Search and Rescue

DVD, Stargate Atlantis S5 (Search and Rescue)

Always a lot going on in a season opener, but it reminded me the Season 4 cliffhanger wasn't that great: a building falling down. On top of our intrepid rescue team. This conclusion to the story is a bit better than that, even if it does move the story on a little bit fast and without really giving enough time for the cast changes which are introduced. It turns out Carter is no longer in the opening credits and I think that fact distracted me enough that I didn't notice Ronon either so I spent the whole episode wondering if he was about to be killed off, and how sad now that I'd got so used to him being around that he wouldn't be there for the final season! I was very pleased to see Jewel Staite come up as Dr. Keller as I'd already suggested she should be boosted up to main cast status for her excellent job replacing Dr. Beckett (even though they very weirdly brought him back and tossed him into storage at the end of last season!), and she certainly deserved it. Robert Picardo bringing Wolsey in...? Not so sure on that one. I like Picardo a lot, he played one of the best characters in Trek, but Wolsey's a very different proposition. I understand the need to put the cat amongst the pigeons for the sake of drama, and if Carter's not going to be around any more then it stands to reason someone's going to have to take over (why not Caldwell, he's served his time defending their missions so many times!), and Wolsey was talking about it last season, but I never saw it coming, I don't know why.

I felt the changeover was a bit sudden, Carter isn't given the chance to say goodbye to what became her team, and though I don't think she had quite the right chemistry, for lack of a better word, you get used to having her around. Maybe they thought she could go off and make a few more 'SG-1' straight-to-DVD films, though sadly only one more would be forthcoming (to date). Maybe it wasn't well enough received, I'll have to watch and report on that one soon. In terms of this series, though, it is strange to jump almost right back into it rather than taking a few months off to review something else, but I didn't want to alternate with the subsequent spinoff, 'Universe,' so it seemed more sensible to make it a marathon and go to the end of this one. I'm relieved to see that all the rest of the cast are safely ensconced (relatively - look what happened to Weir and Beckett...), in the opening titles as I really thought Ronon was a goner, and of course Teyla could also have been written out. McKay is the essential one, as is Sheppard, and the gang's all here. Bizarrely, we even get one flash of a cameo from a past cast member, with Rainbow Sun Francks making a shock appearance in Sheppard's dream, so I'm guessing Ford will be playing some sort of role in an episode at least, because I can't believe they'd bring him in just for one line.

Regarding this episode itself it's mostly all action, all the time, and they don't even hide the fact it's basically all Trek terminology, with talk of beaming in and out, away teams, all the stuff we expect from the Trek world (even the Jumper reminds me of a Runabout), but that's old news, I just bring it up because it seemed especially pronounced after not watching for a few weeks. There was a good sense of tension and terror for Teyla and her baby, it'll be interesting to see if Kanaan has much to do in subsequent stories - can he be saved from Michael's genetic meddling, or is he in fact a plant, the enemy within the walls? Michael isn't going to have been destroyed in the barrage that took out his cruiser, I'm sure, they'd be more likely to give him a definite sendoff, though he's not one of my favourite villains. I thought they were going the tried and tested trope of the underling with a change of heart, and Kanaan would end up doing something to sabotage his master's plans, but that never happened, which makes me suspect he's still under the programming.

One thing is that people keep making rash decisions, quite emotionally motivated, which isn't the best or most rational way to deal with things from a military point of view - obviously the big one is Sheppard so insistent he be on the mission to rescue Teyla (who, by the way, everyone assumes is on Michael's ship, but there was certainly no guarantee of that, he could just as easily have left her on another base somewhere, he seems to have plenty of resources at his disposal), and Carter's insistence that Caldwell not destroy the enemy ship was also not terribly useful when they had no definite intel to back it up. I was sure one or more of these decisions were going to come back to haunt the characters, but everything goes smoothly, unless you're McKay who is the only one available to deliver Teyla's baby! They've got a pretty good thing going with all their technology and the characters, the Daedalus and Atlantis, it's come along nicely over the years. I just hope they succeed with this final season as they have with the past couple and go out on a high. Because this was a fast-moving, entertaining start, with the occasional good little character moment plopped in, but it also suggested it was a bit of a distraction from the fact they were rearranging the pieces of the series, and very quickly, too. Hopefully there'll be chance for things to breathe and develop in the coming episodes.

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