Stargate Universe - "Twin Destinies"

Eli (David Blue) is hit with a strange form of guilt that temporal mechanics could only provide.

Review by Paul Steven Brown

'Stargate Universe'
Season 2 - Episode 12
"Twin Destinies"

In "Visionary", one of my favorite 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine' episodes from that show's third season, everyman Miles O'Brien gets bounced in and out of the short term future, gathering clues to prevent the destruction of the space station. The cool twist in that story is that Miles from a few hours in the future ends up replacing the one that we've been tracking entire hour (if not the series up the this point). "Twin Destinies" has a similar prophet of doom from the future sort of plot.

While there is no switch between Future Rush and Past Rush (this sounds like I'm writing about the discography of the famed rock band), we do get a switch with the two Telfords involved in this story. Though it never turned out to be so, I kept expecting some kind of double-cross or hidden agenda to be revealed concerning Telford. There just seemed to be something in the way Lou Diamond Philips played the character and the way Telford was written this time around that kept pinging my spider-senses. Maybe something will come of this next week when Young talks to Future Telford.

'Stargate Universe' has already played around with time travel with last season's "Time". However, the constant reset button pressing of that episode ultimately had no lasting consequences for the series. "Twin Destinies" thankfully had more relevance to the overall show narrative. First and foremost being the acquisition of spare parts that were desperately needed after all the fighting that occurred over the last two episodes.

Varro finally received some screen time. This time he got to run around for spare parts. Whoopee! At least it wasn't another scene of Varro making eyes at T.J. or pleading with Young to trust him. Unfortunately, the whole Lucian Alliance prisoner plot thread seems to be one of the great unexplored and under-exploited parts of season two.

Despite being a character I like, I'm about done with Eli dealing with grown up feelings for the first time. This time around, the boy genius was feeling guilt over the deaths that a version of himself from another timeline due to his calculations. Dude, it wasn't you! Well, it was you, but not "you" in this timeline. Urg, temporal mechanics. At least he didn't ask for a gun to go hunting for Simeon like he did when Ginn died. Dark Eli is not very believable or interesting.

Overall, a decent outing for 'Stargate Universe', but nothing spectacular. With the impending conclusion of the series in about eight episodes, my mind tends to be more pre-occupied by how the creators are going to wrap everything rather than what has been on the screen for the past two outings.