The cast of Stargate: Universe

Syfy’s latest product from the Stargate brand looks promising even if the two-part premier Air seemed to be trying to do more than it had to–or should have tried to do. Great stories don’t do a data dump about the characters in the first two chapters. The people, their back stories and their motivation are doled out in pieces, bit by bit, over the course of several chapters. I think the only characters I really needed to know much about from the start were Eli, who is clearly supposed to be the viewer’s point of view character; Dr. Rush who seems to be the mastermind behind what goes on; and possibly Col. Young, the military leader of the refugees on the Ancient ship Destiny. I suppose we did need to develop an attachment to the Senator and his daughter, as well, but to tell you why would mean spoilers and for once I’m avoiding those in a review. As it was, I felt overwhelmed by having to learn too much about the characters too soon. For the premier, I don’t know if that much back story was necessary to make the story or characters more interesting at this point.

For example, I wish they’d done more of what they did to introduce Rush: We don’t learn much about him as a person, but we do learn from the action and what other characters say about him that he’s not well liked. From a single scene we learn that something painful happened between him and woman in a picture he keeps in the drawer of his bedside table, something that’s hinted at in later dialog between Rush and the Senator’s daughter, Cloe. That’s how it should be done early on. In Col. Young’s case, we get a little bit of his back story in the form of a dream he has when he’s knocked unconscious. I liked that way of getting information, too.

Eli is introduced through an important bit of action, and the issue with his mother is introduced through dialog. We’re not hit over the head with it. I could have lived without the way Lt. Scott was introduced. I’ll spoil just this one thing: He was having sex with a comrade, but it really did seem gratuitous. Perhaps his relationship to her will become important in future, since I think he may have been breaking a regulation. Still, the sex seemed like a gratuitous attempt to distance this Stargate from its more lighthearted predecessors and align it more closely with Battlestar Galactica with all of its frakking and talk of frakking and its through the roof ratings. This could also explain the shaky camera which was thankfully used less than I feared it would before I actually got to see the show.

I also had trouble following the story when I watched it the night of the premier. This was due to a number of factors, not the least of which was the ridiculous number of commercial breaks and Syfy promos throughout. Syfy oversold the show, then to add insult to injury they also ran at least one to two minutes of Syfy promos on top of the commercials and chose some very awkward points in the story to break.  It wasn’t until I downloaded the show from iTunes and watched it again, commercial-free, that I was able to follow it better. Of course, it didn’t help that I was taking part in the Twitter-palooza that went along with the premier. So, watching it without commercials and giving it my full attention, I realized it boiled down to just a few important points: They’re on a ship bajillions of light years from Earth and it’s life support system is going kaput (which makes sense since it’s many thousands of years old and hasn’t been maintained since the ship was sent out unmanned). Also, it’s a mix of military and civilians, they brought very little provisions with them, many of them are injured–some severely–and so far none of them seems to like Dr. Rush who got them there in the first place instead of evacuating them to Earth. Right. Got it. On a ship, far from home, low on supplies and air, and the ship sometimes stops at planets with stargates on them, so maybe food can be found there.

Joel Goldsmith, who scored the other two shows, delivers a tremendous score for this one. The acting is superb, but what else can you expect from people like Lou Diamond Phillips, Robert Carlyle, David Blue and Ming-Na? We even get some old favorites–bones thrown to long-time gaters–Richard Dean Anderson (General O’Neill), Amanda Tapping (Col. Carter), Michael Shanks (Dr. Jackson), Gary Jones (Chief Master Sgt. Harriman) and Bill Dow (Dr. Lee).

Console aboard the Destiny (photo from Gateworld.net)

The special effects are feature film quality with the Destiny really standing out from everything else. The ship is obviously old, corroded and deteriorated and seems to have endured some kind of attack. There are holes in it that the ship’s force shield is trying to keep plugged, but it’s mostly air tight bulkhead doors that are keeping airless space out and breathable air in. The ship was meant to be manned, as Dr. Rush discovers in the database, but the Ancients never followed through. They never recalled the ship, either, in typical Ancient fashion (we’ve discovered all sorts of things in the other two shows that the Ancients left lying about when they ascended and left this plane of existence). The tech aboard Destiny looks amazing, though it seems to be from the same family as the stuff used on Syfy’s big Summer hit Warehouse 13. Then there are the Kinos, the flying camera orbs that Eli finds and deploys (and uses for his personal vlog). It makes me look forward to the refugees exploring the ship in future episodes and figuring out how all the cool tech works.

Eli shows Lt. Scott the Kino (photo from Gateworld.net)

I need to see more episodes before making up my mind about this show. It really is a far cry from SG1 and Atlantis in look, tone, and theme, but that’s actually more refreshing than off putting. It’s Stargate, so for the love of Stargate and the chance to explore that cool ship every week, I’ll keep watching.

Next week on SG:U Air part 3, we check out that planet the team from Destiny went through the gate to explore and see if they can solve the problem of the gunked up CO2 scrubbers on the ship. SG:U back-to-back with Amanda Tapping’s Sanctuary means Fridays are geeky once again!

That, my friends, is the image The Creeping Crud conjured in my fertile imagination, and I’ve lived in dread of it ever since. Rarely does it come with a fever, sore throat, swollen glands, or discolored boogers…nothing that a doctor would look at and say, “Aha! You have______!” and prescribe you something to make it all better (although this time I do have swollen glands). No, The Creeping Crud just makes you feel icky for no apparent reason, and the only thing for it is sleep, soup, and hot tea with plenty of lemon and honey. Oh, and sympathy if you can get it. In general, not in your tea. I also found watching Hellboy II: The Golden Army on HBO the other night helped, as did Ken Burns’ fabulous documentary series about America’s National Parks, which started last night on PBS. (I believe I have previously mentioned my eclectic tastes.)

But you know what really makes a Creeping Crud even cruddier? Getting your period at the same time. Yup, that’s the tag team that has laid me low these past few days, sucking the energy out of me, and depriving me of the ability to actually think about whatever it is I might be watching on the TV machine. That, of course, means I’m not doing reviews until The Crud has left me, and Aunt Martha has gone home because my brain refuses to analyze things (which hurts me at work because, you know, I’m a Business ANALYST and all). Fortunately, I’ve started feeling better this evening, though the cough and congestion (and my period) are still with me. And, hey, The Big Bang Theory’s on tonight, along with part two of that Ken Burns documentary. Pretty scenery…always good for the constitution, even if it’s only in pictures.

Atlantis reviews return in a few days.

Update: LOL! No sooner did I post this then I read Neil Gaiman’s latest post, and he has the crud, too. I’m in good company.

Tayla says goodbye (photo from GateWorld.net)

Critical Mass

Story by – Brad Wright & Carl Binder
Teleplay by – Carl Binder
Directed by – Andy Mikita
Guest starring – Beau Bridges (General Hank Landry), Jaime Ray Newman (Lt. Laura Cadman), Ellie Harvie (Dr. Lindsey Novak), Ben Cotton (Kavanagh), David Nykl (Dr. Radek Zelenka), Bill Dow (Dr. Lee), Peter Flemming (Agent Malcolm Barrett), Gary Jones (Sergeant Harriman), Mitch Pileggi (Colonel Steven Caldwell)

WARNING: SPOILERS ABOUND!

Summary
The team must race against time to disarm a Goa’uld bomb and find out who planted it before it destroys Atlantis.

General Impressions
I love Beau Bridges as General Landry. It was good to see him in this episode. And OMG, its Jaime Ray Newman (Lt. Cadman) who now plays Dr. Tess Fontana on Eureka! Now I know where I saw the actress who played Tess before.

OK, now that I got that off my chest, I’ll say I really liked this episode. It’s got great suspense and that thing Stargate is so good at where they solve a problem only to have a bigger one appear in its place. The B story of the old Athosian woman dying was good, too, and very moving. And boy can that Rachel Luttrell sing.

The Good
It’s so sad that Tayla’s people have a ceremony to celebrate someone dying of natural causes because of how rare an occurrence it is due to the Wraith. I wonder how many other cultures in the Pegasus galaxy have similar customs. Good for Rachel Luttrell being able to cry on demand. So many actors do the sobbing thing, the twisting up the face thing, but there are no actual tears. When Tayla is trying to convince the old woman to prolong her life with a pace maker, she starts to cry and there are tears. She really turns on the waterworks when the old woman dies.

I loved the scene where Dr. Lee is explaining how to relay a message to Atlantis. When he uses a 101 Dalmatians analogy he gets blank looks, but then he uses a Lord of the Rings analogy, and everyone nods and smiles with enlightenment…and so did I. I’m such a nerd.

It was also funny when Cavanaugh fainted dead away when Ronon stepped into the room to interrogate him. Cavanaugh is such a jerk. I can’t stand that guy. Just once I’d like to see Weir punch him. Just once. We, like Weir, are sure he’s the bad guy. He has motive, opportunity and know-how. Nobody likes him, and he doesn’t like anybody. He’s antagonized everyone and made himself easy to suspect. So naturally it can’t be him, right? Right. It’s not.

I also liked the way Weir bookends the idea of infighting. At the beginning of the episode, they’re all gloating over how cool it is that the Wraith are fighting each other. At the end of the episode, after foiling a plot that came from Earth, Weir wonders if we’re any better than the Wraith when it comes to infighting.

The Bad
I guess it was kind of obvious that it wasn’t Cavanaugh or Cadman who set the bomb, despite the focus given to them by Rodney and Weir.

The Awesome
Although I knew it wasn’t Cavanaugh or Cadman, I did not expect it to be Caldwell when I saw this episode when it first aired. That totally blindsided me, as did him having a Goa’uld symbiote. Nice job.

All that ramping up makes for great tension and drama. They solve one problem only to have a deadlier one appear in its place. And of course they take it right up to the last second before the day is, at last, saved. Meanwhile, Tayla is singing about death and rebirth in the voice of an angel.

Rachel Luttrell has the most gorgeous voice. She’s gorgeous, has a perfect figure, and a beautiful voice. No fair. Tayla singing over her dead surrogate mother, her people determined to go forward with the ceremony, is an almost surreal counterpoint to the imminent destruction of the city. I loved her sad song playing under the “we are all going to die” montage. Oh, and that dress she wears for the ceremony is so pretty.

Wonderful SFX with the Athosian village (exterior establishing shot and the interior of the old woman’s yurt). I love how it looks. I love it when they take the time to create civilizations that aren’t cookie cutter versions of Earth cultures, especially since this is in another galaxy. The matte extensions inside the city are really great shots, too. For an episode that mostly just takes place inside the city, there are a lot of great SFX shots.

Rating
9 out of 10 for great tension and Rachel Luttrell’s singing voice.

Rodney and his dream girl in a sinking puddle jumper (photo from GateWorld.net)

Grace Under Pressure

Written by – Martin Gero
Directed by – Martin Wood
Guest starring – Amanda Tapping (Samantha Carter), David Nykl (Radek Zelenka), William MacDonald (Capt. Griffin), Peter Abrams (Donaldson), Nimet Kanji (Dr. Bryce)

WARNING: SPOILERS ABOUND!

Summary
McKay is trapped in a puddle jumper at the bottom of the ocean and gets help from his fantasy girl.

General Impressions
A whole episode with McKay and Carter. Bliss. It was their dynamic that I loved in the SG1 episodes McKay was in. Sure, Carter’s just a figment of Rodney’s imagination in this episode, but it’s still awesome. Of course he dresses her in tight jeans and a low cut top with a half-unzipped hoodie and more makeup than she usually wears (and yet he complains that she had the audacity to not be provocatively dressed—until she strips down to her underwear). Oddly enough, she even acts and talks like the real Carter, right down to the digs at his ego.

And I’m always happy when they give Zalenka a lot of screen time and let him be a hero.

The Good
Rodney talking to himself is pretty funny. I believe Gandalf called that speaking to the most intelligent person in the room (to paraphrase). Of course, he also talks to the puddle jumper, which is hilarious. If we ever doubted that Rodney loves the sound of his own voice, we no longer do. He talks to himself, his computer, the puddle jumper, a passing “whale” and a Samantha Carter-shaped figment of his imagination.

I really like that Sheppard is more than just dumb jock guy. He helps get the rescue jumper ready, and even demonstrates that he’s good at math (again).

Here’s the cool thing about the whale: In a later episode we learn that the whale was circling Rodney’s jumper out of more than mere curiosity or hunger. That’s all I’m saying for now.

The Bad
Red Shirt without enough time to develop enough sympathy for him to care when he sacrifices himself.

The Awesome
Rodney. Rodney, Rodney, Rodney. And Carter. OK, I’m sure you’re all sick and tired of me going all David Hewlett fangirl on you, but he’s really a terrific, versatile and very entertaining actor, and the best thing about this episode, which is a very good episode.

The shots of the jumpers going down under water and from above while under water, and the shot of the whale swimming up over the two parked jumpers were really cool.

Rating
10 out of 10. Rodney and Carter are so much fun together.

Looks vaguely familiar... (photo from GateWorld.net)

The Tower

Written by – Joseph Mallozzi & Paul Mullie
Directed by – Andy Mikita
Guest starring – Peter Woodward (Otho), Jay Brazeau (Lord Protector), David Bloom (Eldred), Richard Kahan (Baldric), Brendan Beiser (Tavius), Chelan Simmons (Mara), Mark Gibbon (Constable), Anna Cummer (Petra)

WARNING: SPOILERS ABOUND!

Summary
The team finds a city like Atlantis and must wade through feudal politics in hopes of getting a ZPM.

General Impressions
I thought this episode was weak when it first aired, and my opinion hasn’t changed. Not one of my favorite episodes.

The Good
I actually liked the village set. Where the tower was a Renaissance festival, the village seemed a little more authentically period, right down to everybody being dirty, and their clothes looking homespun. I also like the uniforms of the tower soldiers. You can see a clear difference between the villagers and the people from the tower. I imagine that’s exactly the difference one would have seen in feudal societies on Earth: The ones doing the lording over would have been all clean and have the advanced technology. The ones being lorded over would be visibly disadvantaged. Nice redressing of the Atlantis gate room set, too. The costuming in the tower was a bit of a mish-mash. Some Renaissance, some Jane Austen, some Shakespeare, some Kaiser Wilhelm. Nice costumes, but…inconsistent.

Joe Flannigan looks cool in aviator shades. Just saying.

The Bad
OK. The tower folk are supposedly sophisticated, but they don’t have eating utensils? No knives? No forks?

Oh boy! Sheppard gets another temporary girlfriend! He’s freaked out when she tells him that he’ll be Lord Protector if he marries her, but I notice he didn’t kick her out of his bedchamber.

The Awesome
Not much, though I liked the exploration of what happened to Lantean constructions that weren’t under water, like Atlantis was. How many other such cities and other buildings the Lanteans built are buried throughout the galaxy?

The redressing of the Atlantis set was done pretty convincingly, especially the deteriorated underground parts of the city.

Rating
4 out of 10. I just couldn’t get into this one.

If John Woo directed an SGA episode...No wait: No doves. (photo from GateWorld.net)

The Long Goodbye

Written by – Damian Kindler
Directed by – Andy Mikita
Guest starring – Kavan Smith (Major Lorne), Mitch Pileggi (Colonel Steven Caldwell)

WARNING: SPOILERS ABOUND!

Summary
Atlantis is in peril when Sheppard and Weir are taken over by the minds of ancient enemies bent on settling an old score.

General Impressions
Torri Higginson must have been thrilled to pieces over this episode. She gets to do a lot, including kicking butt. She looks like she’s really enjoying herself. This episode is a lot of fun with Sheppard and Weir getting possessed by warring entities and chasing each other around the city trying to kill each other.

The Good
The premise is really interesting: Two enemies in stasis pods with a failsafe that implants the occupant’s consciousness into a host body in order to transmit their knowledge should they be unable to do it themselves. That’s pretty sophisticated.

Once again we’re shown that Tayla is smarter than Ronon. Ronon gets suckered by Thalen, but Tayla isn’t fooled by Phebus or Thalen. I didn’t really realize how smart Tayla is when Atlantis was on the air, but I’m really seeing it during this rewatch. Tayla is awesome.

And the Weir/Sheppard shippers get a bone thrown to them when Weir and Sheppard kiss.

The Bad
The cool, consciousness implantation technology never appears again. Like the darts, the expedition never tries to reverse engineer this cool piece of tech and put it to use for their own purposes.

They use the same head bowing convention used when switching between human and Tok’ra consciousness to switch between Weir and Phebus. I just never thought we needed a physical queue to know we were speaking to a different person. I always thought the change in speaking style would be sufficient. I hate being hit over the head with stuff.

The Awesome
Weir and Sheppard chasing each other around the city trying to kill one another. Two people who know the city inside and out and have all the security codes possessed by entities with no attachment to anyone in the city and a willingness to do anything—even kill everybody in Atlantis—to destroy the other one. We get more than just Weir and Sheppard running around carrying out an alien vendetta, we get ramped up peril as Ronin gets stabbed by Sheppard, and Weir threatens to gas most of the people in the city. The aliens are on the clock because their consciousnesses will fade in a matter of hours. The people in the city are on the clock because Weir will gas everybody if they can’t override her codes in time and counter what she’s done. This episode is just a lot of fun.

The city looks great in this episode. The interior shots are wonderful, and the exterior swooping shot showing that we’re now going to see what the others are doing elsewhere is really cool. It was reused from the episode The Seige.

Rating
10 out of 10. This is one of my favorite episodes.

Special Features

Profile on David Hewlett
A profile of my favorite Stargate Atlantis actor, David Hewlett (Dr. Rodney McKay). Yay! He says fans didn’t like the McKay character on SG1, but I loved him. I think that had a lot to do with David Hewlett’s performance. If I knew a guy like him in real life, on the other hand, I’d want to hurt him. His least favorite shoot? Duet.

Stargate Atlantis Stunts
Stunt Coordinator James “BamBam” Bamford tells us how stunts are done on Stargate Atlantis and how they ensure the actors are safe no matter what the stunt. Also, it’s just fun to say “BamBam”. Everyone agrees, Duet was hard to shoot. Dangling Hewlett by his leg with a fight going on in front of him was tough on everybody.

Audio Commentary for Critical Mass
Director Andy Mikita, actor Rachel Luttrell, Director of Photography Brendon Spencer. They love crossover episodes, and so do the fans. We also get a reminder that SG1 is “sanctioned” by the United States Air Force, which vets scripts, advises, and sometimes provides real equipment and personnel for use in the show. I always thought that was so cool. Rachel didn’t realize that the establishing shot of the SGC exterior is the real Cheyenne Mountain facility. LOL, the guy who places the hateable Cavanaugh is actually a really nice guy. He plays jerk ass so well, though. Oh wow, they’re right: Cadman’s military, so her hair should be up, not down, even if it’s sexier down. Oops. They also talk about the effort that goes into designing the show. I think that’s something viewers almost take for granted, but good design is how the viewers are taken out of their real world and plunked into the fantasy world of the show. And who knew Rachel was so critical of herself that she can’t watch the dailies? They also had to get her to make her voice less polished when she sang, since Tayla obviously would not be a professional singer.

Audio Commentary for Grace Under Pressure
Director Martin Wood, writer Martin Gero, actors Amanda Tapping and David Hewlett. Amanda and David introduce themselves, but we don’t hear much from them until a midway through the commentary. They needed a “cheap” episode, so they put McKay in the back of a jumper at the bottom of the sea. They threw Carter in to make it interesting. It worked. And how! However, they think they made us care about the Red Shirt before killing him off. I disagree. They explain how they made the jumper set shake, look like it was cockeyed, and take on water (they had a second jumper for water). They lit it with flashlights and McKay’s tablet until McKay figures out how to get the lights on  in the compartment. It’s apparently very hard to light dark scenes. Amanda Tapping liked the pink outfit her character wore because it was nothing Carter would pick out for herself, another sign that she’s not the real Carter, she’s McKay’s version of Carter. I can’t believe they actually had Carter do that Finding Nemo “I speak whale” thing, but cut the scene. Can you imagine Amanda Tapping doing Ellen DeGeneres talking to a whale? Heehee. They got awkward thank you letters from fans about Amanda Tapping in her bra.

Audio Commentary for The Tower
Producer Paul Mullie and director Andy Mikita. They address the issue of reusing local Vancouver actors and how they have to wait a few years before using the same actor for another role. It’s fun to figure out which SG1 or SGA episode you’ve seen this or that actor in before. They also talk about locations and finding fruit and animals (or creating it) that look “alien”. Pity they don’t go through that effort where trees and shrubs are concerned. Apparently they had trouble costuming this episode, but the costumes helped the actors get into their roles. They also talk about how they try to make the aliens sound like they’re aliens, even though they’re speaking English: It’s all in the cadence.

Audio Commentary for The Long Goodbye
Director Andy Mikita, actor Torri Higginson, Director of Photography Brendon Spencer. They loved the old woman who played comatose Phebus. All she had to do was lie there, but when she wasn’t in the pod she would do song and dance to entertain the crew. Fun! They usual shoot an episode consecutively over the course of a week, but they had to keep coming back to this one to do pickups for at least a month. They love the lighting, which was supposed to be warm sunlight. Torri did most of her own fight scenes in this episode, rather than having her stunt double do them. It was also the first time she’d shot a P-90 and was a little intimidated at first, but by the end of the episode she was totally into it. They talk about how tricky it is to shoot in the dark. You need some kind of lighting, but very little so it still looks like everyone’s in the dark.

Production Design & Photo Gallery

The Cat Piano from PRA on Vimeo.

Via i09

The latest infraction came from T-Mobile, which provides my mom’s cellular service. T-Mobile is trying to save money and lower its environmental impact by doing away with paper statements. I applaud this move, but then I haven’t received a paper statement from them in years. I get my statements vua email, and my bills are automatically deducted from my checking account each month. Easy-peasy. Then again, I have a computer with an internet connection and have for more than a decade now (not counting the office). Now, my mom could agree to have $1. 50 tacked onto her monthly charges in order to continue to receive a paper statement, but apparently $1.50 is too much to pay for her convenience. I’ll be handling her T-Mobile statements and bill paying from now on, which is fine. I can do it faster than she can.

As if that weren’t enough, now her church has gotten her knickers in a knot. Apparently, the Lutheran church is going to let gay people be ordained (”non-celibate homosexuals” is the terminology they used). The pastor announced this development one Sunday, noting that his church would not follow suit, and if the congregants wanted more information they could find it on the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod’s website. My mother and her friends were ticked. She called me to have me look up the news item and print it for her.

Now I read on Rotten Tomatoes that movie listings might not be printed in newspapers anymore. This is the way my mother finds out when and where the movies she and her girlfriends want to see are playing. She’ll have to call me if movie listings disappear, or hope one of her friends has a computer with an internet connection. I’ve told her she can use the computers at the public library in a pinch (if I’m not available), and I’ll be happy to show her how to access the internet on them. She insists it would be too much trouble, and she’d only forget what I showed her.

I endorse any effort to reduce our impact on the environment. And it’s not like T-Mobile (for example) isn’t providing a way for those without an internet connection to receive their billing statements. But I think they might make allowances for senior citizens, maybe offer them a special deal in which they don’t have to pay for paper statements by virtue of their age. Maybe if they provide their AARP membership number, or something. I just think it’s unfair to penalize someone for not wanting to own a computer. It’s not like she uses her cell phone all that much, anyway. Mostly, she just checks her home answering machine when she’s out, or uses it when she’s babysitting my niece at their house, since they’re totally cellular over there (as am I).

I think this situation will only get worse and more frustrating for my mother and others like her in the future. I’m happy to help, and it’s really no trouble for me at all, but I just think it’s not fair. Not everyone has easy access to the internet, and to assume that all or most people do isn’t right. It’s fine for me, but for people like my mom it’s infuriating.

That’s right: Conan the Barbarian and The Jane Austen Book Club. I am nothing if not eclectic.