Uninvited

DVD, Stargate SG-1 S10 (Uninvited)

Unsettling, uneven and unsure if this was really what I wanted to see when the prospect of an off-duty jaunt in the woods with SG-1 and the General was a much more entertaining prospect. They nix that idea pretty early with Daniel written out for the second week in a row (he's in England, apparently, lost in some toff's library on Merlin), and Teal'c, Carter and Vala drafted in on some Prior-watching mission on an alien world that goes awry when a nasty creature starts attacking. And Landry's break was supposedly at O'Neill's cabin, too! Actually I didn't recognise the location, as attractive as it was, so it may be this was just one of O'Neill's many hideaways rather than a place we'd been to before. Which is a shame as it would have been terrific to return to the famous house we saw on occasion. Either way it's not the kind of episode I thought it was going to be, as it could have been hilarious and fascinating to see this mismatched group of people that are the remnants of the SG-1 team, now filled out with relatively new people, at ease together, as uneasy as they might have been. I still think Vala doesn't always work without Jackson around to bounce off, though I will concede that her bubbly chatterings with Teal'c, where she tries to provoke a response, was amusing since her charms or gift of the gab have no effect on his staunch warrior ethic. I suppose if it had been a two-hander between Landry and Mitchell, alone in a cabin in the woods, it might have seemed a bit bizarre for the series, though they have experimented on occasion.

It was not to be and we're soon hunting through an alien forest, guns at the ready (notice that Vala gets one this time). I thought it wise that they refused to show the monster, instead portraying its POV, which worked better than trying to create a convincing creature, CGI or otherwise, on a TV budget, though they betrayed that sentiment later in the episode which looked about as hokey as you'd expect, though the second creature as it died with the dark woods behind and the torchlight shining on it, worked better. From the teaser I didn't know what to expect, was this going to be a buddy-buddy story about a commanding officer and his subordinate getting to know each other better? Was it to be a creepy alien monster in the woods? Horror? Adventure? It was all over the place, hence the unsettling sense of uncertainty. This might have worked if an atmosphere of foreboding had been successfully implemented, but it was all very light and bright (except for the night scenes, obviously), and we've seen so many episodes of hunting some creature, so it was far from original. It wouldn't even be the last as they did a creature on a planet in either 'Atlantis' or 'Universe,' I forget which. A new horror literally emerges when a leech-like parasite launches out of the carcase of the dead creature and then the story becomes even more unravelled as we learn it has something to do with the Sodan cloaking devices which sometimes let these nasties in from another dimension. Okay.

It all ends up on Earth with another of these parasites having mutated a couple of other creatures into dangerous and violent killers, SG-1 (still minus Dr. Jackson), running around until they kill them. It's not a bad episode, I just feel it didn't understand what it was trying to accomplish and moved from one tone to another, one story to another, without an organic narrative. Things like the Sheriff suddenly being torn apart is the sort of thing you'd expect in a horror film. Not that there was excessive gore, and in fact they cut away quite a lot or refuse to show the full extent of injuries, as you'd expect from a mainstream TV series, but it didn't seem to matter that this guy got taken, it was merely a surprise. I wouldn't even say there were shocks in the episode and if you're going for jump scares or creepiness then do it. Or don't. It comes down to being another one where we don't really learn anything about any of the characters and it's just a mild, knockabout adventure with little reminders of the overall arcs such as a member of the Trust is using a Sodan device that must have brought the parasite through, the Priors are mentioned, and Reynolds heads a team. It really seemed like there was a blind somewhere around here in one or both of the plots - Landry instigating this off-duty session to root out a Trust member spying on them; the creature some Prior scheme or other, but no, things were much more simple than that. And it goes right back to what I said at the beginning, I'd much rather have seen the group sitting around doing casual things together rather than on a big hunt. If you've got a licence to experiment then reaching a tenth season must be it. Saying that, next episode is the one I've long been waiting for where they celebrate the series' two hundredth episode so maybe I'll get what I'm looking for there…

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