Grace Under Pressure

DVD, Stargate Atlantis S2 (Grace Under Pressure)

Mid-season money-saver ahoy! About as exciting as being stuck in a submarine with Rodney, waiting to be rescued. Which is precisely what the episode is all about. From early on I was wondering if Amanda Tapping's Samantha Carter would be part of the story in the flesh or as some kind of hallucination, and even when McKay's stuck underwater I thought she might be contacted to help with the rescue operation thanks to her great scientific brain. It was no surprise that she was only in Rodney's head, especially as stories about people being trapped, whether in space or under the sea, tend to be an excuse to put two characters together for a bit of a chinwag, and maybe work out some issues or tell backstories, that sort of thing. With good writing that can be a pleasure as we get to know these people more under pressure and in the face of imminent death, or perhaps worse, in the face of hope. That's the best thing I took away from this story, though I'm not sure I haven't seen it in other rescue stories before, but the difference between having to accept the end, while also having hope spring from the rudimentary resources left for survival, and how far you can go in either direction. Rodney didn't want to leave his fate in the hands of the colleagues whom he considers himself superior to, at least mentally, but because he tries to operate his own plan it only makes his predicament worse.

I can see what they did by putting Carter in there as a figment of his imagination. Without her it's a run of the mill episode, literally treading water. We know he's most likely to live to think another day, and the method of extraction could be the hook: how are they going to solve this problem? Reality is that Carter was thrown in partly to provide more continuity between the two 'Stargate' productions while they were both on the air at the same time, but also to push up a simple budget-saving episode that was otherwise just filling a slot. If we'd had to take Rodney and Atlantis' most irritating pilot bickering for forty-five minutes we might want to dash our own heads under cold water to simulate a slow drowning, but in a partly surprising move, and partly an inevitable one, Griffin sacrifices himself very early on so that McKay can live. It was a strong moment, but the reality for TV is that he was Mr. Expendable and unless he was going to coax some deep inner turmoil out of the Doctor, he was superfluous. At least with Carter, albeit as a facet of McKay's subconscious, she's got a lot more going for her. Of course it all depends on the quality of the writing in this case, and 'Stargate' is unlikely to win any awards in that regard (apologies if it ever did!). It tends to set out a stall of being standard space opera in an updated version of old 'Star Trek,' and maybe later Treks in terms of the style and approach, but otherwise it's just sci-fi tropes repackaged (at least it wasn't a clips episode!).

In consequence, this episode has very little consequence. Filling a set with water is always fun to see, and the effects of creating a tunnel between the two Jumpers using Sheppard and Zelenka's shields, looked very nice. And I loved the touch of Carter waving goodbye from Rodney's Jumper. But it's really not that good an episode, sadly. You have to expect that sometimes with a series that smashes out twenty-plus episodes a season (back in the good old days when this was still the norm), and if it's a series you love, and characters you love, you're just glad to have another instalment in which to spend in their company. Even so, I don't love the series enough to fully enjoy filler episodes, I need something more to it than that. I'd have much preferred the situation to take a creepier tone with McKay not knowing reality from fantasy. Again, it's been done before (even on 'Stargate'), but that would be more fulfilling than having everything straightforwardly explained as we go along, that way when the crucial moment of reality came in the form of the otherwise improbable form of Sheppard standing on the seabed outside, there would be significant drama to mine from Rodney's uncertainty over whether he really should release the hatch, rather than a slight hesitation. Growing paranoia would have been preferable, and Carter's presence could have been used to further that. Otherwise it would have been good to have more on Zelenka and his team of boffins back at base as we see the rising pressure upon them to secure a solution in the limited time. In all, the episode wasn't tense enough and is merely passable, with a little thumbs up for cramming Carter in there in an Atlantis uniform.

**