Stargate Universe

The plucky and not-so-plucky human crew of Destiny fight to get home.

After a disaster at a Stargate research base, a disparate collection of unprepared military and civilians find themselves stranded on an old and decaying Ancient ship in a distant galaxy, with no way home. They can't control the ship; they have few supplies. Fortunately the ship stops at a planet with a stargate every episode or so, allowing the adventure of the week. Also, they have some communication stones, so can contact Earth. But other than that, they're on their own. And they don't all see eye to eye.

This is a darker, grimmer Stargate series, with lots of squabbling, bickering, politicking, desperation, and worse. There are some interesting stories, and they do manage to stop it being just a "planet of the week", with many arcs, and a new enemy hunting them (or rather, their ship). Lots of twists and turns, and a massive end-of-season cliffhanger.

Rating: 3.5

[ unmissable | great stuff | worth watching | mind candy | waste of time | unfinishable ]

reviewed 29 December 2010

The end of a era.

The second season is pretty similar to the first, but with the crew shaking down and beginning to work together better. Colonel Young and Dr Rush still don't trust one another, but come to have a degree of respect for each other.

There are a few weird episodes, which appear to be planted to allow future development (which will never happen), or in one case possibly just as a bonkers way of getting a replacement shuttle. There's also a plot device added because clearly the gates are too powerful and so need to be disabled (except when they are really needed). A few arcs are developed and then resolved too quickly (Chloe turning alien, for example) as the realisation this is the final season sinks in. And the writers manage to have their cake and eat it, to have the crew as colonists and as travellers, by using that old trope of a wormhole (but how do the two Destiny s obey the first law of thermodynamics? My Flying Snowman moment .)

The season/series/saga ending provides some closure, some suspense, and a neat hook that would allow the series to start again in either a few or a thousand years time.

Rating: 3.5

[ unmissable | great stuff | worth watching | mind candy | waste of time | unfinishable ]

reviewed 21 January 2012