Overall Rating: 7.5
Well...the end of this episode certainly raises a few eyebrows...as does the character work attempted for Greer. It is nice to see the writers FINALLY making use of the ticking clock advantage (if you recall, in our review of the pilot, we opined that the clock on every gate mission would make for high impact action if used correctly...and the last couple of episodes are showing what can be done with these time limits).
Plot Synopsis:
At the end of last week's episode "Human," Lt. Scott, Eli, Chloe, and Sergeant Greer became stuck in a series of underground tunnels after a cave-in and Destiny jumped away. This week, the four lost explorers meander aimlessly through the tunnels for hours before realizing that a series of pictographs on the walls are actually a guiding map. Just as Greer confirms this by running off to another section, he becomes cut off from the other three as a tremor collapses a large section of the tunnel and buries him under a mound of debris. The remaining three scramble to dig him out, but the tremors continue and all attempts to communicate with him fail, so they are forced to bug out. They make for an alternative exit, leaving Greer for dead.
When he comes to, Greer is besieged by memories of his childhood - as it turns out, his father had some kind of unspecified neurological disorder that slowly drove him completely insane. He became abusive to Ronald and his mother - doing things like locking Ronald in a small storage closet for hours on end, forcing him to build and rebuild walls out of old brick, and beating his mother when she questioned him (this explains his claustrophobia, incidentally). As he digs his way out of the tunnels and races toward the gate, the rest of his team is just leaving - they're going to attempt to catch Destiny by jumping from gate to gate until they enter the network that is within range of Destiny's next FTL drop site. He arrives seconds too late and finds the gate abandoned. While he's camped out by the gate hoping for rescue, Greer remembers his father's final battle with whatever the disease was that slowly destroyed his mind (he nearly killed another insane man who was rambling on about Gulf War Syndrome and other nonexistent conspiracies) and the conversation in which he told his mother that he'd enlisted, hoping to make a difference and do something positive with his rotten life.
On Destiny, TJ is having trouble admitting to Colonel Young that she's pregnant. Wray (in a friendly way) brow beats her into confessing her condition, but the Colonel keeps getting called away to attend to one disaster or another...including Destiny dropping out of hyperspace. The bad news is twofold. For one, they've only been given three hours before the next jump. For another, Dr. Rush discovers that they're about to leave their current galaxy and jump into the void between galaxies, meaning they're only going to get one shot at rescuing their stranded officers. A team of eight is dispatched...using a remarkably similar plan, they intend to jump gate to gate in search of the stranded team. With little early success, that team decides to split up and take different paths through the gate network. Dr. Rush's search team chooses wrongly...the other team stumbles into Greer and rescues him.
Gate hopping for Eli, Chloe and Scott runs into a few rather exciting snags (a huge dinosaur almost eats them, they wind up on a few really inhospitable planets (dust storms, blizzards, etc) and they lose the Keno to a planet with a toxic atmosphere, forcing them to gate hop blind. What's worse, eventually Eli scans the list of gate addresses and recognizes one of them - meaning they've gone in completely the wrong direction (back toward planets already visited by Destiny). In fact, it's the address where Dr. Rush was left for dead by Colonel Young. In a moment of brilliance, Eli realizes that the downed alien ship can help guide them back to Destiny and he convinces the rest that it's worth the gamble that the scary blue aliens might return for them. When Chloe realizes that she can intuit some understanding of the alien language (thanks to her link with one of them during her imprisonment), she gives Eli directions to get to a map of the galaxy, and they're off to try to catch Destiny.
Unfortunately, just as they reach a planet close enough to Destiny to gate to it, Dr. Rush's team (wreaking of failure and bad timing) gates home, blocking their return! They try again, but they're seconds too late as Destiny jumps to FTL and the address flashes off Eli's remote. In his words, they're "done." Back on Destiny, TJ finally catches Young and blurts out her news before he can get called away again. Not only does Young find out that TJ is pregnant...but we the audience find out that YOUNG is the father!! He promises to do whatever he can to make it work.
Writing: 6.0
The character work done with Greer has to go into the category of "nice effort, but not horridly original and unless you're actually going somewhere with this, really it's just filler." The abusive father with mental illness thing has been done many times...but they can turn it into something wonderful for the audience if they follow that thread and give Greer more screen time having to deal with the consequences of his past. The action plot (a race against the arbitrary clock to get home) was certainly effective. There were some chuckles listening to Eli continuously whining while they were trapped in the tunnels and a few nice exchanges - notably between TJ and Young - in other parts of the show. I still think SGU lacks the kind of script-writing depth that other canons we follow have traditionally had - there isn't a lot here that engages the mind.
Acting: 8.0
Alaina Huffman and Jamil Walker Smith continue to be my two favorite cast members in terms of acting chops, though David Blue is right up there as well. I was once again very impressed with what Huffman was able to do with her moments with Justin Louis (formerly Louis Ferreira...damned actors and their changing stage names). Jamil Walker Smith had some nice juicy material to work with, although many of those flashback scenes were done with a child actor playing his role, obviously (and that kid was also very solid). I think we're discovering that SGU was indeed very well cast...the acting is definitely improving as characters get better defined. The depth on this "roster" is very encouraging.
Message: 8.5
Large positive credit goes to the writers for making TJ's decision to keep the baby a no-brainer for both her and Colonel Young. Given their harsh surroundings, it would have been easy for them to write a little drama around TJ and Young trying to decide if they should abort, but it was never even questioned. This, IMHO, is a very good thing. I also appreciate that Ronald Greer was placed into some horrible circumstances as a kid and made a choice to do something meaningful with his life, rather than become bitter and blame society or his father or God for his troubles. I'm liking this character more and more...his no nonsense, down to Earth attitude and common sense in the face of adversity make him ideally suited to adapt to life on Destiny and he appears to have a good strong moral center and sense of personal responsibility too - which is always a nice bonus.
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