Stargate Universe
Erk.
So, for the majority of you that have not been watching this show, here's how it works. Most of the episodes so far feature a bunch of rather depressed and angry people realizing that yet another component of their incredibly old and decrepit spaceship is falling apart, and watching said rather depressed and angry people run around like mad trying to fix things while snapping at each other and being Really Mean until yay, the ship manages to rescue itself making all the humans look kinda dumb and petty. This is all a lot more fun than I'm making it sound and gloriously cheesy and stupid. Love it. I would love it even more if I had any way of distinguishing the characters beyond "angry one," "angrier one," "seriously angrier one," "hey, that chick from ER," and "oooh, breasts," but I digress. Also, occasional sex, so, yay Stargate for, um, breaking boundaries, I guess.
(I live in serious hope that another ER veteran will show up, so I can go, "Oooh, that chick from ER! No, that one!)
And then there's the rest of the show. Because by an incredible coincidence, the people happen to have brought along some stone thingies that let them switch minds with people back on Earth. The immediate question that leaps to mind (er, excuse the pun) is that if minds can be switched and, um, brought back, why can't bodies, and the second question is, why does mind switching make everybody so cranky and mean, and shouldn't someone be investigating this phenomena? But I digress. The point is, when this happens, the show gets Very Serious and Deep, and not incidentally, morally questionable and pretty disturbing.
So in the most recent episode, Mildly Angry Guy switches bodies and goes to meet up his ex-wife or girlfriend or whatever. Things did not go well in their rather dull last meeting where she pointed out, correctly, that he's a bit of a schmuck (and also unable to follow anyone's orders) and he's been dreaming about sleeping with one of the other characters, so I lived in hope that that plot line had been abandoned, but no, and after some rather whiny conversation they end up sleeping together.
Just to reiterate the point: he's USING SOMEONE ELSE'S BODY. To have sex. A point only emphasized when for some reason the stones inexplicably stop working and the minds get switched back while the ex-wife/girlfriend is still happily moaning and bouncing...Whoops!
Look. The whole body switching thing...Ok. I admit that if I had my chance to shoot my consciousness over to a spaceship billions and billions and billions away (or trillions and trillions - I get my universe geography all messed up) for the chance to walk around in someone else's body and get to see, you know, an alien spaceship and what travelling at faster than light speed looks like and all that and maybe even help save a few people along the way, I might well take it. And certainly if I was on a ship that distinctly lacked hot baths and café lattes and fine chocolates and dogs and cats and the latest episodes of FlashForward I'd certainly leap at the chance to return even if it meant that I had to use someone else's body. And it unquestionably saves on the special effects budget, so, more yay.
But you would think that the whole body switching thing would come with some basic rules. Like, don't give the borrowed body a major hangover. (Also featured in this episode.) Don't overshare with your body's genetic material, cause the courts are really not going to know how to deal with that.
Oh, and yeah -
If the body you're inhabiting hasn't consented to sex, it's called rape.
(The writer/directors mostly smudge past this problem by having the borrowed bodies played by the actors playing the characters who are inhabiting the bodies, which...yeah.)
Also, probably best not to have characters that don't like each other much do the body switching. Just saying.
I'd be ok with all of this, incidentally, if I had any sense that the writers were planning on dealing with all of the ramifications and consequences of body borrowing - because I have to tell you, that would be one interesting show. But so far, the only slight nod to "consequences" is that Somewhat Angry Guy is planning to get revenge on Mildly Angry Guy not because Mildly Angry Guy used his body to get laid, but because Somewhat Angry Guy is all mad about looking bad on the job. You see the problem.
So, for the majority of you that have not been watching this show, here's how it works. Most of the episodes so far feature a bunch of rather depressed and angry people realizing that yet another component of their incredibly old and decrepit spaceship is falling apart, and watching said rather depressed and angry people run around like mad trying to fix things while snapping at each other and being Really Mean until yay, the ship manages to rescue itself making all the humans look kinda dumb and petty. This is all a lot more fun than I'm making it sound and gloriously cheesy and stupid. Love it. I would love it even more if I had any way of distinguishing the characters beyond "angry one," "angrier one," "seriously angrier one," "hey, that chick from ER," and "oooh, breasts," but I digress. Also, occasional sex, so, yay Stargate for, um, breaking boundaries, I guess.
(I live in serious hope that another ER veteran will show up, so I can go, "Oooh, that chick from ER! No, that one!)
And then there's the rest of the show. Because by an incredible coincidence, the people happen to have brought along some stone thingies that let them switch minds with people back on Earth. The immediate question that leaps to mind (er, excuse the pun) is that if minds can be switched and, um, brought back, why can't bodies, and the second question is, why does mind switching make everybody so cranky and mean, and shouldn't someone be investigating this phenomena? But I digress. The point is, when this happens, the show gets Very Serious and Deep, and not incidentally, morally questionable and pretty disturbing.
So in the most recent episode, Mildly Angry Guy switches bodies and goes to meet up his ex-wife or girlfriend or whatever. Things did not go well in their rather dull last meeting where she pointed out, correctly, that he's a bit of a schmuck (and also unable to follow anyone's orders) and he's been dreaming about sleeping with one of the other characters, so I lived in hope that that plot line had been abandoned, but no, and after some rather whiny conversation they end up sleeping together.
Just to reiterate the point: he's USING SOMEONE ELSE'S BODY. To have sex. A point only emphasized when for some reason the stones inexplicably stop working and the minds get switched back while the ex-wife/girlfriend is still happily moaning and bouncing...Whoops!
Look. The whole body switching thing...Ok. I admit that if I had my chance to shoot my consciousness over to a spaceship billions and billions and billions away (or trillions and trillions - I get my universe geography all messed up) for the chance to walk around in someone else's body and get to see, you know, an alien spaceship and what travelling at faster than light speed looks like and all that and maybe even help save a few people along the way, I might well take it. And certainly if I was on a ship that distinctly lacked hot baths and café lattes and fine chocolates and dogs and cats and the latest episodes of FlashForward I'd certainly leap at the chance to return even if it meant that I had to use someone else's body. And it unquestionably saves on the special effects budget, so, more yay.
But you would think that the whole body switching thing would come with some basic rules. Like, don't give the borrowed body a major hangover. (Also featured in this episode.) Don't overshare with your body's genetic material, cause the courts are really not going to know how to deal with that.
Oh, and yeah -
If the body you're inhabiting hasn't consented to sex, it's called rape.
(The writer/directors mostly smudge past this problem by having the borrowed bodies played by the actors playing the characters who are inhabiting the bodies, which...yeah.)
Also, probably best not to have characters that don't like each other much do the body switching. Just saying.
I'd be ok with all of this, incidentally, if I had any sense that the writers were planning on dealing with all of the ramifications and consequences of body borrowing - because I have to tell you, that would be one interesting show. But so far, the only slight nod to "consequences" is that Somewhat Angry Guy is planning to get revenge on Mildly Angry Guy not because Mildly Angry Guy used his body to get laid, but because Somewhat Angry Guy is all mad about looking bad on the job. You see the problem.