Flesh and Blood

DVD, Stargate SG-1 S10 (Flesh and Blood)

I was looking forward to getting back into real 'Stargate,' no spinoffs, just Carter, Teal'c and Daniel, and of course the other characters, especially as it left things in a pretty rum state at the end of Season 9. We leap right into proceedings here and it's a little chaotic, so realistic in terms of presenting war, though as Mitchell says, not a lot of war is going on when the bad guys are doing all the winning. They tore through the band of allied ships, as we saw, and here we get the odd flashback to find out the fate of each of our heroes. The episode, as is so often the case with resolutions to cliffhangers, exists mainly to bring the gang back together from whatever tricky situations they were in at the end of the previous season, as well as to set up the new threat for the season. Unlike the start of Season 9 they didn't have the advantage of starting a whole new story off, so it does feel a lot like season starters of old when it jumps right in and doesn't spare those who aren't keeping up. It had been over a year since I last saw 'SG-1' so it was a little bit of a struggle remembering where everyone was and the import of what was going on, so I didn't find it the most accessible, but then that's classic 'SG-1.' That it doesn't have much of a complete story is also true to form for the kind of serialised drama the series had morphed into, following the trend of TV in the late 2000s onwards, much more like an instalment of events in a bite-size format.

The important thing is that everyone's alright. Well, almost everyone, as it's pretty definite that the good old Russian colonel who had been in it from the early seasons, is no more, considering his ship, the Korolev, was utterly blasted apart with only Jackson having the chance to escape via Ring Transporter (though I noticed they've dropped all pretence to try and sound different to the Transporter in 'Star Trek' and just call it beaming now). I did think that the way some characters escaped or survived wasn't all that heroic and if there was a theme for the episode it would be that the main cast really don't want to die. And I get it, I don't want them to either, but at the same time desperately trying to save their own skins and not anyone else at the same time just came across as lacking in moral fibre. Again, I understand what was happening: Mitchell had split seconds to leap into a glider and blast out of there, and Daniel was in the same split second predicament, throwing himself into the Transporter and beaming away, but I couldn't help think that they might have saved at least one other person since the glider has room for one more, and the Rings likewise. And Mitchell does seem a bit whiny when Bra'tac's being his warrior self and ready to end it all!

Teal'c doesn't even get the action moment of an escape, being beamed away from the Lucian Alliance ship which had descended into anarchy as soon as the battle was over, blaming Teal'c and the other allies for deliberately getting them into this defeated position and then the leader of the Lucians taking out his frustration on Teal'c because it'll make him feel better. So much for the grand alliance of all factions versus The Ori! We get them all safe together by the end, including Daniel, who'd beamed onto Vala's ship, handily, and she gets rescued too - Claudia Black now a fully paid up main cast member, in the opening credits and everything! Took a long time coming, but she got there. Bra'tac almost ruins everything with his wish for a hopeless kamikaze attack on an Ori vessel over Chulak, their destination after they'd won the big battle, but fortunately the Earth ship under Emerson arrives in the nick of time to beam them all up. But it does seem like a situation of utter despair as these Ori ships are seemingly unstoppable and relentless, easily obliterating any ship that defies them. The episode ends with hope, however, as Carter reminds her friends and us, the audience, that the Goa'uld once seemed like an impossible force to overcome and some said Earth had no chance to stand up to them, and yet here they are. So there is still hope, and it probably lies in Vala's baby.

It was a little girl who was named the Orici, the one who will lead The Ori, with knowledge of the Ancients and all the mythology. Either it was genetic or she'd been given the complete boxed set of 'SG-1' fed directly into her brain. As expected, she's weird, with orange eyes and a vastly advanced growth rate so that she's no sooner taken away as a newborn babe, than she's returned to her Mother as a young girl. Vala isn't the best at trickery because she just has the face and voice of a liar so she was never going to turn the creature to the side of good (I'm not sure Vala could even be considered good except that she does work for the good guys despite all her flaws and vices). It seems this Orici is to be the main villain of the piece and next time we see her she'll be fully grown. Not having strong memories of what happened at the end of last season I forgot Vala was even pregnant and all the talk about the Ancients and the ascended was a bit heavy to take in. In fact I'd say the episode itself was a bit heavy and danced around quite a lot to disguise it all - the best bit might have been Carter being rescued by Mitchell driving the ship right at her so she got popped into the hangar bay, a risky procedure, but less demeaning than if she had to make a quick exit like the boys did. It's hard to go back to something that is so self-referential and deep in its own mythology, but I'm sure I'll settle back in in an episode or two. Until then it was nice to see the characters back as a team, even though 'big' episodes tend to be less engaging because there's less happening with the characters and it's more about the events around them.

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