Stargate Atlantis: "The Daedalus Variations"

“Easy Chewy, those buttons are your friends.”

This week’s episode of Stargate Atlantis, “The Daedalus Variations,” is the perfect example of a bottle-show — a stand-alone episode that is generally so brilliant in its simplicity that it allows the production company to stay on track for the rest of the year.  (Or at least the next few episodes.)

With no guest cast to speak of (unless you count the scary stunt guys in alien costumes), it’s all about giving the main characters a problem to solve and 45ish minutes to do it in.

In this case, the problem is an alternate universe Daedalus which is stuck in a drive loop that causes it to shift realities every half hour or so. It all begins when the ship, sans any lifeforms, appears in the sky above Atlantis.  While the “real” Daedalus is steaming toward Earth, Sheppard, Teyla, McKay and Ronon take a jumper over to the phantom cruiser to see what’s up.

Once they get there, they discover themselves – dead (creepy) and a ship’s log from a commander they don’t know saying that the entire crew was forced to abandon ship.  But why?  Yeah, well, it’s another case of advanced technology doing more harm than good.

Apparently, in some parallel universe, we’ve invented an engine that allows a space ship to shift from one dimension to another.  Now, why you would want to do this is beyond me, but I guess it’s all part of that, ‘we just wanted to see if we could,’ mentality.  The engine was built with a tracking system that maps where you’ve been so you can get back — trouble is, it’s not working.  To make matters worse, the drive is stuck in recharge mode so that every time it hits 100% the ship jumps to a new dimension.

Right off the bat, Sheppard suggests they just put the thing in reverse so they can jump back to their own reality but Rodney dismisses this idea.  He’s worried that if the alternate universe version of himself couldn’t make this thing work, then how can he?  While he puzzles out this problem, Sheppard has troubles of his own.  One of the dimension jumps drops the Daedulus in the middle of a firefight between an alien ship and Atlantis.  (Not their Atlantis, but. . .you get the idea.)  When they choose to aid Atlantis, they become targets of hundreds of aliens ships and it’s the Star Wars big battle all over again.  Sheppard has Ronon join him in the fight, but its obvious that he hasn’t played many video games in his life, since he soon gets frustrated by the whole scenario.  Ronon prefers to beat things up with his own bare hands, not with a joystick.

Bing, bang, no problem.  The drive charges to 100% and it’s out of the frying pan and into the fire.  (Ha!  My favorite expression when writing about Stargate Atlantis and this time it’s for real!) The ship materializes above an exploding (imploded?) sun which means the outside temperature of the ship is rising rapidly. To make matters worse, a couple of aliens from the previous reality have made it on board and now Ronon has something he can beat on — which makes him very happy. (Trust me, he’s happy.)

So, let’s recap.  Ship’s engine stuck in a perpetual loop that throws it into a new dimension, shields are failing, no supplies on board, aliens trying to kill everyone, Rodney whining. . .  oh yes, and did I mention that the jumps are getting more frequent and soon the engine will burn out and they’ll be doomed to drift in space until they die from starvation?

Right-o. Time to think out of the box, so Rodney thinks like John and that means reversing the engine so they go back where they started from.  Cool idea, wish I’d thought of it an hour ago!  So now they have to go back past the flaming sun and the marauding aliens and complications abound.

Shift to Major Lorne, (whom I adore) and his team setting out in a jumper.  Yes, it’s a neat little directorial storytelling device, not showing us how the team escaped their fate until the super cool reveal. Suffice to say they do escape and live to fight another day.

What?  You’re surprised?  Oh, please.

Overall, I liked this episode.  I still feel like I’ve seen this all before but I doubt there’s a way around that at this point.  I like the relationships in this hour; Teyla and Ronon talking about the lives of the parallel people, Sheppard talking to Sheppard after Sheppard saved his butt (it’ll make sense if you watched the episode) and Rodney whining about Teyla keeping her baby from him (I only dropped him twice!)  One fourth emotion, one fourth humor and two parts action.  That’s Stargate Atlantis at its best.

In two weeks on Stargate Atlantis: “Ghost in the Machine”

Photos courtesy of SCI FI Channel