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.
- They get infected by something from a planet they’ve been to previously. (I’ll accept this without argument.)
- 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.)
- The wormhole between the planet and Destiny happens to intersect with a solar flare, preventing them from returning to the ship.
- The solar flare happens to be properly positioned such that the wormhole from the planet loops back on itself into the relatively recent past.
- 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.
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.