I’ve been wondering how they were going to manage to patch things up between the civilians and military, what with the perpetual alien attacks and infighting.  I guess this episode answers that question.

It was obvious from the beginning that TJ would want to stay behind.  She needs to patch things up with Young – oh wait, he’s married.  That could get messy (messier).

I hope they’ll bring back this episode’s mystery later on; it could prove to be quite interesting.

I’m not really sure what to think about this episode.  (Spoilers ahead!) On the one hand, they finally let the civilian-vs-military tension explode into action; on the other hand, there’s no clear indication what the civilians meant to do once they got control.  (Rush knew, but what about the people he was working with?)

I’m also a bit confused about Eli’s loyalty for Colenel Young.  Is it just that he’s a kid who looks up to the military?  Is it that he doesn’t really like Rush?  I’m not really sure.

And of course there’s the obvious just-in-the-nick-of-time escape that’s completely out of their control.  Wouldn’t the ship realize it’s under attack, and jump early?

After the last episode, Justice, I was excited to see the series continue.  It took them four months to get around to airing the rest of the season.  Was it worth the wait?  Let’s see.

(If you don’t want spoilers, stop reading…)

Back in November I mentioned this:

Did anyone else notice a ship detaching from Destiny at the end of the first or second episode and flying away?  What was that?  Did they ever give any other indication of what that might be?

As it turns out, the answer is not “Dan, you’re crazy and you were seeing things.”  The answer is, “Gee, Dan, you’re very observant.”

What that means is that the show’s creators aren’t making it up as they go along.  They do appear to have a longer-term plan, at least for the season as a whole.  A couple of the episodes last year had me worried about that.

Once you understand the premise of this episode, though, it does turn a little predictable.  When they answered Eli’s message in English, rather than in Ancient or in gibberish, it was obvious that they had captured Dr. Rush from the desert planet and therefore knew enough to tell the humans to surrender in their own language.

What they didn’t explain yet is why the communications stones stopped working.  My guess is that the alien ship prevented it somehow while it was in the near vicinity; that does still leave the question, why did the stones work for just that one alien?  Obviously we’ll have to watch and find out

Stargate Universe is very much a departure from the standard Stargate format, but I think if they keep going the way they are we’ll get a decent show out of it.

Wow.  They redeemed themselves.  I really liked this episode.

I don’t want to give anything away – you should watch it yourself, it’s on Hulu for the next few weeks – but let me say that stuff happens.

Now I’m actually excited about the next episode

In pen-and-paper-based RPGs, the players often know things their characters do not; for example, as a player, I can obviously hear when the GM tells another player (whose character may be separated from mine) what he can see.  So I know this information, but my character does not.

However, it is often difficult to make decisions without making use of this information; my character might decide to head north instead of south, merely because as a player I happen to know what the GM said about the north (or south) to another player.

It’s called “meta-game thinking”, and before you start saying “who cares”, it’s applicable to more than just Dungeons and Dragons.

Let’s take Law & Order, for example.  Each episode is generally self-contained; they find a suspect or three, investigate them, and take one of them to court.  Recently I watched an episode guest-starring Bob Saget.  He wasn’t the initial suspect; he wasn’t even the second or third suspect.  But the instant I saw him, I knew he would be the ending suspect – I used information outside of the show’s universe to extrapolate the outcome of the show.

Specifically, more famous guest-stars are always the final suspect.  Now, a viewer who was unfamiliar with Bob Saget would never have been able to determine the outcome so early; it was only my knowledge of the actor’s fame that allowed me to make that determination.

Similarly, even when actors aren’t as famous, you can guess things based on meta-world information.  For example, in V, Alan Tudyk plays a V who is undercover as an FBI agent; he dies in the third episode.  But a friend of mine was able to guess that fact, before it was revealed, because Alan Tudyk was credited as a “guest star”.  Guest stars are not main characters; using that meta-knowledge reveals things about the show that you would otherwise not know.

This is the biggest problem with TV shows.  Merely knowing who the actors are can be enough to reveal “secret” pieces of the plot.  I don’t know what to do about it, but it does sometimes ruin the immersion into a show’s plot.