So this week we got the story of the alternate versions of the Destiny crew on their new planet. Nice way they did it, cutting back and forth between the prime and alternate versions of the crew.

The crew did well on that planet. There were some tragedies, Volker and TJ come to mind here, but for the most part they did okay. Scott married Chloe, Young married TJ, Varro married James, and Greer ended up with Park (nice they named their son Dale, after Volker).

As for the prime crew, they had their own adventure in that they had to get off that planet fast. However, they didn't want to leave the database behind, they got most of it, it seems.

Volker took a shot at Rush in that the alternate crew did okay without him. I wonder how Rush feels about that.

Loved Greer's face when the muzac came on in the elevator.

I thought Varro was a goner, but it seems he's still in the game.

TJ has been handed a death sentence, Lou Gehrig's Disease. Most die from it in just a few years (Stephen Hawking has managed to survive with it for more than forty year, but he's a RARE exception, I think it's his mind that's kept him going). Eli did say they would try to find the cure. Well, they have a few years start to do it.

All in all, this was another good episode.

ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) is horrible. And yes, it's fatal, but the time frame varies from person to person.

Unfortunately, I know this from recent experience... Mrs. ScottN was recently diagnosed

Sorry to hear that, Scott.

My wife and I will be praying for you both!

Oh, I am so sorry Scott. My brother-in-law had this terrible disease and it was heartbreaking to see him become a shell of his former self.

Space Channel did a dreadful airing of this episode. They always start out with the 'previously' scenes and then a bit of the new episode before breaking for commercial; when they return we see the credits. This time they had a commercial, back to the show for one scene and then the regular break followed by the credits. They did this throughout the show, commercials where they should not have been, then one scene and another break. It really interrupted the flow.

My thoughts are with you and MrsN, Scott.

Why are the original settlers still calling Young ‘Colonel’? I’m sure it’s a very respectful title for the leader of the planet but on his deathbed, I would have expected at least Chloe to be calling him by his first name.

I was rather staggered by the casual suggestion of blowing open the protective doors to the underground complex. They might be the only thing protecting an entire nation from the ash fall-out, not to mention keeping the lava out. Destiny’s already short of lime for the CO2 scrubbers, not to mention that there are meant to be millions of people in the city. Even if only several thousand got into the complex, there are too many to evacuate – and yet the crew are happily blasting their way in there and possibly condemning them to death, all because they want to say hello!

It’s a particularly gorgeous shot of the city from overhead as the main weapon blast heads towards the complex, but the size of the explosion seems huge in comparison to the hole that’s left in the doors.

Also the timing seems a bit off. I’m sure that Scott would have had to take the shuttle into the air and well away from the blast site, then come back and land again, but there’s no indication of that passage of time between the main weapon striking the doors and the shuttle crew being back at the doors.

I’m surprised that nobody is left behind to keep an eye on the shuttle. Also, everybody piles into the elevator with no idea whether it’s safe, and with nobody left behind to report back to Destiny if comms won’t reach the surface and the team doesn’t come back. Nobody on Destiny will know whether it’s safe to send down the second shuttle to retrieve the first.

I only realised this when Yaozu was showing Camille the first footage from the archive: Jason and Ellie knew the faces of the first colonists and so had presumably seen some of this archive footage. But the expedition that went to the other planet was only going to find viable new worlds and they weren’t intending to stay there long. It was only when the Gate connection broke down that the expedition ended up stuck there for thirty years. This “Testament” they spoke about in the previous episode must be a really important artefact if copies of it are taken even on temporary brief journeys.

Brian Smith has always had a habit of biting off the first words of his sentences but in this one he was rather overdoing it, I felt. I actually had to add words in to some of Scott’s lines in the transcript to help it make sense.

Why the flippin’ heck did Chloe actively summon Dale to read of his counterpart’s death? It should have been obvious that the alt-Dale would die without medical intervention, but our Dale didn’t need to be told that!

Matt looked so different when Chloe was in labour that I was half convinced he was being played by a stunt double!

Jason and Ellie seem to have got over their terror of Nick. When Scott calls the elevator and finds Nick inside with a zillion crates, Jason doesn’t even lower his gaze this time. Also, they’re fine being in a cramped shuttle with the man they have considered to be a demon all their life. When did they suddenly become fine about him?

Yaozu says that he heard the others talking about TJ, which is why he came over to tell her that they have a cure for her disease. But if he’s such an expert on the history of the colony, shouldn’t he already have known how she died?

How long did Matt and Chloe take to have their son? They’re in their mid-twenties when they arrive on the planet. With no contraception you have to assume that Chloe got knocked up quite quickly, but they look like they’re in their early fifties when they announce that their son’s wife is pregnant. Or did Alan just wait a really long time before getting married?

I wonder if the actress playing Sara, Everett and TJ’s daughter, is related to Alaina, because she was just the perfect image of her.

Joseph Mallozzi was saying that, if only they had known that they wouldn’t get a third season before they finished filming, they would have rearranged the episodes so that the current episode 20 isn’t a cliffhanger, and would have ended the series with this episode instead. It is such a shame that that couldn’t have happened, because that final scene of the village evolving into a city would have been the perfect ending.

Space Channel did a dreadful airing of this episode. They always start out with the 'previously' scenes and then a bit of the new episode before breaking for commercial; when they return we see the credits. This time they had a commercial, back to the show for one scene and then the regular break followed by the credits. They did this throughout the show, commercials where they should not have been, then one scene and another break. It really interrupted the flow.

Yeah, what was up with that. The commercials were always a few minutes before where they should have been. Someone was not paying attention on the job.

Callie - Yaozu says that he heard the others talking about TJ, which is why he came over to tell her that they have a cure for her disease.
I found it amazing that he knew what ALS was & that it was cured 200 years ago. I mean how many diseases can you think of that were cured 200 hundred years ago? Unless ALS is such a common disease in this colony that it keeps popping up & they have to regularly break out the cure you'd think ALS would be one of those things that might be found in medical history books, but is mostly forgotten otherwise.

that final scene of the village evolving into a city would have been the perfect ending
If you ignore that fact that the story was set in the "corpse" of the city that was being destroyed. This series' writers love kicking hope to death with their hobnail boots. What's next? Revealing that the ships carrying the evacuees of that planet ran into an asteroid? Sounds about right for this show.

You know given the mathmaticians & computers on this ship why couldn't they figure out the approximate location of the ships and see if they can find them & get a complete copy of the archive?
Oh, yeah, that would be a "happy" ending & the writers hate that.

They were probably going to follow this up had the show continued.

I found it amazing that he knew what ALS was & that it was cured 200 years ago.

I said earlier that I would also have expected him to know already that TJ had died a few years after the colony was set up. As an expert, he should also perhaps have read/viewed the reason why she died and there might also have been a passing comment in the history that such a disease had since been eradicated.

Oh the other hand, he might have not initially remembered exactly who TJ was but, when he heard people talking about her and her illness, remembered what he had read/viewed about her in the history Kinos.

If you ignore that fact that the story was set in the "corpse" of the city that was being destroyed.

Yeah, but they survived for two thousand years and seemed to have a fairly good time during all those years. Everyone dies eventually.

Oh, yeah, that would be a "happy" ending & the writers hate that.

Oh my, aren't we Mr Grumpy today?! *gives Keith a hug*

Yeah, sorry. There were good things in this episode, but the bad things just grated on my nerves.

I was thinking of this during the next episode, but it probably fits best here.

Alt-Eli says, "We were dialling inside a star, could have hit a solar flare. For all we know, we could have gone back in time, or forward days, months, years."
So he has considered the possibility that they are back in time, so what about the possibility of trying to backtrack gates to planets that Destiny has or will visit? If there is no evidence that Destiny has been there they could have left messages for themselves.

Yeah, considering the laws of time travel work different in the Stargate universe than most others (like Star Trek). Alternate selves continue to exist, even when the events that led to their creation are changed.

So if they had backtracked to previous planets & left messages what events would have been changed? IIRC they entered this galaxy before the episode Pain, so they could have warned themselves about the Lutien Alliance, the location of the seeding ship, the fact that the wormhole in the sun won't work...