Remember when science fiction used to be, ya know, about fictional things with a scientific component? Yeah, sometimes I really miss those days. Given a less even-handed writing team a 21st century sci-fi show can quickly lose its footing and become little more than a soap opera that happens to take place in outer space or on an alien planet. It's obvious at this point that Stargate Universe wants to be the new Battlestar Galactica and it's equally obvious that neither the cast nor the writers have the chops to fill those gigantic, award-winning shoes. What matters now is how badly the show stumbles, or at best how gracefully it accepts that it's just a genre show on a cable network.

Everything even remotely science fiction-y that happened in "Life" could have happened in any episode between the beginning of the series and now. This is a problem. SGU, unlike the original SG-1, can't really do the purely episodic kind of storytelling. No, SGU threw its hat in the plot arc convention from day one when it based its premise around discovering new areas of Destiny and gradually making life more pleasant for its reluctant inhabitants. "Life" barely brushed up against a sense of continuity, especially considering how last week's episode had all the mannerisms of a cliffhanger. Sure, I can accept that Lt. Scott's message got through to the past and everything worked out all hunky dory, but I'd like at least a brief bit of dialog to confirm that something happened, like, "Gee, it sure is nice that we got the antidote for our disease on that planet. The time travel stuff was pretty weird, huh?"

But that gripe is minor compared to all the unnecessary drama in tonight's episode. I wouldn't mind each of these domestic plots (Camille's Canada-wife, Scott's secret kid, Young and Telford's love triangle) if they stood alone in three separate episodes, but all at once is too much. Contrary to the wrong ideas of modern sci-fi writers, people don't watch these shows for the social angst of the characters. Troubled protagonists are just properly seasoned, but they're on a science fiction program; If they don't fight some aliens or fly a space ship through a star at least once an episode, I don't care how tortured their home lives are. As much as I wish I didn't have to keep harping on this, we only tolerated the emotional conflicts in BSG because half of them somehow involved killer robots and shiny dogfights around glowing nebulae.

The actual plot-pertinent parts of "Life" involve the discovery of an Ancient neural interface chair, a primitive version of the one Jack O'Neil used in one of the more visually impressive episodes of SG-1. Dr. Rush wants to put a test subject in the chair to potentially obtain new information and Col. Young won't allow the risk. That's it. That's the debate. End of science fiction segment.

Oh, and the psych review plot? That's what we call "stupid territory". The whole therapy thing has become a TV cliche and it was only made worse by the fact that the character doing the evaluations wasn't even close to having any real training as a psychologist.

Best Moment: I'd like to say it was when they found the chair, but nothing really happened then. So, I dunno, getting to know the hydroponic botanist?

Notes: Maybe I'm just an ethics nerd, but how are these people getting away with using volunteer bodies so carelessly on their visits to Earth? It's just plain creepy to get somebody else's body fall-down drunk, stuffed full of food without an allergy record or, ya know, sexed up by a stranger who may or may not match the volunteer's preferences.

Episode Rating: 2/5- If SGU is going to continue to make a positive impression on the only recently respectable genre of science fiction, it's going to have to stick to its roots and stop screwing around with sub-network drama. Tell me a story, just make it more fantastical than the stuff I can find elsewhere.