Okay, this is getting annoying. Once again we are given an episode with questions and no answers. Who made that planet? Why did they do it? Was Scott right, was the planet put there as a life line for Destiny? Come on, people!

So, Tamara is pregnant. Did you notice the scene in which Chloe asks who the father is, and then they cut to Young. Hint, hint, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Boy Rush is sure singing a different tune. As Young pointed out, last week, Rush wanted the military out, and this week, he's on their side. Can anyone trust this guy?

I loved Eli's comment about the Genesis Device and the moment of silence after as no one knows what he is talking about!

Once again no scenes on Earth. Continuing this welcome trend.

Well, one thing this planet did was seeming help to mend fences between the military and the civilians. Speaking of which, I loved Greer's way of settling who digs the latrine, both of them.

I hope this episode will be followed up on in regards to the planet and who made it. Too big a plot point to leave dangling.

I actually liked this episode; apart from the questions it raised I found it quite interesting. I suspected right away that TJ was pregnant but was surprised too because I thought they had been on Destiny for longer than 15 weeks and I understood that the affair between her and Young was over while they were on the Icarus base. She really looks quite different with her hair down; I did not recognize her in the opening scene. Also there seems to be more of it than it appears when she puts it up.

I could not tell if everyone came back to Destiny or if some actually did stay on the planet.

So no one on Destiny ever watched Trek? I got the reference right away. Of course I have been a major Trekker since the beginning.

All that greenery on the planet looked a little *too* green.

Beth - ;)

As ‘official’ transcriber of Universe episodes, I would like to put in a formal complaint about the diction of a lot of these actors! Brian Smith (Scott) and Rob Carlyle (Rush) in particular have a nasty habit of dropping the first word of their sentences; Alaina Huffman (T.J.) and Rob again break their sentences in weird places, leaving me to think that they’ve finished so that I type in a full stop at the end of the phrase. only to find that they haven’t finished the sentence yet; and several members of the cast mumble their lines too fast. Patrick Gilmore rattled off Volker’s line so quickly and incoherently that I was convinced he had said “bigger surface activities” in relation to the star, but it didn’t feel right and luckily when I googled “+‘bipolar outflow’ +‘surface activity’” one of the entries in the list happened to mention “vigorous surface activity”, and listening back to the scene again it made sense that time. So then I googled Patrick Gilmore and, lo and behold, another bloody Canadian who talks too fast! But I have enough work to do googling astronomical information to find out whether “T Tauri” is lower case or initial capitals and whether “G2” has a hyphen in the middle or not, without having to do more research just to find out what someone said!

Rant over. Thank you for your patience.

I note that, unlike Young (as seen a couple of weeks ago), Scott has only a bog-standard non-electric razor. I was about to retract my previous complaint by saying that it looked like Young had put a battery-operated electric razor into his own emergency kit, but when he went into the Gateroom on Icarus the only thing he was looking for was the communication stones, so I would be staggered if his personal kit made it through during the evacuation.

The crew seems surprised when Destiny exits F.T.L. and doesn’t start dialling, reacting as if it has never happened before – except that it happened twice last week. I know that this week’s writer is brand new to the series, but one of the regular writers edited the script, so why wasn’t he paying attention to what had happened in earlier episodes?

This episode also seems to finally establish that Destiny’s Stargate, unlike those in both the Milky Way and Pegasus, can dial a Gate in the same solar system (Eli seems to imply that if there had been a Gate on the planet, they could have dialled it even as close as they were). Presumably, because the Gates out here are so far apart, and because Destiny’s Gate has an unusual configuration, new rules apply.

Chloe is definitely in a pink top this week, even though she was wearing pink when she was taken into the alien ship. Just how many identical tops did she cram into her small bag?!

First sight of the planet after they landed had me cheering, “Yay! I’ve missed those Canadian forests!”

Many years ago I read a brilliant short story where an exploratory ship from Earth landed on a perfect planet which had a large shaft built on it like the obelisk in this episode. In the story there were lots of weird, wonderful and adorable animals which, after a few days, became very lethargic and poorly and the crew sadly deduced that they must have caught their germs and were dying. However, later the shaft began turning and the animals all perked up and the crew realised just in time that the planet was actually a huge playbox for alien kids and that the shaft was the key winding it back up again. Realising how huge the alien kids must be to need a playground that big, the crew jumped into their spaceship and fled and the last line of the story was the captain saying, “And I definitely don’t want to meet the parents.” So when the shuttle crew found the obelisk I wondered if someone else had read the story too. I still can’t decide if I’m disappointed or not that they hadn’t!

For a moment I wondered whether the Cole who is staying behind to look after Franklin (but not, I note, Riley who perhaps is recovered enough to be recuperating in his quarters) is the same Cole who was in Atlantis’ “Sunday” episode but, of course, T.J. is the most experienced medic on Destiny and Lantis’ Cole was a full doctor so it can’t be the same one.

By the way, the real reason we haven’t seen Riley is because the actor is filming something else.

Scott says that the crew will sleep in the shuttle until they’ve built shelters. It’ll have to be a rota system – I don’t think there’s enough floor space to cater for all of them!

Why is Caine all alone on the riverbank – and why isn’t Scott bothered when he finds him alone – when Young said he wanted all teams guarded all the time? Mind you, when Scott later finds Chloe bathing alone, he isn’t even carrying a rifle, so presumably this idiotic crew has made the assumption that nobody has tried to kill them for a while and so the planet must be permanently safe.

I suppose you don’t have to be that great an actor to portray pain, so on this occasion I won’t rave about Carlyle’s skills, but nevertheless I was gritting my teeth in sympathy as Rush struggled to lie down. (This was probably mostly because I suffered the same problems and pain after major surgery last year.)

I couldn’t tell what the football was made out of, but surely it wasn’t a real one, cos I refuse to believe that that was part of the essential escape kit from Icarus!

Considering how much Universe is trying to insist that it is not a clone of Battlestar Galactica, did T.J. have to look so much like Kara Thrace with her hair down? (And I sniggered when, visiting the Gateworld Forum, I saw a topic entitled “Did they come across a wrecked Colonial Raptor?”)

Poor directing: how did nobody notice Greer’s mis-spoken line?
CAINE: “If they’re advanced enough to build a solar system, I know they can help us get back home.”
GREER: “Not if they don’t wipe us out first.”
Surely that should be “Not if they wipe us out first.”

However, apart from that slip-up, I adored Greer in this episode, both in the kiwi scene and the latrine digging scene.

Greer (and others) talks about how much food and water they’re taking back to Destiny, but with so many people on board the shuttle during the trip to the planet, they can’t have had room for that many containers, especially drums for the water.

Best line of the series so far:
WRAY (to Young): “No-no, you cannot force them to come back.”
RUSH: “Oh, I think he can.”

So did Chloe only decide to stay on the planet because Matt was staying, or was she just too much of a wuss to stay without him? And did she totally not care about how her mother would react to her loss?

I hooted with laughter at Young’s gag about Rush almost getting a chance to talk with aliens who he could have an intelligent conversation with, and laughed even louder at Rush’s blank “Huh?!” look.

It’s typical of this selfish crew that they all happily tuck into the food, laughing and joking, and not one of them seems to have a thought for those who stayed behind on the planet and who they’ll never see again. Even James seems cheerful considering that Caine – the bloke she fancied – has gone.

I don’t mind that we never found out what/who put that star and planet there. I quite like the fact that it remains a mystery (and hope that it’s just not lazy writing by someone who couldn’t think up a good reason!). But wouldn’t it be fun if one of Destiny’s crew uses the stones in the future and arrives back at Earth to see Doctor Caine standing there grinning smugly and saying, “See? Told you so.”

another bloody Canadian who talks too fast!

You don't have a problem with Canadians, I hope. Because I'm one

Did some of them stay on the planet? I really couldn't tell at the end. I guess as long as they got the leads back, Chloe, Scott, Greer, T.J., then it doesn't matter much in the long run. At least story wise. But poor James, as you said, Callie, she seemed to like Caine. Did he stay behind or not?

I absolutely don't have a problem with Canadians - just their very fast diction! Michael Shanks and David Hewlett were always a nightmare to transcribe because they rattled off their lines so quickly, and Patrick did the same thing here. And my next most difficult person was Paul McGillion who, despite being born in Scotland, was brought up in ... guess where?!

It was never clarified whether Caine and others stayed behind, but we certainly didn't see him exit the shuttle and - unless the actor wasn't available that day - I think the director would have made a point of showing him returning to Destiny. At present I'm assuming that some of the crew did stay behind.

CAINE: “If they’re advanced enough to build a solar system, I know they can help us get back home.”
Just because they can build a star & planets doesn't mean they can build a transport system capable of sending someone several galaxies away within that person's lifetime. That's like assuming someone who can build a house or apartment building can also build a jet engine.

Tim - Who made that planet?
The Ori? ;-)

Buh??

Well, maybe not the Ori, but possibly Ascended Beings. (Ori was just funnier.)

Who's to say this galaxy couldn't have their own Acendeds or maybe some Ascended Ancients decided to visit this galaxy knowing that they sent ships here?

I withdraw my comment about Destiny's Stargate being able to dial planets while in the same solar system. I misunderstood what Eli was implying. If the sun and planet had been 'normal' and one of the Gate-seeding ships had dropped a Stargate on the planet, Destiny would have dropped out of FTL a lot further back, and certainly wouldn't have been within the solar system.

Ah! The MUF! (Mysterious Unknown Force from Space:1999)
Yes I liked the little spiritual bits.