"Earth"

    Colonel Young and Camille Wray find themselves using the ancient communication stones for a top secret meeting back on Earth. Colonel Telford and a team of scientists have come up with a way to bring the stranded crew back home, however the plan is not without its inherent risks. While Young resists the rash decision, in the hope that a more thought out, less risky plan can be produced; Wray is asked by her boss to increase support for the project back on Destiny. To assuage any moral qualms Wray might have, her boss offers her a promotion - which she has been passed over for many times - but only if she can get the project approved. Telford takes two scientists with him to swap bodies with Young, Chloe and Eli so they can begin work on the return project. Immediately tensions flare between Rush and Telford. Telford takes charge right away and goes about "righting the mistakes" that Young had made - including locking up Sgt. Greer. Meanwhile on Earth, Young visits his wife again in Telford's body. Despite his wife's wish to not have anything to do with him, he appeals to her and they spend some time talking, his wife coming to terms with the situation they find themselves in. Eli visits home, but doesn't think his mother can handle the explanation of how he is there so he pretends to be his friend, Philip Fry. However, Eli's mom detects there's more to his odd visit but decides to not say anything. Chloe visits her mother briefly before deciding to visit her friends and boyfriend in the guise of "Cousin Liz." However, Chloe is in for crushing disappointment as she realizes she's only as important to her friends as her father's status. Back on Destiny, Telford pushes forward his risky plan, without Rush's assistance. One of the side effects of the plan causes a momentary cut out in the stones and everyone is returned to their true body for a few seconds. It's mostly a non-event, except that Telford returns to his body while it is engaged with Young's wife! The stones return to normal and everyone is again swapped out, Telford looking the slightest bit unnerved. However, his thoughts can only hold on this for a short time, as the plan is about to be put into action.

    From last week's preview, I have to admit I went into this episode expecting to dislike it's heavy reliance on the ancient communications stones. Whether it be lowered expectations or if the plot is truly quite strong, I really enjoyed this episode. This is another episode that excels at putting human drama ahead of a fairly mundane plot. For the most part the scenes on Earth were strong and helped to flesh out characters a bit more. The scenes back on Destiny were fairly short, and thus we ended up losing track of a lot of characters in the mix. Clearly, Telford is being setup as our villain for the season, since there's a lack of any negative force in the series so far. And the implications of his appearance at Young's wife's door at the end of the episode are easy to figure out. Really, the plot of this episode felt more about setting up this relationship as well as the strained relationship between Eli and Chloe. Most interesting are the side-alliances being struck between various characters this episode. We know Young and General O'Neill have some reservations about the General's orders, we see that Young and Eli are equally suspicious of Rush and his moral ambiguity, Eli and Chloe's relationship takes an interesting turn and we see there's more than friendship between Young and Johansen.

    Being a heavy plot for characterization, we were presented with interesting performances this episode. Again Young is prominent in the episode and as such gets a fair bit different emotions to play with. His scenes with O'Neill and Telford really changed the tone of the episode and gave us a little more insight in his thought process. Standing up to a general is no small feat. Lou Diamond Phillips gives the audience a very good performance this episode. He's been an overbearing, stock soldier in his few appearances until now. It seems his character morphed a bit since the last outing - changed by the bad experience he had briefly on the Destiny. He seems like he has more to lose now and his motivations for wanting Young out of the way are still unclear, but quite obviously his main objective. Rush is moved a little to the side of the plot this time, however we still get a good number of scenes with him off of Telford. It was interesting seeing Rush cowed by Telford's presence. Yes, Rush ultimately gets his way and sends Telford and Co. packing, but he does it all by carrying a quiet and docile attitude. It's clear that Rush is a master manipulator and is good at setting people against each other. However, the way he acts in regard to Telford makes his relationship with Young seem that much more special. This episode also showcases Rush's callous disregard for other's lives. His "Bit of theater... always nice" remark is so flippant that it seems comical, until you look at the confused and devastated looks on others faces.

    Again, David Blue's performance as Eli is great. The sense of joy he has with new experiences seems fresh in a franchise about exploration. His scenes with his mother seemed very real and natural, especially compared to the Chloe/mother scene from three episodes ago, as well it was obvious that there was conflict in his character over lying to his mother about his identity. It was the really small things that got me, the way he asked for schnitzel, going to the pantry, even the Futurama reference he uses as an alias, it all just felt right. One of the fun things about having Eli on the show is that he's more or less the "average" SG viewer's door into the series. It's nice to have an overweight character in a show that isn't always the butt of a joke or spouting funny and sarcastic things. While it's true he does the later, Eli's character is a lot deeper than being "the Seth Rogen" of the show. His scenes with Chloe didn't come off as forced as I felt the Chloe/Scott scenes did, and it lead to a lot of realistic (if a tad cliche) teen angst moments in the "... you're a great friend..." speech. Chloe's character gets a little improvement here, as we see her breakdown over realizing none of her friends liked her for more than being a Senator's daughter. However, I felt these scenes might have had more impact if the character had demonstrated being anything more than that before this episode. That is to say, for 6 episodes that's all that Chloe has been, the daughter of the guy that died, there's been no attempt to make me care about her or show me that she's anything more than that until now, and it doesn't quite work. I didn't find myself cringing at her scenes though, which was a welcome improvement. (However, her drunk acting was truly terrible.) Most of the rest of the cast disappears into the ether. Camille Wray and Lt. Johansen get some small moments early in the episode, but more or less have no bearing on the episode. Greer gets a few jabs in his few scenes but doesn't really get to do anything. Lt. Scott is gone almost entirely from the episode, and hasn't really been in the limelight since the premiere. While some characters are under-served by the scripts, I fear Scott is getting lost in them.

    In terms of production, there's not much to speak of this episode. Most of the sets and locations are reuses of previous scenes, obviously shot at the same time as previous scenes. We even have the first reuse of stock footage in the series as the Destriny recharges in a sun again. I've noticed this over the past episodes, but really felt that during this episodes the breaks for commercial seemed pretty abrupt, more akin to a scene change then an act change. I have no doubt this ties into the move to making TV shows more DVD friendly, but it gets frustrating to hear the music rise and then cut out to an overloud commercial. Again, I feel the CGI looks very good, especially in the balcony-at-FTL scene this episode. I have to admit, being a long time fan, it was weird seeing the Stargate program based out of the Pentagon and not the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. It's not a stretch of course, but just an odd quirk of the new series.

    Overall, I thought this a very strong episode. There are some great ethical questions that appear in this episode that will only result in some great drama down the line. These questions I mention are the misuse of Telford's body and Telford's subsequent appearance at Young's house as himself. That was a gamechanger for me. And I think the relationships are coming off more human with this outing. As I said above, I've warmed to Chloe a bit, and her actions with Eli are alarmingly similar to experiences I've had and know friends have had. And finally, it was great to see Richard Dean Anderson back as Jack O'Neill again. The character still feels very true to the 8 years he was on SG-1 while seeming a bit more mature. It is odd seeing him as "the man" in a story when his character has always been a little anti-authority figure, but this was the inherent flaw in promoting him back in Season 8. And I cracked up at "Col. Carter would save our asses by using all kinds of whacky science I didn't understand" because it's not only true of the character, but also Sci-Fi in general. Hopefully the rest of the season will play out similar to "Darkness", "Light" and "Earth." I think these episodes show us a promising show in its first stages. Once we come out of this thematic opening arc, I think the show can come into its own. Stargate Universe airs Friday nights at 9 PM on the SyFy Channel. Check back that following weekend for my latest review!

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