SGU: Un-Common Descent

With only four episodes left for the final season (canceled after only two years and movie prospects to wrap things up appear dead), Stargate Universe returns to some more interesting territory.  A couple of story arcs converge within the first few minutes of this week’s ‘Common Descent‘ episode, harking back to the mid-season opener, ‘Deliverance‘ and ‘Twin Destinies.’  Ratings Update: And this doesn’t make any sense, but viewership drops by 16 percent over last week’s episode.  And just in time, straight from the presses, the transcript.

Common Descent
Common Descent

Destiny is back to falling apart, the breathable air on board needs scrubbing and dodging drones is not nearly as fun as it used to be.  Thinking the dead drone might be phoning home, they jetison it, during an ongoing drone attack, destroy it and attempt a feeble launch into FTL flight.  Destiny finds a couple of planets, one with a working gate, and one blocked, and Young agrees to drop out of FTL to solve the scrubber situation before everyone suffocates.

The expedition to the planet surface encounter English speaking humans who recognize members of the Destiny party.  And no surprise to myself (or Eli), these humans claim to be descendants sixty or so generations removed from the current members of Destiny.  And you thought the ‘future’ Destiny crew went through that unstable wormhole into oblivion?  Ha!

Everyone but Rush reacted with excitement and interest in the plight of the stranded settlers.  A friend of mine at GoodReads connected the dots before me, observing that since Rush remained behind on the ‘future’ Destiny, he sired no offspring (but did foster a philosophic debate of near epic, even Biblical, proportions).  This reminded me that the other Rush actually achieved his (or is that their) dream and ‘married’ Destiny … so who knows what kind of offspring might crop up for Rush?

This episode had a bit of everything: some science (time travel), some action (dodging drones and their command ships), some humor (Futura is a font!), some drama (‘ancient’ keno footage from the ‘future’ Destiny survivors original settlement), a bit of mystery (how are these drones finding Destiny?), and of course some political unrest (fostered two thousand years ago by the current uncomfortable philosophical disagreement between Rush and Young which results in a highly polarized schism developing among their descendants to the point where Rush is either worshiped as a near Messiah by one half or demonized, literally, by the other).

Even though this episode ended prematurely, I thoroughly enjoyed it and for the first time this spring I’m excited and anxious to watch next week’s ‘Epilogue‘ episode.  I give ‘Common Descent’ a solid four star rating out of five stars.

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