Intervention

 DVD, Stargate Universe S2 (Intervention)

Seconds don't tend to live up to the experience of the first round, and this was no exception, although I didn't dislike it as I had the first time I saw it. It was a bit of a sequence of events to begin with, stuff happening to resolve where we left them before, the Colonel doesn't get mown down with all his people, Varo intervenes; Scott and Greer don't get zapped by the pulsar, they wisely head underneath the ship, which protects them; and Chloe somehow gets healed, her bullet wound stops bleeding all of its own accord - since there were clips of her being held by the aliens in the water tank in the recap at the start does this mean they did something to her as I don't think there was any other real connection to that, at least not in this story. But although a chunk of the episode is given over to running around or creeping about, one side saying do this, the other saying no, internal conflicts, etc, towards the end it does become reasonably tense as Rush lays down an ultimatum to the aggressive, self-imposed new leader of the Lucian Alliance gang, Dannic, a man who will sacrifice them all because his mission has failed. Only the botanical bay will be safe from the next pulsar hit, but he won't lay down weapons, and you can believe Rush would be harsh enough to go through with allowing the ship to flood with deadly radiation that will kill even those on their side left behind (when Telford says he's a coward he wasn't acting!). But as Greer says at one point, everybody's okay.

I'm glad they didn't go round killing off characters indiscriminately as what's the point of building up these people only to off them, other than for an immediate smidgen of drama, but it's a sacrifice rarely worth making so I applaud that they didn't do that, with only Kiva, the leader, dying offscreen so they didn't have to bring the actress back, and Dannic, her successor. He was in it before, but I don't remember Simeon. Maybe he was there, but didn't have lines? Obviously Varo is the main voice, but even the girl who shot Dannic was a new character. There were enough members of the group that they can bring out one or two, I suppose, it's a dark ship, they wear dark clothing, they probably melted into the background if we need justification for why we didn't see them before, so I'm okay with that. I certainly recalled that the remnants of the Alliance were forced to join our people and there would be plenty of strife because of it, but what else could they do? At least Varo is an honourable sort, or he's gooey on TJ, so maybe that motivates him to be the good guy? She has an out of body experience, literally! Returning to the planet they left some of the crew who wanted to start a colony, but you're never certain it's reality, it could just be her imaginings or dreamings as she lingers near death and her baby dies within her. And yet... It ends with one of the most upbeat closing moments of the series when she sees the same beautiful anomaly when the ship comes to rest, which she'd encountered in her 'vision' so maybe it was true after all?

It could have been a really depressing part of the story that she's conned by her subconscious into thinking her baby's alive, though parted from her, but this sign, almost like the rainbow for Noah's Ark, suggests it was true. It was a weird part of the story, you'd never have thought they'd bring back any of those people, and it's filmed in such a dreamlike style to encourage it to be seen as unreality. But it's also plausible in the way Cane talks about these alien beings who've helped them, so it ends up being quite hopeful and positive, even if tinged with bitter sadness over the eternal parting, and I came to quite like that part of it. The thing is they make very clear TJ's there on the ship, merely unconscious, while at the same time allowing us to see what she experiences and the contrast with all this anger and violence, the dark, dark ship filled with people in dark, dark clothes, perhaps it was necessary to give some light as well. But does she even believe it? She looks fairly distraught when Young visits her or when Camille tells her what happened, but then again with the sign in the heavens it proposes hope and it was such a benevolent action to save the baby, it comes across as right and good that if aliens were out there helping the colony they could have such power and decide to step in (plus it handily prevents TJ from being tied down with baby duties as they'd already done with Teyla in 'Atlantis' - maybe they realised that would take the character out of the story too much?).

TJ's story is the personal one, it's what happens to everyone else that really matters. Greer is in his element, stalking round the ship like a hunter, along with Scott taking out the enemy without weapons, then using their weapons on them, but if it hadn't been for that one Alliance girl nothing would have saved them, so they owe it all to her for... executing her commander. Okay, so he was about to get them all killed, not exactly good qualifications for being leader, but could she not merely have wounded him? This Lucian Alliance is a savage group and you can tell that Simeon is going to be trouble, he had a nasty look about him! I don't think there was even any serious issues with the story: I felt it was silly they could lock themselves into a room when we'd already seen technology the enemy had to unlock doors, but they were going serious by welding the door shut (Brody definitely seems to carry more weight now), the only solution would be to blast it open, killing all inside and they needed Rush to reverse the power removal from the shields. Mind you, Dannic would probably have taken his chances and hoped one of his technical people would be able to deal with it, but there was no time even for that, so it worked out okay. The exile to a barren planet was admittedly short-lived and seemed to exist only to remind us that this is a Stargate series and they do indeed still have one, but it was the conflict on the ship that was important and I was relieved it didn't drag on, they successfully undid the events of the end of Season 1 and now we can get onto the business of... whatever this series does, now with added Lucian Alliance.

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