New SGU 3/7

Okay just finished watching it on the sci-fi website and I have to agree that it was one of the better episodes they've made. It's a shame that this probably won't save the series.

The problem is that it took 1.5 years for them to start to show promise. They needed to be showing that promise oh somewhere in the first 3 - 5 episodes to really grab and keep an audience. Better if there was some hint of it sooner.

That was my point. If they had simply started letting them run into aliens and get kidnapped etc a bit earlier, and just let us assume that they brought enough food, water, the air scrubbers were ok since no breathing was on board, it would have worked out alot better. And those episode could have been filler for when the show was up and had an established audience already.

Well there's no way they could bring enough food and water or ammo for weapons but the ancients could have those supplies on the ship. No one would have blinked an eye at that.

There's a happy medium between SG-1's superheroics and the deeply, deeply flawed & 99% unlikable characters on the Destiny.


*SPOILERS*



As to the episode itself, I finally watched it. I don't know if it's me or what, but once they got that drone on-board I figured they would go for an IFF plot device. I mean, those drones have to have some way of identifying themselves from the targets.

And having the second command ship take over the drones from another ship would be bad in the sense that if someone gained control of the one C&C, they could gain control of the weapons of the other ships. Granted, a check along the lines of "IF command.codepresence = NULL THEN command.ship = new.commandIFF" wouldn't be too out of line, presuming they are using the same OS version in both command vessels.

Ah. I see you missed it. The Ancients DID put supplies and things on the ship. Go rewatch the first few episodes. Specifically the ones where they are trying to get the air recyclers working again. One of the characters specifically state that they should start opening the Ancient boxes to look for replacement parts. To which the leader dude says "NO! We don't know what's in them, let's just use what we have and try to find a world where we can get supplies."
Now since then there have been a very few allusions to the fact that those Ancient supplies are slowly being opened and catalogued - like when they found the superluminal drive repair bot. But for the most part, the writers have ignored then.
Which means that most viewers have forgotten them.

No the ancients didn't. Which is why they have constantly had to use the stargate to resupply food and water to supplement the garden they established on the ship. The writers have shifted the focus of the constant supply gathering to the background because they had to get on with telling the SGU story.

The only ancient tech I recall them finding that helped them with their lack of supplies was the recharging device. Oh and it's a good thing they brought "magic" guns that never run out of bullets or they'd have been defenseless a long time ago. Either that or they have found a chain of stores on the other side of the universe that sells them Earth made ammunition for discount prices.

It doesn't seem that way to me at all. They have actually used the guns very little. When they have used them they have pretty much stuck to single shot instead of the full autofire used by the other SG series.

You are forgeting that these people didn't have time to bring a lot of supplies with them. They just grabbed whatever they could carry from the pile of scientific equipment staged in the gate room. The ammo they had was whatever they had been given when the base was attacked.

Items like ammunition are always kept under lock and key in the bases armory until it needs to be issued. It is never under any circumstance left out where anyone can go thru it.

The most they would have been issued during the surprise attack would be half a dozen clips of ammo. And I'm basing this on my own personal experience in the military.

Now during a time of war in a war zone sure they would be carrying as much ammo as possible, but they weren't at war. They were on an uninhabited planet and they weren't expecting an attack from the Lucien Alliance.

Oh and if you look at the weapons in the show iand in the pics they aren't using the FN P90's that SG1 and Atlantis used that have 50 round clips, they have M-16's with 20 round magazines

Except that when they had the gate preping to open you can see them hauling in cases of everything they could get their hands on. I rather expect someone probably made a quick trip to armory and grabbed some cases of ammo. Look at the unholy mess of things being tossed through the gate while they had it open and I figure ammo was one of the things. Mind you probably not lots of ammo, but the likely have a few thousand rounds, and then there is what got brought for the invasion of the ship.

It's discussions like this that make me wish the show had a floorplan of the base in question. We know the base had weapons emplacements to fight off ground and air attacks so the armory wouldn't be deep inside the base where resupplying those weapons would be difficult. So it's much more likely that they had two armorys, or a main armory near the exterior and a weapons locker that was closer to the gate room.

Now the problem with a weapons locker is that while it may have a few thousand rounds of ammo, it isn't going to be all one caliber. The locker will carry several different types of weapons for "SG" teams as well as some ammo for the weapons so space will be limited. Everything from pistols, to SMG's, assault rifles, shotguns, SMAWS, M-60's, grenades, claymores, C-4, and LAWS and the ammo stored in the locker will be divided up between those weapons. So I figure they may have had 1-2 thousand rounds at most for any one type of weapon with the rest stored in the main armory.

Then theres the fact that during the first show they got trapped when the air bombardment collapsed the ceilings on some of the passageways. Which side of the collapse was the weapons locker on?

Now assuming the weapons locker was on the gate side and they sent someone to grab ammo (and assuming that they had an itemized list of what weapons everyone was carrying so they could grab the most ammo for the weapons they had on hand) it's possible they could grab a couple thousand rounds of ammo but divied up between the people with weapons that won't go very far or last very long even if they only fire single shots.



I'm now wondering just how much ammo they burned thru on that one planet where they got caught in the time travel loop.

Given the universe that has stargates plus beaming technology, it makes sense for military installations to have multiple weapons lockers around the base (especially near a known weak point - the stargate). When you may be forced to respond to a beam-in situation or an invasion via stargate (can't remember if that one was cut off from the main network or not), you can't be running back to a secured armory for reloads or arming.

Also given that the only people that should be on-base are those who have been cleared for off-planet work (or visitation), security in the sense of having everything under lock and key takes a backseat to faster response time, IMO.

The show isn't known for using common sense. If they were using common sense they'd have had a simple ramp built to go thru the gate instead of that bulky contraption with stairs at one end.

Instead of leaving piles of equipment on the floor they'd have had it loaded onto MALPs or ATV's for quick easy travel thru the gate.

Along with the equipment they'd have brought at least one Naqueda generator.

If they had done things that made sense they would have had a very good chance of getting all their supplies thru before the planet blew up.



As to the idea of having a buttload of ammo next to the gate room isn't a great idea for the very reasons you pointed out. With no iris/force field to protect the gate an invading force could quickly cut the base off from its supply of ammunition.

It's much safer and secure to have a main armory and then several small weapons lockers scattered around to arm defenders in case defenses are breached.

Edit: Nvm Dark One already mentioned it.

That's a yes and no. In a wartime setting sure all military personel would probably be armed and have at least a basic load of ammunition, but even tho this is offworld it's a rear echelon base and the attitude seems to be more on a peace time footing. I mean they had a senator bring his teenage daughter along for a tour of the place.