plentiful resource out where Destiny is, maybe the seed ships have to use other materials. That the gates just don't have the range of MW gates may be partly due to these substandard materials. You just can't channel that amount of energy into them.

Another aspect of Destiny that I noticed this episode that has also had a pretty solid trend on throughout the series is that the Destiny's sensors seem pretty sub par for most Stargate ships. Either no one was manning the consoles when the Destiny was attacked, or it took till people saw the ships visually before the sensors picked them up. Destiny also didn't seem to alert the crew of movement when they first met the drones in the debris field. They didn't seem to detect the drone mothership on this episode till it was right on top of them. They didn't try scanning the planet themselves, they had to rely on the shuttle for intel, which had to descend into the planet before it could get accurate readings. All and all, Destiny's sensors haven't impressed me.

[JME2]

Destroyed civilisation - I was expecting the drones to have exterminated the planet but apparantly not. I'm actually of the opinion some of them got off-world and may be responsible for creating those drones.

Yeah, someone on another board speculated that Tenera and Futura invented the command ship and drones to fight each other.

That would be a hell of a good twist.

[Alyeska]

Destroyed civilisation - I was expecting the drones to have exterminated the planet but apparantly not. I'm actually of the opinion some of them got off-world and may be responsible for creating those drones.

Yeah, someone on another board speculated that Tenera and Futura invented the command ship and drones to fight each other.

That would be a hell of a good twist.

Unlikely given the settlers on the colony did not recognize them.

[JME2]

Destroyed civilisation - I was expecting the drones to have exterminated the planet but apparantly not. I'm actually of the opinion some of them got off-world and may be responsible for creating those drones.

Yeah, someone on another board speculated that Tenera and Futura invented the command ship and drones to fight each other.

That would be a hell of a good twist.

Unlikely given the settlers on the colony did not recognize them.

Unless they were made after contact was lost with Novus.

Also, we don't how long the Ursini were at war with the Drones; it could easily have happened during those 30 years.

[Alyeska]

Unless they were made after contact was lost with Novus.

Also, we don't how long the Ursini were at war with the Drones; it could easily have happened during those 30 years.

I still find it highly unlikely given the circumstances. Such as both sides living on the same planet. Buildings still intact. If they were capable of building the space ships, then they shouldn't have worried about leaving the planet quite so much and would have contacted the stranded colony.

[JME2]

Unless they were made after contact was lost with Novus.

Also, we don't how long the Ursini were at war with the Drones; it could easily have happened during those 30 years.

I still find it highly unlikely given the circumstances. Such as both sides living on the same planet. Buildings still intact. If they were capable of building the space ships, then they shouldn't have worried about leaving the planet quite so much and would have contacted the stranded colony.

It's a bit of a stretch, I admit.

[spaceviking]

So were the purple plants discussed at the begining of the episode being used as dildos, or am I just sick?

[CaptainChewbacca]

So were the purple plants discussed at the begining of the episode being used as dildos, or am I just sick?

You're just sick. I'm guessing you could use them to get high or make booze or something.

[Adrian McNair]

Here are my thoughts for episode seventeen:
- This episode was an interesting example of how the passage of time can affect a civilisation's culture. Presumably matter of fact statements by Eli, Camille and others are transformed into gospel. Rush is both demonised and deified. My one gripe about the episode was that we didn't get enough Kino footage showing Novus' technological and societal development. I'm sure that will be rectified next week.
- So the other TJ ended up reconnecting with Young and bearing his son. Which is odd, given that their romantic relationship fell flat. It seems Varro didn't make a move in this timeline.
- Loved the bickering between Brody and Volker over "Futura" (and the running gag about it being a font).
- The drones returned. I guess they're not the "foe of the week" that a few of the detractors thought they would be. I predict that they'll be the major obstacle that Destiny has to overcome in the series final.
- The drone energy weapons are probably extremely focused, given that one shot was able to blow a chunk out of a Gate while the ground-based explosions were much weaker than a hand grenade detonation. It's par for the course really. Ship-mounted energy weapons in Stargate have never really had significant blast yields when being used against planets. An Ori beam weapon might have been able to penetrate a mountain but we've never seen anything that matches the destructive power of a nuke.
- Of course, this being a Stargate series the descendants of the second crew speak modern English without any major deviations to the language that would naturally set in after two thousand years.
- There were echoes of Battlestar Galactica's Revelations in that ending, albeit without the dramatic weight of that episode's conclusion. So much for Eli's hope that Destiny could be restored to its former condition. The implication was that even if that super-volcano hadn't erupted, the Tenerans and Futurans would have gone to war with each other over ideological differences (and no doubt the referenced nukes would have been involved). I doubt that the trip to Novus will be fruitless, however. They may well be able to scavenge something useful from the planet or gain some important information. At the very least this whole incident will have given them some additional people to help out on Destiny. On the downside that means more mouths to feed.

Four out of five from me this week. A solid slice of sci-fi. I could care less what the haters say (especially those who didn't even bother to start watching in the first place and wish to instigate flame wars regardless). I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

Some clips of next week's offering.

A promo:

That's a nice statue of Young:

[Alyeska]

The Modern English might be a result of the Kino footage.

[JME2]

The Modern English might be a result of the Kino footage.

Good point; I hadn't thought of that.

[NecronLord]

That second clip...

Dial down the power, good.

Sixty percent? Wha?

[JME2]

Little uh... little Irony there that they have visually depicted the Stargate ring broken, and it is thus somewhat symbolic of the franchise's status.

That may well be the last stargate we see. Wouldn't that be sad but appropriate?

Yeah, it's harsher in hindsight.