As most of you know, I love House and rarely miss an episode. That being said, I had no idea what was going on in last night’s installment. I’ll attribute part of my confusion to the fact that, for some inexplicable reason, my DVR started recording well into the show. As a result, I had a really hard time following the story. From what I could gather, it involved some sort of medical emergency that took place at a baseball stadium but, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out who was sick, the source of the conflict and, more importantly, where the hell Dr. House had gotten to.
While I do enjoy the occasionally atypical episode, this one had none of the characteristic House charm I’ve grown to know and love. It focused way too much on the actual baseball backdrop for my liking, going to ridiculous lengths to convey that major league atmosphere. Okay, I get that we’re at a baseball game, but do we have to see EVERY at bat? It really tried my patience, especially with all the stats babble on the part of the faux announcers that sounded like it had been improvised on the spot. While they were tossing out silly acronyms like ERA, RBI, and ALCS, I was sitting there screaming: “Who cares?!! Where’s Wilson?! And what’s happening with Chase and the medical investigation?!” It’s like they just dropped that particular storyline completely in favor of the biggest cliché in television: the extra-inning game. An extra-inning game won, no less, by…you guessed it…the home team with two outs in the bottom of the 11th! Sigh. And the names they came up with for the imaginary baseball players were so uninspired. Johnny Damon? Seriously? I can just imagine the writer spinning: “Hey, he’s a cross between Johnny Depp and Matt Damon. I know! We’ll call him Johnny Damon!”.
Anyway, even though I saw the twist coming a mile away, I nevertheless did enjoy the part where the catcher hit the double to win the game (but thought the guy who played the losing pitcher was a little over the top. I liked him better on How I Met Your Mother.), and was looking forward to see how it would all tie together but, instead of cutting back to the hospital or going to House and Cuddy sitting in the bleachers, it just ended. WTF?!
A very uneven episode. Although it was very dramatic and the CG crowds were impressive (for the most part), it was too much of a departure from the show’s established premise and there was not enough focus on our main characters with the exception of Taub who just happened to be the Los Angeles Angels third base coach for reasons that were never quite made clear.
All in all, I give it 2 out of 5 stars.
Hi Joe!
LOL! I’m currently watching last night’s ep of House, and I agree – waaaay too much focus on the “B-story” of the baseball game going into overtime. Luckily, I taped both House and Lie to Me and there’s this great crossover where the entire cast of House is on Lie to Me, but strangely, no one of the regular Lie to Me cast is on.
Weird, eh?
I give it 3 thermometers out of 5.
eddy
joe, say no to crack! 😛
ummm… don’t watch House or baseball, so have no clue what you are on about.
Or was this some strange, sarcastic commentary on SGU critics?
Are you sure you saw House? 😉 Do you guys in Canada get different episodes?
The synopsis for the last episode was: “A dying patient insists that he has the same disease affecting his heart that killed his father and grandfather at the age of 40. Meanwhile, House discovers that he has a hearing problem while trying to duck student rounds.”
There was no baseball game in that episode.
LOL this is your post? Instead of watching House I watched season 3 episodes of Stargate SG1.
Lol!!!
I can’t watch House ’cause 15 minutes into any given episode, I have all the symptoms. 😛
das
…and the women were portrayed as nothing more than spectators and cheerleaders without a single female speaking role! Sexist!
Anne Teldy
What’s even more crazy is that the next episode in the series is on again tonight and it’s running a bit longer then usual. It looks as though the good guys have turned things around though and are winning. 😛
This is true! Cuddy, Cameron and 13, – the female characters – were wallpaper in this episode. No, less than wallpaper! They were the unseen glue you slap on before you apply the wallpaper.
A very male-centric episode. And stereotypical. Would it have killed them to make the shortstop a woman?
Oooooh…I get it now. Thanks av eddy. I’m dense sometimes. 😛
das
First off, a couple of days late to comment on it, but thank you for your brilliant editorial on office birthdays. I’m new to them this year at my new office, and your description was dead on perfect…really, how can anyone claim that those buttercream cakes are good?
Regarding SGU, I’m really enjoying it so far, but I have a question that hopefully you haven’t already had a dozen times. Being that this is more of a serialized show, is there an overall plan, assuming you run several seasons? Are there certain plot goals that you try to achieve for the conclusion of the season, eventually leading to some sort of series conclusion? I’m not sure if that makes sense to you, but SG-1 and Atlantis seemed to be more episode based, with the occasional multi part story. SGU seems to be going for a larger over reaching story, like a Lost or Battlestar Galactica. In any case, as usual, thanks for putting together a great show.
lol, priceless! I do think, however, it’s time you invest in the east coast feed for your dvr. Well worth it!
Lol i like house but didnt see the last episode.
Oh and Joe: johnny Damon is real, he plays for the Yankees lol
Sheryl My email addy is 316maddog316@gmail.com
And the new dog is a Papillion if you didnt see my comments in Joes last post
I saw part of the same episode Markus did. bad enough we have playoffs for the World Series dragging into late October(remember when the World Series was played at the BEGINNING of the month?) And what’s this? No breakdown of your belated Birthday meal? Did Carl take you to yet another veggie restaurant, or perchance to KFC? Remember, its never too soon to start packing for overseas trips.
LOL great post! it’s too bad you didn’t get to see the whole thing, it was awesome.
what channel were you DVRing it on? i’m pretty sure Global airs House and i don’t think they were airing baseball last night…although i didn’t get a chance to catch the episode on tv so i could be wrong.
That Johnny Damon character just hit another Home Run!
Hey Joe, Any word on the Live + Same Day Ratings for Darkness and the Live + 7 Ratings for Air 1 and 2?
Hey das! Glad you got it! 🙂
eddy
Can I tell’em, Joe? Can I?
Dear Joe,
It just seems I wont give up on pushing the following questions your way….. trust me man… I will be a consistent pain in your backside until I get them answer … lol
1. In the Episode Darkness, Volker stated that the Destiny has been travelling through out the universe for the better part of a million years. Then a little later, he states while conversing with the good Dr. Rush that some systems might need the ancient gene to be activated. Right away Dr. Rush barked at him and Col. Young for that matter before he had a nervous break-down that he knows for certain that the Destiny far pre-dates the ancient gene technology interface; meaning far pre dates Atlantis. But this seems very confusing since Atlantis left Earth for the Pegasus Galaxy between 5 to 10 million years ago, and obviously was built before their dearture to Pegasus; infering that tech was millions of years older. This is either, forgive me for saying this, a Brad Wright screw up or has been written by purpose but in any case it is contradictory. How can the Destiny be travelling for only a million years and in the same time pre dates Atlantis which according to you guys is over five million years old?
NOW TO SOME EASY QUESTIONS
2. Would you say that the Destiny is as big as a:
a. Wraith Hive
b. An Aurora class vessel
c. An O’Neill class Asgard ship
3. The FTL that the Destiny is using, is it faster or slower than Hyperspace windows; IF YOU CANT ANSWER IT JUST SAY IT?
Thank you for the opportunity to voice our opinions and of course your time…. I will post this same entry tomorrow at the same time should you choose to ignore me, a loyal stargate frachise and a two year and counting Joseph Mallozzi Blog fan and regular, for the fifth time and counting.
Hey, another espisode of House is on again tonight. Is this the one where someone gets hit in the groin?
You know, I didn’t watch it because of the stupid baseball game that preempted it. I missed it and will be forced to watch it in two weeks on Thursday at like 11pm on USA. Instead I watched a french movie while I waited for Dexter to show again and then Castle. From what I heard from my sibling, it was funny at least. 🙂 I just want to see House hit people with his cane. That is the fun for me.
I’m with Markus – the episode I saw last night was the father convinced he was going to die of a heart issue, like his father.
Eh?
Suggestion to Belouchi. (Take it or leave it, eh?)
No harm in repeating a question once in the comments, but more than once is a drag, eh?
Joe has answered some of my questions and not others, but it is what it is. If he doesn’t answer it, either he didn’t see it, can’t answer it, or doesn’t feel like answering it. (This is strictly my impression of things I’ve seen and read on this blog. Joe’s MMV.)
The timeline might be answered in a future ep of SGU or not. Joe may answer the question or not. Not so bad for fans to speculate and have fun with a mystery, IMHO. (Such as the beam of light in Letters to Pegasus.)
Age is in flux and sometimes is bent for narrative. I say it predates Atlantis. You?
I betcha Destiny will be compared to previous SG ships or someone will state its size in football-fields (which for some reason is a common method of describing length in the US – do they do that in Europe too – understanding soccer/football fields are a different length from US football/football fields – ?).
IMHO, FTL is slower than Hyperspace, but there were some cool fan explanations of the difference between FTL and HS in previous entry comments over the past couple of days.
Keep on rockin’ the Destiny, Joe!
eddy
@ Beckie Oooh, now there’s an idea! Give Young a real cane and let him go at it!
YOUNG: Hey, Rush! You wanna tell me what’s going on?
RUSH: I canna tell ya what’s going on cuz you’re too stooopid to get it, ye wee whippersnapper!
YOUNG: *smack with the cane*
RUSH: OK! OK! We’re all going to die in 3…2…1…
—
eddy
Here in NY I got the “actual” new episode of House but was burned because of a baseball game, so my DVR recorded 40 minutes of baseball and the first 20 minutes of House.
Anyway, concerning the time tables thrown around in SG, how could ANYTHING last hundreds of thousands of years+? My understanding of the physical sciences is that most metals and alloys of them wont last that long and start to “break down” (too lazy to lookup the “real” terminology).
Haha I was going to explain how much I hate when sports run over into my shows, but you seem to have had a great time of it, Joe! 😉
Also eagerly awaiting Darkness ratings. I imagine they suck because of the same baseball games that seem to have taken over House! ((NUMB3RS, my favorite network Friday night show, only had 7.77. And it premiered with a 7.85. So yanno, that’s a drop in numbers, there.))
Joe M wrote – “Would it have killed them to make the shortstop a woman?”
I like it when you sound like a whiny fanboy. It suits you. 🙂
Oh, and a question…
Would it have killed you to make one SGU crew member a long-locked albino-type?
😉
das
FTL is impossible. Not that wormholes and hyperdrives/warp drives aren’t improbable, but just saying…with Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity in normal space (not hyperspace, which doesn’t actually exist but anyways…) you get a negative under a square root for the time dilation/length contraction equations. Which is a bad thing, if you know anything about math (the answers don’t exist). So the premise of FTL postulates that special relativity is incorrect, I’m assuming?
Personally I think Rush is just nuts and they’re simply in hyperspace.
Is it true that the show caved to the DEA and decided to portray House as someone who chooses not to treat his chronic pain?
SGU has already shown realistic consequences of drug use – Robert Carlyle’s dead on portrayal of an amphetamine crash. Were you going rated rated G on us to have the characters discuss caffeine and nicotine or was it just brilliant sub-text?
Wait, am I remembering an episode of SG-1 where they were trying to stay awake? Was there a deleted scene that mentioned Adderall or amphetamines?
Oh, and the numbers I quoted for NUMB3RS were in millions of viewers, not HH. For some reason, even though the # of viewers dipped, the HH 18-49 ratings actually jumped from 1.6 to 1.8. Strange, eh?
I assume that makes more sense to someone watching it on TV. As I use the internet for TV, I managed to miss all the baseball scenes.
I also want to mention one thing I really appreciate about SGU. Not only did the people who were walking around a desert planet for hours and hours get clearly visible sunburns, but they were still visible the next week. It’s a nice details a lot of shows wouldn’t have bothered with. The only thing that would have made it better would be if at least one of them was burnt so bad it blistered really unattractively. Having had a really bad sunburn, I know it gets worse than just quite red. But anyway, just wanted to mention that I noticed and appreciated the sunburns.
@ Belouchi
My speculation regarding your 1st question is that the ATA gene interface was not invented until the Wraith war which was (I believe) 100 years or so before the Ancients eventually evacuated Atlantis 10,000 years ago. In that event it would have been completely possible for the Destiny to have launched in the time frame inferred in “Darkness” while the interface would still pre-date the ATA technology. That’s my take on it anyway. Joe, of course, can either confirm or deny my hypothesis. (Or ignore it. Which is more likely. 🙂 )
@ Joe
Interesting review of House. Lol. Very amusing. Really enjoyed “Darkness”. Especially the VFX. Keep up the good work.
Don’t know if you want to post this, because as far as I can tell, SyFy hasn’t sent out an official press release, but on the blog The Programing Insider, Travis Yanan (an alias)
who is a frequent provider of ratings info posted these for 10/16/09:
He evidently uses a different base for the HH and so they are consistently .2 lower than what SyFy and MGM report.
“Friday cable finals
College Football (7:59pm, 206 minutes)
– 2.023 million viewers
– 1.4/3 HH
– 0.6/2 A18-49
Stargate Universe
– 2.099 million viewers
– 1.3/2 HH
– 0.9/3 A18-49
Sanctuary
– 1.766 million viewers
– 1.1/2 HH
– 0.6/2 A18-49
Monk
– 3.980 million viewers
– 2.5/4 HH
– 1.0/3 A18-49
Psych
– 3.678 million viewers
– 2.4/4 HH
– 1.2/4 A18-49”
http://pifeedback.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/63310451/m/162108842/p/4
HELP!!!! I can’t stop playing Spider solitaire – on the difficult level, which I make even more difficult by insisting that I stack up the suits in this order – hearts, spades, clubs, diamonds. See, I like hearts best because they’re…well…they’re hearts (plus the Jack of Hearts is usually the best-looking, depending on decks…). YES, I’m weird. Get over it. Spades are next because they kinda look like upside down hearts, leaving clubs in third place (though I have nothing against them), and diamonds for last…because I don’t like diamonds…they’re all sharp and pointy and cold-looking.
It’s a challenge (both playing Spider Solitaire like this, and just being me 😛 ), but it does make the game a bit more interesting.
I really should be in bed…but I want to check out the orionid meteor shower before turning in. Killing time right now…
das
@AnneTeldy on October 20, 2009 at 6:39 pm anneteldy
…and the women were portrayed as nothing more than spectators and cheerleaders without a single female speaking role! Sexist!
Anne Teldy
Anne, sorry to offend you by daring to voice an opinion that differs from your own.
😀
Jumperpilot wrote:
Actually, the Wraith lay seige to Atlantis for 100 years or so at the end of a much, much longer war. The rest I agree with.
Anne Teldy
I think you might need the Shaw PVR rather than the DVR setup. Then if something gets preempted it either doesn’t tape at all, or switches to the new time for the show (if applicable).
My House recording had absolutely no baseball this week. 😀
rofl everyone. too funny!
I was going to tell all my friends to watch SGU on Friday as you said, but then I stopped myself. All my friends have kids. What’s the rating?
@Alfred
As a former metallurgist who has worked with advanced alloys subjected to extreme conditions, you’d think I could address your question about metals breaking down over such a long period of time, but I haven’t worked with the alloys available to the ancients.
What kind of break-down did you mean? There are lots of different things that could be happening.
Micro-structurally, I’d think there would be more grain growth and segregation than the designers would anticipate for the life of the ship, but that wouldn’t necessarily cause a problem. Temperature and time are the main drivers of micro structural changes so, you definitely have a point about the time involved, but, if the Destiny is out lolly-gagging, it may not be bringing the temperature factor into play.
There would be plenty of alloys for interior surfaces that wouldn’t have the problem of continuously oxidizing.
Even if there were some cyclical stresses somewhere in the ship, there are alloys that can take an infinite number of cycles if you keep the stresses below a certain limit so no or few fatigue failures is plausible.
Then there’re the surfaces exposed to vacuum. Hmm… the thing is I don’t think we understand everything that’s going on when that happens, but we’ll get there. I just don’t think people have thought to put the research into certain things that happen, but it’s not that difficult of a problem so researching it will be pretty straightforward. (I’m personally concerned about certain alloying elements, like aluminum, continuously escaping into the vacuum and then the sub-surface aluminum diffusing into the depleted areas to keep the process going. That wouldn’t necessarily cause a problem for the Destiny since it has just been out cruising this whole time as far as we know, but there could be all kinds of things like that that we wouldn’t anticipate just because we haven’t had to think about it.) I’m sure the Ancients would figure it out pretty quickly, but not necessarily anticipate needing to design for effects that occur over such long periods of time.
Most of the issues I’ve mentioned wouldn’t make a journey of a million years implausible. The Destiny has been operating so far below its designed limitations by just being out cruising instead of doing the tougher missions it was designed for that operating for orders of magnitude longer than a designer anticipated is plausible.
Sorry, I just can’t be succinct this late at night.
hey Joe,
wow to my surprise when I visited your blog tonight on my palm pre it has magically been turned into a more efficient mobile version. For the past couple months since I got my Pre your blog shows up as it usually would on my computer, but now its catered more toward a smartphone layout. Did you do this or is it a wordpress thing?
and I’m with JUMPERPILOT on the age thing in response to the ata gene activation tech, that is a much more reasonable explanation.
and I know we will have to wait and see but my theory for power is that destiny has to recharge from a star every couple of thousand years
@Joe: what kind of phone do you use? The palm pre is on O2 up there now I think. Its an amazing phone you should check it out.
Joe, BEST. POST. EVER. Seriously. Thats what I thought about House on Monday. ” Oh, another House episode about baseball.” hehehe. Thanks Joe. That was great.
I don’t know. I think a baseball episode with only Taub in it – no House, no Wilson, no nothing else – would rate a 0 out of 5 stars. Maybe 1/2, but that would be pushing it. I almost ended up seeing that same episode, but luckily caught on to the fact that it was a repeat on the channel I’d tuned to and changed the channel to one with the new episode.
The really weird thing, though, is how this episode seems to be a staple – in various incarnations – on several shows. Quite puzzling. Perhaps you could get Eli, Rodney, and Sam working on the problem.
LOL
The cable company must have gotten my psychic voicemail. Lost signal at 12:05 AM local. Going to bed, leaving iPhone and its temptations in kitchen. G’nite.
Hey Joe,
I’ve just downloaded the book, “I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to be Your Class President”.
The title screams potential.
Baseball. Thank goodness for Wraithfodder’s tweet about it so that I could make sure I taped the Fox 26 Houston local news so I didn’t miss the end part of Lie to Me. House was taken care of my House/Lie To Me preprogramming. I think House is much better now that the original cast is back.
Hey, did any of you watch Dexter this past Sunday with the lovely Christina Cox? She did an excellent job and I think some of her moves felt like something she might have learned from Bam-Bam while on Atlantis. She portrayed the character quite cold, heartless and calculating. Well done! But Dexter was just one step ahead of her and better at what he does best.
Honestly, Joe – if a show gets that bad, even though you’re really rooting for it to be good, well, let’s just say, give it one more episode and then call it a day, right? I mean, if they’ve had that long to get all the team into play (like, they’ve been there a whole innings, man! And it was getting so slow! There was even one bit when everyone was actually standing still and just talking to each other! wtf!) and they’re still failing to work together and hit that ball out of the arena well, it just isn’t ever going to work, is it?
Or even, this gave me a nice laugh this morning. Thanks. I love a touch of irony – or even a full spoonful of the stuff.
Bummer dude!
@AV EDDY and JUMPERPILOT: thanks for the answers and attempt to satisfy my Stargate curiosity. I know posting the same comment over and over is a huge drag but one can’t blame me for trying in a tenacious way in getting what I want. So please bear with me
Your “Johnny Damon” comment kind of kicked a question into my head, a big enough question to convince a long time reader, first time writer (LTRFTW) to actually post and ask it:
How do writers such as yourself actually come up with character names? Does more thought go into cast member names than just single episode appearances?
I don’t know how I missed you guys reading Heroes Die….ugh…
And I AM TOTALLY STOKED about Jason being cast in Game of Thrones….Jason on HBO…GREAT!!!! Although…I’m gonna have to download the epis off of iTunes because I dont have HBO…ugh…
But I’m gonna have to finally get around to finishing that series….just another one that I started along with another and it was the one that got set aside…just haven’t got there yet..LOL
Now….I decided to finish Matt Stover’s novelization of Revenge of the Sith, which I started forever ago and never finished. But I’m almost done now. Gonna be picking up Game of Thrones next….YEA!!!
Baseball? You must have seen an old episode (which season is that? current is Season 6), cause what I saw was about House thinking he was hallucinating again (I’ll say nothing more to avoid spoilers).
Cheers
Hi Mr M!
Re: House. Because I am a HUGE Jeeves and Wooster fan, I find it very hard to make the transition from early 20th Century English Dandy to cynical hard boiled east coast 21st Century doctor…..
Saw “Darkness” last night. Fab ep! Lovely renderings of Destiny (hats off to Mark Savela and crew) Also WONDERFUL acting from entire cast, great nuances and subtle movement lending an air camaraderie to the cast.
More please!
Also….gotta give it up for Peter DeLuis…..
Best to all at the Bridge!
S’n’T
Yeah good thing i didnt watch that one. so far i find SGU superior to other shows in terms of excitement but it falls short on alot of things like forced tension from the get go. and im not sure if i like the idea of watching a show about villains. LOST didnt have this kind of evil, they were just misunderstood by other characters, and as an audience we could relate to them at least in their goals. in SGU they just seem mean and cold to one another for no reason. i dont see why you need to introduce actual villains (lucian) to turn them against each other, coz they seem to do that perfectly fine by themselves. so hopefully that will improve. and then the one thing that made LOST and BSG seem deep and not look like fringe was religion. i fear thats where SGU is headed, although one could argue that Stargate had that already.
@ytimynona
Wait, wait, wait, WAIT!!!
You qualify FTL as impossible by leaning on Einstein’s theories, while dismissing also wormholes yet, you ignore they are valid solutions under Einstein’s General Relativity?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole
Now, hyperspace doesn’t exist? Well, probably the AIAA board was smoking great stuff in 2005 when they awarded their grand prize for best paper presented at their annual conference to someone proposing just that: hyperspace travel. And their wacky tobacky was probably supplied by the US military because they take the idea quite seriously.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18925331.200-take-a-leap-into-hyperspace.html?full=true
I have no problem with someone using scientific arguments to dismiss one part of a Fictional work, as long as they don’t forget this same science when they want to dismiss the rest of the story. Seems like, amongst all those crazy ideas, hyperspace may just be the less crazy of them all.
(not saying here it would work, just pointing to the inconstistency of using science only on a part time basis)
Jean
That is strange because the episode I watched was about a dying man with a genetic heart condition!
It had a lot of Wilson, a lot about Chases’s fear going into the ICU room because he sees JEJ spewing blood everywhere each time he gets close. I wonder if the networks in Vancouver played the episodes out of order to coincide with the baseball playoffs?
@ ytimynona
Given the shots we’ve seen of Destiny’s movement in FTL, I’d like to posit to you that the ship is actually using an Alcubierre drive. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive – it’s possible! Though we haven’t yet determined the off switch.) Presumably the ancients used this before discovering how to move through hyperspace and subsequently ‘scrapped’ the Alcubierre drive for being an incredibly unwieldy piece of work. (Let’s see that off-switch!)
And now, a question for Joe: Are the “Daniel Jackson on…” videos meant to be taken as canon?
LOL re. every single at-bat; that’s what Sportscenter highlight reels are for, IMO.
@Michael Burstein I know ytiminona is right about FTL from POV of Einsteinian physicist — would be very interested in hearing POV of a post-Einsteinian — my understanding is that some believe in possibility of tesseract. In any case, am willing to suspend disbelief for sake of great viewing experience.
Checked with Chev, she says it’s okay to post tweets just about anywhere as long as proper attribution is given. Those not on Twitter might be interested in this:
Julia_Benson says on Twitter:
Some people have said that they can’t get into the blog, it should be http://www.juliabensononline.com … Hope that helps 🙂
Oops, make that Sportscenter highlight vids, not NFL highlight reels. Brain turned into a pretzel overnight.
Hey I was wandering; what’s with the inertial dampeners? Is the fact that it is still a sort of residual fail safe of destiny’s primary systems?(You can use this if you haven’t already explained it in the series. haha) And re: Alaina Huffman’s pregnancy… has there been a decision made about whether to include it in the show or not?
If Jason Momoa is going to be in other countries for a while shooting his new show for HBO’s then aren’t SG: Extinctions chances yet again hindered?(Not that you have set a date as of yet.)
What episodes have you written this year? So i know which ones to watch with even more intensity?
It would be my presumption that the writing staff have thought about having James Spadar reprise his role in some way in the show. However this hasn’t happened? Too much talent for one show?*laughs*
Hmm, interesting, I never have consistantly watched the show. I don’t know, medical dramas aren’t really my thing. Still, I seemed to enjoy darkness much more than you enjoyed the recent house episode. LOL
Oh and one question.
Out of the 80-90 people on the destiny, how many are military?
Thanks so much,
Major D. Davis
Hey Joe,
Finally had time to watch Darkness last night. I guess it’s still early days and we’re still getting to know these characters, but I’m finding that the character moments are not really “connecting” for me yet – it will be interesting to rewatch these episodes after we’ve seen more of the season. I can’t really remember my reactions when watching the early episodes of Atlantis for the first time – now of course when I catch one I’m seeing it from the perspective of knowing the characters well. It’s always interesting to go back and see the arc that they’ve taken. I guess this is one of the hardest things for writers of a new show – to make the characters interesting from the get go – and make you care about what is going to happen to them.
I have to say though, I’m missing the action/adventure part of Stargate – presumably there will be more of that in upcoming episodes?
Also, a question – how far would Destiny have to travel before a planet gate got “out of range”? Presumably it would have to leave the galaxy, because in Milky Way and Pegasus you could dial a gate on any planet within the galaxy with a 7 chevron address. Does that mean that Destiny is galaxy hopping with each episode??
Jean
1. I did get to see some of the orionid meteor shower last night – saw about half a dozen ‘shooting stars’ before it clouded over.
2. My house is being invaded by these:
http://bugguide.net/node/view/7406
http://bugguide.net/node/view/81193
Running, or Sac, spiders. Yesterday I found one drinking out of the cats’ water bowl. I BRAVELY managed to get it into a clear plastic cup and sealed it with a piece of paper, then released it outside…in my neighbor’s yard. 😈 It was pretty big for me – about the size of a quarter with legs and all. So, I’ve moved up from being able to handle dime-sized spiders to quarter-sized…as long as they’re slow, and NOT ON ME! I am forcing myself to look at them after I catch them, and it has greatly lessened my ‘fear’. I still get major heebee jeebees, though…and even now, just seeing those pictures, all the hair is bristled up on the back of my neck. 😛 But there was a time when I wouldn’t even go inside the house if I knew there was a spider the size of a pinhead in there…and now I’m catching them, carrying them in a clear cup (so I know EXACTLY where the little demons are! 😆 ), and watching them scamper off after I let them go outside.
I think that’s a bit of progress. Still…if one touches me I’ll freak right out, and probably in the most embarrassing of ways. 😛
Have a good day, Joe!
das
I experienced something similar, as I don’t normally watch House but always record Lie To Me. Oddly, the first 40 minutes of Lie To Me didn’t feature Tim Roth at all but some guy with a limp yelling at three other people, with a side of Sean Patrick Leonard talking in bed and some amazingly hot chick in a blue skirt and awesome heels. How does she do rounds walking around in those things?
Stupid DVR! And I sincerely mean “stupid” DVR, because it doesn’t record the show you want but only the hour the show is supposed to be on. It’s bad enough to have to suffer through the Phillies and/or the Yankees, but to not record what I actually wanted to watch? Grr.
@das LOL. I play spider solitaire to excess also, however I prefer diamonds. And I drop back to two suits when I feel lazy. Which is often.
The spiders are coming in here too. Heavy-bodied little black things, some I think are widows, and hairy brown ones that jump. My cats eat them. You’d hate Japan, we had giant benjo spiders which lived behind the pictures on the wall. Bodies the size of your thumb, and a leg span the size of your palm. No webs, they carried their eggsacs on their backs. We left them alone because they ate cockroaches, but you could hear their feet tick tick ticking across the vinyl wallpaper late at night.
Coucou Joseph!
ça va bien? Moi oui =)
House? euh jamais regarder.
je voulais vous dire que je ne serai pas sur le net jusqu’a Lundi matin car demain j’ai une longue journée et Vendredi je part pour Paris.
Je vous souhaite d’avance un bon week end!
Gros bisou!
Anais.
Yay! A new Elric story coming out next June!
http://louanders.blogspot.com/2009/10/swords-dark-magic-table-of-contents.html
Joe – any news when the book with your story is coming out?
das
@ maggiemayday – 😯
Yeah, see…I’d have to draw the line there. NOTHING is allowed to live in my house that big unless it meows, barks, or calls me ‘honey’. *shudder* That spider sounds like it might be a huntsman spider – the kind Narelle had living in her fence. Is it like this one:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v54/dasNdanger/huntsman.jpg
That one freaks me the hell out! 😮
das
that episode of House sounds about as confusing as the damn TV tax! Have you heard about this? The broadcasters (CTV, Global, CBC, A Channel) are all claiming that the cable companies (Shaw, Rogers, Bell) want to charge a TV tax of $10/month. But on the flip side, there are advertisements from the cable companies, claiming that the broadcasters want the money for themselves.
So if nobody wants the money why not just drop the idea? And if not, where the hell is this money going to be going?
@Mary – I posted this late yesterday and don’t want it to get lost. But, here is my response to you.
Yes, I watched that episode of SGA. And you are right, although it was nice of them to cameo the real astrophysicist, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, it is not the same as him actually having somthing to do in the show.
I know I said it would be nice to have a minority scientist with actual lines that interacts with the main cast. But, asking the Rodney character if Keller is his sister and “They can’t possibly be dating” never quite came to mind. These do not qualify as real lines to me. I was talking about a character (real or fictional) that actually contributed to the plot of the show instead of vamping up how “hot” the Keller character is supposed to be. But, he was in the episode, so…
@ DP – So, I guess this means I’m off the hook for reading all six novels eh?
Peace & Love,
j
meant to type – “something,” not somthing.
@Jean – I remember my first reaction to Atlantis after watching Rising 1&2 was “So, what happens next?” And, that’s a great feeling to have. I remember that Sheppard had just killed the care-taker Wraith lady. And, she explained while she was dying that he had made a mistake in killing her because now “All of them” were going to wake up. Right after she died, Sheppard and Ford look up and there are all of these Wraith waking up in there pods. That was really cool.
Peace & Love,
j
I meant to type “their pods” Bear with me; I’m multi-tasking.
Okay, I know this is extremely minor but it bothers me anyway-how come the episode titles aren’t shown in the opening credits? I like to know episode titles. I do however like the one word title approach, it makes it easy to remember titles. Unlike ‘There but for the Grace of God’.
Hey Joe,
That episode of House would of been better if the Yankees won!
GO YANKEES!
Well they won last night, I hope you are rooting for the Yankees. :p
Best,
Squall28
@ otros ojos
A post-Einsteinian physics would require Einsteinian physics to be a subset of it, just like Newton’s laws remain valid at lower-than-realtivistic speeds.
I think Ryan is right when he says it’s an Alcubierre drive. But if that’s the case, there’s got to be some sort of exotic matter around….
UH I have no idea what the heck you were watching but it wasn’t the episode that aired on Global at 8pm Ontario time cause it had NOTHING to do with baseball 🙂
You can watch it online if you missed it… Markus has it right cause him and I seem to have watched the same episode.
@das, No more spiders please!!! eek! (ha) No really I don’t much care for the buggers either.
Jumperpilot Said “My speculation regarding your 1st question is that the ATA gene interface was not invented until the Wraith war which was (I believe) 100 years or so before the Ancients eventually evacuated Atlantis 10,000 years ago. In that event it would have been completely possible for the Destiny to have launched in the time frame inferred in “Darkness” while the interface would still pre-date the ATA technology. That’s my take on it anyway. Joe, of course, can either confirm or deny my hypothesis. (Or ignore it. Which is more likely)”
We know from SG1 that the Taonas Outpost and Atlantis Outpost both needed the “ATA gene interface” as well as the Long-range communication devices and stones and possibly both of the known “repositories of the Ancient Knowledge”. We know that the Taonas Outpost and Atlantis Outpost both are from the time before the Ancients left Earth for the Pegasus Galaxy to escape the plague according to RISING and that was between 7-10 MILLION years ago well before the Wraith. We know that the Antarctica Stargate “could be as much as 50 million years old.” According to Samantha Carter. We also know from ARK OF TRUTH that Amelius of Celestis created the Stargate and if the Antarctica Stargate is at least 50 million years old, then Amelius of Celestis lived well before that time. I would guess that Destiny and the seeding ships are from around the time when the Alterans left Celestis and Amelius of Celestis may have even been involved in the design of the Seeding ships and Destiny. We may even find out that one of the seeding ships seeded “Avalon” and another Destiny Class ship scouted Earth (perhaps to find a planet with a similar fossil record to Celestis?) before the Alterans came to the Milky Way. I feel that we may even find out that there could be six Destiny Class ships (six points to make a Stargate address) and many seeding ships. My guess is that the Alterans setup in a close galaxy to their home Galaxy to recover and rebuild before moving on to the Milky way and this could be when the Stargates and the seeding of the Universe project began and that also could be how the Ori knew about the Stargates because they had expanded to that close Galaxy where the Alterans had stopped to rebuild before moving on, and why the Ancients had abandoned the project. Or one of the Seeding ships and a Destiny class ship passed through the Ori Galaxy this could explain how the Ori sent the Plague and why it was so long after the Alterans left Celestis. All speculation aside, that time in the history of the Ancients and up through the Plague would make for an interesting series or story arc. Stargate: Universe has great possibilities and I like what I have seen so far.
I know this doesn’t really relate to the topic of this post, but I wanted to say you guys did a great job finding Jamil.
I watched the commercial for light, on Space out in ontario, i don’t know if you guys gave seen it, but it opens with half of his Kino video and closes with the other half.
The delivery of his lines is phenominal, you’re all doing a great job.
Das: ick on spiders. My hubby wouldn’t let me get a gecko, so I finally had a pro come and spray our house. We had spider webs everywhere but didn’t “see” the actual spiders too often. ( thank goodness) Much luck on their removal from your world!
I’ve been seeing all the talk about women on SGU. It’s not something I’m not concerned about. I have worked at an all female vet hospital before. We were cranky on the same week (hell week). Not much fun without men to pick up the heavy dogs either. Men can be jerks but they are fun to watch.
I would rather see less women on the show if I had to chose. Maybe, some of the girls can be left on one of those planets Destiny passes by? You could pick up one of those albinos Das is always bitching about too! 😉
Did they replay House at a later date/time for ya? I managed to catch most of it by flipping back to that station to check. It is interesting to see how they are changing his personality but not giving him a lobotomy.
Tam
Oophs, I mean it’s something I’m NOT concerned about. Too much sugar. I’m making Cashew frosted cookies today. Yummm, but it’s having effects on my bloodstream.
Tam
@das Yeah, that spider looks familiar. Our Japanese house was tiny and uninsulated, and we had no choice when it came to bugs. You just couldn’t seal it well enough to keep them all outside.
The spiders were shy and nocturnal, they didn’t bother me. We waged constant war with cockroaches and ants, the spiders were allies. The giant hunter bees and aggressive hornets, yes, those bothered me a great deal. And the centipedes and millipedes! YIKES! Especially since I slept on a traditional futon on the floor, at their level. The cat chased a centipede into my bed, I woke up levitating three feet off the floor when it tickled high up on my inner thigh. THAT was awful.
So a few small spiders in winter don’t even make a blip on the radar anymore.
I suppose telling about the time the cat brought in a live, angry pit viper wouldn’t please you, huh?
Just Reading this blog on my iPhone and it’s got a new very snazy look to it…. Kinda looks like the iPhone style….. Previously it has always been the same on iPhone and PC…. Looks great!
@Alfred and @DP
My idea about why the Destiny is still in more or less one piece after so many years is nanotechnology. You can’t prevent metal to decay. Especially with raditation, temperature, gases, flying objects and so on in space.
But considering what we know nowadays about nanotechnology, I assume someone like the Ancients who can build a ship like the Destiny and the stargates, will have also a deeper understanding of nanotechnology.
Theory: Nano-bots repair the hull and other important things on the Destiny. The needed material could be provided by Destiny herself who could pick up chemical elements while swooping through a star system.
Just an idea.
By the way, if you refer to a ship with name, would you call the ship an “it” or a “she”?
In Germany you would say: it, the ship. But she, the Destiny.
How is it done in English?
I’m sorry for another post but had to say Congratulations to Alaina Huffman (when you see her, please).
I’m going back to cookies now.
Thanks,
Tam
SGU woman fan:
“Where are the ‘strong’ women in SGU?! EEK A SPIDER!”
Hmmm…I wish I had the skills to start an SGU FAQ.
But…to those with questions about SGU eps so far, may I suggest GateWorld, and particularly its episode transcripts? GW has a great volunteer posting line-by-line versions within 2-4 days of broadcast. Just bear with minor mis-transcriptions and her British accent. 😉
Belouchi, my dear, repetition, like familiarity, can breed contempt. Please pace yourself to avoid a negative reputation. I speak as one who has suffered that situation.
Rose (formerly OhioAnne) wrote:
I was discussing the episode of House/baseball as was Mr. M when he responded to my comment thusly:
Anne Teldy
Hey, Joe.
I was wondering if I could pick your brain on some stuff, but didn’t want to clog up your comments section and mailbag with questions that no one else is likely to want to know the answers to. Do you have an email address that I could use to – and would it be okay if I – fire some queries your way?
Much appreciated. 🙂
Hey Joe,
Short time reader. First time… commenter. I’ve been curious to what kind of music you listen to if any?
Thanks so much for reading this! 😀
it was a fairly good show until they brought it back this year, something different about the scriptwriting.
Uh-oh, Joe’s been kidnapped again.
Anne Teldy,
Actually, my comment was a j-o-k-e ….. as I assumed (apparently, based on your most recent comment, incorrectly) yours was.
Since you have chosen to make the response that you have I will ask: How does posting how others RESPONDED to your comment explain what you meant by your comment?
LOL! I was also watching the baseball wondering…”okay, when IS a person going to get sick and throw up blood, or go into a hysterical shock and tackle the batter?” When, alas, none of this happened, I quickly fast-fowarded my DVR going, “No! no! It better had recorded the END!!!!!” Which, of course, it didn’t.
So if you want to know the end? The guy dies and is then saved. Confusing? It should be!!! Muahahahahahahaha!
Also, Chase is in deep crap with Cameron. Cuddy and House have weird moments (which are amazing) and House is hearing voices again. The end pretty much almost made me cry.
Have you read The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant: The Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson?
OK, since nobody offered real help, and just in case you didn’t know, (which would rather surprise me) that House episode you missed can be watched online on Global’s website.
Next Monday, Fox airs the show we saw this week, so I don’t know if we’re gonna be treated with an old episode on Global or if we’ll keep a week ahead of our southern neighbours. (eg: no epidose info on Global’s website, and yes, the pun’s intended). Eastern and Central air time will be late (8:43 PM, now it’s football interference’s fault!!!), Pacific time will be on its regular slot as per Fox website.
Jean
I just want house to do it with cuddy and make a baby with an incurable desease, of course house will cure it and they will do “it’ again
What the hel is your commment waiting moderation mean?