Copyright © 2009 by Sarah Stegall
Stargate Universe
“Light”
Syfy, Fridays, 9PM
Written by Brad Wright
Directed by Peter DeLuise
Warning: this review contains some spoilers. If you’d rather not know what the episode is going to include, bookmark this page and read it after viewing.
Eli: Uh, guys? We’re in the star.
The great thing about science fiction is that, even if there are holes in your plot or flaws in your character concepts, you can always fall back on a sense of wonder—if, of course, what you are doing is real science fiction and not just cowboys with rayguns. So when an episode slows to a crawl and the characters have nothing to do but talk about how they can’t do anything, you can still keep the audience awake by introducing the WOW factor, the one moment or scene or concept that blows us away and keeps the story from deliquescing into a mundane mush. Like flying through a star.
So this time, the crisis facing Destiny is that the ship is flying into a star. Oops. There’s not enough power to steer the ship, barely enough to see by. This episode is lit primarily by flashlights, adding to the gloom and doom atmosphere. In a last ditch effort to save as many as he can, Colonel Young decrees a lottery to pick 15 lucky people, plus two that he appoints, to fly the shuttle to the most likely habitable planet in the system. The rest of the episode consists of the drama that ensues, as people decide what to do during their last hours of life. As Dr. Johnson famously observed, the prospect of being hanged focuses the mind wonderfully. Various crew members fight, read, pray, make love, or pace restlessly. Assorted video diaries are recorded. When the shuttle flies away, Eli uses his Kino to get a picture of the Destiny from the outside, earning him a rare encomium from Dr. Rush. But in the end, all of this drama is pointless, because the Destiny flies through the star.
Wow.
As it skims through the corona of the dwarf, the shields draw on the last power reserves to preserve the Destiny from heat, radiation, and the effects of massive gravity flux. The ship slides into the photosphere, scoop-like devices deploy, and the ancient ship replenishes its fuel—the Destiny, as Rush smirkingly tells Young, is literally run by solar power. The lights come on, the engine fires up, and Destiny flies through the star and emerges on the other side.
Again I say, wow. This is the sense of wonder I was looking for. This is the gee whiz moment I long to see in science fiction stories. That few seconds of top notch CGI, coupled with the joyous moments when hope is renewed among the crew, made up for any moments that dragged or did not convince. Lethargic dialogue? Check. Cheesy love scenes? Check. Ridiculous politics? Check. Picking people at random for “survival”, rather than assessing their reproductive health, knowledge of farming, or other skill sets? Check. All them potential yawn-inducing clichés. And I don’t care, because the starship flew through a star.
Not that the show should be relying on this every week. No story can ever be all about the pretty. The show still needs a strong character who Does Something, someone other than Dr. Rush. So far, we have a lot of passive people wandering around a starship acting in a completely irresponsible manner, mooning over their lost loved ones on Earth, etc. The charm of futuristic, high-tech, gadget-filled, awe-inspiring sci fi is that it lets us see ordinary mortals stepping up to the plate to act heroically. So far, the only actual moral heroes on the Destiny were the colonel and Dr. Rush, who pulled their names out of consideration and elected to go down (or up, or sideways) with the ship. Which then negated their sacrifice by flying through the star.
So even though this episode dragged a little, and I’m already really, really, really tired of the Two Pretty Twentysomethings romance, and tired of the Fat Nerd, I am still enchanted by this show. Robert Carlyle is a fabulous mad scientist, Justin Louis is a fine, quiet-spoken, rock-solid commander. They need better supporting characters, but for now, they’re all right. The mood is wonderfully, refreshingly gritty, moody, and grim, a far cry from the sometimes relentless optimism of conventional SF. The CGI is top notch—they made me believe the ship flew through a star.
I’m in. Not because this is another installment in the Stargate franchise—I’m not a SG1 or Atlantis viewer. Not because Robert Carlyle can make tomato soup dramatic. Not because there’s less action and more intelligent introspection on this show. I’m in because the ship flew through a star. And it’s been a long, long while since a TV show made my jaw drop.