The Destiny is falling apart. Granted, she’s always been falling apart, but following the pasting they took in the mid-season two-parter, they’re much more aggressively falling apart. This is hampered by a lack of spare parts and also a basic lack of understanding of what the parts do in and of themselves. The ship is barely functional, and will not keep together for much longer at all. Reluctantly, Young decides to use Eli’s plan to gate everyone back to earth while they’re inside a star refueling (Yeah, that works now, apparently).

There’s a degree of parallelism between the three-part series premier and this three-part season finale. We’ve got most of the classic SG1 team turning up - Jack, Daniel, Sam - we’ve got the Lucien Alliance, we’ve got people traveling to the ship and things not going exactly as planned, and we’ve got problems with the air supply, and we’ve got yet another Icarus-like planet blowing up. Daniels’ even a cameo on a DVD, just like in the premier.

It’s backstory city here on SGU tonight: We have two parallel plots running, the first, and more important being an extended semi-flashback in which we watch the things that turned Rush (A person) into Rush (An evil scheming jackass). In the other one, we’ve got a fairly standard peril-on-a-planet-with-the-clock-ticking plot. Both take a rather surprising turn, which is becoming the calling card for this series, and really has always been a trademark of the SG franchise, if we’re honest.

It’s seeming more and more like the long slow burn of the first half of the season was justified!

PLAY BY PLAY

Chloe has a bad dream set to a vaguely grungy minor-key song that probably would have seemed really edgy and impressive circa 1996, but it’s just dated, manipulative, and kind of slow now. Afterwards she has a talk with Rush, who’s also been having the same alien-related nightmares.
“Everyone thinks it’s over, that we’re safe, but it’s not over is it?”
“No, it’s not.”