At a certain point in this week's episode of Stargate Universe, the show was a science fiction thriller, a political intrigue drama, a philosophical teleplay and a medical mystery program. It can't be overstated how much this convergence of genres shouldn't have worked. And yet, it kinda did. SGU has had its problems with multiple style confusion, most egregiously in the episode "Life", the majority of which took place in a series of washed-out Earth sets that had pretty much nothing to do with space ships, aliens or weird technology. Somehow, "Divided" made its many disparate genres flow together in a way that was believable enough for high science fiction.

At first I was baffled by the decision to cram so many ideas into one episode, but then I remembered that this is a series in the Stargate franchise. Even the original movie is something of a genre mash-up and SG-1 was nothing if not a game of mix and match. Stargate Universe has done a lot to reign in the excesses of its predecessors, but it hasn't left them behind entirely. Despite its post-Battlestar Galactica bleakness and drama, SGU is still very much a pulp program. At its best, it's like opening up a speculative anthology magazine. Some of the stories are good, some not so much, but the project as a whole tends to aim for entertainment first and foremost.

Our gaggle of genres begins with Chloe's nightmares replaying her abduction by the blue aliens introduced in last week's episode. According to Rush, these as yet unnamed baddies have been obsessed with Destiny since before humans discovered it and now they're using the people inside to track the ship. Rush reveals that, in addition to an alien shuttle secretly attached to Destiny's hull, there's also a tracking device surgically implanted in his chest from his own abduction. Of course, he waits for a civilian coup before he shares this bit of information.

SGU's debate about the imbalance between the military and civilian populations on Destiny is one of the best parts of the show, if only because the tone hasn't taken any sides. The soldiers are competent but frequently heavy-handed while the civilians are more capable than they're given credit and as often panicky as they are reasonable. Perhaps another week we'll get some kind of conclusion to this struggle, but for now it's all posturing and no real development.

Rush's surgery was the weakest element of "Divided", if only because TV medicine is always so hard to believe. Real surgery takes way too much time and is far too boring to make good drama, so most decent medical shows have it happening off camera. Not so with Rush. He gets to have his chest opened up by amateurs with nary a hair net in a ship quaking with battle. But hey, it made for some tension, so it kept the popcorn crunching.

Best Moment: It's not a moment exactly, but there was a general sense of increased confidence among the civilians, even after the coup was foiled, that made the mutiny plot actually feel like it added to the story.

Notes: It has been confirmed that SGU is getting a second season. I hope by then they improve the look of the blue aliens, if they're still around. Currently, they're like figures straight out of a decade-old video game.

Episode Rating: 4/5- Too ambitious by a half and occasionally outlandish, "Divided" barely managed to make its jumbled premise work. The cast handled themselves well and in general the show has eased into its embrace of long-arc plots rather smoothly.