Stargate Universe Takes a Walk on the Dark Side

The Stargate franchise is like a family with the same parents but whose children are all very different. Stargate  SG-1 is the serious, responsible oldest child and Stargate Atlantis is the fun, mischievous youngest child. So that would make Stargate Universe the odd, schizophrenic, middle child who has a tendency to light things on fire.

Yeah, what they’ve been saying all along is true — this is not your father’s Stargate.

I’m sure you’ve already heard the basic premise. A group of civilians, scientists and military personnel are forced through the Stargate in order to survive an alien attack on their not-secret-anymore base. Trouble is, instead of dialing home, Dr. Nicholas Rush (Robert Carlyle) decides to dial a mysterious gate address that he’s been puzzling over for years.

Everyone goes through the gate, gate room is destroyed, there’s no going back, which is a bad thing because they’ve arrived on the deck of an ancient starship that isn’t in shape to support human life. So, it’s a survival story more than a exploration story. It’s back to basics looking for food, keeping the air breathable, providing medical care and keeping everyone hopeful and undercontrol. Yeah. . . good luck with that.

Stargate Universe is dark in theme and in design. Destiny, the ship in the show, is a beautiful piece of work. The production designers did a great job capturing that feel of ancient tech that’s decayed with age. Add to that the minimal lighting, hand-held cameras and a haunting soundtrack and you’ve got a very claustrophobic, tension-filled hour. The only thing missing here is the alien chest busters but it’s only the first episode of the season, so there’s hope.

The premiere is two hours long but some of that time is devoted to those annoying flashbacks that flesh out the character backstories and way too much time is spent acquainting scifi geek Eli (David Blue) and us with the details important to the Stargate franchise.

I am probably alone in this, but Eli is my least favorite character in the cast of ten-ish regulars. I do understand the need for an audience POV, but I find it hard to get on board with the idea that he was plucked, literally, out of his mother’s house because he solved a video game conundrum.  For such a dark and serious show, the introduction to Eli is played for laughs and smacks of Men In Black or Galaxy Quest. Now this kid is practically running the life saving efforts on Destiny because Rush is too focused on the tech to worry about human lives and I’ve got a problem with that.

I like Brian J. Smith who plays the young Lt who must step up in a way he never imagined he could. Smallville’s Alaina Huffman works for me, as does Elyse Levesque who plays a civilian caught in this mess while on a tour with her father the Senator.

Ming-Na feels severely underused in the pilot, but I imagine that will be remedied in upcoming episodes and Louis Ferreira is troubling me because he’s a killer on Durham County and I’m having a hard time getting past that.

When I first started reading about the show and the “edgier, younger tone,” I didn’t think I’d like it but I did. The opening action is a grabber, the danger feels real and that characters, for the most part, are intriguing. What really seperates this from the other Stargate’s is that it’s not about military personnel doing a job. It’s about the struggle for survival where only a few people are trained for this. Like every good disaster movie, Stargate Universe is about coming together and going beyond their own personal limits to ensure the survival of the group. This is no place for power trips, jealousy, greed or fear.. . . in other words, they’re in big, big, trouble. See how much trouble when Stargate Universe premieres Friday, October 2 at 9:00 on Syfy.

Syfy Photo: Art Streiber