Stargate Universe

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I admit, I am not your typical geek. I’ve never seen any of the star wars movies and find the whole space thing to be a tad obvious and uncreative. It’s cliche. But each of the Stargate shows have appealed to me, the newest of which, Stargate: Universe, does moreso than the others.

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Eli, played by David Blue, is a character that I can relate to. Okay, so he’s far better at math than I am, but he is also an unemployed gamer who lives with his sick mother and can’t afford her medical bills.

Here is the break down for Eli. He dropped out of MIT but not because he couldn’t hack it. While playing an MMORPG based on the Stargate world he performs a function that nobody had been able to perform which alerts the Air Force and Stargate Command, who then show up on his doorstep and take Eli onto a space ship. He stumbles into a world that has only existed in video games and sci fi movies and has to man up, quick. He isn’t trained. He isn’t in shape. This is why the show is more accessible than other sci fi shows. On other shows, the people grew up in the Sci Fi worlds they inhabit or they are part of an expedition that is trained and knowledgable. Not Eli.

While on the ship Destiny, Eli discovers a floating camera ball that he names a Kino. With the Kino, Eli begins to… well, vlog. That’s right. Now, you won’t find his clips on youtube but you see him speak directly at the viewer and he tells you what he is feeling and what is going on. Eli gets the rest of the crew to join him, though some have little to say.

Chloe, played by Elyse Levesque, is the daughter and assistant to a US Senator who dies early in the series. She is the kind of woman I would have the hots for. Most of the time on Sci fi shows, the women are these hypersexualized, leather wearing cyborgs. Not Chloe. She’s cute, nerdy and quiet. I would totally try to flirt with her if she were hanging around my work place. She seems like a kind person and you really feel for her when she loses her father. It’s a damn hard place to be, to be lost, with no way home, and to lose the person you idolize. And she does idolize her father, make no mistake. She works as his assistant at an age when most people would rather avoid their parents.

It was Chloe, by the way, who comes up with the idea to put the programing code that nobody could solve into a video game, which propelled the entire series. Without her brilliant idea to tap into the gamer community they would never have been stuck on this space ship. Period.

The obvious thing for the Stargate people to do is to put her in a relationship right away with Eli, but that hasn’t happened yet. For Stargate fans, you know how long they can tease a potential love interest – Sam and Jack anybody? – so I hope that they do the same on this show, though Eli and Chloe are citizens and are stuck living together on some ancient space version of the weekend cruise ship.

What I find really impressive though is that Chloe seems to have many male friends who she feels close to. It isn’t just Eli in her life. We see her confide in several other male characters after the loss of her father. She is a real woman with real emotions and not simply there for the men to have sex with. One particularly amazing moment was shared with Matthew Scott, played by Brian J. Smith, a soldier who is also on the ship. They could turn this into a love triangle but I hope they don’t.

Dr. Nicholas Rush, who is my favorite person on the show, is absolutely mad. I do not trust him. What’s better though is I think my distrust is unfounded. He is irrational but brilliant and methodical. He does things in a way that make it seem sneaky but mostly I think he just thinks the rest of the crew are stupid and don’t need that much info… but I just can’t trust the guy. I’m so suspicious of his actions and motives and what is best is that it appears that the SGC feel the same way about Col. Everett Young (played by Justin Louis) who I do feel safe with.

You’ll notice something else about Stargate: Universe. So far there have been zero aliens, aside from the intial attack on the planet that held the stargate they traveled through to end up on Destiny. This is a show about people from Earth who are lost. It is Lost, if the island in lost were a space ship. We’ll eventually see other life forms on the planets they visit, but their auto pilot space ship is probably going to move too fast for a recurring evil doer. You’ll see no replicators, borgs or cylons. This show will undoubtedly have aliens but probably not the wraith, wookies or vulcans.

If you haven’t watched the show, you should check it out. It is funny, smart and emotionally rewarding. You’ll get some action but so far it is about emotional depth not pod racing or huge epic battles.