Stargate Universe ”Common Descent” - Detailed Analysis & Review

This episode begins a two-part arc that may just be my favourite plotline in Stargate Universe. Running from the drone ships, Destiny finds a planet populated by a settlement of humans. These humans claim to be the descendants of the crew of Destiny, their civilisation founded 2,000 years ago.

This episode covers a lot of ground and has a very interesting structure.

Let's dig into Stargate Universe "Common Ground."

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Transcript

Welcome to Nerd Heaven

I’m Adam David Collings, the author of Jewel of The Stars

And I am a Nerd.

This is episode 88 of the podcast

Today, we’re talking about  the Stargate Universe episode “Common Descent”

 

And if you’d like to check out my original science fiction books, head on over to AdamDavidCollings.com/books

 

The description on Gateworld reads

Destiny comes upon a colony of humans who claim that their civilization was founded two thousand years earlier ... by Destiny's own crew.

 

This episode was written by Robert C. Cooper.

It was directed by Peter DeLuise

And it first aired on the 18th of April 2011.

 

We’re really in the home stretch of Stargate Universe now.

This episode and next episode form a little two-part arc, and then the final two episodes round off the season arc.

 

I’ll warn you in advance that I may be doing a lot of gushing over these next two podcasts. I love this episode and the next one.

 

Remember the CO2 scrubbers that were failing back in the pilot episode Air? Well, some of them on one of the decks are failing, resulting in headaches and nausea for the crew who sleep in that section.

 

I like how TJ immediately reports the unusually high number of people with similar symptoms all in the same area. There could be a cause which presents a bigger problem than just the medical one. Fortunately, Brody is already onto it.

 

They’re still allowing Destiny to follow its own predetermined course, for the most part. They can control the ship if they have to, but the rest of the time they let it do its thing. It’s just dropped out of FTL and there are two planets with stargates in range. One of them looks promising. Destiny is still helping them find the supplies they need.

 

When Eli meets Chloe and Camille in the observation deck, Chloe talks about how she hopes they find some of the purple fruit they discovered recently. Interesting that you’d expect to find the same fruit on multiple planets. I wouldn’t expect that to be likely. Voyager did the same kind of the with Leola root being common to many planets in the delta quadrant.

 

Anyway, like most edible plant life in this part of the universe, they tasted terrible, but Chloe and Camille share a knowing look. Apparently, they were good for something else. But they’re not gonna let on what that was to Eli.

 

That’s when Chloe spots something out the window. Drones. Our old friends. We haven’t seen them in a while, but last time we did, they nearly destroyed the ship. As they come into range, they open fire immediately.

 

So that’s not good.

 

One would assume the crew have been practising operating the ship in a combat situation since last time. They seem to be doing a decent job flying and shooting. Greer is actually getting pretty good at it.

 

Scott detects the command ship. It’s on an intercept course.

 

They’re keeping distance between them, but they won’t be able to keep it up until it’s time to jump. That’ll burn out the engines.

 

Young and his crew had assumed they were out of drone space, and Rush still believes this, so it seems the drones are actively pursuing Destiny. They may have tracked us using the re-programmed drone that got the crew out of their last encounter. They destroy it, but that’ll only help after they make their next jump, assuming that really is how they were tracking us.

 

Rush thinks the damage they’ll suffer from jumping early is a greater risk than the damage they’ll suffer from the next attack.  Which just goes to show how bad an idea it really is to jump early. Something you only do in the most dire of circumstances.

 

This episode is our first indication that the drone problem really is going to be a bigger issue than just that two-parter in the middle of the season.

 

As the command ship comes into range, we see a huge swarm of drones. They’re not gonna make it.

 

Except they do. Rush boosts the shields and they make it until the timer runs out. They jump.

 

As Eli says, they’re lucky they’re still alive. There’s a lot of repair work to do. Destiny is not going to be able to survive continual attacks like that one. So let’s hope the drones no longer have the ability to track Destiny.

 

They must have been travelling for quite some time, because Destiny wants to drop out of FTL again, near a planet. This presents a bit of a dilemma.

Young is inclined to override Destiny and keep going. Just to be sure they can get far away from those drones. And I get that. When you’re being chased by something scary, the last thing you want to do is stop running and stand still.

But that’s a very emotional response.

It’s actually Brody who is looking at this a little more logically. They need lime for the CO2 scrubbers. It’s safe to assume Destiny has found some on this planet, which is why it wants to stop.

They’ve dealt with the worse of the repairs. And as Rush says, if they don’t stop soon, they’re gonna have trouble breathing.

 

There are no drones immediately on sensors.

The planet seems relatively inhabitable.

At least this time they’re not searching for lime in a dessert.

 

Space exploration has always been an important part of the Stargate franchise. 

But you know one of the big things I like about SGU, there really is a sense of going where no one has gone before.

In SG-1 and Atlantis, they were travelling to planets populated by humans, who had been placed there by the Goa’uld, or the Ancients. But here, in Stargate Universe, we’re in the deep distant reaches, where no human, or any other race known to humans, has ever been. Not even the ancients.

There’s a real sense of wonder I get from that. But it’s a spine-tingling, cold almost scary kind of wonder. It’s hard to describe, but I think it’s cool.

 

However, as I say that, who should run out of the forest, but two human beings.

At least, they look human,

 

And they understand and speak English.

But even more surprising, the young woman says “I know you. You’re Matthew Scott.”

 

Okay.

 

When Scott demands to know how they know our names, the male says “You’re the ancestors.”

 

They claim that their civilisation was founded 2,000 years ago by the crew of Destiny.

They have historical Kino footage, which is how they recognised Scott and Greer.

The logical conclusion here is that the ancestors were the alternate timeline crew from Twin Destinies.

The time anomaly sent Destiny itself back a few hours, but the wormhole itself may have sent the crew back thousands of years. So why didn’t they arrive on Earth in the first century? We know the wormhole was connected to Earth because Telford made it through.

Remember that when a stargate gets impacted by a solar flair, not only does it travel through time, it also loops back on itself, so you come back out the source gate, not the destination. And since there was no Destiny there 2,000 years ago, Rush theorises that it simply connected to a nearby gate in the network. A gate that had already been placed by a seed ship far in advance of Destiny. 2,00 years ahead of it in fact. That’s not too unbelievable. I mean, we know that Destiny will just plod along at sublight until it reaches a star to recharge, if necessary. If that ever happened in the past, Destiny could easily have fallen back a few thousand years behind its furthest seed ships.

 

Eli seems to be the only one who sees this as super cool. As he says “Don’t you at least want to know how they survived and developed as a society?” I know I sure as heck would.

Chloe rekons Eli played too much Sim City as a kid, but I’m with Eli. Chloe, Young, TJ and the rest have no poetry in their souls. I’d want to know every little thing about this society’s history.

 

But Rush has to remind everyone why they came to this planet in the first place. They need lime. Jason and Eli can probably help them find it.

 

The crew are subjected to some hero-worship, which has got to be a little uncomfortable, if flattering.

 

Jason and Ellie don’t understand how their ancestors can be here alive, but they mention their testament said that Destiny might return someday.

The other Eli probably theorised about what had happened, and his words may have taken on sacred, almost religious importance.

 

This planet is not where they first established their civilisation. That was on a planet called Novus. This group came here as part of an expedition to try to find other viable worlds.

But one day something happened and they couldn’t dial Novus anymore. They think it was likely destroyed in an earthquake. And with no other gates in range, they were stuck here. That was 30 years ago.

 

These settlers have tents, radios and soccer balls.

But no permanent buildings, it seems. You’d think that over the course of a generation they’d build some houses.

 

Camille is chuffed that the leader of this tribe has the same name as her father.

It’s nice to know that their descendants have finally managed to find palatable food and drink.

 

Eli wants to get his hands on the testament. How cool would it be to just sit down in a nice library for a few days and just read through it all. I’d be up for that in heartbeat.

 

We learn that Novus had a population of millions, and it was pretty advanced technologically. But it was facing some kind of natural disaster. There was a lot of political tension around the issue, as you can imagine, but it turns out there were two countries on the planet, each with a different political philosophy. 

Tenara believed in the testament, which some of them wrote. The name means “The land of the Young” in ancient.

The other group blamed alternate Eli for what happened. They thought Rush was still on board Destiny and would one day come and rescue them. He became a saviour figure. They broke off and formed a country of their own. Futura. Brody was one of them. He came up with the name.

 

They have some of the old footage on a data port compatible with Destiny. The original Kinos that first housed that footage are viewed like the Dead Sea Scrolls. Which makes perfect sense to me.

 

Rush seems to lack the enthusiasm everyone else has for all of this. But then, he doesn’t have any descendants down there. His counterpart never made it to Novus.

 

When Jason and Ellie meet Rush on the bridge, they bow their heads, but apparently, it’s not in reverence. Some of their descendants have come to believe that Rush was a demon who would drag their souls down to hell.

And when Park remarks on how some things get twisted and exaggerated, Volker says “and some don’t” which I found amusing.

 

But many Futurans worship Rush like a god, which I’m sure Rush would be thrilled about.

We’re treated to some footage of Eli showing where they’re going to break ground building their town. He also explains the history of how the planet got the name Novus.

 

The settlers have helped the crew get the supplies they need and now they have a request. “Take us home to Novus.” They know the gate won’t dial, but they don’t know exactly what happened to their world. What state is it currently in?

 

These guys were sent out to create a colony, but with the expectation of help and support from the homeworld. Since they were cut off, they’ve had to make do on their own, and they’re barely surviving.

 

Goodness, that all sounds familiar. Seems the Destiny crew have a lot in common with their descendants.

 

Eli and Camille feel they have a moral duty to help these people, which I would agree with. But Young points out they can’t take that many people on Destiny.

Eli has figured out the location of the planet. The trip will only be about a week.

But with that many people on board, the lime they got here will be running out by the time they get there. If they can’t secure more lime on Novus, they’re finished. And that’s not a risk Rush wants to take.

 

The people of Novus might be advanced enough to help them get Destiny back into a fully working condition, or, they could all be dead.

 

The theory, 30 years ago, was that a rogue black hole was approaching the system. The tidal forces could rip it all apart. But that process could have taken hundreds of years.

And all of this was happening in the early eighties.

Crazy. While I was a pre-school kid here on Earth, the Novans were looking for a new homeworld.

 

And there’s another problem. The drones. In all the excitement, we’d kind of forgotten about them, hadn’t we? That’s actually how this episode started. The last thing they need right now is a drain on their resources.

So… what’s the alternative? Say “no thanks” and let their descendants, possibly their only remaining living descendants, just slowly die on this planet?

 

Young has a good compromise. The planet is close. They go there and investigate the planet and see what’s up. Maybe they can repair the gate and then the settlers can get there without the ship.

 

It seems a reasonable first step to me.

 

Another clip from the Kino footage shows TJ giving birth to the first baby born on Novus. I love how Eli practically has tears in his eyes as he says it. It seems those versions of TJ and Young got back together and started a family.

 

They had a boy, by the way.

 

Then there’s a big jump ahead. The town is well established. There are wooden structures that don’t look too dissimilar from what you might see in an American frontier town in a western. It seems Eli has a child too. His only regret is that his mother will never know how they turned out, or get to meet her grandson.

 

A much older Young is giving a speech. This is the time when the Futurans broke off and formed their own country.

Young seems pretty magnanimous about it all.

But he talks about how the early days were hard, but it brought them closer together. They’ve build a life they can all be very proud of.

 

Eli still thinks Young’s plan isn’t enough. They should be taking everyone on board now.

He hoped showing Young the footage would convince him of that.

 

So what are they going to do if they reach Novus and the gate can’t be repaired, or there’s nothing there to go back to?

 

Will they return here and help these people find some other home? Will they at least go back and tell them what they’ve learned?

 

It seems Young is offering no promises on that front. And that, I think, is what is really bothering Eli and Camille.

 

The leader of this world sadly observes that the Futurans were wrong at all. Destiny didn’t come back to help them. If they’d known this sooner, they could have avoided generations of conflict over the question.

 

And that’s when the drones appear. Not just in orbit, but flying through the atmosphere of this world.

 

That’s a problem. Because if they leave the settlers here, they’ll die.

 

There’s only one option now. They all evacuate through the gate, as the drones blow the settlement to pieces.

 

Destiny is also under attack.

 

Young allows the settlers to evacuate. Good thing he has a heart after all.

 

Rush doesn’t know how the drones found them.

 

Scott and Greer manage to destroy the drones, but the gate has a big chunk out of it. They’re not getting off this planet that way.

 

Young has no choice. Destiny jumps.

 

Eli, Scott, Greer and Camille are stranded on the planet with the remaining settlers.

Ellie asks an uncomfortable question. Why would the drones come here?

And that’s our fault. Destiny brought them here.

So …. Rather than bringing salvation, Destiny’s return has brought destruction and ruin.

Boy were those Futurans wrong.

 

Eli and Rush have both come to the same conclusion. The drones are tracking Destiny via the gates. An active Stargate is a massive subspace event. The drones can detect that event.

 

There are other settlements on the planet. Jason and Ellie run off to warn them, but it’s probably already too late.

 

This means that as long as they don’t use the gate, they should be able to hide. They’ll have to use the shuttle to get supplies from planets.

 

Young agrees with Rush that it’s too dangerous to risk going back for everyone else.

But…..if they don’t use the gate, then the drones shouldn’t be able to track them.

I’d be buying a little time to get the drones off the scent and then going back, personally.

 

Eli may have found a way to get a signal out to Destiny. Stargates have a transmitter. They communicate updates with one another and send status to destiny. So far, all Eli can do is turn it on and off, but that’s all they need to tap out an SOS.

 

I kinda wish they’d all give Brody a break. Yeah, I don’t think Futura is the greatest name, but do they have to keep mocking him for that? The answer, by the way, is no. They don’t. It’s getting a bit old and I’m kind of annoyed on Brody’s behalf.

I think this is possibly meant to be funny? I’m not sure. But it reminds me of the kind of humour you sometimes see in old DC comics, where everyone makes fun of Aqua Man because he’s the butt of all their jokes. And similar nonsense between Superman and Batman.  I hate that kind of humour, and really don’t understand why people find it funny. If you do, then great. But it does nothing for me.

 

Anyway, they’re overjoyed when they see that shuttle in the sky.

 

As they near the planet, speculation is rife. As usual, Eli is the voice of optimism. Their descendants have to be there. We passed down all our knowledge to them.

But, as TJ points out, they passed down some of their disagreements too.

 

The shuttle descents toward Novus. There are no radio signals, which is odd, given they were advanced. They’re passing through a layer of particulate matter. Dust and Ash. That’s ominous. It’s very cold down there. A nuclear winter?

 

They see a huge modern city. But it’s completely deserted.

It seems the ash came from a supervolcano and it produced conditions similar to a nuclear winter. There’s nobody alive down there.

So….where did they go? Are they all dead?

 

We’ll have to tune in next time to find out.

 

This episode had a pretty unusual structure. It actually covered a lot of ground.

First it raised the issue of the CO2, but very quickly became an episode all about the drone attacks.

But then it transitioned, almost into an entirely different episode about finding their descendants.

Only to have it all come together with the drones, and the CO2 being important elements of the climax.

Then, we make it all the way to Novus before the episode ends.

In my memory of earlier watches, this was all covered over a series of several episodes, not just one.

But … as unusual as it may feel, this structure works for the episode.

It’s a thrilling ride.

 

And I can’t wait to delve into the next one with you.

That’ll be called Epilogue.

 

Until then, have a great two weeks.

Live long and prosper.

 

Make it so.