Alliances

 DVD, Stargate Universe S2 (Alliances)

It only took being stuck in a Lucian Alliance ship that's collided with Homeworld Command and contains a massive bomb that's set to go off at any time for Greer and Camille to talk to each other! At first look this story didn't exactly stand out, especially after the high concept drama of the previous episode, but it really grew on me and reaches high stakes before the end. The highest stakes are for a couple of guest characters who come to Destiny to... What? Are they really there to evaluate whether this mission is worth 'funding'? What can they do, other than turn off the communication stones and say, 'you're on your own now'? Budgeting issues and viability, and whether this special message Rush discovered that prove someone existed at the start of creation are all well and good, but there isn't a lot to get your teeth into, for the daily grind, the nuts and bolts of living on this ship, it isn't going to make a blind bit of difference, so the authoritative VIPs come across as an unnecessary formality. It helps they have prior connections aboard: the senator is close to Chloe's Mother and the science guy worked with Rush in the past. What they didn't bargain for was their little routine mission becoming life and death for them. Mainly death.

It's not that they get caught up in some Destiny trouble, no, the issue comes back home on planet Earth when Homeworld Command (which I can't get used to calling it, Stargate Command was a lot less arrogant in assuming 'command' of the entire planet, effectively!), the base itself, gets attacked by a Lucian Alliance ship, Camille and Greer in their bodies take a lethal dose of radiation just by being there, and the brave senator goes back to defuse the weapon thanks to specific instructions from Varo - that's when it got good. It was all very well all this confusion and a fairly low-budget attack (they duck into an office so we only have an office ceiling caving in rather than anything more spectacular), but that's fine, it doesn't need to be feature film levels of carnage to sell it. The point is, it was the urgency and immediacy of the plan to send the vital defusing knowledge to the pair back home which really impressed. Unfortunately they don't know how to finish the job. Camille especially came across as very brave, the one who decides they're going for the bomb rather than getting to another exit, the one to thrust her arms into the holographic outer casing, and ultimately the one who realises they can't just try to defuse it without knowing exactly how to, because they need to give those outside as much time as possible to evacuate the area, so can't risk triggering the bomb earlier than it will go off anyway. It's a huge self-sacrifice, made worse because not only will they kill themselves, but the two guests on Destiny.

It all played out well as this moral quandary, even in spite of the fact the bodies they're in are the walking dead due to radiation exposure. Of course the senator is the one to step up and finish the job, while science man (Covel?), is the snivelling coward who'd rather take the small chance of Greer's body surviving the cut-off of the stones in order to save his own life. My question is regarding the holographic screen: if Camille could put her hands in there, why not crouch down and dunk her face in, too, then she could at least see what it all looked like. Not that it would have really changed anything - if you don't know what to do, you don't know what to do. It's a shame we never got full resolution, it's almost like they simply ran out of time and had to at least squeeze in a scene between Camille and Greer talking about those back home, rather than confirm the bomb was successfully defused. I think we can assume it was, otherwise that'd be the end of Homeworld Command. Wherever that is, it's clearly not the Cheyenne Mountain Complex - I wonder if they lost the ability to film there, or more likely took down the old 'SG-1' sets so had to move things somewhere more conventional. It was pushing it a bit to have hardened soldier Greer get mildly emotional when talking about his Mother, I wasn't too keen on the idea that he's 'finally' overcome his feelings so that he can talk about personal things, but at least it wasn't 'Discovery' level emotionalism on display and I generally liked that two characters that couldn't stand each other before found some common ground through their experience. Maybe other characters could have been better used, for example I feel Brody and Volker could be a terrific double-act if they were given more, but the series didn't have time to develop everything to the desired level before its time was cut short. At the moment I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

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