Survival Instinct (407)

[Stargate: Horizon]

Stargate: Horizon - "Survival Instinct"

Christine finds herself stranded on a planet, where a peaceful group of humans are facing attacks by an unknown enemy.

Check it out!

Then be sure to stop back here to share your thoughts!

[peragrin]

Looks like Christine has figured out tactics, and strategy. Good for her. Also knowing where to place C-4 is awesome. that is friggin hilarious. though i wish Grant had a few words with chris on the subject after words, instead of ma'kin and Devon eating. though that scene should have been saved for the next episode.

[The Maneuver]

Christine certainly has come a long way since S1, and I liked that subplot with Ma'kin. Nice ep.

[Senku]

Nice episode.

From a typical and standard main plot (shuttle with some H1 on board crash on an alien planet and things happen while they are waiting the rescue team) come an interesting development story for our -at least till this episode...- favourite porcelain-like girl

The subplot was a perfect complement indeed.

I like the idea of Daniel being a little bit like a secondary character at the moment. Don't rush things with the new member, specially if he is a VIP of the franchise! One step at the time seems the right thing to do, IMHO.

Back to Chris. The survival-mode suits her pretty well. Sweating, bandana on the forehead, P-90 with the right hand and a bunch of good intentions on the left one... really cool

Naik was okey. Less himself as in "Connection" but yet himself indeed. The "breaking-news" of his relationship with Dr. Koyamata were great, creepy, but great By the way, Demora is the name of Star Trek's Hikaru Sulu daughter... May be a "wink" there...

A good episode

[knowles2]

Well I really enjoyed this episode.

Especially the ending, in fact it the first time I've seen a member of horizon planning to be attack and actually taking counter measures against it, a nice change, she could turn out to be a tactical gen.....perhaps not but a vast improvement what we seen in the past on Horizon.

I love the new aliens, when we first meet their leader he seem reasonable, but love how it turn out in the end he was not so reasonable. I also would love to see a bit more background on them in the future and them not to turn out to be a one episode race like we have so many of in the TV series.

i also like the villagers they seem like people who just needed a leader, and more than willing to fight if they believe they stand a chance.
I like how you gave them a bit of character development to, none of them dies for which is a change. Through I would love them to of mention picking up other groups of nomads on the planet, it seem like their were more of them on the planet, as Roik said something about being split up when they left the city.

Their were very few bad parts, perhaps the setting up of the story seem very unoriginal, same plot be used in more than scifi series in the past, star trek done the same thing on at four occasions from memory, and the one crew men dead one on the verge of death and their the one trying save them also seem just to familiar and been done far to many in that exact same combination to.

Overall a good episode, a bit more originality and it would of got an excellent.

[Alex Rubit]

Glad to see that everyone's been enjoying the episode so far. It's definitely one of my favorites so far.

though i wish Grant had a few words with chris on the subject after words, instead of ma'kin and Devon eating. though that scene should have been saved for the next episode.

It would have been interesting to have a scene with Grant and Christine, but we definitely needed to wrap up the Callen/Ma'kin story in this episode too. I think it's a nice little beat there between the two, where we see how far their relationship has come since "What Comes Before The Dawn..."

We'll definitely be seeing more of Ma'kin this season. I'm actually kind of surprised that so far still no one's been wondering just what happened to Callen's wife. We never actually mentioned that... at least, not yet.

[Alex Rubit]

Christine certainly has come a long way since S1.

That's definitely true. Which is only natural, I think. People change as they evolve and grow.

Especially if you're constantly caught up in some kind of wild and crazy adventure somewhere out in the galaxy. That's bound to have some kind of effect on people.

[Alex Rubit]

I like the idea of Daniel being a little bit like a secondary character at the moment. Don't rush things with the new member, specially if he is a VIP of the franchise! One step at the time seems the right thing to do, IMHO.

Yeah, we felt it was important to focus on all the characters, ensure they'll all have their moments to shine. For example "The Syndicate" is a huge episode for Sivea, in which Kalos returns in an interesting way. And "Prophet's Rising" will then be a Daniel episode.

Back to Chris. The survival-mode suits her pretty well. Sweating, bandana on the forehead, P-90 with the right hand and a bunch of good intentions on the left one... really cool

That's what I thought too.

By the way, Demora is the name of Star Trek's Hikaru Sulu daughter... May be a "wink" there...

Always nice to see when people catch these little references. That was, indeed, a subtle Star Trek reference.

[Alex Rubit]

I love the new aliens, when we first meet their leader he seem reasonable, but love how it turn out in the end he was not so reasonable. I also would love to see a bit more background on them in the future and them not to turn out to be a one episode race like we have so many of in the TV series.

There's nothing in the works right now, but it's always possible we'll run into someone from their species again one day.

Through I would love them to of mention picking up other groups of nomads on the planet, it seem like their were more of them on the planet, as Roik said something about being split up when they left the city.

It's not mentioned in the episode, but they definitely made sure to scan the planet, and pick up additional groups of nomads.

Their were very few bad parts, perhaps the setting up of the story seem very unoriginal, same plot be used in more than scifi series in the past, star trek done the same thing on at four occasions from memory, and the one crew men dead one on the verge of death and their the one trying save them also seem just to familiar and been done far to many in that exact same combination to.

That's true, even though I wouldn't consider that a "bad" part. We felt we had only done one shuttle crash so far, and that was almost two years ago. So we felt we could get away with doing it again.

In early drafts of the outline we were toying around with a couple of other reasons for why the shuttle could crash, but in the end the reason why it crashed really didn't matter that much in the grand scheme of things. It was just a way of getting Christine and Naik to be trapped on the planet, and ultimately placing Christine in a situation where she's completely on her own, in a leadership role, responsible for this group of humans on that planet.

And Carey definitely was a red-shirt. But we needed a pilot, after all.

[Elite Anubis Guard]

Well...I'm struggling through this episode. I'm finding the A-story rather dull and uninteresting. Christine just bores me. I'm getting frustrated the B-story, which is far more interesting, is so short and it's making it hard for me to get into the story.

Very disappointing considering how much I enjoyed Cindy's previous episode.

[Alex Rubit]

Well...I'm struggling through this episode. I'm finding the A-story rather dull and uninteresting. Christine just bores me. I'm getting frustrated the B-story, which is far more interesting, is so short and it's making it hard for me to get into the story.

Finding the story uninteresting is, of course, a valid point as it's your opinion. But I don't think that Christine is "boring" at all; she's actually got some great moments here.

But I've noticed that, for some reason (and correct me if I'm wrong), you seem to dislike everything that has anything to do with Christine, which I don't understand. Just what has she done to you to deserve that?

I guess what I'm saying is you should approach the episodes more objectively, and not say to yourself that just because this is a Christine episode you're not going to like it, before even reading it, which I remember you did way back when some info on it was released, before the season even premiered.

If you approach it like that, I think there'll be a lot of episodes coming up that you won't like, just because Christine has a pretty big role in them; and it would be a shame to write off an episode just based on that. We'll definitely continue to see a lot more of her this season, which was greatly necessary, since she hadn't gotten as much moments as she should have in Season Three.

Very disappointing considering how much I enjoyed Cindy's previous episode.

You can blame me for it. Cindy did a great job with the first draft, and I'm the one who came in and messed it up.

[SG-25CSAR]

I finally got to reading this, and the time I put into reading this has been well worth it.

I finally know Christine and have an Idea about her personality. For some reason I could never just Imagen her in a random situation and what she would do like other characters.

For that This Episode gets a Good.

This wasn't a massive epi, but it was a great one. I am reserving the Outstanding vote for Big things, not CGi type stuff F.Y.I.

overall, the story was interesting and the B plot keept the A plot from getting boring, it also added some suspense in a way.

[Elite Anubis Guard]

I don't hate her. I just find her very redundant. And episodes like this...placing her in that situation just don't get me excited. Especially when it was all "Oh, don't worry, we're gonna help you defeat the baddies." You know me, I'm fair and I never slate an episode but this one...tickled me in no manner of good.

[Alex Rubit]

I just find her very redundant.

Saying that she's "redundant" doesn't really make any sense to me. If she hadn't been there for the first three years, the team would have had a pretty big problem every time they came across some Ancient writings. Because none of the others can read Ancient. Also, let's not forget that if it weren't for Christine, Daniel would not be on Horizon. She's the one who not just originally approached him, she also talked him into staying.

And aside from things like that, I just don't look at shows saying that a particular character is redundant. Unless, this character serves no purpose and contributes absolutely nothing. Which isn't the case here, as I just said above.

Characters aren't just on this show for a particular practical reason. If that were the case, we wouldn't have both Daniel and Christine on the show, because they can both jump in and do some translations real quick, if we need someone for that. But just looking at a character like that just takes away from what makes these characters really interesting. Both Christine and Daniel could do the same thing within any given story; but what's more interesting is, how do they interact when they're together in the same story? What will their relationship be like?

In Christine's case, when the series was starting off, I thought she brought a certain level of realism to things, in a way that we hadn't seen up until then, in that it took her quite some getting used to being on Horizon and heading off to new planets. It was something I know a lot of people can identify with, because that's how some people would feel if they had been in her situation. And I'm particular proud of how she's naturally grown and evolved over the course of the series so far. She didn't go from being the shy, young woman in "Starship Lost" to the confident leader that she became in "Survival Instinct" over night. There's a natural progression that starts in "Starship Lost" and evolves over a ton of episodes that are spread out over the first three seasons.

Other things that make her interesting to me is just to watch the progression of her relationships with some of the other characters. Obviously, Christine and Lenori have a strong friendship that kind of resulted out of the fact that he made her feel more comfortable when she was still struggling with trying to decide whether or not she was going to stay on Horizon; and they've been close ever since. There's one very powerful scene in an upcoming episode actually, but it won't air until March.

Then we've got the Christine/Grant relationship, which I think will become a lot clearer after "Temple of Secrets," where we learn more about their background, how they met, etc. I don't want to give anything away, since it's just another week until it'll air.

There'll be more moments with Christine and Sivea, who've started forming a real frienship, which was picked up on in "The Gateway of the Gods." There's a very fun scene with the two in "What Fear Does," that's very different from interactions we've seen between them in the past.

Then there's Christine's relationship with Daniel, which will continue to evolve. The two definitely make a good team, and it'll be interesting to see where things go. It's still early in the game for them, and they've only known each other for a few months now. But it's a relationship that will continue to grow.

So those are the people that she's definitely got the closest relationships with. And to be honest, that does not seem redundant to me. The show wouldn't be what it is without these elements. Especially, since I've always looked at this series as being about its characters and their relationships with each other. Everything else is just added elements; the events that they're all going through. But at its core, it's about these people, and how do these events that surround them effect them. That's kind of the philosophy behind this particular series.

We'll also be finding out a little more about Christine's background, how she grew up, and especially her relationship with her brother, Kevin, in the very near future.

I know, that was a rather lengthy reply to just that brief little statement.

Especially when it was all "Oh, don't worry, we're gonna help you defeat the baddies."

It wasn't like that, at least I never got that feeling. The people from the planet, for the most part, were trusting and hoping that Christine and Naik were going to help them. But Christine, until almost the very end, had some pretty big doubts that she was going to be able to do that. And the fact Roik was convinced she could, only added more pressure. Of course, she doesn't say that to Roik and the others, and she hides it pretty well in front of them. But it comes out in the scene with Naik in the tent.

To me that's very human; she's filled with self-doubts and some fear, but in the end she overcomes that, goes out and does what needs to be done, and ends up surprising herself. That's what I always loved about this story from the moment it was first pitched. It sends a nice and inspiring message in a way, in that it shows that people can do things that they may not even know they can do -- if they just don't have another choice.

[Lt. Colonel Ryu Gaia]

I sense a wee bit of bias there.

[s09119]

I sense a wee bit of bias there.

Haha, he's the series' creator; he gets to have bias