Just call this episode "all the proof you need that Telford is a giant prick and deserved whatever Greer did to him." That last scene especially, where he shows up at Young's wife's door.
Any other thoughts?
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
I'm getting tired of the whole "is Rush good or bad" gimmick. They keep trying to plant the seed of doubt by playing up the fact that he's an arrogant ass, but that alone is not enough to convince me.
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
Yeah, I'm really beginning to hate Telford. Posted by Josh (Member # 1884) on :
I was a little tired of Jaffa and Wraith killing, so when they said it was time for a more character driven show I was all for it, but this has been pretty crappy so far. Apparently character driven means has sex with other characters all the time and keep complaining they are the wrong people for the job.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
^Welcome to the human race!
Seriously though, I don't find Rush to be arrogant, per see. An opinionated pain in the arse to be sure but so far I've yet to notice him being wrong without admitting it, so I'd say that while his attitude may not make other people feel all warm and fuzzy inside he seams to know what he's talking about.
I have to admit my opinion is softened somewhat by the fact that I'm more or less the same way when something needs sorting and I know what I'm doing. Sometimes it actually helps to piss off your colleagues so they'll get the job done just to spite you (actually it's very effective as a training tool, if applied to the right kind of personality, I've found.) After all you're there to do a job, not make friends.
I'd actually say Young the the weakest link at this point and that while Telford certainly has an iron rod where the sun don't shine, I think he's right that Young isn't holding things together very well. As for the bit at the end with seeing Young's missus, either they had an affair too (which BTW looses her any sympathy I might have had) or he's there to say "the next time he shows up in my skin, please don't fuck him, it sickens me." Probably the former... Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
"After all you're there to do a job, not make friends."
That must be why I've never gone anywhere with my life Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
I'd say there's a third option to Telford turning up at Young's Wife's door.
He experienced a bit when the connection broke - and liked it - or he can rock up to her place and get easy sex pretending to be Young in his body.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
I doubt he's that shallow or that she's so easy to fool.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
How do you know he's not that shallow - he already seems like an arsehole.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
It's also possible that he's there to tell her that she was briefly having sex with him, so she will be put off from having sex with Young the next time he shows up. Or, maybe he just wants to see if he can get any information from her that he can use against Young.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
I agree with Andrew. That was my first thought when he showed up.
Posted by Josh (Member # 1884) on :
O'Neil seems a little out of character in SGU. He's become quite the paper pusher for a guy who used to talk about how much he liked sticking it "to the man". Even when he appeared on Atlantis as the head of Homeworld Security he still had that dry humour. Here that's absent.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Overall an excellent episode, reinforcing that even with the swap stones, they are still very isolated and can't really connect with loved ones except by proxy. Notes:
- Young and Johanssen made whoopee in the past, which explains why everyone was wondering why she was still around two weeks after she was supposed to go home. Young told his wife, which explains their strife (even though he still went back to work in a place where he can't come home in the evening to work things out).
- Young and Wray swap with Hamilton and Baldwin twice in this episode; we don't know what they get up to when they're on Destiny. I'd hope that they would try to make the most of each swap, and get engineers, scientists, computer experts and the like aboard when they can. OTOH, we still don't know how long they've been on the ship, so they may not have worked out a working system for the swaps yet. As we soon find out, there seem to be no regulations for what you can do with the body you swap into!
- The Pentagon hosts "Homeworld Command", which is a verbal cue to the SGC. No mention has been made of Cheyenne mountain, so we can assume that Landry is still tooling away down there - unless Atlantis is still somewhere on Earth, at which point their gate system would override the older Milky Way gates. The set itself is an apparent reubuild of the SGC briefing room set, down to O'Neill's office being set off to the side.
- Oddly enough, an airman scans everyone's ID tag barcode when they enter the briefing room. I have no idea if they do this in the real military, but I thought it an interesting touch.
- I love how the set designers continually try to convince us that this is a military installation by hanging pictures of planes on the wall.
- O'Neill continues to be the only guy wearing a custom black BDU in the style of what they wear at the SGC, not even the tighter black version on the Icarus base. Even the extras are wearing I guess if you're a 3-star, you pick what you wear, eh?
- Camille spends weeks aboard a ship eating BEIGE PASTE, and then refuses her boss's offer of a hot dog. Say what you will of hot dogs, it's GOTTA be better than beige paste!
- Camille's boss (Carlo Rota, currently also starring in "Little Mosque on the Prairie") wants to see the plan work. The IOA is always up to their tricks - here, they want everyone home if only to use the data from the attempt to enable a Daedalus-class ship to replicate the trick, thus enabling the original team to gate to the Destiny. Why the original team? Who knows, but it's certain that the IOA has some say in it.
- Eli suggests that the Destiny would be able to run around for several months before needing to go tar diving again. I wonder what that number would have been if she were at full capacity...
- There's no mention of why Eli and Chloe are going on this trip - was it their turn? We know there's a schedule. It's Eli's first time and Chloe's second. Has everyone else had a chance? And if it was obstensibly just to get Telford and he good looking goons on the ship, who told them to send Young and "two others"?
- Young was O'Neill's first choice to lead the expedition. Young turned it down, so he got command of Icarus and Telford anted up for the star role, who imediately wanted Rush off the team. Also, Young has been part of HWC or the SGC long enough to be looking up to O'Neill for "most of his career". I can see him as an SG team member or leader...
- Doctor Hottie immediately requests a change out of Eli's loose manchild outfit. He eventually ends up in a brown jacket - can anyone identify it? I'm sure it was some alien uniform from Atlantis or a later SG-1 episode, but I can't find a reference. Don't think it's an Ancient uniform...
- Eli called himself Philip Fry. Yay, another in-joke from the stereotypical sci-fi nerd!
- Wray hesitates on a hot dog, but Eli heads straight for the chocolate chip cookies, schnitzel and coke. Eli admits he's been losing weight since going on the BEIGE PASTE diet.
- COKE? I think this is the most intentional product placement in the franchise since the ubiquitous "The North Face" jackets anyone wore when it was cold. That, and Lulu Lemon.
- Likewise, this is the first time they've propped a real-life, current singer in this way, in this case grammy-nominee Janelle Monáe. Can't say I'm a fan.
- They still only have the two functioning suits to do repair work in the unpressurized parts of the ship. Goes to show that they can only do so much with what they have.
- So, transitioning between FTL and normal space interferes temporarily with the swap box mechanics; likewise, we see that the physical effects to the host body (i.e. alcohol) transfer to the psyche of the person inhabiting it. No one has said it explicitly yet, so there. But to put my two cents in, I'm thinking Telford feels as violated as Young feels guilty using his body to screw his wife. I know Telford's up to something by the end of the episode, but the noble part of me wants to believe that he just wants to tell her that he was there mid-coitus.
- Destiny finally gets to bare her fangs, unleashing her destructive power against the evil threat of EMPTY SPACE. We've never gotten very close looks at the hull from the outside, but here we find that many of the smaller bumps on the external hull are twin-barreled energy cannons of some kins. Note that these are NOT the larger turrets we've seen before, which do not fire. So these are the shorter-range defensive batteries, and we're saving the big guns for later? Or perhaps the big ones are projectile/missile launchers?
- We have a definitive location for the gate room, and contrary to what I was thinking last week, it IS the large box structure on the spine of the ship. However, to get to the shuttle dock or obs lounge you have to go DOWN from there as they are in a different superstructure and there's no apparent way to get there directly from that deck.
- Rush managed to convince at least a couple of the science nerds to participate in his conspiracy, suggesting he has SOME leadership qualities even though it's purely self-serving.
Mark
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Personally, I'm convinced that the "Is Rush Evil?" plot is a red herring. He's too competent, even if he's manipulative and conniving. Pulling energy directly and unregulated from a star into the 'Gate seemed like a bad idea from the very beginning.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
When three people are using the stones at the same time, do you think the computer matches up the genders as best it can, or do you have to use certain stones or apply them in a certain order (i.e. planning ahead on both ends) to make sure you get the right body?
Posted by bX (Member # 419) on :
I feel like it's a thing where its specific stones coordinate with others. Maybe something in the pairing...
So I found a lot to like in this episode.
I still have a big problem with how shy they are being about the technobabble. They danced around Rush's objections to their plan, rather than convincing me. Rush is a scientist. Last I checked, scientists like to cite evidence when proving theories--in fact, tend to distrust anything and anyone who makes bold claims without supporting them. It's maybe a peeve of mine. And really I don't want the episode to get overly bogged down with them talking about volumetric parameters of Naquada's absorbtion/dissipation capacity or accounting for the relativistic complexities of spatial expansion velocities in trans-galactic wormhole dynamics. But I do need just a little bit. To make it real. To make them scientists. To make them geniuses. To make them more than just moody archetypes lunging around in the dark and moping about the hopelessness of their predicament.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Or specific spots on the base? It's hard to tell if that base station is of Tau'ri construction or not. After all, the other communications stones needed that weird-shaped vase-like base station to swap consciousness..es.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
They mentioned early on that they reverse-engineered the base station to make it easier to move and use. So yeah, it's SGC designed.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
I'm surprised they'd managed to re-engineer it at all, though I suppose the Asgard core/matter replicator had something to do with it.
I do wonder if they've come up with a list of dos & don'ts when it comes to body switching and there must be certain considerations to take into account. For example if someone has a medical condition (pregnancy, epilepsy, peanut allergy, diabetes etc.) that they're either excluded from swaps or the person swapping into them needs to be fully briefed. I'm actually surprised Eli & Chloe were allowed to go out drinking (I know I'd be pissed off if some bugger left my body with a hangover when I got back) and I'm certain Young's nookie must have been against the regs. As for the glitching, they're just lucky that Eli wasn't still driving at the time, that'd be an excellent way to get someone killed.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Not just medical conditions, lifestyle choices. Like, vegetarianism for example.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Or religious beliefs that forbid the eating of certain meats, swapping with a practicing Muslim during a ramadan fasting, the list goes on.
Suffice to say I'll bet there's a huge amount of wavers and paperwork involved for anyone submitting to a swap.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
And speaking of do's and don't's, you'd think that Young's wife would've had some qualms about fucking her husband in someone else's body. After all, she doesn't get the benefit the viewers have of seeing the other actor...
Concerning the glitching, I imagine that now that they know about the problem, they'll have to implement further restrictions on activities, just to prevent things like the car accident scenario Rev suggested.
Posted by Josh (Member # 1884) on :
Screwing your spouse in someone else's body would be the ultimate form of cheating.
Posted by The Ginger Beacon (Member # 1585) on :
I'd love to see that form!
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
George Clooney better watch out Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Also wondering about how they get hard data back to the SGC. I mean some people have really good memory - but how the hell can they remember all the numbers etc for them to do significant research on what the ship does? Unless they remember a chunk - then turn on the machine and write it down back on earth then turn it off and so on and so on.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by Daniel Butler: Not just medical conditions, lifestyle choices. Like, vegetarianism for example.
Eventually, there will be the whole "evil alien/spy gets a stone and swaps bodies" gag.
Posted by OnToMars (Member # 621) on :
quote: - I love how the set designers continually try to convince us that this is a military installation by hanging pictures of planes on the wall.
That's actually pretty spot on to what military installations look like. They don't get all that imaginative in their decor.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Military homes too. Trust me I grew up on an army camp and it's pictures of tanks, missiles, aircraft, soldiers and decorative weapons everywhere. Especially the American quarters.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Heh, I stand corrected. The lack of same in Canadian bases (that I've seen) probably has a lot to do with our lack of actual weapons worth showing off, that we didn't design or manufacture.
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But to put my two cents in, I'm thinking Telford feels as violated as Young feels guilty using his body to screw his wife. I know Telford's up to something by the end of the episode, but the noble part of me wants to believe that he just wants to tell her that he was there mid-coitus.