Forsaken

DVD, Stargate SG-1 S6 (Forsaken)

You sensed immediately that things were not as simple as they first seemed, but you could also say that this was hardly the most complex of stories. Maybe because it followed a clips show, or perhaps I was just in the mood for a basic, but outdoor sci-fi story, this one worked fine for me, though when I originally saw it I felt it was pretty average. The ship that had crashed into a planet looked okay (not as good as the 'DS9' one from 'The Ship'), even though you could tell that only part of it was real and the rest CGI extension, but the internal set on a slant showed a bit of effort had been expended, and the exciting shootout between marauding aliens looked good, partly thanks to some different weapons, partly because it came out of the blue, and also because it's usually fun to see alien weapons fire in a lush woodland setting!

In sci-fi terms it wasn't trying particularly hard, it's a straight-up story of a prison ship having crashed on an alien world (three years seems a long time for both parties still to be living within a short walk of each other!), the prisoners gaining control and their jailers, the alien Serrakin, being forced out and most of them killed. I was interested in the trio of humans, a people descended from Celts of the Hebrides (hence their world being called Hebridan), as well as the good news that there are other benevolent aliens out there who have fought the Goa'uld to emancipate another race, as the Serrakin did for the Hebridans, thus creating an intermingled culture. It strikes me that the interracial issues would have been a ripe vein to tap, but there's really no racism dealt with, it's simply that the prisoners were bad'uns who got out in the crash and took over the asylum.

The B-story, if you can be generous enough to give such a short deviation that monicker, is Jonas dealing with the injured woman of the trio, Reynard, who is so thrilled that he saved her in the attack (I must admit I didn't notice him do anything, but it could have been the slightest hint that he pulled her out of the line of fire and she would have still hero worshipped him, insincerely as it turned out), she wanted him to know it! If there's ever an alien woman injured on a base Jonas will make a beeline there, it seems (if this and 'Frozen' are anything to go by!) - it did rather appear that they left out his plan to trap her so we could get the 'surprise' at the end, one of a couple of times when you could telegraph what was going to happen. The other being when Pender is no longer in visual range during his, O'Neill's and Teal'c's hunt, so you know he's going to show up and deal with Carter, who really should have been more guarded. You can see these things coming, but despite this I was in the mood for a simple concept that looked good and played well, with the team all working together and a glimpse into a larger universe with the background of the Serrakin/Hebridan history and the team off on an alien world, and this ticked the boxes.

'Captain' Aden Corso was a bit of a Captain Kirk (the modern JJ Abrams version from the films), being quite sleazy and cocksure, though less trustworthy. It was frustrating whenever O'Neill's plans or actions were messed up by Pender, such as when he kills one of the attacking aliens whom Jack wounded, or stops him from talking to the other one when O'Neill catches it looking at the dead body, so it's pretty clear that they're going out of their way not to have any dialogue with these people or let anyone else do so. The design of the creatures was simple, but effective, although it did have the effect of making Unas come to mind, so I was waiting for these to be another branch of that race, but they weren't. It's also a shame that this Celtic people that apparently were related to Scots all spoke with an American accent - maybe they thought viewers wouldn't understand their dialogue otherwise? And the way it started with that telescope in a leafy environment I thought we might be at O'Neill's home. We weren't, and it didn't make sense that he wasn't interested in the astronomy that Carter was talking about or realise he'd not be able to see anything in the day! A case of forgetting character details? Finally, I wondered how this alien was going to get his ship back home without his crew of eight - they must have all served a purpose!

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