Season One, Episode Fourteen
Rush has hooked himself into the Destiny’s systems and seems to be reliving a critical time in his life as he tries to decipher the hidden information within the information he is seeing. We learn a whole new side to Rush and you might even say his character may be misunderstood.
Two major storylines dominate the episode. The first is Rush’s living through a painful point in his life while trying to learn what he needs in the now. The second is the situation where Destiny drops out of FTL and four crewmen go to a planet they must deal with some dire consequences.
This was a really impressive episode. The fact that Rush must relive a tragic historical episode in his life and figure out the keys to unlocking Destiny’s secrets at the same time was brilliant. We get to watch the tragedy as his wife goes through something that must have been awful for Rush to deal with the first time. He must deal with it again understanding that this for all intensive purposes is not real. A lot of this makes his personality and his callousness much more understandable. Robert Carlyle’s Rush has truly been a character you’ve love to hate. This episode certainly will change the feelings for a lot of people as it is much more understandable the scars this man must have. You feel when he actually deals with the situation at the end a true glimmer appears in his understanding of things in the big picture.
The first storyline has a major effect on the second as Destiny is still uncontrollable and at this time it is becoming even more critical to the four people on the planet that Rush, Young, and the travelers on Destiny get control of the ship they are traveling on. This series has been somewhat serialized and a lot of the episodes have been multiple stories over two or three weeks. This new wrinkle now creates what could be an even more serialize feel as the crew works to overcome their long term situation.
Of course we still have the critical Rush/Young problem. Rush hooked himself into the systems without asking permission and then Young is forced to decide when the right time to unplug him would be. Does he risk severing the connection before Rush is ready even though Rush is beginning to show signs of fatigue?
This series is getting better in this its second part of the first season. The limited actual contact with Earth may be the key. The constant capability of communication with Earth gives a false sense of connection to the show and at the same time really doesn’t move the travelers on Destiny forward. With these current episodes after the encounters with the aliens and now the current situations we feel the true separation that these people must feel and how they truly are on their own and must work together.
This was an enjoyable episode and maybe one of the best of this first season overall. It will be fun to go back and watch this episode again when the season is completed so we may be able to see some of the subtle nuances we missed the first time. Great acting and a very good story highlight this episode of Stargate Universe. Thanks for reading…
Jeffery Yarter
