NEW!: SGU 1:11 - Divided

Overall Rating: 6.5

Colonel Young is being seven levels of stupid right now and it needs to stop. The show was certainly much more entertaining than last week, but this situation is getting out of hand...perhaps Rush was right...Young CAN'T make the tough calls.

Spoilers after the cut.


Plot Synopsis:

Chloe and Rush are disturbed by nightmares and flashes of imagery from the aliens who attacked Destiny last week. They seem thick as thieves as the show opens - the discomfort felt by the viewer grows as soon as Dr. Rush suggests that Colonel Young and Lt. Scott take the Ancient shuttle out and shoot an alien tracking device off the hull of the ship. One of the other scientists is heard talking on his radio with other civilians - saying "it's on." While Young is off the ship, Rush begins a transfer of controls to another terminal which causes the ship's docking clamps to fail to lock the shuttle in place. Destiny is mere moments away from jumping to FTL, which will likely cause the disconnected shuttle to vaporize when it fails to make the jump. Rush claims he had no idea this would happen when his program was active (and is believed by exactly NO ONE in the viewing audience). Everyone still on board...even the b*&%! (Wray's official name on this blog)...plead with Rush to stop the transfer of control and allow the shuttle to dock. He tries to convince Eli that the control transfer must be completed (i.e. it can't be stopped) and Eli needs to stop his attempts to block it, but Eli's not buying in either. Finally, mere seconds from murdering his adversary, the B*&%! warns him that killing the command staff will cost him what support he has and Rush relents, halting the command transfer in the nick of time.

When Young and Scott come aboard, Rush locks down the majority of the ship, cutting off the military personnel (with two exceptions - TJ and one additional air force officer) from every key system and supply stash but one - life support. Eli realizes that Young can still attempt to bargain with life support, but Rush is quick to point out that he's got control of the ship's entire water supply and the ugly (and potentially lethal) stalemate that would ensue would do no one any good. He offers a trade - Eli comes over to the civilian side and the military personnel get a small supply of food and water. Young needs time to forge an attack plan and agrees to the swap. He's got another idea for how to get his people past the lock-down. They're going to use the hole cut by the alien attackers to infiltrate from within. While Rush is busy ordering Eli to divert all power to the ship's defensive shield in case of alien attack, they successfully get Scott and Greer into enemy territory and are able to open a door for the cavalry.

While all of this is going on, Eli expresses his profound disappointment with Chloe - who is willingly working for the civilian mutineers. Of course, the only side of the story she has heard is Rush's tale of being left behind on the alien planet intentionally by Young because he was an "inconvenience." Unfortunately, Eli's been stupidly sworn to secrecy by Young about the other half of that little skirmish, or he'd have gleefully enlightened Chloe on just how gullible she was to trust Rush. Also, during this time, we learn that Rush has been keeping yet more secrets from the crew of Destiny...it turns out he's aware of an alien tracking device implanted in his chest! So he knows they'll be arriving as soon as Destiny is back in normal space to launch an attack and that's why he wants shields.

All of this comes out in full when Young and Scott bring the party to the civilian camp and throw down some order. Young tells TJ to extract the alien tracking device immediately but TJ doesn't feel qualified to do the surgery blind and on her own. So Chloe volunteers her body to switch with an earth-bound expert to do the surgery. Unfortunately, before the procedure, the ship drops out of FTL and the alien appear shortly thereafter and start bombarding the shields, which creates so much ionic interference that the ancient communication stones fail and TJ and Chloe have to work together to get the device out. They nonetheless succeed just as Destiny jumps away from the battle only slightly the worse for the bombardment. Young, Scott and Greer talk amongst themselves...they know Rush will try again to take the ship as soon as he is able and he'll have the B*&%!'s support, despite her attempt to be diplomatic and talk of needing to find a way to work together.

Writing: 7.0

There are two plot holes. One - when did Destiny start dropping out of FTL every couple of hours? They were traveling at FTL speeds for days or even weeks at a time before this episode, and now...because the writers needed a ticking clock twice in the same plot, we had the ship out of FTL (but not molested by aliens for some reason despite the presence of alien tracking devices) at the begin...and then...after going into FTL...somehow ending up back in normal space (though we never saw the moment that this occurred) so that it could be attacked by aliens and so that we could send some EVA suits through the hull breech to get into the locked out portions of the ship. These kinds of things irk me; what can I say? Two - Chloe was an alien prisoner too..why didn't SHE get an alien tracking device?

Aside from sloppy plot points, the episode was certainly engaging and kept me awake...which is more than I can say for some of the recent episodes. I'm glad they decided not to wait too long to push the Rush/B*&%! vs. military conflict, and I'm also very glad they put Chloe on the wrong team to drive a wedge between her and her two closest friends (Eli and Lt. Scott). That will certainly spice up future episodes on the soap opera front. All that said, I just can't believe a trained military command office like Young would be this spectacularly stupid. Withholding knowledge about Rush's lack of trustworthiness through criminal acts to keep the crew from splintering into all out civil war is one thing. Withholding that knowledge after the crew has ALREADY been splintered into civil war because one side is not telling the whole story about their culpability is quite another. There is no good reason whatsoever to keep the truth about Rush's attempt to frame Young from the public now that it's clear everyone believes Young left Rush on that planet intentionally.

Acting: 9.0

This was actually an unusually strong episode from an ensemble perspective, although none of the individual performances jump out at me as particularly above the others. David Blu is still my favorite member of the cast despite the presence of Louis Ferreira and Robert Carlyle (and Ming Na) with their higher pre-show acting "cred." This is, perhaps, because he has the most interesting position in the crew (the only civilian who believes in the military leadership - perhaps because he's the only civilian who has all of the facts), AND the most interesting soap opera (his unrequited love for Chloe...now severely damaged by her dubious choice to back the civvies). He does a great job playing the precarious "on the fence" position in this episode and clearly outsmarting Rush on at least two occasions. Carlyle and Ferreira shouldn't be overlooked and neither should Alaina Huffman (TJ was, for better or worse, in the collateral victim role and did well with that rare bit of dramatic screen time) or Elyse Levesque.

Message: 3.5

Hey Stargate writers: 80 people is not a country...80 people do not function the same way that a nation does. Especially not 80 people scraping by just to survive against impossible odds on the far side of the universe. If you're going to try to put the B*&%! and Rush on the moral high ground with lines like "This is how civilized societies normally work, Colonel - with civilians making the choices, not the military," and if you're going to call the current state of the Destiny a military dictatorship, perhaps you should do a little research on how most 80-person tribes are typically governed. The ones who can offer something of VALUE to the society...get to make the rules. And when you are billions of light years from home on a rickety ancient ship with barely enough food to survive the next week...the things that are valuable are NOT personal vendettas (Rush) or diplomacy (B*&%!). We'll call you when we need to negotiate with aliens who speak out language, Camile...how's that? You don't get to grab for power and expect us to think of it as the morally superior course of action, kthx.

Oh...and Young's guilt over marooning Rush continues to annoy me on a moral level. Rush tried to convince the crew that Young was a murderer and specifically warned on that planet that he would never stop trying to interfere with Young's command. The survival of everyone on board depends on stable leadership...Rush is a liability NO ONE can afford - he can't be trusted to have anyone's interests but his own in mind whenever he makes any recommendation - he's proven this countless times. There is nothing more correct (morally) that Young COULD have done BUT get rid of Rush. Except perhaps tell the crew what Rush tried to do and exactly what he said during their confrontation and be truthful about having left him behind intentionally. If you want to make Young feel guilty about something...perhaps start with that.