You'd still be dealing with a lack of equipment. I really don't know why they don't switch in medical personnel.

 

I don’t think there is a time limit on the stones. But has anyone used the stones while the ship was in FTL?
Not to mention the stone device requires energy which is in very high demand.

As for medical equipment, Atlantis had a Medical Center/Infirmary.
I'm sure the ship has some medical equipment--MRI X-Ray like machines.

Trading in scientist and engineers sound best. I'm sure Rush and Eli are smart and very capable, but most of the people are civvies and were only at the base to see how things were going, like the IOA

 

Do you mean to permanently switch them out? While, yeah, it would kinda make sense, the moral and ethical issues of it all kind of outweigh the need. For one, TJ as a normal medic is doing fine as she she, and the scientists aren't fucking everything up (yet). Wouldn't that be hell to have people switch into foreign bodies because they're useless? And the ones in their bodies on the Destiny could go home every now and then and leave the Destiny-ites stranded...

For some reason, that seems grimmer than BSG...

 

New episode was pretty good, despite the rather predictable ending.

Spoiler

Though I do have to say, the inexplicable Rush-hate at the end irritated the fuck out of me. What possible reason could Rush have for lying about the ship's chances of survival? I mean, even if he did lie to get rid of a few people, you'd think he'd give it up as a bad job when he realized that they were going to send all their fucking supplies away on the shuttle! Just when I was really warming up to Colonel Young's character too...

Sheer stupidity aside, the episode, while painfully predictable, was done well enough that it didn't bother me too much.

 

This show focuses too much on the boring characters.

Instead of watching Lt. Scott cheat on Lt. James with a girl he just met or watching Wray cry for 5 minutes, I would like it if the show focused more on Col. Young and Dr. Rush, with a little Greer thrown in.

You know, the interesting characters.

 

The special effects were incredible. I loved the dipping into the corona. The lottery was low-key, which was, frankly, a nice change from the near-hysteria such things usually elicit. One panicked rabble-rouser, one really savage punch.

Now we know why that sergeant was in the brig and why the blonde medic was leaving the program.

I'm enjoying this series.

 

I think he's done quite enough fucking for one season, but I wouldn't mind seeing him die horribly in a "dark, edgy" moment.

The orbital mechanics of everything going on in this episode and the last seemed pretty dodgy. First, Destiny uses a gravity/atmo assist to change its vector so its flying into the Red Dwarf, which is fairly kosher (though it's a bit surprising Destiny is moving at pokey ~100 km/s affected-by-gas-giant-gravity-well velocities after coming out of FTL). More damning however (I suspect), is the planetary slingshot manuever.

It's known that the planet was in the "Goldilocks zone" of a red dwarf, meaning that it picks up about as much light from its star as Earth does from the Sun. From this we know the distance from the planet to Destiny (~at the star) was (D/1 AU)^2 = L_Dwarf/L_Sun. The most velocity you can possibly pick up in a gravity assist is twice the orbital velocity of the body, which in this case is equal to 2*SQRT(G*M_Dwarf/D) through some fancy orbital mechanics. This means in absence of the shuttle's speed itself, the slingshot alone would take roughly T = D^(3/2)/(2*SQRT(G*M_Dwarf)). We know D from earlier, so subbing in:

T(rough) = (L_Dwarf/LSun)^(3/4)*(1 AU)^(3/2)/(2*SQRT(G*M_Dwarf))

The dimmest Red Dwarves are about 1/20000 L_Sun with about 8% of its mass. Plugging those numbers in... you get about 90 minutes, which is actually not nearly as bad as I guessed when I started this rant. It could have even concievably been an hour between the shuttle slingshotting and landing on Destiny, maybe (I don't have the episode avalible to rewatch with that in mind). I was expecting a day or something truly ridiculous, but it appears for once the Stargate technobabble team may actually have done something vaguely defensible. Really, color me shocked.

Dangerous Solar Winds and Tidal Issues (to anything even made of metal Destiny's size) from a Red Dwarf that small though? I'm skeptical, though I don't have time to check it out right now.

 

^This
I hope Eli starts banging Lt. James just to get back at the greasy bastard.

Also I have to say that's a pretty damned sturdy ship flying around in space for who knows how many millions of years and is still perfectly fine taking a dip in a star

 

The shuttle chase at the end had me going, I was thinking they the were going to land harder and move us into the wounded and dying without medical treatment, you know cut down on some of the cast members, But hey they all lived.

Still know word on the two that stargate two shows ago right?

 

Just caught up on the series and I have to say, it's impressed me. It has a very different feel to SG1 but without the failure of Atlantis.

Rush is a brilliant character but you can already see he's going to go apeshit at some point and do something stupid. Like killing everyone on board so he and Destiny can be alone together.

Eli is predictably the favourite among the geekier fans. He's funny, not retarded and you have to root for him. I was genuinly pissed when Scott fucked Chloe (who instead of being a nice character, turned out to be a whore).

Not that interested in Young but Greer is interesting.

Who the fuck cares? It's a TV show. You sound like one of those pricks who speaks Klingon and has a Realdoll in the form of Legolas.

 

Greer is my favourite character by far. Just because he's an ass and does what needs to be done... plus he knocked out that jackass who tried to start a riot. Fun times.

 

Personally I find the "stone" ideas quite interesting. As far as a time limit we have seen them checking watches (Col. Young states something before visiting his wife and looks at his watch), so it might be feasible that there is a time limit, just one set up by the SGC.

We also know from Rush that this ship predates the chair technology and the ATA gene, so why not use the stones to bring say....Rodney McKay, Col. Carter, or even Dr. Lee into the show to help get into the systems that they are locked out of? Do they not have the database in Atlantis? I'm sure that somewhere either there or even in the massive Asgard database they have there could be a solution found.

And I have to totally agree with comments about Lt. Scott and Chloe, they should both die a painful death, and Eli needs to hook up with Lt. James.

Ok need to turn my ranting off and just sit back and enjoy the show....

 

For everyone who calls Chloe a whore because she Held Eli's Hand while they watched their approaching death through the Observation window... wow.

Her father completed a suicide mission three days ago, her lover just took a blind leap into the dark leaving her behind, and the ship is about to break up in plasma. She sits in a highly public place, holding a guy's hand, and now she's a slut?

You people are a lot tougher than me. I'd be a wreck.

 

I find Rush to be the only sympathetic character (mainly because he's the only person on board the Destiny with at least 2 brain cells to rub together). I agree completely with Shadowmage though, the Rush hate at the end of the recent episode was inexplicable. While Rush is being a dick, the jump into shocked paranoia was jarring.

At first I thought I was going to loathe Eli, who spent the first 3 episodes being an incredibly annoying whiny bitch. My opinion of him was confirmed when he made the oh-so amusing proclamation of "Oh look, more sand!" in the 3rd episode. It was at this point that I wish Greer was punching him out.

However he does appear to have become a bit less of a smug self-satisfied toss in the last two episodes, manning up and dropping the horrendously un-funny constant quips.

I like Greer and Young as an opposition to the more sympathetic character of Rush in the same way that that characters like Cuddy or Vogler are to House.

I thought the sex-scene was good in the way that it might make Eli realise that Scott isn't his best friend looking out for him, and that the Chloe is pretty much just dead weight.

^This would be awesome.

 

^This.

While I'm all for the Eli/Chloe hook-up, he didn't really step up in what everyone was pretty sure was their last day alive. He's got the awkward-nerd confidence thing going on, but I reckon he's going to get his shit together in the end. Between him and Scott, they've already saved everyone's lives half a dozen times.

T'is a pissing contest, always a pissing contest.

With Eli reaching out in front being the untrained gamer only a handful of days prior to being blasted across the universe.

 

The whole scott/chloe sex scene thing had me raging on IRC. I was swearing like a sailor. I'm really looking forward to the next episode.

 

You misinterpret the hate it seems. I think a lot of it comes from the whole "you slept with that one guy who talked to you that one time after your dad died, instead of the lovable nerd whos been hanging out with you since you met, 'cause the marine is prettier." at least that's me

 

Eli was never going to nail Chloe. He's destined to be the fat, loveable nerd with unrequited love.

 

The only reason I'm now vehemently anti-chloe is because the sex scene was so out of the fucking blue. It honestly jarred me irl. I'd like Scott if it wasn't for the Jesus shit so it's not just because he's a dick, it's the fact that the girl has a vagina like quicksand.