MvTrlrMsc said:
Well I hope 0 Neil & Jackson eventually finds out they are okay. Do they ? I really hate unresolved plot twists.
Jack and Daniel find out that Skaara and the other Abydonians ascended in the very same episode that they do ascend. Anubis destroys Abydos but they want to check and make sure there are no survivors, so the SGC tries to dial the gate. They fail a bunch of times but keep trying anyway. Then, miraculously, the gate connects. SG-1 goes through and finds everything exactly as it was, as if nothing happened to Abydos. Skaara shows up, explains things to O'Neill and the others, and then does the glowy ascended being thing. SG-1 turns to go back through the gate with the knowledge that their friends are still out there, looking out for them as ascended beings. Jack turns back to where the Abydonian settlement was but is surprised to find that it's completely vanished. In fact, everything has vanished except for the gate. The ascended beings' power basically recreated Abydos so Skaara and the others could give their message to SG-1, then they reverted Abydos into the barren husk that Anubis made it after they left.
Anyway, I thought "Origin" was kind of so-so. I liked a lot of things about it, namely:
- Daniel's "Daniel-ness" while trying to reason with the Doci. Man, that whole conversation took me back to seasons 2 and 3, when Daniel was much less of the warrior archetype he's become and much more of the naive genius he started out as.
- Gerak seems like a suitably antagonistic jerk. He should make a good foil for Teal'c and the "good" Jaffa that we know and love, like Bratac and Rak'nor.
- Mitchell going all-out southern on us and talking about his gran'ma with the Prior. Different humor from Jack's, obviously, but I found the country-boy humor pretty funny. I like that he and Teal'c finally began to bond a bit too.
- The whole Crusade angle. I liked the ending speech where the Doci says something along the lines of "we will gather an army and stomp the unbelievers!" to the administrator.
- Immolations are
always fun.
Of course, there were also things I wasn't so hot on. Mostly, it had to do with how flat the Ori came off. People on another board I frequent have been expressing concern that the Ori are just an upgraded version of the Goa'uld, and I hate to say it, but they may be right. The Ori seemed to just be a new spin on the false god archetype established by the Goa'uld. The Priors and Doci are pretty cool because of the whole religious fanaticism bent, but I don't know how long that'll stay fresh. I hope the Ori will be fleshed out more over the course of this season, but as of right now they're just another variant on a theme.
But hey, they're done with the exposition-filled 3-part opener now, the pieces are all in place, and the team is mostly back to being associated with each other, if not necessarily a true team just yet. I'm looking forward to the off-world stuff, more about the new villains, more about the Ancients, the return of Carter, the official re-forming of SG-1, more development for Mitchell and Landry, and other stuff. There's a lot of material for this season to potentially turn into something great.
P.S. - Anyone else find it odd that the preview for next week's episode featured a shot of Vala with the dialogue "she's back!"? Dude, she never left!
