Copyright © 2009 by Sarah Stegall
Stargate Universe
“Time”
Syfy, Fridays, 8PM
Written and Directed by Robert C. Cooper
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.
The first planet the Destiny stopped for was a desert that looked a lot like Tatooine from Star Wars. The next one was an ice planet even the crew was calling “Hoth”. This episode takes place mostly on a jungle planet, which Eli should have nicknamed “Dagobah” at first sight. This can’t be a coincidence. Nor can it be all that much of a coincidence that the vessel that houses this story is called the Destiny, given the ridiculous number of times various people in Star Wars talked about Luke Skywalker and his destiny. So if I start looking for Yoda around a corner or start listening for a distinctive hoarse breathing sound, you’ll understand why.
This was one of the most complex episodes of TV I’ve ever seen. I enjoyed it, I was frustrated by it, and I watched it several times. I’m still not sure how it ended—or if it ended. Like the characters themselves, it seems to be caught in an infinite time loop.
The first third of the hour was a wonderfully documentary-like story of exploration and disaster. The away team, which included Rush, Eli, Chloe, Scott, and Greer, arrived on Dagobah with Eli’s kino in full record mode. Over the next twenty minutes, we see them explore for food, observe their interactions, and begin falling sick, one by one. Worse, it starts to rain, the sun goes down, the Stargate is not working, and finally the group is attacked by some sort of flying lizard/worm. Lt. Scott is bitten and falls into a coma; Chloe dies a gruesome death by chest-burster. Besieged and unable to return via the Stargate, the rapidly dwindling team retreats to a cave in a last-ditch stand, in which everyone is killed off except Scott, who wakes from his coma to find everyone dead.
But that didn’t really happen.
It turns out we are watching this over the shoulder of the very much alive crew on Destiny. It seems that in their first (second?) foray to Dagobah, they found human remains and a kino with a full databank. Bringing it back to the ship, they behold their own deaths in living color with full sound. Stunned, they try to figure out how this could (not?) have happened. People get freaked out by things that they know have not happened—yet. (Was anyone else getting flashbacks to FlashForward? Just me?). Greer gets sullen (his default mode) because he failed to protect his people—even though Young quite reasonably points out that a) everyone is still alive, b) he could not have prevented the attack they saw on the tape, and c) it didn’t really happen.
As the group struggle to assimilate this surprise, they begin to fall sick, one by one, just like in the video. Assuming they picked up some bug on the planet, Dr. Johansen quarantines everyone. Unfortunately, the infection spreads, and people begin dying. A review of the final message on the kino shows Lt. Scott warning the Destiny of what happened to his crew, and then he tosses the kino through the malfunctioning Stargate. The kino records static—and then it’s back on Dagobah. Say what?
Rush is the first to say it out loud—this is a time travel puzzle. He theorizes that the wormhole connecting the planet’s Stargate to Destiny‘s has been warped by too close an association with a solar flare (which I found weak, considering that the wormhole would have to be orders of magnitude stronger than a solar flare, but what the heck). He further theorizes that the kino traveled forward in time (or is it backward?) and therefore altered their own timeline, so it accomplished its purpose of warning them. At this point, Dr. Johansen realizes that the infection killing people did not arrive on the Destiny from Dagobah, but was imported from Hoth, the ice planet, in the water they brought back. And it’s both lethal and quick. Now it’s her turn to theorize, and she decides that the Future Scott who sent back (forward?) the kino survived because he’d been bitten by a flying lizard. The away team must return to Dagobah and bring one back to create an antidote.
This time, armed with foreknowledge (anteknowledge? I’m confused), Young goes himself, taking Scott and Greer again. Although they know that the flying lizards are lethal and that they must capture one alive, it apparently doesn’t occur to anyone to use the heavily armored spacesuits that saved their butts on Hoth. No, they go through armed with manly courage and automatic weapons that have already demonstrated their ineffectiveness against flying lizards. As the kino again records their exploits, the crew of Destiny watches as their comrades die off one by one. Chloe dies, with Eli holding her hand, and Rush relays this to the away team (did they really need to know, Rush? What happened to your policy of lying to keep people’s hopes up?). The lizards attack. Scott records another warning. All die.
Cut to black. Roll credits.
Huh?
On one level, this had me on the edge of my seat. Of course, when major characters started dying off, I knew there would be a “reset” button somewhere. Naturally I expected the second (first?) expedition to the planet to counteract everything that had gone wrong. It was a great twist to have things go wrong all over again—even though it made the team look like idiots (fool me once…). But then there was no resolution, and I’m left hanging. And confused. Apparently, next week’s episode includes all the characters who died in this one, so… did someone wake up in the shower?
Being left hanging like this should tick me off, but instead I was amused and gratified at a “real” science fictional story. I found the entire documentary sequence compelling and believable—especially where they involved Eli. I like him jumping in to sample foreign fruit, his paranoia that Johansen and others are laughing at him, his shy peeks at Scott and Chloe, and his grief when she dies. Even his annoying tendency to overshare with his nervous chatter provided some welcome comic relief, and even gave us a nice moment between him and Rush, where we could almost see the older man recognizing something of himself as a young nerd. The flying lizards were suitable for any horror story, and the flash/nightvision/shaky-cam photography gave the whole sequence a gritty realism I liked. And bonus! Chloe died horribly. Twice. At the end of the hour, I was saying things like, “Awesome!”
Not so much at the end of the second viewing. I watched the episode twice in order to fill in some gaps in the storyline, especially the time travel paradoxes. Alas, I found myself even more confused than before. The time travel “chronology” made no sense, and the ambiguous ending was less awesome and more annoying. If we’re really supposed to “fill in the blanks” ourselves, essentially fanwanking an ending so we can get on to the next episode, I feel cheated. It’s not my job to tell this story, it’s the writer’s. What did Cooper think he was doing?
Since everyone did/didn’t die in this episode I got to see the reactions to death from the various characters. When Chloe dies the first time, Eli’s reaction is subdued, his face strained, his demeanor grieved and grim, yet determined. When Scott wakes up and finds everyone dead, this trained military tough guy falls to his knees in hysterics. The second time Chloe dies, Eli is confessing his, uh, deep friendship to her (really, is this guy ever going to drop the nerd protective camouflage?) and reacts with silent and totally believable grief. Scott, however, hardly reacts at all. It’s hard to see this “love triangle” as real, given that Scott and Chloe between them don’t seem able to conjure a single genuine expression of feeling. Eli, however, makes up for both of them. His friendly and understanding interviews with Johansen and Rush are an emotional high point of the episode. Eli’s resourcefulness and determination during this episode made him a standout, and considerably strengthened his character. I like him a lot better after watching him duct-tape the kino to his hat, determined to do what he can, to the last. He does not sulk, like Greer, or fall apart, like Scott; rather, this pudgy nerd quietly goes and gets things done. When I get stranded on Dagobah, I want Eli with me.
“Time” garnered 1.8 million viewers according to the overnight ratings, for a 1.3 share. This appears to be a slight increase from last week’s numbers, so with any luck the show is gaining audience share. I sure hope so, because so far it’s exceeded my (admittedly low) expectations.
Hey there,
Next week nobody is waking up in a shower. This one is easy and you don’t need to see anything beyond the credits to know how the story ends.
This story is about a time travel loop.
They go to the planet,
they find a kino telling them they will all die
they all die one by one
the last person throws a kino back in time with warning
Those are the pertinent events of every iteration of the loop.
This loop will repeat until they break it. Each iteration of the loop they will get a little closer to breaking out.
I don’t know if you noticed but in the beginning of the footage on the kino that they found it showed the team finding a kino also. (trippy)
But if you follow: that tells us that the events of the episode were not the first iteration of the loop, or even the second. They could have been the third or thirtieth, it makes little difference.
Lt. Scotts’ kino sent back in time had a very concise message of what to do, and an explanation of the time loop, it’s safe to believe that they will do a better job on the next iteration in dealing with the disease and creatures.
However if they fail, it doesn’t matter. Likely one of them will manage to send a kino back in time with an even more refined message/warning. In fact I expect it. Same people, similar situation (nearly identical on each iteration), same results. The loop will continue until they achieve a solution where everybody lives and time travel isn’t necessary. There’s no need to show that in following episodes.
Sure, that makes sense. But that’s not really my point. I don’t feel it’s my job, as a viewer, to finish the story. Your version is fine, but someone else might have a version where everyone dies forever. I think it’s the writer’s job to tell the story, not ours, and it’s a bit of a cop-out for the writer to say “figure it out for yourself” when there can obviously be more than one ending (my endings would all involve Chloe dying horribly).
I think Cooper was trying to be artistic or innovative or cutting edge, and if so, I think it was a failed experiment. When you already have Multiple Character Death ™, time travel, and alien planets/life forms in the mix, you need to be very, very clear in your storyline. And this wasn’t. It was muddled, and matters were not helped by the “avant garde” structure Cooper used. I think he would have been better off reserving that particular innovation in style for a more straightforward, less complicated story.
Not to take away from my continuing enjoyment of the episode, however. Although the structure and ending may be shaky, the rest of it–Eli’s character, multiple Chloe deaths, the planet Dagobah–all hold up well on repeated viewings. The episode was definitely one of my favorites; I only believe it could have been better if the ending were less ambiguous.
On the other hand, I think it was cool, but I didn’t KNOW it was cool until I saw they weren’t going to make it a two-parter. Because you can extrapolate, it’s not necessary to waste time showing a “auto-success” conclusion at the expense of the more characterful two “we died!” iterations. In my opinion, best episode by far, and salvages my interest in the series.