Stargate Universe: The Hunt
Greer and Varro must team up when T.J. is captured by an alien creature.
“The Hunt” features a number of small stories going on amongst the crew and allows the audience a chance to see some interactions between characters we hardly ever get to see.
While visiting a planet Greer hesitates before taking a shot against an attacking creature and several members of the team are injured. They return to Destiny missing T.J. and another crew member who were captured by the creature and taken away. Young returns to search for them with another team but their tracking abilities are limited until Varro suggests he should be allowed to help. Another attack from the creature leaves the team decimated with Young forced to go back to Destiny and all of the remaining Lucian Alliance crew members besides Varro left dead. Varro and Greer continue on until T.J. radios them and passes on her location. When the creature returns to the cave it left them in it sees they have built a fire and obviously possess intelligence. It allows Greer to leave with its two captives and return to Destiny.
This episode may be my favourite of the second half of the season so far. All of the characters have little moments throughout the episode whether they are involved in T.J.’s rescue or whether they are being played by Rush into testing the stasis pods or even if they are convincing Volker that he should tell Park how he feels. There’s a lot going on but the episode is well paced and keeps everything moving smoothly.
On Destiny Eli and Brody are becoming frustrated with Rush’s insistence on caution in exploring unknown parts of the ships. After they discover a stasis chamber Rush sends them off to run diagnostics knowing they’ll be unable to resist going back. Eli and Brody return to the stasis chamber and accidentally lock Brody inside. Eli calls in Chloe but before she can do anything Brody is released again and everything returns to normal. Of course on the bridge Rush is the one really controlling the mysterious occurrences. He gets a chance to study the stasis chamber while giving Eli and Brody the chance to feel like they’ve made a decision about what to investigate on their own without Rush’s orders.
Meanwhile Chloe beings to notice that Volker may have feelings for Park after she is injured and he comes by to visit. She talks to him about it but he denies there is anything going on. Chloe drops the subject but Volker isn’t the most subtle and Rush begins to pick up on the signs as well and begins to drop hints that he’s more of the “best friend type”. Volker tries to prove him wrong but he finds Park with Greer instead. Though this storyline was a nice little look at Volker it had me a bit confused about the Park and Greer relationship. Quite a while back it seemed they were obviously together and everyone seemed to know about it but more recently they’ve been more distant. Even when they’ve had scenes together they’ve barely spoken and so I wasn’t sure what the nature of their relationship anymore. Apparently I wasn’t the only one confused because Volker didn’t seem to realize anything was still going on with Park and Greer either.
In the main storyline the crew hunts for T.J. and another crew member on an alien planet. The Lucian Alliance crew members turn out to be very useful in tracking where T.J. and the creature that took her went perhaps even too useful for their own good. All of the Lucian Alliance members except Varro meet their end when the creature attacks them for getting too far into its territory. Varro and Greer make a good team though and they manage to find T.J. with the help of a radio conversation with her. In the end though none of them would have stood much of a chance against the creature had it not decided that it was against eating another intelligent species and allowed them to go. The show is obviously pushing the relationship between Varro and T.J. a little further with this episode and I’m pleased to see they didn’t go the love triangle route. I worried early on that Young would be upset by the increasing intimacy of Varro and T.J. even though he’s shown no real interest in her for the entire run of the series. Obviously there was a time when they were together as he was the father of her baby but since they’ve been on Destiny, nothing has ever come of it. I was glad to see Young recognized this as well and accepted her decision to move on without fighting it. He’s obviously grown quite a bit as a person since the beginning of “Stargate Universe”.
“The Hunt” manages to incorporate a large amount of character development for a wide range of characters into one episode without losing the action and excitement of the primary storyline. Proof that the two can in fact exist together.
Andrea
