Small Victories

DVD, Stargate SG-1 S4 (Small Victories)

As expected this season opener was a bit limp. The Replicators have never really threatened the Goa'uld as being a good replacement villain. For one thing they don't have a leader or a face, they're just little robotic spiders with a sub-Borg ethic of consuming everything. Season 3 ended fairly excitingly with the Asgaard ship plummeting to Earth and Colonel Jack O'Neill, Major Carter and Teal'c trapped aboard, but this turn of events is quickly resolved without explaining how much time has actually elapsed when they suddenly appear through the Stargate. Carter says it took them a week to dial home, but was that the full time they were gone? If so how come she had time to grow her hair (let alone style it!), and for Teal'c to develop a tiny blonde beard, if such a small strip of hair could be granted such a title. Daniel, left behind back at base is once again relegated to watching events unfold on monitors without any real input, but I can't deny it's good to see them all back at this business again.

The titles have reverted to the close-up view of a pharoah's sarcophagus or death mask or whatever, which are the titles I most remember from when I watched it regularly, so this may be the season I began seeing each week (though I certainly hadn't seen this one before). I think that title sequence, without clips of previous episodes, probably works better, as it isn't as cheesy, but I wonder if the motivation was to save money rather than put together a new sequence for the new season as it had been used once or twice before.

The CGI is mostly quite good, the close-ups of the replicators, all CG, looking particularly realistic, though the designers' vision may have exceeded their resources as the ships and Asgaard city didn't have the same weight to them. Using an actual submarine is always a good move in terms of making an episode look more real, but it doesn't really work too well as a place to run around in the dark with guns, since there isn't much room to run, it's more about climbing up and down ladders than anything pacy. Still, the idea of a mother-bug was good, but the finding of a couple of pieces from the Asgaard ship's crash seemed like it might be setting up for a sequel if only a few more bits were to end up getting collected and stored together.

Many of the recurring characters get to show their faces, such as Dr. Fraiser, Sergeant Siler and the guy with glasses who operates the Stargate. I don't know why a season-opener should be so underwhelming, but I can see the cause - there's too much discussing, talking, working out, on the one hand, and on the other, the action scenes never quite worked up the threat level. I never believed O'Neill and Teal'c were truly threatened and there was little to no horror in the replicants taking over the Russian sub - the one moment when one of them claws the face of the Russian sailor was about it, and there should have been a real foreboding about going down into the depths of the lair of these creatures, when the escape route could be cut off at any moment, but it didn't ever seem that difficult. Hopefully things will pick up and we can get back to deserts and forests and maybe some good sci-fi stories.

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