Providence (205)

[Alex Rubit]

Stargate: Horizon - Season Two
"Providence"

"Providence"
Ep: 2.05
Release Date: October 20th 2005
Written by Erik Pasternak

The Horizon team discovers a planet inhabited by a peaceful and very religious group of humans. Events take a turn, as Grant and Chase discover that things are not as they seem.

[Alex Rubit]

This weeks all new episode has now been released. Follow the link to get to the homepage, where the episode will be available for download.

Enjoy. And don't forget to stop back right here, for comments and discussion. And don't forget to make use of the episode poll either.

[Lord Zedd]

I'll go right at reading it right now !

[SierraGulf1]

A nice stand alone that will lead into some heavy arc stories over the next few episodes. I liked the little family disputes that went on here, though I was sorry to see Tey have to pass on.

Nice to see a Christine episode, she was one of the more underdeveloped characters in Season One.

Lenori is still with the Tok'ra, and we have yet to see him don his old uniform. I wonder if and when he'll ever rejoin the medical team on Horizon.

[AzMcNeil]

Excellent job Erik! A very nice episode indeed! You would hope that the villagers and Horizon could still work out an agreement in the future for that mineral. Only time will tell...

[Alex Rubit]

Yup. Only time will tell. You never know...

I too thought this was a great episode. I was always very happy with it. It seems to have a classic Stargate feel to it, meaning it's a "go through the gate, get into trouble" episode. I also like the fact that there's no real bad guy in this episode. There's no actual villain.

Neither Tey nor any of his people are really evil; on the contrary, they believe firmly that what they're doing is right, and that the others are in fact evil. Lots of shades of grey. And I was always very fond of the ending, and the final line of the episode. It raises a question which is really hard to answer, since everything that was happening on that planet happened without any outside influence. It's just the way things evolved. If you look closely there's that subtle message about embracing diversity and tolerance, covered in an old fashion sci-fi setting. Those are things I always enjoy as an audience member, so it's great to have it in this episode.

It's also a great episode for Christine. I thought her character really evolved nicely over the course of the first season, but there weren't as many episodes that had their main focus on her as there could have been really, which is a shame, and will be fixed this season. This particular episode really shows nicely that she's come a long way from the days of "Starship Lost" or "Explorers." So that's another thing I've always liked about it.

There are a couple of interesting notes on how the script evolved and what was added or changed, especially since this episode ended up being completed before last weeks episode. But I'll save going further into that for the Making Of. I should be catching up on those pretty soon.

[NoDot]

I noticed the Ori remark. Nice touch!

[Elite Anubis Guard]

I quite enjoyed this. Started pretty slowly though but sped up. Interesting story, nice to see a one off episode. The writing was pretty good and had quite a number of what would have been beautiful shots. What was interesting about this episode was that it didn't have an Enoly, a Draque or an Aschen, it didn't have an episode. It was like Beast of a Burden, in that the enemies wheren't really enemies.

I also liked the idea of mute Miners. I would have liked more interaction between Grant and Miner 1 as that would have been interesting. It was also nice to see Tom go back out but I had been expecting Lenori. It would have been interesting. Nice development on Christine and a nice episode.

[Alex Rubit]

Yeah, that's what I always liked about the story, as I said in a previous post; there's no real bad guy. It is indeed in a way like "Beast Of Burden" when it comes to that. I always liked that about "Beast Of Burden" as well.

And that Ori reference just had to be there. It was just calling for it.

[Elite Anubis Guard]

Did we manage to get any of this supper Trinium?

[Alex Rubit]

Did we manage to get any of this supper Trinium?

Unfortunately we didn't. There was too much chaos going on.

Maybe eventually an agreement can be reached with the people on the planet, but in order to make use of the material they'd need to find a way to work around the effects that long term exposure to it has.

[StevetheWraith!]

Thanks Erik for a really entertaining episode. I thought that it was really, really good to feature yet another culture that have become "brainwashed." by religion over time because all this talk about the Originators, Enoly, and the Shadows really help to re-enforce the notion of how much this galaxy has suffered throughout the eons. I also thought that it was sweet to see Tom return to active duty; Christine, again, demonstrate that she has become quite the little fighter over this past year as opposed to her timid personality at the start of Season 1. I would like to send a big thank you to all you SG:H writers (and of course Sam for her excellent site and the other guys and girls who work so hard to make this series what it is) for providing us with this excellent virtual series week after week and indeed year after year. We owe you guys big time

[Erik Pasternak]

I quite enjoyed this. Started pretty slowly though but sped up. Interesting story, nice to see a one off episode. The writing was pretty good and had quite a number of what would have been beautiful shots. What was interesting about this episode was that it didn't have an Enoly, a Draque or an Aschen, it didn't have an episode. It was like Beast of a Burden, in that the enemies wheren't really enemies.I also liked the idea of mute Miners. I would have liked more interaction between Grant and Miner 1 as that would have been interesting.

Thanks! I appreciate the comments. The thing with Miner 1 is that, as you might expect, it is pretty difficult to write that.

It was also nice to see Tom go back out but I had been expecting Lenori. It would have been interesting. Nice development on Christine and a nice episode.

The reason I wrote Tom in as going out instead of Lenori was really a twofold reason. One was that, at the time of writing this episode, the plan was for Lenori to have already taken back his old job (this episode was, I think, completed third for the total season, following the "A Time To..."s) and I wouldn't have felt like it was a perfect episode without Tom in it. Second, "Connection," or whatever title episode three had at the time, featured Tom feeling very seperated and away from everyone else. He had overcome it slightly by the end, but the idea was still present. The goal in bringing him out to M33-JK6 was to further that "coming back into the fold" sorta thing.

[Elite Anubis Guard]

I think I'll re-read this one later. Nice episode.

[Elite Anubis Guard]

Well I've finished reading this. Still a great episode and all my previous comments are the same.

Was there any scenes removed from this?