The Daedalus Variations

DVD, Stargate Atlantis S5 (The Daedalus Variations)

A somewhat inconsequential adventure that would appear to have no bearing on anything. That's not a bad thing in itself, I enjoy a good sci-fi tale and not everything has to connect to an ongoing story or even the core mythology, but having said that it was much more like the kind of story you'd do in a first season when you haven't got the characters completely down pat - you send them off on a mission together where things go awry and see how they react. The four people on this mission are Sheppard, McKay, Ronon and Teyla, and other than Rodney they're all fairly redundant. It's true they have some shooting to do and then have to take out some boarders attacking the ship they're on, but it's McKay who's the only one that can really extricate them from their predicament. So it's much more like an early episode where he has to solve one problem after another and the others glance askance at each other before telling him there's no time. There isn't much more to it than that, truth be told. It's not like we learn anything new about anyone or a new bond is formed between people that didn't know each other so well. I'd also say that it took them an inordinate amount of time to even posit the theory this Daedalus might be from an alternate universe and I was on that quite early - if you're waiting for the writers to catch up to what the audience already suspects then that doesn't bode well for a story.

They already knew before boarding that their Daedalus was safely in the Milky Way, and as so often happens in the 'Stargate' franchise, I'm tentatively expecting a new spin on a sci-fi tale, only to find it's back to the basics with little variation. Sometimes they come up with good stuff, but in this case it was a simple A-to-B journey, albeit with the expected escalation of their problems to cause Rodney more pain. I always love a dark, abandoned ship and there was a good sense of mystery to begin with - is it going to be an alien experiment gone wrong, an invasion of something nasty, or some other twist I hadn't thought of? But the mystery and the creepiness doesn't last long before we're flipping into alternate universe after alternate universe, though obviously there's not a lot of variation as it's not like they leave the ship, so it's just a slightly different issue in each jump: no planet, aliens attacking Atlantis, too close to a star... Sheppard gets to pay himself compliments when they run across the reality with the Borg drone aliens (perfect fodder for Ronon to grapple with), on the way back and F-302s save them from the alien craft's assault, and there's a reminder this is Teyla's first mission back for real, but other than that there's not a lot going on. Wolsey and Keller don't even appear, so it's left up to the B team of Lorne and Zelenka to ponder what's happened to their team, though they don't seem too concerned about it. I'd have thought Lorne would have got Wolsey down there right away.

I will give them credit for the CGI, both the battle scenes as little alien fighters duck and weave under the belly of the Daedalus looked lovely, and the red sun wasn't bad either. It's not a bad episode, either, perfectly inoffensive and gives us a chance to see our characters doing what they do again, but equally it's not doing anything they haven't done before, and probably better. It's a little like they squandered the possibilities which, like the alternate universes, are diminishing with each passing episode so that you want there to be more meaningful scenes for these characters instead of merely solving a technical problem or fending off an attack. Character has always been at the heart of 'Stargate' and if they forget that then they're failing to use their greatest asset. It's one of those that would work fine if you're unused to science fiction, but when you're well versed in the concepts simply repeating one isn't enough to make it truly worthwhile. Perhaps it was a budget-saving episode? If so, the writing needed sharpness. (Though I did enjoy seeing a sign on the supply boxes saying, 'Do Not Ring Transport,' in case we forgot that's the term they always used to use).

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