Stargate Universe: Take a drink every time there’s a sex scene

This isn’t your older brother’s Stargate.

And for people who have been loyal to Stargate and Sci-Fi Channel and now SyFy, this isn’t our Stargate either.

What’s left is for us to decide if that’s a bad thing or not.

Through the first four episodes? Yeah. It’s a bad thing.

Now we get to the fifth episode of the series. Once again, the crew is facing imminent demise.

Only 15 people will fit aboard a shuttle that can leave the “Destiny” for another planet. The melodrama unfolds but becomes difficult — actually impossible — to believe when half of the main cast of the show is not picked in a lottery to decide those 15 shuttle-mates.

Oh my god, MacGyver, how can you possibly get out of this one??

Of course, they do. Everyone lives to die another day.

The ship was on a collision course with a sun. What happens? Instead of crashing into the sun and dying, the ship’s tiny remaining shield power protects it while the ship flies directly into the sun, which recharges the ship’s power. All is well.

Yay.

This whole experience — after more than a month of episodes — unites this crew of misfits. Now they’re all friends. Or are they? Another cliff hanger at the end of Episode 5: “Light.”

This month has taught us definitively that “Stargate Universe” is absolutely not “Stargate SG-1.” In the second episode of SG-1, the crew was already out visiting new planets and encountering new civilizations. SG-1 and Atlantis were shows about societies and groups of people. Universe is a show about a few people. The main problem so far is that I don’t give a damn about these people. There’s no depth to them, except maybe Dr. Rush (Robert Carlyle) who is easy to single out as the bad guy or just a pure Machiavellian.

But there’s too much build up and anticipation and not enough performance. Every episode of “Stargate Universe” is prom night with chevrons.

Thinking outside the box here, maybe they should have brought back Ben Browder for this one? Or Joe Flanigan? There’s a lot of inexperience on this show. It’s already written like The CW’s version of Stargate

I’m not saying that we need a new episodic adventure every week. SGU is obviously tied into this main story for survival far from Earth. I get it. All I’m saying is we don’t need an hour to realize that the crew isn’t going to die for the fifth time. Let’s explore a bit. Let’s have some adventures.

The show has two elements that can be used to make a few interspersed episodic adventures work: When the ship stops in a solar system, there’s a ticking clock until it will jump back into “faster than light speed.” The crew can disembark on an adventure. You can leave the ticking clock at the bottom of the screen and let then get into all sorts of mischief, trying to make sure they can get back in time.

You also have a love triangle emerging with Chloe (Elyse Levesque) and the muscular hero Matthew Scott and the lovable nerdy genius Eli. The Stargate overlords skirted (totally ignored) the love triangle in “Stargate Atlantis,” but now you can use it. There are more ways to make drama than “death at every possible turn.”

The show is still getting better ratings than “Dollhouse” though.