Stargate Round-Up 08-13-04

For those who may not know, I live in Florida, near Tampa, close to where Hurricaine Charley was supposed to strike. Luckily, for me it veered (but not lucky for those people it did hit... ). So I was expecting to be spending Friday night in darkness with candles, propane lamps, and flashlights to see...

Stargate: SG-1 "Avatar"

The concept? Tron meets Stargate... Teal'c tests out a chair which is a VR interface and is supposed to simulate a battle with the Anubis Drones who breached the SGC.

First off, yes, this isn't an altogether original plot, but as I will echo in my review of Atlantis, the Stargate Franchise makes up what it lacks in original plots with exceptional characterization.

And it's in no short supply in Teal'C's case this episode. I've noticed that Stargate likes to do focuses on its characters every once in a while, which really focus on a specific character and their persona really drives the episode. For O'Neill we got Season 1's "Cold Lazarus," for Carter we got last Season's "Grace," Daniel got the Season 3 and 4 (respectively) episodes "Forever in a Day" and "Absolute Power," while Teal'C got Season 5's "Tangent." And this episode.

Early on something goes wrong with the chair and it appears that Teal'C's subconscious won't let him out of the game. It's an interesting concept, similar to the one Batman devised to take down Wonder Woman in the event that she went rogue (or one could surmise, just turned against Bruce) as we learned in the JLA story "Tower of Babel." It's partly Teal'C's ego, but a large part of it is his upbrining and his unique situation as the first Jaffa to rebel.

But we learn an even more tasty tid-bit later on, which brings in a bit of continuity. In the Season 3 episode "Gamekeepr," SG-1 first came into contact with these chairs when they were used against them. Long story short, they broke free, liberated a planet, and gained allies (who were not mentioned again until this episode. An imprint from when Teal'C was in the chair originally reveals that Teal'C back then did not believe that total victory against the Goa'uld was possible. Daniel and Sam discuss the possibility that Teal'C may still feel that way.

Of course the ending was really...simple, but the journey to tne ending was worth it. Even heartbreaking when Teal'C's body succumbed to the strain and he effectively gave up.

As long as SG-1 keeps up the great characterization, I think I'll continue to enjoy Season 8 (as I have with last week being the only exception). I give "Avatar" an "A."

Stargate: Atlantis "Childhood's End"

Once again, the plot sounds familiar (I know I'm not the only one to see the comparisons to the original Star Trek episode "Miri" and Logan's Run). Basically the crew finds a planet of kids and learn that they sacrifice themselves when the night before their 25th birthday to keep the Wraith away.

The crew learns that it's not the sacrifice which does it, but a field generator which produces an EM-wave which keeps technology from working (Similar to one used in Deep Space Nine's "Progress"). They also learn it has a limited functional area and the sacrifice bit is to keep the population down, so that the numbers are able to live within the field. Oh and McKay manages to break this field, making them at risk for a Wraith attack.

Some great moments from McKay and one really memorable moment from Ford strengthen this by-the-numbers plot. McKay is his usual self around kids finding them aggrivating and then annoying, but Ford saves the day by introducing them to Choclate.

Sheppard really comes off as O'Neill lite and Teyla isn't much of a presence. Weir appears in two scenes to argue with McKay and I found her to be on the "right side."

Of course, there is a tidy ending which solves both the problem of the broken generator and the need to sacrifice themselves. They make small talk about seeing them again and then they're off.

A nice bit was McKay at the beginning explaining why each planet looks alike (like Vancouver, to be specific), which degrades into him babbling about Carter, a nice bit of continuity between the series.

Overall, it's an A- due to strong characterization and Atlantis continues to keep me entertained. I'm still waiting for the "knock my socks off" episode, similar to SG-1's "The Torment of Tantalus," which I think made a lot of people sit up and realize how great SG-1 was. In the meantime, I'm happy to watch these enjoyable, "fluff" episodes.