Stargate Universe ”Visitation” Detailed Analysis & Review

This one is certainly a dark and depressing episode, but does that make it bad? If you're at all familiar with me, you'll know what I think. Join me as we dig into "Visitation" a very emotional episode of Stargate Universe.

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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 80 of the podcast. Today, we’re talking about the Stargate Universe episode, “Visitation.”

 

The description on Gateworld reads

Members of the crew left behind in another galaxy make a shocking return to Destiny, while Chloe deals with the inevitable consequences of her transformation.

 

This episode was written by Rémi Aubuchon

It was directed by William Waring

And it first aired on the 23rd of November 2010.

In a recent episode, Young pointed out they didn’t have any shuttles. I was confused by this. One shuttle was destroyed, but they had gotten the second shuttle working, right?

The recap of today’s episode reminded me that Young left the damages shuttle behind on the faith planet for use by the people who stayed behind. So….Oops. I forgot about that.

 

While Brody repairs the still, Rush is trying to explain the message in the cosmic background radiation to people who have absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. To them, and to me, it looks like an animated screensaver.

 

So Destiny drops out of FTL and they see a Destiny-style shuttle. It looks like the one they left behind. It’s just floating in space next to them. Interesting.

 

They get a message. It comes from Doctor Cain. They fell asleep on the faith planet last night. They woke up here. They have no idea how.

 

Re-watching this episode, I didn’t actually remember this, so I was filled with the same sense of wonder and questioning that I had the first time I watched it.

And this really is intriguing.

 

Young is concerned that it might not actually be our people. Could it be a trojan horse, to get inside Destiny’s defences? Rush makes a very good point. With any beings that could do this, defences are meaningless.

 

There is one advantage of all this, though. It would be nice to have a working shuttle again.

 

The first thing that TJ thinks about when she hears about what’s happened, is her daughter. Young is convinced that what TJ experienced was a simulation, much like what he went through recently. A false experience placed into her mind.

 

And that is definitely plausible. It even explains the whole Nebula thing, that TJ couldn’t possibly have known about until she saw it, but Destiny would have known it was coming up. The ship could have placed the image of that nebula in her mind. But to what end? If it was just a simulation, what was the ship trying to achieve? Maybe giving hope to the only doctor the crew had?

 

Young sounds a sobering caution. Nobody mentioned a child. He doesn’t want TJ to get her hopes up, but she has to know.

 

The shuttle docks and the crew come aboard. It’s all their old friends from the Faith planet.

Young’s not taking this lightly. They’re expected to exit the shuttle one person at a time.

They will be escorted to a holding area.

 

None of them are carrying a child. There is no sign of a child on the shuttle.

 

Young asks TJ if she’s all right. She replies, “I’m fine.”

Honestly, I don’t know why she’s pretending. I sure as hell wouldn't be.

 

Eli is recording a diary entry on the Kino. Not only is he still grieving the loss of Ginn, but he’s losing Chloe. She continues to transform and there’s nothing any of them can do about it.

 

Scott visits her to give her the news about the arrivals.

 

Chloe is not even sure she wants to fight her transformation anymore. What’s happening will happen. She’s not afraid of it anymore.

 

Cain says they were sleeping in the shuttle, using it as a shelter from the cold during the winter. So, the log cabin that TJ saw in her vision wasn’t real? All the evidence is supporting Young’s theory that it was just a simulation.

 

Cain seems convinced that if not the aliens, then God himself has brought the shuttle here.

Eli turns the mike off, and argues against this, using that familiar Arthur C. Clarke quote.

Given the trembling in his voice, I’d say there’s a lot more going on here than simple philosophical disagreements. This is emotional. This is personal. Ginn didn’t get her miracle. It doesn’t look like Chloe is going to get hers either. So why should he believe in such things?

 

I did chuckle when Young said “Turn the microphone back on. Winston Churchill”

 

The shuttle was barely working when they left it on the planet. But now, it’s in perfect working order. It’s like brand new. Brody even jokes that it has that new shuttle smell.

 

So far, no ticking time bombs have been found. Nothing that could be a threat.

 

Even though Cain talked about using the shuttle for shelter, they seem to have amnesia, remembering nothing about the planet. At least, very little. So…that leaves a small sliver of hope that maybe the child was there and they just don’t remember it.

 

Cain claims the amnesia is a sign from God that they have been reborn.

 

Cain is a little frustrating, the way he jumps to so many conclusions. I don’t think he’s a very good representation of people of faith.

 

The others think the aliens that built the planet discovered them and returned them to Destiny as an act of benevolence. Which would imply that the planet was never meant for Destiny’s crew, which goes against Cain’s original belief.

 

Young isn’t buying it. These aliens are too powerful. So…power and benevolence are incompatible? That’s an extraordinary opinion.

 

Now being afraid of that power, realising “they could squash us like ants if they wanted do” I do understand that.

 

But here’s something really interesting. Both Young and TJ have had an odd experience. When they look any of these visitors in the eye, they get a weird feeling. They can’t be in the same room as them for long without feeling like that have to get out. Fascinating.

 

Chloe doesn’t know how much longer she will be herself, so she’s recording messages for her loved ones, while she can.

 

Eli says, “start with someone easy, like me.”

Chloe is kind of offended by that. Of all the people, Eli is the hardest to say goodbye to.

 

Young has released the visitors. He has no reason to treat them as prisoners. They are given back their old quarters. They will be given tasks to do, to carry their weight as members of the crew.

 

He’s not happy about it, but at present, this seems the right thing to do.

Greer also has this strange feeling about them. And it’s nice to see him in a sling, given that he was shot in the last episodes. These are the little moments that make such a difference when TV shows take continuity seriously.

 

TJ takes Caine to see the place where they’re growing their own food. She questions him about her experience with the baby. Caine has no memory of any of that happening, but then, he has partial amnesia about their time on the planet. So…who knows?

But this is enough to cause her great pain.

 

Camille interviews them about what they remember. This explains a little more about this partial amnesia thing. They only seem to remember the most vague generic details of their time on the planet. No specifics. No actually memories of events happening.

 

They’re all like that.

 

Wray thinks the aliens didn’t want our people to remember …. Something.

 

Young asks if Camille is having the same weird feelings about the visitors. She says she’s the wrong person to ask because a lot of people creep her out. I found that very amusing.

 

Greer is being weird about Scott visiting Chloe, but that’s kind of Greer’s way. He doesn’t always come out with things plainly. When Scott pushes him, he explains his position. Chloe is isolated for a reason and he thinks Scott is not taking that seriously.

We get a little insight into how the military structure works. Greer says “It’s my job as a master sergeant to make sure butter-bar lieutenants like you don’t make mistakes.”

I’m not exactly sure what that means. I get the impression that Scott technically outranks Greer, but Greer may have more experience, and so is meant to keep the young officers accountable.

 

This is a good character scene. They have a pretty meaningful conversation. Scott reminds Greer how much he loves Chloe, and Greer reminds Scott that he’s not the only one. Greer prays for her every night, but he can see where this is going. Greer’s concern is not for a lack of caring for Chloe, but his love is of a different kind than Scotts. He can, perhaps, see things with greater clarity.

 

Greer and Scott are actually better representations of people of faith.

 

Eli sits down to talk with one of the visitors. He’s a little jealous he never got to see the planet. Some fragments of memories are starting to come back. She’s going to share an embarrassing memory, but I honestly couldn’t understand what she said. I rewound and listened again but still couldn’t make it out. I tried turning on subtitles, but nothing happened, so I guess this DVD doesn’t have them.

 

Anyway, the more she thinks about the planet, she starts to feel weird. Then her nose bleeds and she’s in excruciating pain. It all started when Eli mentioned the obelisk. It’s pretty confronting.

 

Caine seeks out Rush on the bridge.

Rush has been checking the navigational logs of the shuttle, to see what path it took to reach Destiny. But there was no path. The shuttle was there, and then it was here.

 

Rush makes a good point to Caine. He had no burning bush, no angel speaking to him. He has no evidence for his beliefs whatsoever. No grounds. Just assumptions.

 

Rush also points out that while the shuttle was returned to pristine condition, the people weren’t. But I don’t see that as direct evidence that God wasn’t involved.

See, they both have their own biases, like we all do.

 

TJ admits to Young that she’s not doing okay. Which is completely understandable. She’s just lost the one thing that gave her hope. Her only reason to keep going. She must be in a very dark place right now.

 

Greer actually takes Scott’s advice and visits Chloe.

He has a way of speaking openly and honestly with her that I think she appreciates.

She knows that once she is no longer herself, Young will see her as a threat. Greer says at that time, Young will remove the threat. One way or another.

 

She asks, “will it be you?”

And with a shake in his voice, he says “Yes, ma’am. I think so.”

Oh man. That hit me right in the heart.

 

She apologises.

He says he couldn’t let it be anyone else.

 

He asks for her forgiveness for when the time does come.

She’s quick to offer it.

 

This exchange broke me a little. I just wanted to hug them both.

 

He doesn’t think he can see her again. So he makes his goodbye now. She reaches to hug him, but he can’t do that.

 

Whew that was powerful.

 

Chloe records a very heart-felt message to Scott. I like that she wants Scott and Eli to take care of each other, as she knows they will.

And she asks Scott to forgive Greer for what he’s likely going to have to do. I imagine that’ll be a hard one.

 

Camille is trying to use hypnosis to help the visitors remember their time on the planet, which they named Eden.

They’re preparing for winter. 

The fact that this world has such harsh cold winters is compelling evidence that this planet wasn’t fashioned by the aliens specifically for the crew of Destiny to live on. If it were, they’d have made the climate more ideal for human habitation. They’d have arranged it so that it wouldn’t have been almost winter when Destiny arrived.

 

And then Peter remembers something startling. That woman who starting having painful convulsions while talking to Eli, she died on the planet. A tree fell on her before winter.

He saw her die months ago.

 

Now that he’s realised this, he’s also convulsing.

 

Time time, the convulsions were enough to kill him. But it’s weird. TJ says the symptoms of death were hypothermia.

From the condition of his body, TJ could argue that he died on the planet as well, from exposure.

 

Maybe Val died too, but the episode hasn’t exactly been clear about that.

TJ theorises that they’re all dying again. In order. The next one they find in her quarters. She looks like she’s freezing to death. But she’s got these weird contusions on her face.

 

Scott comes to see Chloe but she tells him to leave. I don’t think she wants him to see her anymore. She’s still herself for now, but for how long?

 

While TJ tries to prevent the other visitors from dying of hypothermia, Camille tries to get to the bottom of it all with Caine.

 

In his memory, snow is falling. The shuttle is their only shelter.

They’ve lost power so they can’t use the heating. The shuttle is airtight so they have to keep the door open or they’ll suffocate, which will let the cold in.

Caine slowly watches his friends die. He’s the last. He falls asleep in that shuttle. The next thing he remembers is waking up near Destiny.

 

Caine expects he’ll be dead before they next drop out of FTL. He’s remembered something.

He remembers that he’s already dead.

 

Whatever the aliens did to bring them back from the dead was only temporary.

The question is …. Why?

 

Caine has realised that his reanimation was not done by God, but by beings that, while powerful, can rebuild a man’s body, but not his soul. Maybe that’s what TJ and Young were sensing.

 

We’re seeing here that the aliens, which Gateworld refers to as Eden Engineers, are fallible. They have limits.

 

And now we get what I’d consider the first decent faith scene with Caine. He says that he has Caine’s DNA, some of his memories, but he is not the Robert Caine that God made.

TJ is surprised that after everything he still believes.

And he says, That’s faith.

 

Caine tries to reassure TJ that she has to believe her daughter is in a better place. Not an alien planet, but heaven. He encourages TJ to live her life, to fulfil Destiny’s mission, and to have faith in her crewmates.

This is the best Caine scene we’ve ever had. And I actually like it.

 

A kino has been found in the shuttle. Eli didn’t leave it there. It contains a recording of Caine’s last moments. The real Caine.

He’s praying for rescue while he freezes to death. And then there is a bright light outside the front window of the shuttle.

 

It seems that aliens did their best to restore the humans, but unlike with the shuttle, they didn’t have the capability to fully and completely restore the dead humans.

 

In an interesting twist on the cliche, I think we can say that this episode answered more questions than it raised. But those answers certainly lead to new questions.

 

I think we can now conclusively say that TJ’s experience with her baby on Eden was just a simulation from Destiny, to give her hope to carry on, as Young believed. She now knows that her baby is dead. And that’s really heart-breaking. In a way, I feel this with TJ, like some of my hope has been taken away as well.

 

Are the Eden Engineers the ones Destiny is searching for? The cause and origin of the fingerprint?

 

And what will become of Chloe? It’s looking pretty bleak for her at present.

 

This is quite possibly the most depressing episode in the stargate franchise, because it takes the innermost hopes of many characters and utterly crushes them. There is nothing darker than the death of hope.

 

Some people would argue that because it’s depressing, it’s intrinsically bad. If you’ve listened to me for any period of time, you’ll know that I strongly disagree with that.

But I’ll admit, this episode makes me feel pretty sad.

 

I think the parts I struggle with most are the realisations that all that TJ and the colonists put their hope and faith in was for nothing. Possibly because faith is so important to me. But just because something is hard, doesn’t make it bad.

 

On the other hand, the stuff with Chloe is equally dark and depressing, possibly even more so, but I loved those parts of the episode.

 

The show is really ramping up.

 

Next time, Destiny’s crew will find themselves caught in a war between two alien races. Should be interesting.

 

I’ll see you in two weeks.

Live long and prosper.

Make it so.