Category: Sci-Fi
Stargate Atlantis: 02-15, “The Tower”
Rating: 
Our lovable Atlantis team find themselves on a planet inhabited by who they think are primitive people. It’s harvest time and the villagers are busy, so the team is kept around waiting. During that time, Rodney wonders why they’re there since there’s no technology to glean from these folks. Teyla mentions that establishing good relations with other planets can prove beneficial for other reasons. I gotta side with Rodney on this. They can be a good neighbor to the galaxy when the Wraith are destroyed. Until then, they should be spending their time trying to find some weapons.
It’s a good thing they were there after all though. One of the villagers, Eldred, comes up to greet them and apologize for their wait. He explains that they are trying to prepare their tribute for The Tower from their harvest. Naturally, this peaks their interest and they inquire of it. Eldred is amazed they don’t know of The Tower and states it protects them from the Wraith. The team can’t get to The Tower soon enough to investigate.
What they find kind of blows their mind a little bit. Mine too.
Episode spoilers inside!
Stargate SG-1: 09-15, “Ethon”
Rating: Okay. I’ve been complaining ever since the return of SG-1 that it was missing something, namely Daniel. Although this wasn’t a Daniel rich episode, he at least got some screen time and more than a few lines of throw away, red shirt material.
In “Ethon”, last season’s “Icon” storyline is somewhat continued. That world was split into two primary forces, the Rand Protectorate and the Caledonian Federation. Disputes between the two nations really heated up when the Stargate, located in a museum in Rand’s territory, was activated and the SG-1 team came through.
This time, it’s the Ori who are driving these nations further apart. The Rand Protectorate has embraced the message of the Ori, so naturally the Caldonians are opposed. Rand works with the Ori to build a satellite weapon, capable of wiping out the Caldonians. With the help of Jarrod, a Rand officer who doesn’t want to see this result in more bloodshed, SG-1 obtains preliminary plans for the weapon. Their first choice is to send Daniel there to try to talk some sense into the Protectorate about the Ori and convince them to dismantle the weapon. Plan B involves sending Prometheus there to destroy it themselves. Neither plan quite works out in the end.
Episode spoilers inside!
Battlestar Galactica: 02-14, “Black Market”
Rating: 
This season is just irritating me. It’s too depressing. I understand and appreciate that these people just had their whole world turned upside down. I do admire the fact that the writers don’t make the show fluffy or fill it with a lot of out of place comedy. Still, I just want something good to happen to them!
Stargate Atlantis: 02-14, “Grace Under Pressure”
Rating: 
A puddle jumper test including Rodney goes drastically wrong and the jumper falls out of the sky and into the ocean. It’s sinking to the ocean floor quickly and the Atlantis crew needs to figure out a way to rescue Rodney. Rodney desperately tries to figure a way out of this situation himself and conjures a hallucination of Samantha Carter to help him find a solution.
Episode spoilers inside! Continue reading at your own risk.
Stargate SG-1: 09-14, “Stronghold”
Rating: The Jaffa Council is putting democracy up to a vote. Some previous supporters of democracy for Jaffa are now acting strangely opposed to it, as if they’ve been brainwashed. So when Teal’C is kidnapped, everyone is worried about who may have taken him and for what purposes. In the meantime, Mitchell uses the memory device from “Collateral Damage“ to allow his dying friend to look back on his memories of being involved in the Stargate program over the last year.
Spoilers inside! You know the drill, proceed at your own risk.
Battlestar Galactica: 02-13, “Epiphanies”
Rating: Unfortunately I’m a week behind on this review, so it’s going to be short. With the lack of Pegasus plot lines and characters, this felt like an episode of BSG from the first season and made me fall in love with the show all over again.
President Roslin is sicker than ever. On her deathbed she orders the abortion of Sharon’s baby after anomalies are discovered in its blood and begins thinking back to the hours right before the Cylon attack on Caprica. She has a meeting with the President to discuss some sort of teacher’s union strike.
Spoilers inside! Don’t continue on if you haven’t seen this episode.
Stargate Atlantis: 02-13, “Critical Mass”
Rating: 
When Stargate Atlantis spun off into its own series, there were questions like, “Why didn’t they take any staff weapons or zats with them to Atlantis?” Atlantis seemed to be ignoring a lot of the established Stargate-verse and to the fans, that just didn’t make much sense. The reasoning as I understood it, was that the creators wanted Atlantis to hold its own. They didn’t want a Stargate newbie to tune into Atlantis and be confused by all the references to pre-discovered alien technology or enemies. The common tie between Atlantis and SG-1 was the Ancients, the builders of the gates themselves.
This resolve was somewhat broken by the 9th episode of the first season, “Home”, where the team returns to what they believe to be Earth and we see characters we’d normally see only on SG-1. Since then they’ve added an Asgard to the cast and have a method of returning home, securing the possibility for many cross overs and plot tie-ins from SG-1.
This episode put a final nail on the coffin of making Atlantis a stand-alone show. Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was great, but there’s no way someone who didn’t watch SG-1 will get the full impact of what happened.
Spoilers inside! Do not continue if you don’t want to be spoiled for this episode.
Stargate SG-1: 09-13, “Ripple Effect”
Rating: This week’s episode of Stargate SG-1 brought everything that last week’s did not. It was funny, had a whole bunch of scientific gobbledy-gook I didn’t understand, SG-1 worked as a team and the episode as a whole tugged at my heartstrings. Of course, any episode dealing with alternate reality versions of SG-1 promises to be good.
The SGC notices a weird power surge when the Stargate is activated off schedule. An SG-1 team dressed in black comes through the gate and during their debriefing with Landry we find reality isn’t quite as they expected. Tiny details are different, such as the planet they were visiting and the fact that Jacob and Selmak are still alive. A short while later, another SG-1 team comes through the gate and it is determined that since they arrived when they were originally scheduled and since all their details matched, that they are the “real” SG-1.
Sam thinks the other SG-1 are somehow from an alternate reality, she just needs to figure out how that’s scientifically possible with a Stargate. She pairs together with her other self for faster work. While the Sams are trying to figure out what happened, additional alternate reality teams (some SG-1, some not) pour through the gate. Gate operations are suspended and the SGC only accepts alternate reality teams trying to get through the gate who are under fire or in distress.
Continue on for more thoughts. Warning! Spoilers inside! Stop here if you haven’t seen the episode.
Battlestar Galactica: 02-12, “Resurrection Ship”, Part 2
Rating: I didn’t much care for this the first time around, but I was half falling asleep at the time. I decided to watch it again and I’m glad I did. I’m not sure why, but I felt better about it the second time. The score makes this show. It’s just as much a character in the show as Starbuck.
Everything else is a spoiler. Spoilers inside! Do not continue if you haven’t seen the episode.
Stargate Atlantis: 02-12, “Epiphany”
Rating: This episode felt similar to this week’s SG-1 for me. I guess it’s because of the romance factor, but it was also more or less a stand-alone episode. Unlike SG-1, however, Atlantis got it right.
Sheppard, McKay, Teyla and Ronon are off world together following an odd energy reading picked up by McKay. When they get to the source, they find only a covered entrance to a cave. The entrance seems to be shielded by some sort of force-field, so Rodney has the great idea to create “MALP on a stick” which is quite simply a camcorder on a stick, to investigate what’s behind the entrance. The recording indicates nothing out of the ordinary, so Sheppard decides to enter. Unfortunately the force-field sucks him in. Only at that point does the team pick up clues about what’s happening on the other side. They must rescue Sheppard before it’s too late!
There was a good bit of Rodney/Ronon interaction, which I found very refreshing. McKay is obviously less than thrilled with Ronon’s intellect and will spare no opportunity to make that fact obvious. This show is so fun and fresh, I can’t believe I’m saying it, but until they give Michael Shanks more air time on SG-1, Atlantis will be my favorite Stargate show.
Continue on for some thoughts about this episode. Spoilers inside! Do not continue if you haven’t seen it or don’t want to be spoiled!
Stargate SG-1: 09-12, “Collateral Damage”
Rating: 
What the frack? This was just about the worst episode of SG-1 ever. This episode was all about Mitchell and, while I like his character and accept him as Jack’s replacement, I don’t really give two flying flips about his “dramatic backstory”. The latest episode of Stargate SG-1, “Collateral Damage” was a filler episode with no advancement to the overall storyarc of the Ori coming to our galaxy to declare war on the Ancients.
Every season there are several “filler” or “stand-alone” episodes that ignore anything and everything that’s been going on recently in the Stargate-verse. Usually they at least attempt to be funny, a la “Avenger 2.0" and “Wormhole X-Treme!". Sure, they sometimes overshoot funny and go right into the cheesy category, but I get the point that they’re at least trying.
This episode was not funny (save for a few moments) but was downright morbid.
Spoilers inside! Don’t continue if you haven’t seen the episode.
Battlestar Galactica: 02-11, “Resurrection Ship”, Part 1
Rating: This show is blowing the two Stargate series away. The writers seem to understand how to create drama while still making you laugh. The score is always beautiful.
When last we left our loveable Galactica crew, they were on the verge of war with Pegasus, another ship from Caprica. While Galactica has somehow maintained a sense of civil rights with their fleet, the people aboard Pegasus are, to put it nicely, dirty rotten scoundrels. Its officers tried to rape Sharon 3, the Cylon and when her two lovers tried to defend her, they killed one of the officers. Their execution was ordered and it’s all Adama can do to delay it.
Thanks to Starbuck (whom Cain seems to admire) the two battlestars gain intel on a huge resurrection ship with Cylon spares, so they must put aside their differences for the moment and plan to destroy it.
Some episode thoughts and spoilers inside.
Stargate Atlantis: 02-11, “The Hive”
Rating: As with this week’s SG-1 episode, I found myself a bit behind on things when the season recap flashed by. I don’t know why it was so difficult for me to retain information from the Stargates, but I had no problem recalling what happened earlier this season in Battlestar Galactica.
In this episode, Sheppard, Teyla and Ronon accompany Ford and his men on a mission aboard a Hive ship after they’ve been pumped full of the Wraith enzyme. To be completely honest, I have no recollection of the mission’s purpose. I think they were trying to destroy the hive ship. Sounds like a good idea, after all. Of course complications arise when they get caught by the Wraith, but those nasty bug ancestors surprised me by not killing them.
Spoilers inside.
Stargate SG-1: 09-11, “The Fourth Horseman”, Part 2
Rating: I don’t think I did a good job paying attention to what happened last season because when the, “Previously on SG-1” clips started playing, I was immediately lost. Seriously, I didn’t remember most of it.
This episode spent some more time on the Ori and their purpose in this galaxy. Unfortunately it spent a lot of time on the Jaffa storyline as well, which I can’t stand. As I mentioned to my husband, I would really prefer Teal’C to be in a tight black shirt with Samantha on his right side and Daniel on his left, stepping through the Stargate together. These loose, ugly robes covering him up are just not working for me. That, and I feel like I’m in the middle of a Shakesperian play whenever he’s around his Jaffa friends. I want happy, Earth-giddy Teal’C back. The guy who loves Star Wars and cowboy hats and raises one eyebrow anytime Jack Mitchell says something stupid. I know Christopher Judge has to be getting a little bored with the fact that Teal’C never has any meaty storylines, but oh my God is this Jaffa Rebellion crap boring.
A few spoilers inside.
SciFi Friday Returns!
Set up your Tivos, DVRs and tape recorders, my US friends! Sci Fi Friday returns tonight from its winter break with new episodes of its three most popular shows!
- 8:00 PM: Stargate SG-1: “Fourth Horseman”, Part 2
- 9:00 PM: Stargate Atlantis: “The Hive"
- 10:00 PM: Battlestar Gallactica: “Resurrection Ship”, Part 1
Thanks to GateWorld.net for sending me an email letting me know the shows are returning tonight!
Expect brief reviews, theories and/or thoughts on each over the weekend.
