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Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Thinking Beyond Mere Survival

This is Steven Petrick Posting.

If you were the colonel on the Destiny in Star Gate: Universe, what would you have done?

While it was obvious from the start that the Destiny was not going to be destroyed by the star, if you were the colonel and not aware of that, how would you have handled the situation?

There are a lot of things to think of when you are trying to put 17 people out of about 80 on the shuttle. Too many of them were overlooked.

For example, the people you are sending are going to be totally on their own. Is it enough that they might live long enough to die of old age? Seriously, the colonel needed to do the best he could to have as diverse a genetic pool among the people on the shuttle that he could. Yes, the pilot and the medic were Gimmes. But he needed to look at other skills among the people available before resorting to a lottery. And suppose the lottery had filled the shuttle with 16 men and one woman? They would have all died lingering deaths of old age at the very best. The reality is that he needed to send women and men, and he needed to make sure that they understood that survival was going to require births. With as much of a mixture genetic codes as possible. Yes, monogamy was going to have to be dispensed with.

He needed to be trying to establish a colony. It ultimately may not have thrived, but given the circumstances (there is no chance the people on the shuttle are ever going to be rescued if Destiny is destroyed), the viability of what he sent out had to take absolute precedence.

Otherwise there was simply no point.

There are a lot of other factors (getting control of the guns before the lottery because those who lost might use the guns to try to change the result, for example).

But the writers seriously short-changed the viewers by not fully discussing what the colonel needed to do.