One Sentence Review

Good character drama and an ending that is both predicatable and surprising at the same time, proving that SGU is better when it doesn’t have any sex in an episode

Episode Recap

After Sgt Spencer is late for duty and does not respond to communications, Sgt Greer goes to Spencer’s quarters to check on him and discovers that Sgt Spencer is dead. While most of the evidence points to suicide, there is no gun by the body pointing to murder.

Col Young calls a ship meeting and informs everyone of the news, while some people including Lt Scott and Eli have an alibi, others including Col Young do not so Lt Scott is placed in charge of the investigation and they start to search everyone’s room for the weapon.

When doing a token search of Col Young’s room, Eli happens to notice something in an air vent which turns out to be the weapon. Following this Col Young stands down and Camille Wray is placed in charge until the investigation is concluded.

During the course of the investigation, it becomes clear that tensions between the military and civilians are rising and that some of the civilians believe Col Young could have done it for the good of the ship. The military on the other hand are ready to take control by force. To prevent the situation spiralling out of control Col Young stands down on a permanent basis with Wray now in charge.

Dr Rush takes advantage of this to work on the ancient control chair and tells several of the scientists how the chair could hold the key to getting back to Earth. This leads to Dr Franklin using the chair when left alone leading him to entering a coma when freed from the chair. Following this Lt Scott tells Eli to recheck the Kino footage from the day of the murder to see if he missed anything.

The Destiny exits hyperspace and dials a habitable planet, as Camille gets ready to head to the gate room, Sgt Greer confronts her about being taken off the away team duty list. During the course of exploring the planet, the away team discovers a crashed alien ship.

On Destiny concurrent with this, Eli discovers that Kino footage had been deleted from the Destiny database, fortunately Eli kept a complete backup of the last few days footage. This footage was of Sgt Spencer committing suicide, but later footage was not recoverable. While Wray wants to recall the team from the planet Rush disagrees and Young agrees with him and they both go to the planet.

At the ship, Rush asks for a few more minutes to investigate the ship which is not ancient in design. Young agrees but sends everyone back to the gate except himself and Rush. When they are gone Young tells Rush that he knows he was the one who framed him, as the footage was not corrupted. Rush admits it and justifies it by saying that Young is not the man for the job and is not up to making the life and death decisions.

Young then attacks Rush and after a brief fight knocks Rush unconscious and heads back to the gate alone. When he gets back to the Destiny he claims that Rush got trapped after triggering a landslide. Young is then placed back in charge and speaks to Eli alone. Young asks Eli to make a copy of the footage which only Eli and Young saw and then delete it from his hard drive.

On the planet with the ship on Rush wakes up to find it has gone dark and he has been left alone separated from Destiny.

Thoughts and Analysis

I have had mixed feelings about Stargate Universe in the first half of the series. While on one hand it has several outstanding actors and character drama, on the other it often has an overemphasis on sex and soap opera elements, and that is even before the issue of not dealing with the ethics of body swapping. Thankfully Justice is a powerful character drama which while at times predictable highlights all of the best elements of Stargate Universe, with none of the worst.

The main driving force behind this episode the suicide of Sgt Spencer has been foreshadowed for several episodes and will come as little surprise. The main surprise was that it initially didn’t appear to be suicide. The events around the framing of Col Young again highlight the tension between the crew members and I expect these to be revisited at a later date.

The only aspect of the plot that I had mixed feelings about was that it was Rush who was responsible. While this did fit his character and was believable, it was a bit predictable. What would have been a good twist is if before heading to the planet the video of who framed Young was lost and so Young assumes it was Rush and events play out in much the same way. Then when he got back to the ship Eli could have informed him that it was Franklin (scientist who used the chair) who was the actual culprit, which while surprising is believable given what we know of him and would have an interesting impact on Col Young when he learnt the truth.

One thing that was missing from the episode was an update on Franklin, as that last we saw, TJ was going to try to bring him out of his coma. Given that we did not hear anything about him after this I assume he is still in a coma and so can return whenever the writers think it is convenient.

As for Rush being trapped on the planet, given that there is a crashed alien space ship right next to him I doubt he will remain trapped for long, the main question is how long will it take for him to repair the ship or be picked up by the alien race who designed it and get back to Destiny. I personally expect it to be 2 or 3 episodes before Rush makes it back to Destiny, but the writers could easily decide to bring him back before the end of the next episode. Regarding the ethics of leaving Rush behind, given that Rush has shown he cant be trusted, I dont think Col Young had much of a choice as the alternative was leaving him locked up on the ship where he could cause trouble.

A related issue to Rush being abandoned is how will Eli cope as there is a good chance Col Young will rely on him even more than he has been doing now that Rush has gone. To date Eli has been primarily assisting other people or checking data but with Rush gone there is a good chance he will have to take over his role in investigating the Destiny systems. In the episodes to date Eli has been given challenges he can solve in fairly short order but the added responsibility may be more than he can deal with.

Overall then a fine episode to use before the mid season break, I just hope that the second half of the series has more of this type of episode rather than the overly soap opera-ish Earth based ones.

Episode Rating

8/10

Destiny Death Count

2 (+1) – Sgt Spencer (Dead), Nicholas Rush (Abandoned), (Dr Franklin – Coma)

Total Missing or Dead – 6 (+1 coma)