Stargate Universe (TV Series) Incursion: Part 1 (2010) User Reviews

Worst ambush ever

[ok-notifications-517-439932 · 8/10 · 29 December 2021]

Let's recapitulate what the Lucian Alliance is: A combination of smugglers, terrorists and traders, who harvest kassa and sell it. After several misunderstandings and Tau'ri interventions they are basically at war with earth. Somehow they "need" to get on the Destiny to... well, I still don't know why. What do they want with a 100.000 years old ship several galaxies away with no power to dial back home?

But they try. Since their own science is not good enough it helps, that Rush is there using the stones to help them achieve a way to reach Destiny. That could have been prevented with disabling the stone connection.

The "plan" of Destiny's military is to let the enemy come through the only door in full strength and then depressurise the gate room. This obviously fails, because Talford comes through the gate and they don't want to kill him. Let's recapitulate this plan: You have a single entry point, where enemies can enter your ship. Coming from another galaxy these enemies don't walk through, they get shot through the gate, are disoriented and maybe injured. In front of the gate is a platform. The easiest plan would be to put your military on the platform, seal the doors (even weld it from the outside using civilians) disorient the enemies even more using grenades and shoot them FROM THE PLATFORM.

But then there wouldn't be a chance for the authors to add some Voyager Maquis crew blending, wouldn't it?

I still rate this 7.5 or 8, because it's a fun episode, we get plenty of action and see old friends and old enemies.

unnecessary distractions

[gs20 · 7/10 · 5 June 2010]

Let's see. Oh yeah, the reason i may be unnecessarily distracted may be the disturbing image of pathologically chewed fingernails that "i wanna be peter Jackson" Andy Mikita put in my head...... It is absolutely beyond me as to why some directors seem to think that close ups of grotesquely chewed past the quick fingernails might be a useful photographic effect when in reality it just stuns the audience into losing track of the action and as well, what it has to do with the story (if anything) could easily be managed by more relevant means.

The same loss of focus thing happened to people watching Lord of the Rings .....as far as i can tell it almost ruined that astounding effort for some viewers if you consider the unbelievable amount of flap-jaw about it ......... it is clearly a counter-productive effect..........the only pseudo-logical reason i can think of as to why a director would want to embarrass an actor at the risk of his story-line might be some kind of weird passive aggressive/sadistic John Ford/John Wayne dynamic (if this needs explanation, then you are not much of a movie fan).............haven't these guys ever heard of hand models? ......they must still exist, or at least, i'm sure that makeup people would be happy to glue on some fake nails in order to preserve the audience train of thought rather than have the story interrupted by thoughts of the hero's hideously mutilated fingertips ...........sure there is a place for hideous deformity in science fiction but i don't think it serves a greater purpose when pushing a button or holding a ring or any other mundane yet supposedly suspenseful moment.....................

Also, the Colonel SHOULD have been relieved after blowing the ambush in the gate room, it was unbelievably unprofessional and frankly, not very believable.

S1E19

[syntory · 7/10 · 18 February 2024]

Another good filler episode that doesnt advance the Destiny story. I did have a major gripe with this episode, however. The fact that Young was unwilling to vent the atmosphere in the gate room was a little absurd since he had already done it to Rush/Telford earlier in that same episode! What would've been the difference? He could've vented the gate room before the stargate was even activated and had a couple of soldiers in the spacesuits waiting in the gate room behind cover. He wouldn't have even needed to create a full vacuum. Just lower the air pressure enough for everyone coming through the gate to lose consciousness within a few seconds. Once everyone has come through the gate have the guys in the suits grab telford and pull him out. Overall this filler episode was good, but that Young character inconsistency was a little annoying. And this episode should've been cut from SGU. Maybe good for a spinoff.

Too much implausible behavior in this episode

[jasonemartin-75927 · 1/10 · 10 May 2023]

One sign a show is poorly written is when the characters behave in ways that don't make sense. When Col. Young failed to vent the atmosphere of the gate room out into space, he was behaving in a way that doesn't make sense. Of course, he failed to vent the atmosphere of the gate room because he didn't want to kill Col. Telford, who the Lucian Alliance brought through with themselves into the gate room. But the thing is... he didn't have to kill Col. Telford to make his plan work. He could have released the atmosphere of the gate room into space until everyone in the room had merely lost consciousness or was at least greatly weakened and disoriented, but was not dead. Then he could have had his soldiers rush in and eliminate the freshly disabled enemy troops as they bring in new atmosphere with them, and have a medic provide emergency treatment to Telford. Even if that wasn't true, he still put the lives of many of his own people on the ship at risk by trying to save Telford -- a guy who had been helping the Lucian Alliance and should not be trusted even if he somehow managed to survive. Losing the life of one untrustworthy traitor to save the lives of several of his own crew while repelling a large enemy attack successfully is, frankly, a bargain Col. Young should have eagerly accepted.

I'm aware Col. Young is a strong believer in the "leave nobody behind" type of military decision-making that, if applied consistently to all cases, would demand he try to save Telford. But as I said earlier, there was a way he could attempt to save Telford without allowing the Lucian Alliance to gain a foothold on his ship in the first place which puts everyone else on the ship at risk. And even the most steadfast believer in the "leave nobody behind" philosophy of command knows that in war there will be casualties. Being a good commanding officer requires he make the decisions that minimize them while achieving the objective, which he wasn't doing.

Not only should Col. Young have vented the atmosphere, he should have vented it before all of the enemy even went through the gate and before Col. Telford even got through the gate to the ship. Why wait? They should have emerged from the gate in a total vacuum so they wouldn't even be able to react in time.

And Col. Young's soldiers guarding the interrogation room with Col. Telford also failed to keep the interrogation secret from Camile Wray by allowing her to see who was inside the room and what was going on when they opened the door. Also implausibly bad acting. A person doing a better job of playing a soldier wouldn't have even allowed her to be in that area arguing over it, let alone allow her to see what was happening in there so that word of what was going on could spread to the rest of the ship, which would reveal to the others on the ship a classified military operation taking place which they could then talk about to others on Earth when they use the ancients communication stones.

Overall, the characters just seemed to be doing a really bad job of playing their roles. Even General O'Neil got mad at Col. Young for failing to vent the atmosphere as planned, and O'Neil follows the same "leave no soldier behind" philosophy of command. Because O'Neil presumably knows there are reasonable limits to how far you can take that philosophy in practice, and Col. Young crossed them to an extreme degree to the point where we can say he was an implausibly bad commanding officer.

There were just way too many characters in this episode making implausibly bad decisions and it ruined it for me.

Flauts in storyline

[dreamboy-100 · 2 May 2013]

I think that it's bad that they say that naquadria is found in great masses naturaly in the new as well as the old icarus planet. Naquadria is not an natural element which was clearly stated in the series stargate SG- 1, it was created by an goa'uld in an attempt to create a new greater power source. one you expose naquada to the procedure that turns it to naquadria it will spread and turn all the naquada in the deposit to naquadria. this can make a planet extremely instable.

another thing that's been bugging me is that the 302:s couldn't escape the explosion of the new icarus planet, they could just have entered hyperspace like the deadalus class ship. after all they are capable to since they are mounted with a hyper-drive engine and with their naquadria energy source they have enough power to use it.