I want to get this review through without being sidelined, so I'm gonna just write this up before reading the other posts. Some of my thoughts might already be touched on or resolved. (I'll read through it after I post)
In summation, this was just...a really irritating bad episode. It wasn't 'bad' like Earth and Life where I wondered WTF show I was watching, it had a quality I could almost see in SGA/SG-1...on a really bad episode, but still.
Anyway. WHAT was the point of this episode? Other than to get the shuttle which they could do without the people (and I don't know yet that it won't degrade). To upset TJ? To give Destiny more corpses? To say "HAH! IN YOUR FACE! That's what you get for having FAITH!"? To blatantly rip off more of BSG? (Oh look at this planet to settle on, it's perfect and lovely OH NO WAIT)
Mind, I was never a big fan of the people who chose to stay behind in the first place, s1 was too early to give up on going home already, so I couldn't believe why they were staying at all. And I was annoyed we didn't get answers--but we still haven't gotten them! We actually got more with TJ's dream than this.
Furthermore, it made no sense. These idiots couldn't manage to find anything for shelter against the cold on an entire planet before or during Winter? With a space shuttle that presumably only broke during the Winter (And highly skilled scientist/engineer types couldn't find a single way to make its heater work at all?)
Then the aliens bring them back to life and restore their shuttle...but only for a little bit, and as the regain their memories of their deaths, they don't just die, they relive their death. That makes no sense unless their bodies were in some sort of temporal loop...and why do that when you could just restore them?
Now. Obviously what Rush was getting at was right: The 'aliens' didn't want to fix them. Because they're epic douches apparently, but never mind that. The only answer--the only one--is that they chose to bring them back briefly, perhaps so they could say goodbyes or so that they weren't 'dying alone' or something.
Now, they could have been done with their experiment and sent them back to their perceived 'home' without the care to actually heal them permanently (which is actually going to take less tech than temporarily), but then when the effect wore off, they should just have dropped dead, possibly of their affliction, not suffer through it progressively. The girl, for instance should have just wham hit the ground with a fractured skull and died, not gone into convulsions. (I suppose they were 'slowly reverting' but that doesn't explain their varied time tables of afflictions)
So. Why is the last guy implied to be dead when the kino footage clearly shows him still alive--or at least recoverably alive--when they jumped. If his body reverted he'd be suffering severe hypothermia, but he wouldn't be dead.
This again goes back to the problem I had with Time. Eli (and a little bit of Rush) just gets his panties WAY UP in a bunch over these aliens and the possibility that they might be 'gods'. Not because almost every other villain in the franchise pretended to be gods. Because it seems to offend him. Or possibly freak him out like in Time.
Hello. People. The Ancients ascended. This is fact. It is also fact that their abilities--through zero technology--can appear godlike. Especially if they have a cult of followers somewhere (like oh, a small colony of people on a planet, maybe? Or many small colonies on many planets?) THIS IS ABSURDLY WELL DOCUMENTED. Eli SAW all of Daniel's intro videos.
WHY is he having so much trouble accepting the possibility of ascended beings, and why isn't anyone smacking him over it?
...Yeah. That's a bit of a peeve for me, since it's more pervasive and consistent in the Stargate Franchise than the Stargate. That aliens are capable of Eden and of transporting people across galaxies and of restoring shuttles and reviving people is not even the slightest bit in question. The question they should have asked from the start was why.
Unless these aliens turn out to be the overarching villains--in which case I don't know how they'll deal with them, or why the aliens gave them back a shuttle better than their entire ship--this episode's main plot was. absolutely. pointless.
And...honestly. This isn't Doctor Who, but there's still an element of hope integral to Stargate. To go back and smash Eden and kill all of the people who took a leap of faith pointlessly without even getting one tiny little answer at all is just to smash hope because they can. It does not sit right with me at all.
Moving on to the B plot!
There...wasn't really one. There was investigating the shiny, well-lit, better equipped shuttle that will once again render the Gate obsolete as long as it exists, and there was Chloe.
Not only would I actually cheer if she became a fish alien and gained a personality, or became one and then died, but I don't believe it. At all. She'll end up a hybrid or a fish alien with all her knowledge, or--most likely--she will just get a miracle cure at the last second and Scott will be like "Yay! ILU" an Greer will be like "Yay! I like you!" and Eli will be like "Yay! Hug me? Please?" and Young will be like "Yay! I feel unexplained parental feelings toward you because I'm supposed to be Poppa Bear and everyone loves you, Chloe, so I do, too."
She's supposed to be the eye candy and what humanizes Scott and Greer and...oh, right. The whole crew. Everyone is supposed to love her, so if they kill her it will be for shock value, not with an actual story arc leading up to it.
THUS.
All scenes dealing with eventually killing Chloe are pointless, and all the scenes with the survivors NOT dealing with the shuttle are pointless.
This is essentially a two minute episode.
One last note: Why did none of them start praying until Cane was the last man alive in a ship of ghosts, nearly dead from the cold? And why did no one investigate the obelisk? Seriously?
So on one hand, I'm not 'meh I don't care', but on the other...the reaction I have is one of irritation and in some places anger.
.