Crusade

DVD, Stargate SG-1 S9 (Crusade)

Very different to how I expected this episode to play out, and for a while I wasn't sure if it was working for me, but it went to some interesting places and was quite accomplished as a forewarning before what should be a spectacular season finale. I really thought, despite its position as penultimate story of the season, that this was going to be some kind of comedic body-swap story from the way it opened: Vala's back, she's pregnant, and… Siler and everyone else at SGC don't seem surprised to see her wandering the halls. That is until you realise that the communication stones so beloved of 'Stargate Universe' are working their magic again and Vala found a way to switch consciousness with Jackson, which makes it pretty funny to begin with as we see him prancing around like a woman. Things become a whole lot more serious and a different direction, there's no Daniel trying to behave like Vala on her side of the stones, and much of the episode is her telling the tale of what happened to her after she was sucked through the Stargate or whatever device it was that zipped her into The Ori galaxy way back near the beginning of the season.

It's not surprising that she should have landed on her feet, becoming known as the lady that fell from the sky and picked up by a crippled follower of The Ori, Tomin, who nurses her back to health and then marries her. So she's got a fairly comfortable situation going as she tries to find a way back, or to communicate with our galaxy, while at the same time being 'blessed' with the equivalent of a virgin birth (if she weren't already a promiscuous type), rather than a pregnancy from her new husband. Whether it was marital bliss or the concern for her situation, she does seem to take to her new role, right up until the nasty village leader brands her a dangerous evil and chains her up in the monument we saw people burn to death upon at the beginning of the season. Michael Ironside (he's in everything), plays Seevis (he almost always plays bad guys), the village leader and man to lay judgement down on her, but things are more complicated than we first suspect. The episode impressed me with Seevis' reveal as not only a staunch member of the resistance, but its leader! It was so easy to believe the cover Seevis had cultivated for himself as this villainous, surly brute, just because of the casting of the role, and I never once questioned it. They really got me when he approaches Vala at the cliff edge where we can see the many starships being built for the followers of The Ori in readiness to strike at our galaxy through force of numbers.

It takes on a disturbing hue as not only is the episode titled 'Crusade,' but that is how The Ori are portraying their evil mission, to convert or die. Although this is all couched in Medieval style of dress, speech and attitude, it still struck me more than ever that they're making a commentary on Islamic extremism, covering themselves by hiding it in what could be seen as 'Christian' overtones of monks and priors and these little European-like villages. That way they can get away with doing such things, it seems. However The Ori are read into, that they are the gravest threat to life in our galaxy is indisputable, and no amount of healing or rhetoric can hide that. At the same time the series is playing with the notion of King Arthur and Camelot, notions quite opposed to the Islamic extremism in our contemporary world, and while I doubt they were going for Arthur and his knights being the British mythological answer to the cries of terrorism, nor the English as the brave defenders of liberty in the world, you can't help but get some of that and it's refreshing that it's not American mythology - except that the nation is too young to have its own mythology, the closest being the Wild West. I'm sure fascinating essays could be written into all this, but I'm just here to judge this episode, and I think it worked well. It shows Vala as doing more than her usual selfish ambitions dictate, and while she performs in order to survive, she also bites her tongue, bides her time, and is surprisingly sensitive and sensible.

Her brave facing of three days without food and water is a testament to there being more than just a space pirate in her makeup, and whether it was survival or not, she never gave up her friend. She jumps right back into the old Vala's ways by lying most convincingly to her husband when he comes to kill Seevis and the other woman, destroying the all-important communications device in the process. Rather than her husband being conveniently killed in the expected sabotage attempt by the resistance that would have taken out all the willing followers that were to leave on the ships, he lives still thinking she's important to the Priors' plans, and giving her a way back to our galaxy as she's decided to go with him. And for all she knows she is important, thanks to this mysterious pregnancy: so good when she asks SG-1 for examples they've ever heard of this happening and Teal'c mentions Darth Vader! - 'Revenge of The Sith' would have been in cinemas around this time, I believe, so it was a timely reference, and great fun!

There's almost as much interest coming from the political machinations of our old 'friend' the Russian General, who basically gives Landry the ultimatum that the Stargate must be returned to Russian hands. It's a great reminder that the current 'gate the SGC uses isn't even their own, and with the real world politics the way they are you really can imagine that the Chinese would back the Russians to run their own programme of operations, with the US condescendingly invited to join as guests, of course! It was a major blow to everything that such a thing came at such a tense moment just before everything's about to go up, but as ever with the Russians it's not as simple as that, Landry able to fathom that what they really want is something else: the 304, as it turns out - they want to be able to boldly go into space, like their American allies, I suppose. It was a real wrench to go into something like this because the consequences could have been enormous! A part of me wishes this had been drawn out a little more as it was certainly a worthy plot development for the series and something I'd never even considered before. But it was typical of the series that it's sorted out quite simply before the end of the episode, not that it takes away from the story in this particular instalment, because this remains a good one thanks to the twists and turns and the gravity of what goes on.

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