'Visitation' (209) General Discussion

[StefanSGA]

That's it just ignore my post entirely....

I'm sorry man, you were absolutely right. Excellent episode, BAG, the new shuttle, nice character moments, closure of the Eden-story line etc. But to me it feels like this episode could have easily stood on it's own, like most of SGA's episodes. But like i said, maybe we'll get some more info in the second half of the season after which we can say: ''Aaaw, that's why we focused 2 complete episodes on that alien species, Eden and the group that stayed behind".

[Perelandra]

discussion about the God and faith was very well done.

yes I agree 100%

[Eternal Density]

IMHO the Faith aliens having the ability to create a planet and restore a shuttle doesn't mean they have the foolproof ability to restore life. Life is on a different level entirely. So it's not too surprising that they could have thought they'd fixed the crew but it didn't last.

[Dr. Carter]

Was it meant to end an unfinished storyline, like the one from the people on the planet and TJ's baby?

Was it a cheap way to give us back a brandnew shuttle?

Was it to further introduce these aliens and are we going to meet these mysterious aliens in one of the coming episodes?

Personally, I think it was the above three. It was a means to show the crew that they are not alone, and someone is out there watching over them. Even though 'The Ancients' will not fully interfere, they will help the crew get past certain psychological obstacles.

T.J.'s traumatic loss and near death experience.
(Vision that she had of the ascended crew 'already dead'.)

Young's lack of confidence.
(Someone on the ship initiated the program. Right?)

Scot's issue with not meeting his step-father's expectations.
(Episode 'Water' I believe.)

Rush struggling with the loss of his wife.
(Why did she show up when Rush was alone 'on the bridge', and not when the crew was there?)

Crew dying on a far away planet, and being given a chance to say goodbye.
(Explains why they also didn't know about T.J.'s baby. Remember what the last missing crew member said before he past onward. Episode "Visitation".)

Even though these Ancients have new tricks, it would not be the first time they played god.

[SGeff]

Simple: the writers had no usable idea for the episode so they recycled some stuff form the old Faith episode to fill the gap without affecting the whole storyline in the slightest. So, if you missed this episode you didn't really miss anything...

Well, your answer is lazy. This episode answered some questions left from Faith, mainly about what happened to the Caine's crew. Then throw out other questions: why did alien do that and are they the real ones.

That is actually how the well paced series do, answers some old questions and gives some new ones. If you missed this episode, then in one future episode, the planet builder actually showed up, which I think they will, you will have to ask one question: what happened to Caine.

[The Destiny]

Is it necessary for every ep to be part of arc/storyline? SG1 and SGA had boatloads of filler episodes, there was never any complaining about it back in those days. I like a filler. A nice little single story that's not necessarily tied into the overall storyline. I doubt I would've been able to stand 20 episodes fighting the wraith for example. Some random stories or exploration once in a while.

If you missed this episode, then in one future episode, the planet builder actually showed up, which I think they will, you will have to ask one question: what happened to Caine.

No we wouldn't

We'd ask ourselves...

..what happened to B.A.G.?

[Lainier]

Good episode. I like weird mysteries. I really enjoyed Caine and Rush discussing God. But the best part was Greer with Chloe: very emotive.

[Dr. Carter]

IMHO the Faith aliens having the ability to create a planet and restore a shuttle doesn't mean they have the foolproof ability to restore life. Life is on a different level entirely. So it's not too surprising that they could have thought they'd fixed the crew but it didn't last.

Read my comments here:
http://forum.gateworld.net/showthrea...1#post12107112
http://forum.gateworld.net/showthrea...1#post12107160
http://forum.gateworld.net/showthrea...1#post12107251
(Starts on post number 26 and goes to the bottom.)

Its the Ancients.

[hedwig]

Is it necessary for every ep to be part of arc/storyline? SG1 and SGA had boatloads of filler episodes, there was never any complaining about it back in those days. I like a filler. A nice little single story that's not necessarily tied into the overall storyline. I doubt I would've been able to stand 20 episodes fighting the wraith for example. Some random stories or exploration once in a while.



No we wouldn't

We'd ask ourselves...

..what happened to B.A.G.?

Regardless of whether it furthered the storyline, I thought it was a very good episode. SG1 and SGA had stand-alone episodes, so why not SGU?

[nx01a]

"Oh, look! Guests! Stay for dinner. Stay forever..."

The Good:
>Seeing those idiots who stayed behind get what they deserved for being so stupid.
>They called the planet Eden. Good. It's like naming a ship the Prometheus. You just know it's gonna end in tears.
>And scientists who couldn't fix the shuttle. Inept! Just like all the other scientists apart from Rush and Eli. Oh, they SO got what was coming to them.
>Young not caring about Volker.
>Young NOT being one of the people waiting to get alcohol.
>James being one of the people waiting to get alcohol. Poor thing must be still drowning her sorrows over Scott.
>TJ looking for answers about her baby. Obvious, sensible, and well acted.
>The dome! Nice to see it being fixed. It looks like quite the maze being grown in there. I wonder if anyone'll get chased through it?
>Cain telling TJ to get on with her life. When a dead guy tells you that, you listen!
>And isn't he just creepy? Cain is just so calm and serene when he talk about God. It's like he's one second away from killing everyone in the room.
>New shuttle! Was Destiny, like the shuttle, once silver with red highlights? Same colour choices as the alien vessel from a few weeks ago.
>Chloe coming to terms with her impending... something.
>Greer seems to be quite the all-rounder. Lover [Park], friend and trainer [Scott], friend and executioner [Chloe]. Good to see him still injured.
>Park: "OK, you're being too deep again." *whistle* That's how you get hamstring injuries, Greer.
>Wray knows hypnosis. It's crazy, but it was just too cool to really nitpick.
>Wray's creeped out a little by most people.
>Rush dissecting the shuttle's repair and the humans' disrepair as evidence against God being involved. Very nice.
>I guess the bald asian dude that Gateworld people were trying to save didn't make it.
>Is Cain really dead? Will he really die again? I half expected those viewing the Kino footage to run for the observation deck to save TJ, followed by a shot of Cain looking menacingly at her. To be honest, that's what I wished would have happened.

The Bad:
>Eli didn't have some comment to make about Ginn being dead and not coming back? Didn't question the Powers That Be [not tptb ] in the slightest? He wasn't still rattled by her death? No comment about losing Ginn, now losing Chloe? Boo.
>I'm a bit confused. If the aliens came before he died, then why is he 'dead'? He says he remembers dying, right? Did the aliens kill him?
>TJ's baby may be with aliens who couldn't reanimate humans properly OR keep a living human alive [Cain]. What chance does a baby have?
>Just like the Kino appeared in the shuttle, the shuttle should have then disappeared. Or returned to its horribly damaged state.
>Why didn't the Planet Builders just send the people back to Destiny? Why send back the shuttle, too? Unless they didn't want anything left of them on the planet. Intergalactic garbage disposal.

The Ugly:
>I spent the first half waiting for something to go horribly wrong. Apart from Rush's talk about God and religion, it was rather boring.
>I truly hate god-like aliens who move in mysterious ways, their wonders to perform. You have all this power. Send the crew back to Earth! Help them somehow! Don't tow with life and send cryptic messages about existence via a woman's presumably dead baby and temporarily reanimated corpses. Come out and say it! Most of my problems with religion are crossing over with SGU. But I think that was what tptb wanted: the crossover, not necessarily the problems. The Planet Builders seem to say, via Cain, that TJ et al should complete Destiny's mission. Big whoop. If you've got all this power, why don't you just give them the answer and stop people from dying?! It's just like the ascended Ancients and their non-interference. It makes me sick.

The Verdict:
>Despite not being a horribly episode, I don't think I'll be revisiting it. I really dislike this faith/religion plot, but it seems that the ultimate 'mission' of Destiny ties into these Planet Builders.

[hedwig]

With the questions about whether Cain was alive or had died, maybe he died just as the light appeared in answer to his plea for help. And the aliens then revived him right along with the rest of them. And the next memory for all of them was in the repaired shuttle as they came alongside the Destiny. Then, since he was the last to die on the planet, he was also about to be the last to die aboard the Destiny.

(*Just a random thought that flashed through my mind as I was reading some of these posts.*)

[Pharaoh Atem]

discussion about the God and faith was very well done.

the writers have done a amazing job with that with this arc.

[Pharaoh Atem]

Except that it always has

in one way or another

[MattSilver 3k]

Blah blah. Good episode, not my favourite but not the disaster all the kids seem to be making it out to be. It's easy to say this episode's useless and all it achieved was getting a shiny new shuttle right in time for the midseason finale, but I think people are forgetting it's still a character show and all that, and the little things like debunking TJ's baby vision and trying to get her to move on, seeing the crew work together, have some great Eli/Chloe/Scott/Greer dynamic that really shows how far they've come... I wouldn't want to miss any of that just so we could have an episode that ends the same (We get a shuttle) but is all shooting and random explosions.

That said, what brought the episode down just a bit was the lack of continuation from Malice. Seriously, only the fact Greer had a sling seemed to reference the Ginn/Simeon debacle, and that sucked. What, we couldn't have had Eli say something, like in that first Kino recording, something like: "I'm losing Chloe... like I lost Ginn" or have Rush act like anything's changed instead of being all nonchalant and stuff? The presence of Greer's sling makes me think it really hasn't been that long since Ginn died, and it just doesn't feel like a good writing tactic - if you're going to rush Eli into a relationship and kill the girl off, at least let the repercussions of that affect him as the episodes go by. And if they're going to ignore that in a character episode like this one, what hope do we have of it getting mentioned in the next one (Which seems like big space battle action. Space 2.0).

Don't get me wrong - I liked a lot more in this episode than that one little niggle of dislike. I'm one of those weird ones that understands the show isn't trying to preach God to me - it's simply showing a bunch of characters that do believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and it's neat there's a diversity instead of a bunch of SUPER DUPER ATHEISTS running around and being dicks about it. I very much liked that the big aliens in Faith are really flawed in their way. They can make a planet but can't make a human 100% whole, and that's a good an indication as any that they'll either try and fail to help us again, or we can cross them off the list of helpful buddies.

The episode's tie-ins to Faith were good, and I'm glad it ended so badly, oddly enough. Not only was it a good sign that our alien buddies aren't that great, but it's near-realistic that the eight science types that get left behind can't save themselves from the environment. Suck on that, guys. Suck on that.

Yeah, let me get back on the part about how people are thinking this episode useless, but seriously - we could've gotten the shuttle back any way, sure, but how they did it is neat enough for me - the writers tied up the story of the Faith planet, killed off some folk in a very creepy way, tied up TJ's arc as started in Intervention without giving a happy ending, and gave us a neat subplot that fully lays out the feelings about Chloe... before something big happens to her (Calling it). Could've been worse, guys. Much worse.

[SGeff]

MattSilver 3k, I agree with you. The episode is full of surprises, even I read all the spoilers, I didn't see it's coming.

The Ginn thing is the only thing bugs me too. After all, they met, fell in love, she got killed, the revenge. All in 2 eps, it happened so fast. I even want them to slow things down a little bit.

Does anyone know how many people they need to operate the Destiny? I count there're only 69 people left include 7 LAs and Caine. I assume they soon will have some newbies. But haven't heard anything about casting.

[Jumper_One]

KEK writes: “So are we to assume that their lack of ‘soul’ is he reason they died again, or what that just Caines theory?”

Answer: No. It was a phsyiological design flaw (or re-design flaw to be more specific) that caused them to die again. The lack of soul (or perception thereof) was a failure/byproduct of the process.

Ben writes: “So, just for my peace of mind, what exactly happened to Caine? Is he dead, or still alive? He was still alive when the light appeared, but then he says he remembers his death. So, what’s going on there?”

Answer: One could draw the following conclusion from having watched the episode – Caine and the others died on the planet (in Caine’s case, it was on the heels of witnessing the white light). The planet’s caretakers/creators discovered them too late and sought to remedy the situation by restoring them to full functionality and reuniting them with Destiny. However, while constructing planets is easy, resurrecting once living beings is not and this resulted in – for lack of a better way of putting it – each of the restored human beings having an expiry date. Eventually, the damage done caught up with their corporeal forms, resulting in all of their deaths – even Caine’s which took place offscreen.

Doug writes: “I disagree with that characterization of Caine. He was never a man of science or logic, all of his choices and responses in both Faith and Visitation seemed to be constructed on his system of belief.

As a religious scientist myself, my first reaction would always be to suspect the explicable before the inexplicable. It’s not a challenge to the faith of any reasonable believer to accept that not everything you dont understand is de facto divine.”

Answer: In this case though, it wasn’t a simple theoretical matter but a very personal life and death experience, and that no doubt informed his conclusion. Also, the fact that both the existence of powerful aliens or an omnipotent God are posited but neither hypothesis is supported by corroborative evidence.

http://josephmallozzi.wordpress.com/...pdate-mailbag/

[Kelara]

>And scientists who couldn't fix the shuttle. Inept! Just like all the other scientists apart from Rush and Eli. Oh, they SO got what was coming to them.

To be fair, not all scientists are studying some form of mechanics. Could have been 100% soft science people and for those it wouldn't be "inept" to have no clue about shuttle tech.

Do we have any clues what their actual field of study was? Was spontaneous, regressive skull fracture lady (forgot the name) the chemist we saw some time working on making the food taste better maybe, or am I remembering the wrong face?

[garhkal]

Most people, when they think of God, imagine a pretty damn near omnipotent being. Someone who is perfect. Someone deserving of worship, precisely because they don't have any flaws and can always take care of and provide for us. Someone who is not a part of the universe, seeing as how they created it.

A super advanced alien being would still have flaws, and still be a product of the universe. Thus, not someone worthy of worshiping. Powerful yes, but not not a god. The Goa'uld, the Asgard, the ascended... all powerful beings in their own right, but I think you can see the fallacy of treating them as gods.

Precicely my point. I cannot see how with what these people know, that any still have 'faith' that there even is a god.

I wondered if the temporary resurrection was because the aliens do believe in non interference with lower races but were prepared to bend the rules a little on this occasion. So they were prepared to let them rejoin destiny to say goodbye but not to leave them permanently alive as that would be to change their fate.

or like someone else has suggested, they were supposed to stay that way but our prodding, made the aliens kick off a 'kill switch' to keep their secret.

So what that shows is the aliens did care because they responded to a plea of help. If you do not care you do not respond to a plea for help. Nor would the obelisk beings create an entirely new shuttle and entirely new people and send them back to the Destiny.

That was a huge act of compassion, if mishandled due to some sort of misunderstanding by the obelisk beings.

Maye they were already "enroute" to help just as he was making his prayer..

At this point, it makes more sense to assume the aliens never intended them to bring them totally back to life, but just give them time to say goodbyes to their friends on Destiny.

Heck, if that "nebula" was really them (tj's dream) maybe they are just not used to working with carbon based life forms.. The sun&planet were moved, rather than made.. the shuttle was just 'time jumped' back to when it was new...

[antipodal]

"Visitation" repeats on Syfy Sat Nov 26 at 5am.

[Lainier]

http://josephmallozzi.wordpress.com/...pdate-mailbag/

The restored human beings having an expiry date reminds me of another show...

Spoiler:

Babylon 5. Sheridan and his expiry date. Not even the first one had the ability to resurrect people permanently.