The Greater Good

 DVD, Stargate Universe S2 (The Greater Good)

A lot of simmering in this one, a lot of buildup to the inevitable. I actually wondered if this was a test by Colonel Young to find out Rush's secret, because it's been obvious for some time that something's going on. The way Brody, Parke, Volker and Eli are getting fed up with the pattern of Rush being missing whenever the ship drops out, then popping up as if it's completely normal, was quite clear. But it wasn't Young's tactic to strand them on an alien vessel, even if it was his choice to go, just him and Rush, to 'keep and eye on him.' Or in other words, to give him a battering like on the planet in Season 1, only he stops short of really giving him a total going-over, as brutal as it was. He did promise the concerned Scott he'd bring Rush back (he didn't say it wouldn't be in a body bag, though...), but it seemed a bad idea. But then Rush is so subtle and able to manipulate people with his logic and spin, making everything, even the most terrible, appear somewhat reasonable, only Young is immune, and even he can listen to reason - Riley's death and the loss of the shuttle were 'mistakes,' but Rush's much more intent on the Grand Theme: Destiny's mission. I must admit, it was a bit of a comedown to realise his motivation for keeping control of Destiny a secret was simply that he didn't trust Young and therefore wanted to investigate all her systems and get a handle on everything first. Would he have eventually told him or would he have given him an ultimatum, perhaps trapped him somewhere, along with all the military and made his own one-man coup?

I don't know. Although Rush craves control it's because he thinks he's cleverer than everyone else and therefore his purposes are so much higher, and to an extent he's correct. But intelligence doesn't necessarily mean right, and his goal is uncovering the mystery, not preserving or protecting the lives of those with him, whereas Young has a definite mission to get everyone home safely. The episode is all about trust, and the lack of it: you've got Mr. Mean Guy of the Lucian Alliance, stalking Gin (who's quickly become Eli's girl), threatening her with not telling anything - it's interesting that Varo is nowhere to be seen because I'm sure he'd be just as short with his lieutenant as Greer is, and he doesn't even know what's going on. It is delightful whenever Simeon's slithering around like a cobra or a panther about to strike, that Greer appears and blocks him completely, forcing him to back down from whatever badly disguised hatred he has for his enemies. But it ends with Dr. Amanda Perry in the body of Gin with simmering Simeon finally getting her alone - what happened to his guard? You'd think they'd have clocked him as worth special attention from his attitude and failure to even pretend he wants to work with these people - Greer should have made it his personal mission to follow him around all the time, except he's beneath contempt. I'm guessing Simeon's decided the only way to silence Gin and remove her as a threat to the Alliance, is to kill her body, regardless that it's being inhabited by Perry...

Good cliffhanger in a good episode, though it took me a while to realise it was a good one thanks to the low-key nature of much of it - I always like a mission to an abandoned ship, and the effects were terrific (especially at the end when Rush and Young are forced to jump from the rapidly spinning alien hulk, that reminded me of the docking sequence from 'Interstellar' - they really did a great job with that impression of the vastness of space, and that one small error in judgement or timing can be fatal!), but it was still a slow burn. It was fascinating to see Perry drawn into Rush's little battle of wills, secretly inducting her into his knowledge of the Bridge and its systems, but there was no way she could have kept it secret - it shows how singleminded Rush can be that he would happily keep going along tricking his colleagues, and also a certain contempt for their level of intelligence that they wouldn't be suspicious. He just expects to override any argument or questioning of him, an arrogant and disgusting attitude, really. As he later says, though, the truth is out now, and that's good. Whether anyone can really trust him, and the idea of him giving his word after all he's done, was preposterous, especially to Young, and is another question entirely, he's constantly shown himself to consider himself above everyone in perceiving the depth of Destiny's importance, but he's going to have to work with them now.

I found it a slight anticlimax when we find out what Rush believes to be Destiny's mission, as much as it's desirable to know what the series was planning to play with had it survived for future seasons (and once again, how terribly disappointing that it didn't, along with 'Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,' one of very few TV shows that deserved to last years more than they did, to a proper conclusion). The crux is that at the birth of the universe Something was. Some kind of intelligence built a structure that only the advanced technology of the Ancients could detect in the background noise of space, or so I understood it. Granted, you have to accept the Big Bang as reality (whether it was or wasn't the mechanics of how matter came into being, the real issue is whether God was behind it or it just happened out of chance, my view being vehemently the former!), but then it becomes a mystery of what the series was going to stretch to doing. It's a Big Topic, and they could hardly put off half their audience by saying 'aliens,' for want of a better term, built the Universe, but they'd always delved into belief and such from the earliest days of it being revealed that the 'gods' of ancient times which primitive humans worshipped, were actually powerful aliens (the Goa'uld), and obviously in later seasons of 'SG-1' they dealt with humans' being more than physical entities, and that there was a realm beyond matter, so was it a matter of time before they connected with God Himself? I'm sure they wouldn't have been so definite, they'd have probably left it all a mystery even at the end, but we'll never know because they didn't get the chance to play the story out, more's the pity.

At least a piece of the puzzle is now known: the point of Destiny, beyond mere travel and exploration, although even then it's questionable why it would need to travel across galaxies to get somewhere if this 'structure' is all around. But it's all a way to get these characters on weekly adventures so for that reason it makes sense. But surely now they have the ability to control the ship, so wouldn't Young simply tell them to turn around and head back to Earth to drop everyone off that wanted to be, add a proper crew complement and set off on the mission with preparation and understanding. Instead we see them jumping to yet another system where there are planets. And while I'm nitpicking, another one, though much smaller, is whether Gin understood the full ramifications of swapping with Perry's body. It's her first ever body-swap, she's got vital intelligence to convey to Stargate Command and they expect her to go through the ordeal of being a paraplegic? That doesn't seem the most sensible way to put someone through an important debrief! I get it - it's so that we care at the end when Simeon arrives to murder her. If it had been any old person from Earth then there would only be the jeopardy of Gin being killed (I'm assuming, I don't actually remember what happens next), but now it's Rush's love whom he's connected with better than anyone else, other than his dead wife.

It's worth noting that Rush saves Young's life when he mistimes his jump (not sure how, since Eli told him to go when he said, and he seemed to do that!), and I'm sure Rush saw it as a perfect opportunity to make up some of the massive ground he's lost by being discovered in a deception that has cost lives (I notice they never mentioned Telford, who's also missing, presumed dead!). He really needed to do something extraordinary to even make a dent in the reams of crimes that should be levelled at him. I have the feeling Perry becomes part of the ship itself somehow, perhaps in the same way Franklin appeared to, so it's almost certain she's a goner. Which is a shame, but then she also became an accomplice to Rush by her complicity in his secrecy and no doubt would have kept it up if it'd been possible. Not that she deserved to die for that, but for the sake of drama there does seem to be a price to be paid. And of course Gin has to die because she's an innocent, and Eli likes her.

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