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SGA 4x05: Travelers
I should warn you ahead of time that I had major, major problems with this episode.
My first and biggest problem is that the episode made my inner anthropology geek curl up into the fetal position, wailing.
I love the idea of a culture that lives on old ships traveling between the stars -- space gypsies, of sorts. What made my teeth grind is that they looked and behaved exactly like the crew of Generic Space Vessel X. Their original ship should've looked lived-in; it should have had personal possessions strewn about, kids and pets running everywhere. Most of the people on the ship should have been related to one another or at least exuded the sort of comrades-at-arms closeness that we've seen with the Satedans. Their terminology for positions within the society shouldn't have been the exact same sorts of thing that you'd get on a Federation science vessel (like at the end were she calls for technicians and a security crew .... aaaaargh). Ideally, they would have been distinctive as a society, with foreign customs and a religion and unique clothing and all of that, but being that this is mainstream sci-fi, I would have settled for the mere acknowledgment -- in any other way than random and unconvincing snippets of exposition -- that these people are a society, not merely a collection of unrelated people serving aboard a starship together.
I really can't express in words my annoyance and displeasure that we never got ANYTHING of that sort, not even to the extent that we've gotten it with the Genii and Satedans and Athosians and the other cultures that they've visited. The Travelers could have been lifted straight from any generic 1950s/60s space opera. They were only there to serve the plot. I wanted to like Lirrin, I really did -- strong cool chick with (supposed) techie skills running a society of space gypsies, sign me up! But ... gaaahhhh ... I never really felt like she cared about her people, her hotheadedness and tantrums towards Sheppard just seemed bitchy and juvenile, of course she had to be rescued from the Wraith (twice!), she didn't have any of the quirkiness and sense of fun that draws me to a character -- she was just horribly generic.
Which brings me to Gigantic Episode Bitch #2: the whole plot was horribly generic. And unsuspenseful. I think that it was intended as an homage to the old space-opera serials, Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon and things of that nature; this show does that kind of thing so often that I'm pretty sure the parallels were intentional. But it didn't really fly on its own merits, and even as an episode of Buck Rogers it would have been very blah. Every time they started to crank up the suspense, things just fell apart somehow; I never really felt like Sheppard was in danger from the Travelers, even the double-crosses were kind of lackluster, and rather than an exciting finale, it just kind of crumbled with a whimper at the end. They let him go (off-camera!) and flew away! Gaaah!
The thing is, it's no longer the 1950s. If you're going to do a blatant space-action-serial homage, you really ought to muster up some kind of new twist on it, maybe a tongue-in cheek slant on the genre -- but at the very least, if you can't do any of that, can we at least get ACTION? Stargate, as a whole, is kind of the successor to those earlier sorts of shows, and at its best it can be fast-paced and smart and funny and very self-aware. This ... this wasn't ANY of that. It didn't subvert the tropes of the old action-serial genre, with its damsels in distress and generic white all-American cast, but worse, it didn't even manage to capture the fun of the original.
And then there are all the minor plot holes -- like Lirrin using the LSD, or about a dozen times during the episode when I went, "Wait, how does she/he know [x]" or "How did she/he find [x]"? These are the sorts of little things that I'll normally let go, but since I wasn't enjoying the whole thing much anyway, they kept making me want to tear my hair out.
There were a few little things I enjoyed. I liked Sheppard fixing the chair, Rodney-style -- obviously he's been paying a lot more attention than he lets on (although what would really have made that scene would have been an overt acknowledgment of that -- Sheppard muttering that he's never going to tell Rodney about this because he'd never live it down, or harking back to some time he'd watched Rodney do the same thing ... if we can't get the rest of the cast there in body, could there be SOME intimation that they're present in spirit, anyhow?). Sheppard flopped against the wall in the cell after they re-capture him on the Ancient ship, exuding boredom and general "nope, ma'am, wasn't me!" innocence, made me giggle. And his team + Lorne with their determination to get him back in the jumper. Rodney wanting to be kidnapped by space babes, and the team all eating together ... awww! (Although, does this mean they didn't feed Sheppard on the 5-hour flight back to the gate? That's not very nice! Aren't there MREs in his jumper or ANYTHING?)
But all in all ... probably not gonna be watching this one again soon. I didn't loathe it with the active burning passion that I felt for "Irresponsible" -- but, on the other hand, I actually really liked parts of "Irresponsible", and on re-watching, was able to ignore the parts I hated (for the most part) and focus on the funny team stuff. My feelings towards this episode (aside from a giant case of frustration regarding the Travelers) are more of a general "blah". There was just NOTHING really to recommend this episode ... nothing that made me want to go back and rewatch bits, nothing that really sparked off ideas. Well, okay, that's a lie, because I really want to write about the Travelers -- but I was so thoroughly frustrated by the way they were depicted in the episode that I don't really want to write a tag so much as I want to write about my own culture of space gypsies DONE RIGHT.
*sigh*
Okay, now is where you all disagree with me and tell me that it didn't suck as much as I thought it did. *g*
My first and biggest problem is that the episode made my inner anthropology geek curl up into the fetal position, wailing.
I love the idea of a culture that lives on old ships traveling between the stars -- space gypsies, of sorts. What made my teeth grind is that they looked and behaved exactly like the crew of Generic Space Vessel X. Their original ship should've looked lived-in; it should have had personal possessions strewn about, kids and pets running everywhere. Most of the people on the ship should have been related to one another or at least exuded the sort of comrades-at-arms closeness that we've seen with the Satedans. Their terminology for positions within the society shouldn't have been the exact same sorts of thing that you'd get on a Federation science vessel (like at the end were she calls for technicians and a security crew .... aaaaargh). Ideally, they would have been distinctive as a society, with foreign customs and a religion and unique clothing and all of that, but being that this is mainstream sci-fi, I would have settled for the mere acknowledgment -- in any other way than random and unconvincing snippets of exposition -- that these people are a society, not merely a collection of unrelated people serving aboard a starship together.
I really can't express in words my annoyance and displeasure that we never got ANYTHING of that sort, not even to the extent that we've gotten it with the Genii and Satedans and Athosians and the other cultures that they've visited. The Travelers could have been lifted straight from any generic 1950s/60s space opera. They were only there to serve the plot. I wanted to like Lirrin, I really did -- strong cool chick with (supposed) techie skills running a society of space gypsies, sign me up! But ... gaaahhhh ... I never really felt like she cared about her people, her hotheadedness and tantrums towards Sheppard just seemed bitchy and juvenile, of course she had to be rescued from the Wraith (twice!), she didn't have any of the quirkiness and sense of fun that draws me to a character -- she was just horribly generic.
Which brings me to Gigantic Episode Bitch #2: the whole plot was horribly generic. And unsuspenseful. I think that it was intended as an homage to the old space-opera serials, Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon and things of that nature; this show does that kind of thing so often that I'm pretty sure the parallels were intentional. But it didn't really fly on its own merits, and even as an episode of Buck Rogers it would have been very blah. Every time they started to crank up the suspense, things just fell apart somehow; I never really felt like Sheppard was in danger from the Travelers, even the double-crosses were kind of lackluster, and rather than an exciting finale, it just kind of crumbled with a whimper at the end. They let him go (off-camera!) and flew away! Gaaah!
The thing is, it's no longer the 1950s. If you're going to do a blatant space-action-serial homage, you really ought to muster up some kind of new twist on it, maybe a tongue-in cheek slant on the genre -- but at the very least, if you can't do any of that, can we at least get ACTION? Stargate, as a whole, is kind of the successor to those earlier sorts of shows, and at its best it can be fast-paced and smart and funny and very self-aware. This ... this wasn't ANY of that. It didn't subvert the tropes of the old action-serial genre, with its damsels in distress and generic white all-American cast, but worse, it didn't even manage to capture the fun of the original.
And then there are all the minor plot holes -- like Lirrin using the LSD, or about a dozen times during the episode when I went, "Wait, how does she/he know [x]" or "How did she/he find [x]"? These are the sorts of little things that I'll normally let go, but since I wasn't enjoying the whole thing much anyway, they kept making me want to tear my hair out.
There were a few little things I enjoyed. I liked Sheppard fixing the chair, Rodney-style -- obviously he's been paying a lot more attention than he lets on (although what would really have made that scene would have been an overt acknowledgment of that -- Sheppard muttering that he's never going to tell Rodney about this because he'd never live it down, or harking back to some time he'd watched Rodney do the same thing ... if we can't get the rest of the cast there in body, could there be SOME intimation that they're present in spirit, anyhow?). Sheppard flopped against the wall in the cell after they re-capture him on the Ancient ship, exuding boredom and general "nope, ma'am, wasn't me!" innocence, made me giggle. And his team + Lorne with their determination to get him back in the jumper. Rodney wanting to be kidnapped by space babes, and the team all eating together ... awww! (Although, does this mean they didn't feed Sheppard on the 5-hour flight back to the gate? That's not very nice! Aren't there MREs in his jumper or ANYTHING?)
But all in all ... probably not gonna be watching this one again soon. I didn't loathe it with the active burning passion that I felt for "Irresponsible" -- but, on the other hand, I actually really liked parts of "Irresponsible", and on re-watching, was able to ignore the parts I hated (for the most part) and focus on the funny team stuff. My feelings towards this episode (aside from a giant case of frustration regarding the Travelers) are more of a general "blah". There was just NOTHING really to recommend this episode ... nothing that made me want to go back and rewatch bits, nothing that really sparked off ideas. Well, okay, that's a lie, because I really want to write about the Travelers -- but I was so thoroughly frustrated by the way they were depicted in the episode that I don't really want to write a tag so much as I want to write about my own culture of space gypsies DONE RIGHT.
*sigh*
Okay, now is where you all disagree with me and tell me that it didn't suck as much as I thought it did. *g*
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