Ripple Effect

DVD, Stargate SG-1 S9 (Ripple Effect)

Classic 'Stargate,' just what the doctor ordered. And Janet Fraiser: just the Doctor that was ordered! Aside from the garbage multiverse theory which I always hate in sci-fi for its making of our own reality meaningless (a debate I'm happy to go on at length about), they managed to pull a fun and, if not overly inventive, entertaining story out of such a thing, creating some believability in events, and sympathy for the various SG-1s. It even answered a lot of the basic questions like 'how come SG-1 is the team to keep coming through from other realities when there should be just as much chance of strangers and other SG teams?' Answer: SG-1 is the most commonly found in dangerous situations - tenuous, considering each reality could, according to the garbage theory, be any combination or outcome conceivable, and even those we can't conceive, which is the whole point of the garbage theory. It's still suspension of disbelief time, but this is sci-fi, and it is 'SG-1,' not some deep sci-fi novel, which means complicated ideas narrowed down to populist terms. But they manage to get in plenty of boffin talk, or technobabble as they call it in the trade, which makes it feel even more 'of the series.' How could they avoid it with so many Samantha Carters on the base!

They were able to have some fun with the concept without straying too far from the ongoing arc of the Ori, and I wonder if these last couple of episodes, essentially filler, getting back to the old days of more episodic 'Stargate,' are treading water to allow time for whatever is the next move from the Ori or Baal, both of which are name-checked in case we'd forgotten them, but by the standards of the season, largely ignored, in favour of this bottle episode idea. It's funny that bottle episodes, taking place on just the standing sets of a series, can often generate some of the best story ideas, and while I'm not suggesting this is in any way an astonishing or clever execution of a familiar (some might say over-familiar), concept, that's what the series always did: derivative sci-fi. It sounds like I'm insulting the series ("Did he just insult me?"), but that's the level of my expectations for the series and what I've learned to enjoy, and for better or worse they should be dealing with stuff like this on top of ongoing stories, because that's what the series is made of. I can see that in today's TV world you wouldn't get episodes like this because the season would be stripped back to only the 'essentials' of an arc, but that's one reason I like long seasons because there are standalone stories that can play with the setup and characters and put them in interesting situations.

Or bring back a familiar face. I wish they'd kept Teryl Rothery's credit for the end as it would have had even more impact if we didn't know she was going to be on one of the teams that comes through the 'gate, but even so it was still a lovely moment. I have to admit that my recall on 'SG-1' lore fluctuates and I couldn't even remember if Jacob/Selmak was still alive in our universe or not, so I was half expecting to learn that SG-1 from our universe was one of the teams that had gone through (as their Daniel said, this could all be a trick), except that would have made things more complicated, something you probably don't want too much of in a forty-five minute episode of a genre series - that's the thing, they were playing to more than one audience by this stage, or that's my reading of it anyway. They'd created the Ori plot as backdrop to the season so new viewers could come onboard with the new character(s), and although there were still heavily interwoven arcs from previous seasons, the Ori have been by far the main focus. With episodes like this, or when Baal showed up again, it would mean more to longterm viewers, so this was a well-judged instalment, able to walk the border of both audiences, or at least that's how I took it, though I don't know the viewing figures or its reception. Whatever, it was just nice to see Dr. Fraiser again, even if she didn't play a substantial role (the main characters were in triplicate times triplicate times triplicate, etc, after all). It was also good to have an old face back in Martuf, which was a surprise as I didn't remember the actor's name - nor did I remember whether the character had died or not, it'd been so long!

That's one of the great things about a long-running series or franchise: having the opportunity to bring back a character we've not seen for years. It can be called a ratings stunt or scraping the bottom of the barrel, but I prefer to look on it as solidifying the reality (or 'realities' in this case), of a series, catching up with lives we'd known as if those lives had continued on beyond what we saw on the little window on the world we look through to see these episodes. We've seen doubles before (I really wanted Carter to say she was used to meeting herself, she's done it so many times), but this time having so many made it more fun. I guessed that at least one of the SG-1s would be 'bad,' or at least have different motivations and take matters into their own hands, but from General Landry's perspective he said it himself, he did sound callous not taking into account the level of need to send these people back. Granted, this is taking place in the here and now, not some future Trekky society that would need to debate whether they owe it to the greater multiverse (yuk!), or not, to make the return of the refugee teams the top priority, especially as it didn't seem particularly pressing, just some vague talk of needing to get their normal operations going to track down new tech and keep an eye on the Priors. But that had to be done to up the tension and force the black-uniformed SG-1 to take over Prometheus.

I guessed one of the teams would do something, but I didn't twig that it was their plan to get a ZPM from Atlantis in our galaxy right from the start (or is that the Pegasus galaxy? Our 'reality,' let's say), and it was they that started the jump into our reality. I liked the Trek Mirror Universe reference when Mitchell says they're not wearing beards so they can't be from the evil twin reality! I didn't get how they could travel to Atlantis in three weeks aboard Prometheus because I thought Atlantis was stranded, but I've only seen Season 1 of that and I can't remember how it ended so I'm sure it all makes sense if you're keeping track. It was also a fun sequence where their Mitchell puts on our Mitchell's clothes (I had already wondered why someone didn't do that, even if it was just for a practical joke), to get our SG-1 to escape the brig, but our SG-1 guesses the plan and outwits him. You could ask why their SG-1 didn't work out that our SG-1 would work out their plan and make a counter-plan, but it gets too complicated and no one has time to follow that degree of logic so I give them a pass on that! When they have all these fun touches and ironic comments, it adds up to a goodly entertaining episode - regulars like Walter, Lee, Lam and Siler, even an Asgard get involved, though he was called Kvasir, sadly not Thor. I guess Michael Shanks must have been unavailable. Hang on, there were tens of Shanks', what were they playing at? He was too busy playing himself to do a voiceover…? (At least Daniel gets a line saying he misses Thor!).

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