Stargate Universe: Time

By | November 20, 2009

This episode returned to a more Stargate-like feel, yes, it’s true.  Too bad I didn’t like anything about it – nothing.

First: I hate time-travel episodes.  They are rarely done well, and this one was no exception – what’s worse, looping in time is a bad plot tool, unless the looping itself is the premise.   Star Trek: The Next Generation did a looping episode well.

Second: There wasn’t just one “convenient coincidence” in this episode.  No, one convenient, random occurrence is expected.  It’s what you build a story on.  But four or five?  Come on, that’s just dumb.

  1. They get infected by something from a planet they’ve been to previously.  (I’ll accept this without argument.)
  2. The currently-accessible planet happens to have a cure for the infection.  (Two completely unrelated worlds, one with a disease and the other with a cure?  Visited one after the other, in the proper order?  That’s practically four coincidences by itself.)
  3. The wormhole between the planet and Destiny happens to intersect with a solar flare, preventing them from returning to the ship.
  4. The solar flare happens to be properly positioned such that the wormhole from the planet loops back on itself into the relatively recent past.
  5. Since they know what’s going to happen, they know when the solar flare occurs, and thus they’re able to use the looping to presumably solve the situation.

I say “presumably” because they didn’t actually resolve the situation in the episode.  It’s pretty irritating, actually.  The Stargate formula is a generally self-contained episode.  Stargate Universe has been more like a giant multi-part episode than anything else.  It just doesn’t feel like Stargate.

One thought on “Stargate Universe: Time

  1. Michael

    I thought it went fairly far into the past. Not a million years or anything, but maybe a couple hundred? Didn’t they find ‘human remains’ near the gate?

    I agree that time travel is difficult to do well. In this episode they should have found 2 kenos on the planet: the first on that Eli did, and the second one that explained the illness/cure that was created at the end, thereby bypassing the entire story and negating kenos creation in the first place.

    I seem to remember star trek and futurama’s time altering storylines to be better as they had a clear entry and exit points.

    Despite the logical errors I still liked the episode. After all it is a tv show and not meant to be examined in detail! Didn’t like the camera effects at the beginning of the episode though.. found it annoying and somewhat disorienting.

    Reply

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