Overall Rating: 8.5
We don't believe in double-penalizing a franchise for running with a stupid idea here at RightFans. I already shot this whole Lucian Alliance incursion plot concept full of more holes than a block of Swiss, but once they decided to go with that idea, their execution of the incursion itself was very entertaining and intriguing to me on several different levels (and yes...I will point out when we saw some old cliches, but they generally worked well, as we'll discuss).
Plot Synopsis:
When last we left Destiny, Colonel Young was apparently murdering Colonel Telford for his treasonous confession. As it turns out, however; Young had a very good reason to do this. He theorized that Telford had been made a Zatarg slave of the Alliance and the only way to break his programming was to make him clinically dead and then revive him. Of course, he didn't actually TELL anyone his rationale, so after they bring Telford back (and he reveals that the Alliance is planning to attack Destiny), Lt. Scott is understandably pissed at the apparent lack of trust and Camille looks like she's about to crap her pants, she's having to fight that hard to restrain her anger. Young uses the ancient stones to communicate the situation to Earth and they send Sam Carter off to the planet in question. Rush (in Telford's body) is working on safely dialing the 9th chevron (under threat of death, of course) when the planet comes under fire. Here's where I get annoyed with the Lucian Alliance plot concept one last time! Any opportunity to report back to the REST of the alliance and make a profit in technology and knowledge for her faction is lost when she is forced to dial out before a safe connection can be made. The planet blows up just like the Icarus Base and Carter barely escapes with most of her combat teams. Why...oh why...would the Alliance want to make a ONE WAY! trip to Destiny? They'd be cut off from reinforcements, their backs against the wall, and they'd be at a disadvantage to the Tauri crew who know the ship better than they do. *sigh*
Growing a shred of a brain, Keeva drags Rush (in Telford's body) through the gate with her and as they emerge in Destiny's locked down gate room, Young's plan to evacuate the air in that compartment and kill the intruders quickly goes out the window. Unfortunately, the Alliance somehow has prepared for this mission by finding a way to open a sealed door on an ancient ship (without ever having had ACCESS...to an ancient ship!...we can probably blame Telford for this). They break out of containment while Young is twiddling his thumbs trying to decide what to do. He doesn't realize that the ancient communication link between Rush and Telford has been severed by Telford's trip through the gate. They strike quickly and take ten hostages (nearly twelve, but Eli and Chloe stumble into the fighting and then duck into an elevator for safety, only to discover that they've ended up in an unfamiliar part of the ship and can't get back using the now locked-down elevators). Then the stand-off begins.
Camille, being a complete moron, believes surrender is the best option. Thankfully, Young has all the guns and is NOT a complete moron. Later, he'll finally explain why he won't give up the ship - very correctly, he reasons that the Alliance will kill everyone they don't need as soon as they have complete control. That's right, Camille...we do NOT make deals with terrorists, nor do we cede territory to the enemy in the hopes it will appease them and save a few lives in the short term. To her credit, when she is forced to agree with Young that immediate surrender is not an option, she takes the walkie-talkie and actually demonstrates a fairly firm hand while attempting to negotiate the release of SOME of the hostages in exchange for Lucian Alliance prisoners taken during the battle.
Their first attempt to make an exchange goes horribly wrong, however, when power flickers and spooks Keeva. She thinks Young or Rush is responsible and starts threatening to kill hostages if they don't bring back the lights (unfortunately, the Lucian Alliance prisoners we were keeping are lost to the other side during this attempted exchange). A bit later, Telford (now no longer brainwashed) tries to give Young a chance to break the Alliance defense perimeter by leading a couple of them through an access corridor that is exposed to space (protected only by the ship's containment shields) to the control interface room and into a potential trap. Unfortunately, their plans go on hold when one of his former allies gets incinerated without explanation and he decides the best course of action is to retreat and wait for another opportunity.
Meanwhile, Rush has asked a very logical question. If the ship dropped out of FTL to accept the 9th-chevron dial-in...why didn't it jump right back into FTL? Before he has a chance to research his question too far, the crew is waylaid by yet another attempt to exchange hostages for supplies. This time, the Alliance wants medical supplies in exchange for four of our civilians. Young decides this is their best chance to set a trap and take them down. He tries to pass Greer off as another medic to offer them (to get a gunner inside to start shooting up the joint), but just when the rouse is about to pay off, the lights flicker again and guns are drawn. Greer, on instant, pulls out his pistol and takes aim at Keeva, blowing their cover. He wants to take the shot, but she reveals that her men have orders to kill all of the hostages if she doesn't return. They make off with the medical supplies and we don't get any hostages released. Upon returning, Keeva is mad enough to kill (and she randomly kills a civilian scientist - John Rivers) to make her point. Now she wants food and water and will only deal with Camille Wray...Wray, again demonstrating just how clueless and downright idiotic she is, chooses to refuse a flak jacket because she is still trying to earn the trust of COMPLETELY untrustworthy people. *headdesk*
Through all of this, Eli has been trying to treat a gunshot wound Chloe suffered during their escape, but she continues to slowly bleed out and loses the ability to walk early in their trek (on foot!) across the length of Destiny. Eli is forced to carry her, stopping every so often to rest and talk to her (to keep her conscious). Once again, Chloe professes her brotherly (d'oh!) love for Eli - saying the words all guys in love hate more than any others on four separate occasions. As she watches his soul get very visibly crushed by the repeated heart-wrenching stabs to the chest she delivers, she gets frustrated and tries to put a positive spin on it. She says she doesn't want Eli to see their friendship as some runner-up prize and confesses that she never knew what a real friend was until she met Eli. They eventually come to a dead end in their long walk when they hit a compartment that is exposed to space. Resigned to wait out a rescue, they collapse - that is until Eli spots a console in the corner and realizes it's got power. He sends a message to Rush in the control interface room and Rush confirms his receipt. They will eventually be rescued - or so they hope.
Meanwhile, furious that the lights keep cutting out and that they have no FTL capability, Young bludgeons (verbally) Rush and his team into figuring out the problem. It turns out that they popped out of FTL near a binary pulsar which is periodically emitting huge gamma ray bursts that bombard and drain the ship's shields. All the power must be diverted to the shields during these bursts (causing the temporary black-outs) and after another one or two more bursts, the shields are likely going to fail and people are going to start getting cooked by the intense background gamma radiation. In order to get the Alliance to allow us access to a crucial part of the ship that contains a power relay, we are forced to turn over command controls to them and surrender en masse. Rush heads to an auxiliary control console to hide and prepare to receive control again thanks to Telford (who overhears Keeva's demand and comes up with the plan to pull this clever double-cross). However, just as he's sending controls back to Rush, Keeva walks in on him and the two draw guns and shoot each other at point blank range simultaneously. Now we've lost control of the ship, Scott and Greer are trapped outside the hull when Keeva's second in command refuses to let them come back inside, there are about twelve minutes left before another gamma ray burst is scheduled, and Keeva's second (who is apparently even more brutal than Keeva) rounds up the military personnel, drops them to their knees and is prepared to give the order to execute every last one of them. TJ - who has been treating their wounded at gunpoint (while very VERY pregnant) refuses to turn over wounded Tauri military personnel, and in the ferocious gunfight that ensues, two or three of those wounded are killed on operating tables and TJ is shot at CONTACT range right in the chest (!). While this is going on, Rush has devised a plan to get Scott and Greer back inside before they fry, but he needs Eli to sprint from his location to a rear cargo hatch to let them in. Eli tells Chloe he loves her (without actually saying those words, but it's understood) and then bolts as Greer and Scott sprint for the cargo airlock. And this is where we're left hanging. YOWZA!
Writing: 9.0
Putting aside my general disdain for the idea that the Lucian Alliance would give two s**ts about Destiny, this is actually exceedingly strong, suspenseful, and appropriately impact-laden action wall to wall (the the exception of Eli and Chloe's scenes, which carry the action breaks we need to get our feet under us and which deal out the heaviest emotional blows. If there's one element of this script that falls flat, it would have to be every single confrontation between Camille and Young. I think that either the writers don't know how to write a compelling diplomat character (the IOA, the NID...basically all civilian oversight of the stargate program in past franchises have always been exceedingly poorly written...the chief civilian antagonists, with the exception of Colonel Maybourne (not a civilian, but in charge of the civilian authority) have been such badly rendered, intellectually bankrupt, two-dimensional characters that I came to hate all gate episodes in later seasons that directly involved civilian oversight)...or they're intentionally creating a straw-man to back what would normally be a message of which I approve (leave matters of security in the hands of the military, and limit oversight to checking for moral transgressions amongst military ranks...do not put civilians in charge of making battlefield decisions). I don't like straw men...even when they are in support of my position. Camille can't possibly be as utterly BRAINDEAD as she appears on this show and have reached high enough heights to be a civilian adviser to the Icarus project. Every word that comes out of her mouth is unspoiled grade-A stupidity. The show needs the presence of a strong civilian leader (like SGA had with Dr. Elizabeth Weir) to make (intelligently) the needed counter-arguments to military brute-force tactics that can sometimes get separated from ethics if not watched carefully. Wray...is not that character. She needs to be replaced. Or she needs to be hit until bloodied about the face with the reality stick and gain some common friggin' sense. The rest of the show really did have me on the edge of my seat and that is only the second time that's been true since the start of Universe.
Acting: 8.5
The strongest performances here were delivered by David Blue, Elyse Levesque (who'd been falling out of favor with me until this two-parter), Alaina Huffman (whose cold stony rejection of an Alliance nurse-maid's peace offering was pure awesome) and Lou Diamond Phillips (muuuch better once he got off the Zatarg juice). I remain unimpressed with Keeva or any of her lieutenants. They gave no credibility to their level of brutality...they were just there to be a royal pain in the backside for no apparent reason. And as I said above, Ming-Na added nothing to the show either - although I think that the fault there may be the script...not the actress.
Message: 8.0
Two mini-messages in an episode that exists primarily for the action-packed fun:
1) When you lead a life of privilege, it can be difficult to know who your real friends are. However, Chloe articulated the real test of friendship very well as she slowly comes of age and realizes how empty her life has been before Destiny. "A true friend is someone who'll stand by you no matter what. Someone who still cares about you when you're at your worst." Indeed, Chloe. Indeed. You will notice that Lt. Scott didn't stick by you when you sided against him in the civilian coup. I can't say I totally blame him...you were acting like a spoiled little brat and taking advise from the wrong people...but you will also notice that Eli DID stay by your side. Scott's a good guy on the whole, but Eli is the one who'll care for you no matter what. You might just want to think about think.
And yes...I do realize that the whole "trapped below decks with each other and it brings out all the emotions!" thing is a very old and very heavily used cliche...but in this case, I think it worked well and demonstrated why this cliche is so popular.
2) Negotiating with terrorists generally only strengthens their hand. As it does three straight times in this script. And you won't be saving any lives unless you kill the terrorists before they kill your people. When someone has a hostage (or many hostages), and the will to kill those hostages when cornered, you do not give in to their demands. (ARE YOU LISTENING, CAMILLE???)
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