WRITTEN BY - Alan McCullough

DIRECTED BY - Andy Mikita

Stargate: Atlantis

“The Daedalus Variations”

Review by W. Joseph Thomas

2 out of 4 stars

Average-Minus

“I just suggested that two hours ago!”
“And naturally I dismissed it out of hand, but then I realized that -- including the original designer -- not one but two versions of myself have failed to make this thing work. I had to think not like me -- in fact, I had to think like the opposite of me, and it doesn't get much more opposite than you.”
“...I'll take that as a compliment.”

--Sheppard and McKay

Bottom Line: A one-off adventure story that delivers fun in measured doses.

And now, this year’s “parallel universe” episode.  Stargate absolutely loves doing these.  I’m not really sure what sort of sweetheart deal they’ve worked out with the Hugh Everett estate, but I tell you right now I want in.  The parallel universe episode is now as much an essential part of the Stargate formula as the time-travel “reset button” became to Star Trek (Voyager in particular).

Which isn’t to say that alternate realities (and/or timelines) are a bad thing.  They get used a lot because they’re enormously fun—same reason Star Trek does so much time travel, and Doctor Who spends so much time defending Earth (and, specifically, London.  Always London.  Never Manchester or Norwich or Glasgow).  It’s just plain cool to see “the road not taken,” to understand how the tiniest changes can cause a “ripple effect” that introduces us to a radically different-and usually desperate—reality.  Often, these episodes amount to a reflection on the old truism “there but for the grace of God”—although sometimes wily reviewers also use their titles to make bad puns.

There is a risk to episodes that focus on other universes, though, and it’s the same risk Star Trek runs in episodes that hit the reset button.  It’s very easy for the focus of the episode to fall on the alternate versions of our heroes, rather than on the heroes themselves.  When this happens, we finish the episode eyes wide because of the amazing spectacle (parallel universe episodes are always ace at creating spectacle), but ultimately unsatisfied, because our main characters, the core of our drama, haven’t been through anything particularly interesting.  I’m afraid this happened to Atlantis’s last alternate timeline episode, “The Last Man,” which aired just five episodes ago.  Very neat episode, lots of fun for the fans, but there’s a problem with any story where the actions of the main character are reduced to a framing story for a secondary story that’s going to get “unhappened” by the end of the hour.

I point all this out simply so I can say this: despite my fears going into it, “The Daedalus Variations” avoided all of those pitfalls, and I give it credit for that.  “Variations,” when you got down to the nuts and bolts of it, wasn’t a traditional alternate reality story.  You probably noticed that while you were watching.  It wasn’t about checking out “For Want of a Nail” or “Butterfly of Doom” scenarios on alternate Atlantises*; it was played basically as a straight adventure story that happened to use parallel universes as the vehicle to put the heroes in mortal danger.  Sure, there was a bit at the end where (spoilers!) the Sheppards from the two universes pseudo-meet, but, for the most part, “The Daedalus” was able to set its own course in this hour, even if the ship itself was stuck on autopilot.  I don’t know if I’d call it “fresh,” because, hey, since when are action-adventure romps with guns fresh, but I’ll praise this hour for avoiding all of the typical downfalls of alternate realty episodes.

But avoidance of cliché does not a good rating guarantee.  So let’s take a look.  What exactly does “The Daedalus Variations” bring to the table?

The story gets rolling quickly.  We’re still subjected, for the fourth time in a row, to the official Stargate: Atlantis Teyla’s Offscreen Baby Update.  I was going to profess my irritation with this tedious but insistently regular continuity shoutout, but I’ll save it for next week instead.  This particular Off-screen Baby Update was redeemed, because it was the setup for a scene the end of the episode which fueled my continuing Teyla/McKay ‘shipping hopes.

Then the Daedalus appears in orbit, seemingly from nowhere.  This is problematic, because (1) the Daedalus is supposedly at Earth, and (2) there aren’t any life-signs.  Sheppard takes his four-man team up to investigate.

And that’s that for the rest of the main cast.  Keller and Woolsey never appear in this episode, which is a bummer, because Woolsey’s had the vast majority of good moments so far this season, and Keller desperately needs more moments before this series ends, or she’s going to get forgotten (except by the Statie fan cult, of course).  So we get an hour about Sheppard, McKay, Teyla, and Ronon aboard a battlecruiser stuck on inter-dimensional autopilot (which reminds me: spoilers: the Daedalus is stuck on inter-dimensional autopilot).  They’re trying to get back home.

...and that’s about it, theme-wise.  “Trying to get home” isn’t really much of a theme, I admit, but I’m stretching here.  “The Daedalus Variations” does not have a lot of depth to it.  The team does encounter the dead bodies of their own otherworld counterparts, which had the potential to set up an existential dilemma about futility, but, after being used by the writers to make fun of McKay for a bit (always a worthy goal, I confess), it is sidestepped in favor of... well, writer Alan McCullough called this episode a “wild romp,” and that pretty well sums it up.  Any deeper theme was sacrificed in favor of more rompery.

I can hardly get my knickers in a twist about that.  I mean, from the impression I’ve gotten of the producers, “wild rompery” is pretty much the mission statement of the Stargate franchise.  They’re on a mission to create a whole lot of harmless fun and serve it to you, the viewer, on a nice platter of entertainment with grits and fresh cabbage on the side.  Stargate is, has been, must always be, a show with a strong element of pure escapism, or it will cease to be the show that first got me watching.

That being said, I’ve always appreciated Stargate Atlantis for having a certain philosophical depth to it that I never thought Stargate SG-1 had, at least not during the seasons that I watched (some of seven, then eight, nine, and ten).  Atlantis needed that added depth, because its team has never had the remarkable dynamic that carried SG-1 through ten seasons.  On Atlantis, one cannot get through an episode happily on the strength of the character interplay alone.  On SG-1, not only was that possible, but, thanks to the ridiculously strong presence of Richard Dean Anderson as Jack O’Neill and the deeply entertaining, heartfelt relationships (and resultant banter) between Teal’c, Carter, and Jackson, watching the episodes for the humor and the warmth instead of plot and theme became the default, not the exception.

In my opinion, this has never been the case on Atlantis.  I enjoy each of the characters singly, and, for the most part, each to a great extent.  But, as a team, I’ve never felt they’ve had anything approaching the SG-1 dynamic.  Sheppard and Ronon is fun, it’s well-written, it often makes me laugh, but it doesn’t rival the waves of unspoken irony that emanated from both actors in a good Teal’c-Jack scene.  This is one reason that, in my opinion, Atlantis has become an ensemble show in a way that SG-1 never was. 

Unfortunately, it’s also why I spent a goodly bit of this particular episode thinking about the team dynamics of SG-1 versus Atlantis rather actually than watching the episode.  As I think I’ve made clear by now, there is not a whole lot of depth to this episode, and there’s not a lot new about the characters worth commenting on.  As for the plot, I’d rather not spoil you on the one thing that will (mostly) hold your attention in this episode.

Instead, I’ll sidetrack to production.  Visually, this is a marvelous hour, and we get to see some pretty neat things on our TV screens.  That aspect of alternate universe episodes does not disappoint.  In addition to the beautiful and obviously expensive CGI, we’re also treated to a new alien lifeform.  I haven’t seen such a neat design for a one-off humanoid alien race since Star Trek went off the air.  In other news, Ronon, falling victim to The Worf Effect (the tendency of newly-introduced threats to demonstrate their high badass quotients by immediately attacking Worf—or his nearest equivalent—and winning*), loses this week’s Man Contest again, falling to an embarrassing Sheppard 9, Ronon 4 so far this season.  Come on, man, get it together.

Overall, this episode is a piece of adventure fic, and we know all the emotional contours of the show early.  There is a crisis, then a long process of incremental resolution. McKay panics and makes me laugh.  Teyla demonstrates latent talents.  Sheppard and Ronon mock each other and themselves and especially Rodney.

Yeah, pretty standard fare.

Next Week: Weir’s back, but apparently they couldn’t convince Tori Higginson to play her.  Might have something to do with the brutal murder of her character, hmm?

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