'Malice' (208) General Discussion

[Misfits]

Interesting Episode.

Now that I have had time for the details of the episode sink in, the following points are of interest.

The Good - Rush blaming himself for the death of Dr. Perry.
This is exactly the point I made in the last episode which brought so much criticism from Rush defenders. So, what happens in this episode? Rush blamed himself for the death of Dr. Perry. And rightfully so. If it wasn't for his scheming and lying, Dr. Perry wouldn't have been on Destiny. Rush is sorely responsible, and he knew it.

The Bad - Rush blaming himself for the death of Dr. Perry.
If Rush keeps on having these moments of clarity, these forum pages are going to be bare of any argument regarding Rush's guilt.
Countless of pages were used to defend Rush in regards to Riley's death. Not necessary any more.
A few pages were used to defend Rush regarding Dr. Perry's death, Not necessary anymore.

As for Rush's declaration that he won't keep secrets and co-operate fully, well, that lasted less than a day. Just like the last time.
In end of 'Space' Rush agreed to put the past behind, then proceeded to wage a mutiny, almost leading to Young and Scott, in the shuttle, vaporizing.
This time was no different.
Asked by Scott what he was doing with the Kino remote. Rush said he was checking time. How quaint. The character just doesn't change.
He has the ability to concentrate on a singular goal, everything and everybody else be damned.
Scott's perception of Rush in 'Cloverdale' is absolutely correct.
Rush, as Justice of Peace had such a narrow office, illustrating Rush's narrow mindset.

Now, on to the Destiny Mission.
As I have opined before, the mission is problematic as defined by Rush.
As we have learned in this episode, the structure in the background radiation is a repeating loop.
It would be reasonable to conclude that it doesn't take million+ years to see the loop.
Then, the question would be how long does it take to view one loop? After recognizing the loop, why is Destiny still on it's journey? Is it to find the source of this transmission? If it were, how long and how far would Destiny have to continue to travel to find it? Can it be found? How does Destiny know which way to go? Why send Seeder ships ahead of Destiny if investigating the background radiation was the mission? Does the seeder ships have some kind of detection device to locate the source?
Too many questions without a reasonable theory to answer these questions.
An interesting tidbit is that Rush said the Ancients meant to come to Destiny.
Who's to say they didn't? What if the Ancients did make it to Destiny, over 10,000 years ago, from Atlantis in Pegasus Galaxy, before they lost the war to the Wraith, and deciphering the background radiation was a key component that enabled the Alterans to ascend? Then, the Alterans gated back to Atlantis leaving Destiny on it's journey to be found later by their descendants.
This possibility makes a lot of sense because the possibility to ascension would be a perfect motive for Rush to risk everything to attain. Power to change things, to right the wrongs, to control one's fate.
Rush has mentioned about ascension in 'Time', Dr. Perry talked about conversation with Rush regarding this subject before the Icarus project, etc...
It would explain Rush's singular obsession with Destiny. As well as LA's interest in it.

[morbosfist]

A repeating pattern doesn't mean the signal changes over time. Otherwise the Ancients would never need to go anywhere. They could just stay at home and wait it out. The signal is constant and repeats at a regular interval, but they don't have the entire pattern, hence sending out Destiny to collect it.

[jelgate]

lol

if anything it's Simeon who'd make Greer beg for mercy
Greer is all talk, but in the end he proved as useless as usual & he couldn't prevent Simeon from killing Ginn (either that, or he actually let Simeon kill her, although of course that's debatable)



in the end Greer even came to respect Simeon, at least this was made quite clear in this ep

I don't see what your point is. Greer can't be everywhere. Being one of the highest ranked soldier he probably has more important duties then gurading

[morbosfist]

He only harasses Simeon while off-duty. It's a good way to pass the time.

[Misfits]

A repeating pattern doesn't mean the signal changes over time. Otherwise the Ancients would never need to go anywhere. They could just stay at home and wait it out. The signal is constant and repeats at a regular interval, but they don't have the entire pattern, hence sending out Destiny to collect it.

Just the same, Destiny was sent out million+ years ago, it would seem that Destiny would have gathered the entire pattern a long time ago. And if Destiny didn't gather the whole pattern after million+ years, how much longer would be required? Is it even possible? Why send out seeder ships ahead of Destiny? Do they have a way to track the origin of the signal? Otherwise, why send the ships out in any particular direction?
Questions, questions, and no reasonable theory that answers these questions, if the mission was as described by Rush.

[morbosfist]

Just the same, Destiny was sent out million+ years ago, it would seem that Destiny would have gathered the entire pattern a long time ago. And if Destiny didn't gather the whole pattern after million+ years, how much longer would be required? Is it even possible? Why send out seeder ships ahead of Destiny? Do they have a way to track the origin of the signal? Otherwise, why send the ships out in any particular direction?
Questions, questions, and no reasonable theory that answers these questions, if the mission was as described by Rush.

The fact that you insist on denying anything Rush says is the reason you keep misunderstanding. The seed ships exist to plot a course for Destiny to follow and drop gates for supply runs. Destiny hasn't gathered the entire pattern yet because if it did it would still be in the database (unless the Ancients deleted it, in which case why not just scrub the whole mission since you're done?), and Rush would have found it by now.

Destiny's mission is a very very very long term mission, and the Ancients knew that going in.

[Misfits]

The fact that you insist on denying anything Rush says is the reason you keep misunderstanding. The seed ships exist to plot a course for Destiny to follow and drop gates for supply runs. Destiny hasn't gathered the entire pattern yet because if it did it would still be in the database (unless the Ancients deleted it, in which case why not just scrub the whole mission since you're done?), and Rush would have found it by now.

Destiny's mission is a very very very long term mission, and the Ancients knew that going in.

Negative.

I'm looking at the logic of the mission.
If you were curious about a message in the background radiation, why would you send seeder ships ahead of Destiny?
I know what the seeder ships do. What I don't comprehend is why would you do it?
What would be the benefit to the mission to send ANY seeder ships ahead of Destiny?
Is there any way to locate the source of the signal? If not, then, how would you know which way to send any of the ships?
As for the longevity of the mission, million+ years? We do know that the life span of Alterans is not millions of years, right?
If their life span is anything similar to ours, then we're talking about a mission that spans hundreds of thousands of generations. Are you kidding me? Who in their right mind would put such a mission in motion?
As for gathering the whole pattern, if Destiny has not done it already after million+ years, how much longer will it take? Another million+ years? or longer?
All these questions are daunting, to say the least, and make very little sense if Rush's mission statement is to be believed.
That's my problem with Rush's explanation.

[morbosfist]

So, a generational mission to collect the secret behind the universe itself is totally unthinkable, yet seeding life and waiting millions of years for it to evolve so you can run social experiments on them isn't? You may not be able to think beyond your own lifetime, but the Ancients did it constantly.

The seed ships exist because Destiny needs a course to follow and you need a way to gather supplies. If you have the technology to make it easier on yourself, why not do it? Why build a floating city that can fly through space with the aid of a shield when a starship is simpler?

[Misfits]

So, a generational mission to collect the secret behind the universe itself is totally unthinkable, yet seeding life and waiting millions of years for it to evolve so you can run social experiments on them isn't? You may not be able to think beyond your own lifetime, but the Ancients did it constantly.

The seed ships exist because Destiny needs a course to follow and you need a way to gather supplies. If you have the technology to make it easier on yourself, why not do it? Why build a floating city that can fly through space with the aid of a shield when a starship is simpler?

Tens of thousands of generations?
Not a few generations, mind you, tens of thousands of generations later.
We're talking about millions of years. AND there may be no end.

As for the seeder ships, it would be more practical to construct a few bigger shuttles to enable in gathering supplies after a million years in journey, them to seed planets for a million+ years with several ships.

Even if we believe that the Alterans meant to investigate the background radiation pattern millions of years later, if the pattern has not been fully gathered by now, how much longer would it take? Millions of years more? Or longer?

And can the source of the background radiation be ascertained? If not, then how would they know which way to send the ship?

These facts do not fit any logic whatsoever.

As fot building a city space ship, I can see the logic of it better than the particulars of this mission.

[morbosfist]

They're perfectly logical, you just refuse to see it. Shuttles require you to park in orbit, fly down, then fly back up and go to the next world to do it all over. Stargates let you press a few buttons and walk to a planet from outside the solar system, several even. It's much more efficient, and when you don't have to worry about resources, it's also more practical.

The mission, no matter how long it takes, is still something the Ancients were the kind of people to do. Life takes forever to evolve, so long that your corpse will have rotted into nothingness even if you stayed in stasis the entire time. Why do it if you don't benefit? Because someone will, someone you'll never meet. You do it because you're curious, because you want someone to benefit from it, and most importantly for the simple reason that you can. You may not be that forward-thinking, but the Ancients were, and until you accept this fact you're never going to understand the idea.

They don't need to find a specific source. Just point the ship in one direction and let fly. It's background radiation. It isn't being transmitted from anywhere in particular.

[Misfits]

They're perfectly logical, you just refuse to see it. Shuttles require you to park in orbit, fly down, then fly back up and go to the next world to do it all over. Stargates let you press a few buttons and walk to a planet from outside the solar system, several even. It's much more efficient, and when you don't have to worry about resources, it's also more practical.

The mission, no matter how long it takes, is still something the Ancients were the kind of people to do. Life takes forever to evolve, so long that your corpse will have rotted into nothingness even if you stayed in stasis the entire time. Why do it if you don't benefit? Because someone will, someone you'll never meet. You do it because you're curious, because you want someone to benefit from it, and most importantly for the simple reason that you can. You may not be that forward-thinking, but the Ancients were, and until you accept this fact you're never going to understand the idea.

They don't need to find a specific source. Just point the ship in one direction and let fly. It's background radiation. It isn't being transmitted from anywhere in particular.

Just because you say it is logical, doesn't make it so.

Haven't you learned from all the logical reasons why you claimed Rush was innocent, didn't make it so. Rush admitted to his guilt. How logical was that?

As for seeder ships, if the mission is to investigate the background radiation, then why would the Alterans send several seeder ships ahead of Destiny and seed millions of planets for million+ years on the chance that they could use a few after a million+ years?

This is rational to you?

As for gathering all info on the pattern in the background radiation, after million+ years, if it not complete already, how much longer would it take? Another million years? or longer?
If that is the case, what would be the point of this crew to stay on Destiny?
For all we know, it could take more years than this crew has to give.

As for the source, if there isn't one that they can locate, then why did the Alterans choose this particular direction? Did someone close their eyes and point into the sky and said that way?

All of these don't add up IF you take Rush at his word.

Whereas, if the gathering of the background radiation was a secondary part of the overall mission, then, it would make better sense, don't you think?

My point is that there had to be more to this mission than just gathering data on the background radiation.

If Alterans planed to seed galaxies so that they can travel, colonize, seed galaxies with new life, AND investigate the background radiation, especially if deciphering the pattern was a key component to achieve ascension, then, it would make sense.
It would also explain the obsession that Rush has about Destiny.

[morbosfist]

The mission is perfectly rational. There's a degraded signal, so they sent Destiny out to get the rest of it. You don't want it to be rational, and you can't accept the scale involved, so you're inventing these secondary factors to try to justify that belief. Destiny was built to find the signal. Everything is secondary to that. It doesn't matter how long it takes or will take, that is its purpose. It doesn't have anything to do with seeding life, because there's no way to get back to all those galaxies once Destiny has passed them. It's about going forward, not looking back.

This is all I'm going to say on the matter. If you want to believe there's more to it, fine. I'm not going on for pages.

[Misfits]

The mission is perfectly rational. There's a degraded signal, so they sent Destiny out to get the rest of it. You don't want it to be rational, and you can't accept the scale involved, so you're inventing these secondary factors to try to justify that belief. Destiny was built to find the signal. Everything is secondary to that. It doesn't matter how long it takes or will take, that is its purpose. It doesn't have anything to do with seeding life, because there's no way to get back to all those galaxies once Destiny has passed them. It's about going forward, not looking back.

This is all I'm going to say on the matter. If you want to believe there's more to it, fine. I'm not going on for pages.

I agree with you that we are not going on for pages discussing this subject, unless other people chime in.

I will say this as my last comment.

Rationally speaking, a lot of thing just don't add up if all you're doing is taking Rush at his word.

As Volker said 'He's done nothing but lie to us.'

As previously done by Rush, there seems to be more to this mission than what he told Young. Colonizing, seeding with life, ascension, and who knows what else.

Lastly, the concept that the seeder ships will place Stargates on millions of planets that will never be used. This would seem to me a total irrational waste.

[PantheraLeo]

even if the mission had to take tens or hundreds of millions of years long, the Ancients were prepared for it.
The wealth gained from aquiring knowledge cannot be compared with a that of a lifetime.
The Ancients didn't think individually, they though of themselves as a whole.

[Misfits]

even if the mission had to take tens or hundreds of millions of years long, the Ancients were prepared for it.
The wealth gained from aquiring knowledge cannot be compared with a that of a lifetime.
The Ancients didn't think individually, they though of themselves as a whole.

Yeah, but, the problem is how does this affect the current occupiers of Destiny.

Rush said the Ancients were supposed to come to Destiny thousands of years ago.
If that was the intention, then, were they planning to spend thousands of years aboard destiny? How many generations?

See where this gets very tricky. Were they planning to rotate crews in and out of Destiny? Possibly.

If the Data gathered by Destiny had million more years to complete, would they have stayed, or come back a million years later?

All these questions are perplexing.