Stargate Universe - "Awakening"

Sgt. Greer (Jamil Walker Smith) inspects the seed ship.

Photo Credit: Syfy

Review by Paul Steven Brown

'Stargate Universe'
Season 2 - Episode 3
"Awakening"

Enough with the musical montages already. The one at the end of the season premiere was understandable, because it gave us a glimpse of the new condition of the cast after the Lucian Alliance takeover had been undone. Also, I didn't care if the music was contemporary pop rather than scored, unlike a number of naysayers online. However, we're three episodes into the season and two have ended with a pop ballad montage. Even the second episode had a mini-montage with scored music as Col. Young cried into his moonshine near the end of the program. It's crossed into cliche and it didn't help matters that last night's montage song had lyrics that were too on the nose.

The stargate seed ships have been mentioned off and on throughout the first season and Destiny finally catches up with one. I'm not sure if it was for budgetary reasons, but I liked the contrast between the wide corridors of Destiny and the cramped passages on the seed ship. This makes since if the seed ships were meant to be automated and far ahead of Destiny, planting stargates throughout the universe.

This encounter provided introduced another alien race. While these new aliens seemed a bit more docile in comparison to the skinny ones that had kidnapped Rush and Chloe last season, they were certainly capable of taking down Rush and his guard effectively and without permanent damage. This leads me to believe that we haven't seem the last of Telford, who was stranded on the seed ship with about a dozen of these fellows when Destiny jumped to FTL. I think that they were protecting their interest in the seed ship and used non-lethal methods to do so. I would be nice to see the humans make some friends instead of constant adversaries.

Speaking of which, the Lucian Alliance members that are still on Destiny are getting bored and listless while stuck in a cargo hold ever since Young and Co. retook the ship. As with Ginn, a number of the Lucians were conscripted into service, so they may be a little more trustworthy. Varro wants to improve the situation for his people and feels that he should have earned some modicum of trust from Young for turning on Dannik. It doesn't hurt that he has the hots for Johansen. Unfortunately, it'll probably be due to her reminding him of his dead wife and that would be just too sappy to take. Not helping matters is negative behavior from the Lucian played by Robert Kemper. I guess there's got to be at least one around to potentially cause some mayhem.

This season has spent a lot of focus on Young, Rush, and Johansen, so hopefully that will change soon. This is a deep cast of characters and I'd like the lens to narrow on a few others soon. Chloe's situation is going to be explored next week, but I hope it doesn't reduce her to the problem of the week and not a person. On the positive side, the communication stones haven't come into play since the medical team switch up in the season premiere. It's my least favorite thing about the show, so I'm happy with this development.

Now, if they'll just get rid of those drippy montages.