stargate universe; or, wtf was that all-nighter?
Last week I was terribly sick, and am still not quite sure how I got that way though I have a few ideas, but after spending several days in bed with a 104-degree (40C) fever and collapsing every time I stumbled to the bathroom or the kitchen, I managed to make it to the couch and finally do something with the last few days of my Netflix trial, since I had spent the rest of the month of having it wondering why it didn't have any movies I felt like seeing and no new episodes of my tv shows. My brother's Hulu+ account = a much better option for my viewing needs.
Ever since watching OUAT's "Skin Deep" and realizing what a fabulously nuanced actor Robert Carlyle is and starting to watch some of his movies, because watching him act is sort of like watching a string of firecrackers go off in the food court of a mall, I noticed that he was on Stargate Universe. I've never had the desire to watch any Stargate before, I've seen friends' Rodney/Daniel (?) slashfics and didn't care, it all looked like the shiny military drama sci-fi I tend to avoid. I don't care about Super Important People doing Super Important Things IN SPACE! Because of an early exposure to MST3K, I like my spaceships to be rustbuckets on the edge of falling apart and I like my characters to be a bunch of mostly-nobodies doing what they have to do and having some fun with each other. I also like to talk during movies. Like I said, I blame MST3K.
So I guess it was the feverish delirium that led me to start watching Stargate Universe on Thursday afternoon. And then literally not cease watching episodes from that time, through the night and all of Friday, until late Friday night. I finished both seasons in three days. It's a new record for me.
I reeeeeeeally had my doubts in the beginning that the Destiny was going to be enough of a piece of shit ship to make me like it, but then it proved to have plenty of its own personality. The ensemble of people on board was even better; some military people and researchers, but an awful lot of civilians who just sort of ended up there, stranded on an unpilotable spaceship halfway across the universe. And, TARDIS-like, they all just kinda got dumped off at various planets, had to do a lot of running, and had vital bits of the spaceship break at super inconvenient times.
And all the characters grew for it. Eli went from being a slacker MIT dropout to having people count on him, and even though he was clearly terrified at the responsibility it did a lot for him. TJ doubted her own skills as a medic but found reserves of doctoring abilities in her she never would have known she had. Chloe went from being aimless and a bit helpless to being strong, and brave, and using her intelligence. Young learned to deal with more responsibility than he ever expected to have. Greer learned to stop using nonstop action as a way of avoiding his vulnerability. Camille gradually let go of the control she needed to feel that she had a future.
Dr. Nicholas Rush, bless his curmudgeonly soul, doesn't change a bit. Except, really, he does. He lets his guard down a bit. He lets himself love Amanda Perry, even though there are always barriers between them. He is always the first to calculate the dreadful algebra of survival, but he will put himself on the line again and again to save the people on the ship even though he knows they all hate him.
[His response to being on a spaceship waiting to crash into a star.]
And I was really impressed by the diversity of the cast. It's pretty rare with TV shows that I'm NOT going NEEDS MOAR POC AND LESBIANS PLZ (Once Upon a Time, I'm looking at you, get your shit together in s2. Vampire Diaries, you too.) But with SGU, one of the main characters is a Chinese lesbian with an adorable girlfriend! Another main character is black! Plenty of the people you see milling about the ship are Asian and black and hispanic! WOW.
While the focus of the show was figuring out what the ship's prime directive was and also how to survive and maybe even get back to earth, season one seemed to be focused on exploring physical places, and it caused a lot of development of strength for the characters, and learning how they could work together and save each other. Season two was a bit more abstract, with more journeys of the mind- trips through time and seeing themselves in an alternate timeline, existing in digital realities, and I guess all the self-reflection that ten months in space will do to you.
I get the impression that SGU is not the popular girl of the Stargate club? What's up with that? I mean, I haven't watched the others so if everyone got turned off by a dramatic change in tone I suppose that's understandable (although it makes me want to not watch the other Stargate series, if they aren't quite as down to earth, pardon the pun) but the quality and writing of SGU seemed pretty solid, to me. AND ALSO IT HAS ROBERT CARLYLE'S STUPID FACE IN IT WHICH YOU HAVE TO WATCH.
I haven't found as much Chloe/Rush fic as I want (don't judge me) or fics that answer what happened after the ambiguous finale, so I have had to come up with my own headcanon, and it is this:
Eli spends one day after closing the last stasis pod eating whatever he wants, looking out into space, listening to music, and generally feeling good about being the epic hero of a space drama who gives up his life to save the rest of the passengers.
Then he wakes up the next day on the floor of the observation deck with a cramp in his neck and says, fuck this, I'm gonna live. And not just because if I don't, my mother will kill me. So he turns on as many computers as he can risk, and gets Amanda and Ginn out of quarantined drives, because even if they suck Rush's brain into cyberspace, what is that going to change? Ginn sighs and very pointedly doesn't ask why he's gotten himself into this situation when she appears. Mandy smiles at Eli like she wants to ruffle his hair, and says she'll help. She disappears for a minute to check on the stasis pods, though it's obvious she mainly wants to check on Dr. Rush. She never admits to the moustache that gets drawn on the glass in front of his face.
The two women have their own brilliance and the bulk of the Destiny's systems in their heads, so they set to solving the pod problem in the less than two weeks that they have before life support stops supporting. They find the problem with Eli's pod, and eventually come up with the solution, just in time. And as Eli goes to sleep, hopefully for just three years, Ginn and Amanda promise to keep the ship on track.
They do a better job at it than anyone up until that point. Still, it's four years and a decent distance into the next galaxy before they drop out of FTL, the pods open, and Mandy informs Rush that (a) she fixed the parameters on the program they set up to be together so the computer understands the definition of Utter Bastard Grieving Dead Wife But Still In Love, and (b) she'll be co-piloting the ship now since she knows about a million times more things about it than he does. They make a good partnership, for being a jackass and a non-corporeal being together.
After four years, the planet Jack Bristow (or whatever his diplomat name is) has come to an agreement that they'll let their stargate be used twice, so everyone who wants to get off the ship can do so and supplies and other people can get on. Everyone goes home to hug their families and take a billion hot showers. Most of them stay there. Eli's mother died during the four years. Camille has an awkward reunion with Sharon, but Sharon has moved on and they won't be getting back together. Chloe goes home to her mother, doesn't contact any of her former friends, and spends three days shopping. TJ makes arrangements and takes tests and is actually most of the way towards becoming a medical doctor by the time three days are up, with plans to use the stones to fulfill the rest of necessary requirements.
A lot of people stay home, but Chloe Armstrong does not. The ground is too heavy under her feet and she can't sleep properly and she gets a few job offers from friends of her late father, but none of them appeal to her, and she decides that Chloe Armstrong, Harvard graduate resident of earth, is basically a waste of oxygen. Her mother has been five years on her own and will survive, even if she claims she needs her daughter. When she returns to Destiny, it is Dr. Rush's surprised and actually delighted face that is a sight she will treasure forever. If he, who considers the majority of human beings to be utterly useless lumps of carbon, is glad to see her back, that really means something.
To the surprise of absolutely no one, Dr. Rush decides to continue on with Destiny. He had to extract a lot of promises that if he would just go home and take a goddamn bath and pack a few changes of clothes for the love of fuck then yes they would let him back on the ship. New notebooks take up more space from clothes than they should in his suitcase. He also gets a bottle of good single-malt, to enjoy when the paint-stripper from the ship's still is just not quite the beverage he's looking for.
Matt decides to stay home. He wants to see his growing son, but mostly he wants to have a life. When Chloe kisses him goodbye, it's like they've both already moved on. They aren't the same people who clung to each other in the wake of being marooned and her father's death. Ronald Greer comes back on board. Family isn't enough to keep him on earth, and he says he'll get bored if he doesn't see a new planet every week. Dr. Park also decides to stay. It's about a month after they've taken off again that the two reveal they actually got married while on earth.
Eli comes back, of course. Rodney McKay wants to come on board. Dr. Rush takes him out drinking on earth one night. The next day, Rodney is a bit paler and has changed his mind entirely.
A couple other new people come on board, knowing that they may never go home again; mostly they don't care. An English couple, Dr. Martha Jones and Mickey Smith, come on board, having been recommended by another agency for their experience with interstellar travel, aliens, triage, and General Weird Shit. Martha and TJ have a few problems at first, since TJ is almost but not quite a doctor yet but she doesn't want her territory encroached upon, but when it turns out Martha's experience is really not the same as what she'll be doing, they work together well.
Everett Young comes back on board. He says someone needs to keep an eye on Rush. Mostly he is just completely out of place on earth. Everything has moved on without him.
And so they travel on through the galaxies, following Destiny's premarked path and finding out new things on the way. Rush, Amanda, and Chloe write a paper together on what they've discovered and win Nobel Prizes (that they have to accept by proxy) for actually stating a Grand Unified Theory that seems to work. Babies are born on the ship, people die and are buried on whatever planet they next stop at. They're gypsies of the universe, and they've found the home they always belonged in.
Ever since watching OUAT's "Skin Deep" and realizing what a fabulously nuanced actor Robert Carlyle is and starting to watch some of his movies, because watching him act is sort of like watching a string of firecrackers go off in the food court of a mall, I noticed that he was on Stargate Universe. I've never had the desire to watch any Stargate before, I've seen friends' Rodney/Daniel (?) slashfics and didn't care, it all looked like the shiny military drama sci-fi I tend to avoid. I don't care about Super Important People doing Super Important Things IN SPACE! Because of an early exposure to MST3K, I like my spaceships to be rustbuckets on the edge of falling apart and I like my characters to be a bunch of mostly-nobodies doing what they have to do and having some fun with each other. I also like to talk during movies. Like I said, I blame MST3K.
So I guess it was the feverish delirium that led me to start watching Stargate Universe on Thursday afternoon. And then literally not cease watching episodes from that time, through the night and all of Friday, until late Friday night. I finished both seasons in three days. It's a new record for me.
I reeeeeeeally had my doubts in the beginning that the Destiny was going to be enough of a piece of shit ship to make me like it, but then it proved to have plenty of its own personality. The ensemble of people on board was even better; some military people and researchers, but an awful lot of civilians who just sort of ended up there, stranded on an unpilotable spaceship halfway across the universe. And, TARDIS-like, they all just kinda got dumped off at various planets, had to do a lot of running, and had vital bits of the spaceship break at super inconvenient times.
And all the characters grew for it. Eli went from being a slacker MIT dropout to having people count on him, and even though he was clearly terrified at the responsibility it did a lot for him. TJ doubted her own skills as a medic but found reserves of doctoring abilities in her she never would have known she had. Chloe went from being aimless and a bit helpless to being strong, and brave, and using her intelligence. Young learned to deal with more responsibility than he ever expected to have. Greer learned to stop using nonstop action as a way of avoiding his vulnerability. Camille gradually let go of the control she needed to feel that she had a future.
Dr. Nicholas Rush, bless his curmudgeonly soul, doesn't change a bit. Except, really, he does. He lets his guard down a bit. He lets himself love Amanda Perry, even though there are always barriers between them. He is always the first to calculate the dreadful algebra of survival, but he will put himself on the line again and again to save the people on the ship even though he knows they all hate him.
[His response to being on a spaceship waiting to crash into a star.]
And I was really impressed by the diversity of the cast. It's pretty rare with TV shows that I'm NOT going NEEDS MOAR POC AND LESBIANS PLZ (Once Upon a Time, I'm looking at you, get your shit together in s2. Vampire Diaries, you too.) But with SGU, one of the main characters is a Chinese lesbian with an adorable girlfriend! Another main character is black! Plenty of the people you see milling about the ship are Asian and black and hispanic! WOW.
While the focus of the show was figuring out what the ship's prime directive was and also how to survive and maybe even get back to earth, season one seemed to be focused on exploring physical places, and it caused a lot of development of strength for the characters, and learning how they could work together and save each other. Season two was a bit more abstract, with more journeys of the mind- trips through time and seeing themselves in an alternate timeline, existing in digital realities, and I guess all the self-reflection that ten months in space will do to you.
I get the impression that SGU is not the popular girl of the Stargate club? What's up with that? I mean, I haven't watched the others so if everyone got turned off by a dramatic change in tone I suppose that's understandable (although it makes me want to not watch the other Stargate series, if they aren't quite as down to earth, pardon the pun) but the quality and writing of SGU seemed pretty solid, to me. AND ALSO IT HAS ROBERT CARLYLE'S STUPID FACE IN IT WHICH YOU HAVE TO WATCH.
I haven't found as much Chloe/Rush fic as I want (don't judge me) or fics that answer what happened after the ambiguous finale, so I have had to come up with my own headcanon, and it is this:
Eli spends one day after closing the last stasis pod eating whatever he wants, looking out into space, listening to music, and generally feeling good about being the epic hero of a space drama who gives up his life to save the rest of the passengers.
Then he wakes up the next day on the floor of the observation deck with a cramp in his neck and says, fuck this, I'm gonna live. And not just because if I don't, my mother will kill me. So he turns on as many computers as he can risk, and gets Amanda and Ginn out of quarantined drives, because even if they suck Rush's brain into cyberspace, what is that going to change? Ginn sighs and very pointedly doesn't ask why he's gotten himself into this situation when she appears. Mandy smiles at Eli like she wants to ruffle his hair, and says she'll help. She disappears for a minute to check on the stasis pods, though it's obvious she mainly wants to check on Dr. Rush. She never admits to the moustache that gets drawn on the glass in front of his face.
The two women have their own brilliance and the bulk of the Destiny's systems in their heads, so they set to solving the pod problem in the less than two weeks that they have before life support stops supporting. They find the problem with Eli's pod, and eventually come up with the solution, just in time. And as Eli goes to sleep, hopefully for just three years, Ginn and Amanda promise to keep the ship on track.
They do a better job at it than anyone up until that point. Still, it's four years and a decent distance into the next galaxy before they drop out of FTL, the pods open, and Mandy informs Rush that (a) she fixed the parameters on the program they set up to be together so the computer understands the definition of Utter Bastard Grieving Dead Wife But Still In Love, and (b) she'll be co-piloting the ship now since she knows about a million times more things about it than he does. They make a good partnership, for being a jackass and a non-corporeal being together.
After four years, the planet Jack Bristow (or whatever his diplomat name is) has come to an agreement that they'll let their stargate be used twice, so everyone who wants to get off the ship can do so and supplies and other people can get on. Everyone goes home to hug their families and take a billion hot showers. Most of them stay there. Eli's mother died during the four years. Camille has an awkward reunion with Sharon, but Sharon has moved on and they won't be getting back together. Chloe goes home to her mother, doesn't contact any of her former friends, and spends three days shopping. TJ makes arrangements and takes tests and is actually most of the way towards becoming a medical doctor by the time three days are up, with plans to use the stones to fulfill the rest of necessary requirements.
A lot of people stay home, but Chloe Armstrong does not. The ground is too heavy under her feet and she can't sleep properly and she gets a few job offers from friends of her late father, but none of them appeal to her, and she decides that Chloe Armstrong, Harvard graduate resident of earth, is basically a waste of oxygen. Her mother has been five years on her own and will survive, even if she claims she needs her daughter. When she returns to Destiny, it is Dr. Rush's surprised and actually delighted face that is a sight she will treasure forever. If he, who considers the majority of human beings to be utterly useless lumps of carbon, is glad to see her back, that really means something.
To the surprise of absolutely no one, Dr. Rush decides to continue on with Destiny. He had to extract a lot of promises that if he would just go home and take a goddamn bath and pack a few changes of clothes for the love of fuck then yes they would let him back on the ship. New notebooks take up more space from clothes than they should in his suitcase. He also gets a bottle of good single-malt, to enjoy when the paint-stripper from the ship's still is just not quite the beverage he's looking for.
Matt decides to stay home. He wants to see his growing son, but mostly he wants to have a life. When Chloe kisses him goodbye, it's like they've both already moved on. They aren't the same people who clung to each other in the wake of being marooned and her father's death. Ronald Greer comes back on board. Family isn't enough to keep him on earth, and he says he'll get bored if he doesn't see a new planet every week. Dr. Park also decides to stay. It's about a month after they've taken off again that the two reveal they actually got married while on earth.
Eli comes back, of course. Rodney McKay wants to come on board. Dr. Rush takes him out drinking on earth one night. The next day, Rodney is a bit paler and has changed his mind entirely.
A couple other new people come on board, knowing that they may never go home again; mostly they don't care. An English couple, Dr. Martha Jones and Mickey Smith, come on board, having been recommended by another agency for their experience with interstellar travel, aliens, triage, and General Weird Shit. Martha and TJ have a few problems at first, since TJ is almost but not quite a doctor yet but she doesn't want her territory encroached upon, but when it turns out Martha's experience is really not the same as what she'll be doing, they work together well.
Everett Young comes back on board. He says someone needs to keep an eye on Rush. Mostly he is just completely out of place on earth. Everything has moved on without him.
And so they travel on through the galaxies, following Destiny's premarked path and finding out new things on the way. Rush, Amanda, and Chloe write a paper together on what they've discovered and win Nobel Prizes (that they have to accept by proxy) for actually stating a Grand Unified Theory that seems to work. Babies are born on the ship, people die and are buried on whatever planet they next stop at. They're gypsies of the universe, and they've found the home they always belonged in.