Whaddaya know... A good episode with no "Is Rush Evil?" tacked on.
Destiny really does seem to have a mind of its own, assuming that it came to this planet specifically because it had a cure to the disease.
"What... the..." *commercial break*
The ending was a bit ambiguous, but I suppose Scott's plan had to work. Otherwise, there'd not be any more episodes.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
I really didn't like this episode. While the solution to the problem was creative, I think Star Trek has tainted time travel for me. Though on a lighter note, at least we got to see Chloe die twice. At perhaps I missed it, but what happened to Future Rush?
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
If you mean Rush who dove into the malfunctioning gate and went back to the past : When the kino went through, it saw him lying on the ground just past the gate. There was no explanation of what specifically happened to him, but that was presumably his skull they found next to the kino at the beginning of the episode.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
I completely disagree with MNW; I think this was an excellent way to handle time travel. Unlike Star Trek, in which the story usually seemed to have a semi-omniscient grasp of what was going on, SGU seems to be focusing on the various moments along the way rather than the procedural "fix the timeline" story. The time travel becomes a means towards an end rather than the whole point of the show.**
If this episode was done by Star Trek, they would've had a scene at the end of the "is everything all right?" vein to completely spell out that the problem was taken care of. And they probably would've had more setup at the beginning, too.
I think that this was a pretty insightful treatment of time travel. Consistent with previous instances (all the way back to "1969"), the story was internally logical and coherent (whereas some Trek time travel episodes weren't), and the twist of killing a bunch of people anyway in the second time loop was something that I didn't see coming until Chloe died.
My big question, which could either be a plot hole or a future story: why did the aliens seem to ignore Scott (for the most part)? In the first loop the one only bit him, didn't eviscerate him. And he was the only one to escape the last fight intact. Sure, that last creature was creeping up on him, but maybe it would've just bit him, too.
Finally, to follow up on Krenim's note about the Destiny, it's really starting to creep me out. It seems that the ship knows exactly what's going on and what is needed before the crew even knows that it's needed. But if that's not a future plot line, I don't know what is...
** Side Note: That's not to bash Trek, certainly; SGU is just using a more modern, mature storytelling method that couldn't have developed without Trek's stories to build on.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Um. I may have been really tired last night when I watched it and had to replay a few sections cause I missed what they said but I don't get the time-lines here.
The first group are in the past or not? The first time Scott tries to throw a kino in it just roles back down? OHHH it's near RUSH - so THAT actually went back in time. Got it now... I think.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Heh, I know what you mean. The reason they couldn't contact Destiny while the Stargate was fritzing was because the wormhole was looping back to the same planet, in the past. So Rush thought he was gating to Destiny, but instead going back in time, back to the same planet.
As Eli said, "What... the..."
One more thing that I missed before: I think Greer was a standout of the show. Very understated scenes, but awesome.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
So the first group are in the present. Rush and the Kino went back in time. The second group are in the present, the SECOND Kino will warn ANOTHER group. Presumably though Rush and the first Kino should disappear when those events didn't play out. "I hate temporal mechanics".
The effect on the Wormhole looked freaky, I must say.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Re: the timeline, that's exactly how I've been interpreting it.
Another silly question: how come they're only taking one Kino on these missions?
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
I imagine because two kinos means two pairs of hands to operate them.
I had a feeling when they introduced the Kinos that they'd eventually do a Blair Witch/Cloverfield episode. I'm glad they used it in an unconventional way - Pitch Black meets Predator.
As far as Destiny's apparent omnipotence goes, it's starting to get very suspicious and not in a bad way. Either that's a very advanced AI, or there's somebody or something else on the ship or one of the Ancients are bending the rules again. This is the second time Rush has mentioned ascension so they certainly haven't been forgotten by the writers.
As for the timeline, I do wonder that when the unseen but inevitable 3rd group arrives if they'll find just on Kino or two plus Yorik?
I suppose it depends on when in time the second Kino was sent. If it arrives earlier in time than the first then the first shouldn't arrive at all, if it arrives later then they should both still be there.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
quote:Originally posted by Reverend: As for the timeline, I do wonder that when the unseen but inevitable 3rd group arrives if they'll find just on Kino or two plus Yorik?
Hmm. My initial assumption was that the first Kino and Rush's corpse would cease to exist because the timeline was changed. But that's the Star Trek rules of timeline changing. In Stargate, they do tend to leave things a bit less tidy, with apparent paradoxes that are resolved by the fact that the timeline might be changing while an object or person is in transit through the wormhole. (Like in "1969" when the Stargate was present for a few moments before it disappeared. Or how Mitchell had that picture of his dad and his "buddy" in his locker.)
So considering that the Stargate in the past could potentially be just a "dumb" receptor for whatever gets tossed its way, it might make sense that the second Kino (sent by Scott) would arrive first — assuming that the time jump was a finite length, or rather that time passed equally in both time frames, so to speak.
Therefore, yes, I guess it could be that the unseen third team will find two Kinos plus Yorick.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Well if I remember 1969, a mistiming of a few seconds sent them about 50 years in the future, so one assumes the temporal trajectory (for lack of a better term) is in constant flux.
As for artefacts from alternate timelines, there was the warning note from 2010 O'Neal (hey, we've almost caught up!) the message with the Mobius ZPM and so forth. Plus we know stargates can cross alternate realities under certain conditions, so perhaps they're going with the branching universe theory.
Posted by Sean (Member # 2010) on :
It was a good episode in my opinion...but it left me scratching my head in the end. I understood the flow of it well enough, but from the preview of next week's ep, it seems that we might not get an explanation to how the whole thing ended.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Stargates can cross alternate realities? I thought that was the quantum mirror? I wonder if that was an ancient artifact. They never mentioned. Surely the Goa'uld didn't invent it. Maybe it was Furling Technology!! Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Finally, a Kino extra that actually contributes to the show, sorta...
Mark
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
quote:Originally posted by AndrewR: Stargates can cross alternate realities? I thought that was the quantum mirror? I wonder if that was an ancient artifact. They never mentioned. Surely the Goa'uld didn't invent it. Maybe it was Furling Technology!!
I think they showed about 3 ways to cross realities; the mirror the stargate and that reactor thingy on Atlantis.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
Yah, but the Stargate only ever crossed realities when something else was happening too. Black hole fun, timeline shifting, etc. It couldn't do it on it's own.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Interesting - the Icarus base planet had a core composed of naquadriah, a super-powered, unstable version of naquadah. SG-1 ran into this a couple of times, noting that it does not occur in nature. So, it's possible everyone was thinking that the planet HAD to have been left behind by the ancients as a unique power source to be able to unlock the ninth chevron.
Mark
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aban Rune: Yah, but the Stargate only ever crossed realities when something else was happening too. Black hole fun, timeline shifting, etc. It couldn't do it on it's own.
Oh I realise that, but it's still physically capable of doing it, even if it's not supposed to, just like time travel.
Which raises a point; don't DHD's have a safety feature to prevent accidental solar flare/time travel connections? Perhaps that was included much later as they hadn't happened on the phenomena when the Destiny gates were designed. Makes sense as Janus & co were new to time travel when Wier popped in on them and that was right when they were about to leave Pegasus, much later.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
I'm thinking so, though OTOH they seemed pretty capable of using the stargate in "1969" by manually dialing it and not modifying it. OTOOH, the DHD may contain the safeties required to abort establishing a wormhole in the event of a flare.
Mark
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
How do they dial the off-ship gates in Universe? With the kinos?
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
The kino control thingy, yeah.
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
They have a remote for the gates. Like a kino remote, only different (same prop I'd imagine, though).
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
Well, you'd have to think that the much older remotes don't have nearly the amount of safeguards built into them as the bigger and more advanced DHDs.
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
I'd say test runs with the Destiny proved that a DHD with safeguards was necessary.
They say that the Destiny was sent out to follow up on seeded gates in the universe, but what if they originally used Destiny to put the gates in the Milky Way?
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
It's possible... They seem to think that the Destiny gate system predates the Milky Way. It's possible they seeded our home galaxy with this kind of gate first, then much later they replaced them with the more familiar red chevroned rings. But Rush thinks so far that the Destiny was expressly sent out on this mission followoign up on its seeder ships. In the pilot we do see the path of the Destiny passing through Pegasus, for example, but did they stop over and seed that galaxy with older gates before Atlantis got there?
Mark
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
That's what I've assumed... because the Pegasus gates are the most advanced out of all the gates that we've seen, it would make sense that the Destiny-era ships first seeded the galaxy, and then when the Ancients got out there and started settling, they replaced the gates with upgraded models.
And I think the same would make sense for the Milky Way, too.
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