portals

Ok, first of all, I think I already have a bit of a girl-crush on Sgt. Vanessa James. I mean, for cripes sakes, look at her. And I love that she told the guys she could whup their ass. You do not want to cross her.

Four episodes into Stargate Universe, and I'm starting to get hooked. I like that this week's episode, "Darkness," took place mainly on the ancient ship Destiny, which looks ultra-cool flying through space. The whole thing has a Firefly feel to it.

I'm also starting to get a better feel for the storyline and characters, thanks in part to their little bio recordings engineered by Eli. Most of the crew are in their 20s or 30s, and most would rather be anywhere but there.

I appreciated them trying to figure out the ship's systems -- waste, water, showers, etc. As some of the commenters have said, that probably would have been first on the list of things to do three episodes ago, even if Dr. Rush was having some power issues of his own.

I once again checked out Stargate Universe this week. Apparently, the first two episodes hooked me enough to watch this one, even though I'm still a little in the dark on the whole portal jumping / chevron stuff.

So I'll let you veterans talk about all the inter-dimensional Stargate stuff, and will just point out a few things I liked about this episode, part three of "Air." For one thing, I'm really liking the kid, Eli Wallace. He sort of grounds the series and keeps it from being completely in a sci-fi universe where none of us could ever imagine going, because that's exactly what's happening to him.

I'll preface this by saying that while I'm familiar with the Stargate franchise and recently watched the 1994 movie starring Kurt Russell and James Spader, I've only seen an episode here and there of the various TV shows. So this is my newbie look at Stargate Universe, which premiered Friday night. (And, uh, there really isn't that much on Friday night, and it happened to be on Charter's video on demand, so I checked it out after the premiere aired.)

I'll say right off the bat that it seems a little cheesy, so I'm wondering how it compares to the previous Stargate incarnations. The characters seem a little cliche:

• the blowhard politician with health problems (and his caring daughter), which resulted in the episode's most heartbreaking moment
• the nerdy guy with long hair and a sad past
• the nerdy kid who ends up being transported to a spaceship and helping the crew with important stuff
• the tough-guy military people with guns and crew cuts
• the gorgeous female crew members