Stargate Universe (season 1)
{4.5/5} “We can’t all be Mozarts, right? Some of us are Salieris. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I… I like Salieri.”
In “Darkness” the Destiny experiences a severe loss of power — lights go out, and basically everything except life support is nonfunctional. Then the ship enters a solar system — but it’s headed straight for the sun. In “Justice” there’s a death on board the Destiny — and the gun that shot the dead man is found in Colonel Young’s quarters. In “Space” Colonel Young is using one of the communication stones — but instead of Earth he winds up on an alien ship. Soon afterwards, the aliens find the Destiny — their one-word response to Eli’s greeting is “Surrender.”
Stargate Universe season 1 originally aired in 2009-10.
Universe is a very different Stargate show. The characters are on an Ancient ship they didn’t intend to board, travelling faster than light away from home with no immediate way of getting back. At first I was going to say that this is the Voyager of the Stargate universe but I quickly realized that it’s Stargate‘s answer to Battlestar Galactica. It’s a grittier show — a group of characters who don’t necessarily get along, and a dire situation.
The other two Stargate shows were very episodic, whereas in this one the ongoing story is more important. Also, the other two Stargate shows took a while to start producing great episodes, whereas this one was great from the beginning.
The characters are a mixture of military personnel and scientists. They have the ability to communicate with people back on Earth by using some Ancient communication stones — when you use them you switch bodies with the person on the other end.
The season ends on a cliffhanger with lots of people in jeopardy.
Joel Goldsmith provides great music for the show, as he did for Stargate Atlantis.
Robert Carlyle (the TV show Once Upon a Time) plays Dr. Rush and Ming-Na (the TV show ER) plays IOA representative Camille Wray. Lou Diamond Phillips (La Bamba) plays Colonel Telford.
Louis Ferreira (the TV series 1-800-Missing) plays Colonel Young, Brian J. Smith (Hate Crime) plays Lieutenant Scott, and David Blue (the TV show Moonlight) plays mathematics genius Eli Wallace. Alaina Huffman (the TV show Painkiller Jane) plays medic Lieutenant Johansen, Elyse Levesque (Normal) plays senator’s daughter Chloe Armstrong, and Jamil Walker Smith (the TV show Hey Arnold!) plays Master Sergeant Greer.
The show was created by Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper. They created Stargate Atlantis together, and Wright was a co-creator of Stargate SG-1.