Tag: project space above and beyond

Originally aired December 3, 1995

Lt. Nathan West arrives aboard the USS Saratoga alone and seriously wounded with the rest of the 58th arriving KIA in body bags. West is having problems come to terms with the death of all his friends but when he can’t stop thinking “stay with the dead,” West realizes that the 58th might not all be gone after all.

“Stay with the Dead” is another Space: Above and Beyond episode that was much stronger than I remembered. This episode is an interesting study on what some combat vets go through after the battle’s over as well as having some interesting elements of cutting back and forth between Nathan West in the hospital at present with a brain injury and flashing back to him on the battlefield with the rest of the 58th.

The 58th are sent to a planet called Keres to rescue the 61st who were sent their to rescue the 72nd. But it’s a Chig held planet and the enemy has no qualms about booby trapping wounded Marines to kill anyone trying to help the injured. The 58th gets into a position where it’s a matter of them saving themselves rather than the 61st.

Much of the episode is told via flashbacks, glimpses really, that West has of the fight with the Chigs. Everyone on the Saratoga is convinced that the 58th are dead (spoiler alert, we’re not yet half way through the season, they’re not) but West has his doubts. But are those doubts a symptom of his injury or real?

In “Stay with the Dead” we get a good look at medical treatment in 2063. This treatment is a bit more advanced than it was back in ’95 when the episode aired but not more advanced than it really is today 19 years later. We also see some 2063 treatment options doctors use to treat vets with PTSD. Their solution is pretty brutal; to wipe the memory of the soldier to a point before the trauma. And no trauma = no PTSD. I can’t imagine that without consent given by the soldier for this to be done, which West never gives, this would be something that could ethically be done yet that’s what almost happens to West.

The big issue I have with this episode, other than a few small things which are below in the “Goofs,” is realistically anyone with the kind of wounds that Nathan West suffered in battle would be shipped home for better treatment. In three days West goes from recovering from his wounds to the doctors ready to wipe his memory which is BLAZING fast for medical treatment. Front line medical facilities are generally in place to provide immediate treatment and to stabilize the patient before shipping them off to better facilities behind the lines. And West, with a brain injury who’s going through an extreme version of PSTD would almost surly eventually be on a ship headed back somewhere safe before the memory-wipe.

The twist with “Stay with the Dead” is that the living 58th had switched their uniforms with the dead 61st using htem to lure in the Chigs to an ambush. But things go wrong and much of the 58th were driven away during a counter attack leaving a wounded West to “stay with the dead.” And since the team from the Saratoga who recovered West also recovered the 61st wearing the uniforms of the 58th they think it’s the 58th who are dead and not the 61st. But at the last minute, just before the surgery, West remembers and is able to convince T.C. McQueen that the last hope the 58th have is with West having an unaltered memory.

I’m starting to come to the conclusion that while SAaB does have a season long story, mankind vs the Chigs, it’s probably a mistake to watch each episode with 21st century Lost/Sopranos/Battlestar Galactica/The Americans sensibilities where each episode is a direct chapter in this story. Watched alone without tying it directly to the previous or next episode, “Stay with the Dead” really works. We have a broken a battered West with a brain injury and an uncertain future. “Stay with the Dead” doesn’t really work taking into consideration that ALL of the 58th were suffering physical and mental injuries after the previous “Choice or Chance” so why were they on this mission in the first place or that the next episode, “The River of Stars,” starts with West back in the pilot’s seat and seemingly okay.

Alone, most of the SAaB episodes work but back in 1995 the series wasn’t to the point of having a cohesive season-long story.  Grade: B.

Stray observations:

Portable devices in 2063 have graphics akin to the Apple Newton/Palm Pilots from the 1990s than smart phones of today.

New members of the 58th include Lyndon, Tell and Shankowicz.

Del Gato is a member of the 61st.

The battle takes place around December 3, 2063, or 68 years after the episode aired.

Commander S. R. Kanellos is the Chief Medical Officer of the Saratoga.

“Spammed” is Marine jargon for being killed. Perhaps this is a reference to the dead being buried in space in metal coffins?

One of the members of the 61st killed was a Lt. named Kristen M. Burris who was born in 2041 and who’s service number was 926-42-37008.

Favorite dialog:

Nathan West: “Every time I close my eyes I hear this familiar voice over and over, ‘stay with the dead.'”

Dr. Kanellos: “Actually, it’s recommended by the VA.”
‘T.C.’ McQueen: “Then something must be wrong with it.”

Dr. Kanellos: “I’d like to believe would come along way since the 20th century.”

Hatfield: “Don’t come over here, I’m rigged!”

Hatfield: “You killed my buddies, you shot me in the gut but you can’t touch my soul.”

Vanessa Damphousse: “We can’t help him.”
Nathan West: “It don’t mean we shoot him.”

Cooper Hawkes (upon entering their bunk empty of their personal materials): “We were only got three days!”

Goofs:

Are there only one nurse and doctor aboard the Saratoga? The same nurse and Dr. Kanellos who treat West when he first arrives on the Saratoga are the two who treat him while he’s recovering in the hospital and later on and are the same who start the mind erasing procedure on him in surgery.

It seems a stretch that the 58th would switch uniforms with the 61st since I can’t imagine the Chigs would be that detail oriented when confirming the dead. And it’s even more of a stretch that no one aboard the Saratoga would notice that the occupants of said uniforms don’t match the 58th after they’re brought to the ship.

Originally aired November 26, 1995

Continuation of “Hostile Visit,” in this episode a captured 58th faces imprisonment, torture and execution at the hands of the Silicates who are working with the Chigs. But the Silicates made one mistake; they didn’t capture all of the 58th.

“Choice or Chance” is another great episode of SAaB after a few disappointing ones. In “Hostile Visit,” the 58th took a captured Chig bomber, attacked one of their planets and were shot down after delivering their payload. “Choice or Chance” opens with an escape pod from the wrecked bomber literally crashing into the planet with most of the 58th injured and Cooper Hawkes and TC McQueen being the only two who are able to escape into the wilds of Chig held territory.

Those who can’t get away are captured by the Silicates who are allied with and are running the Kazbek Penal Colony for the Chigs. There, it’s revealed that the Chigs have taken prisoners from their attacks on human colonies and Nathan West finally finds Kylen, his girlfriend missing since the pilot episode.

“Choice of Chance” deals with the POW experience soldiers sometimes face. Much of which here is culled from the experiences from the Vietnam War and especially experiences from, what’s all but a footnote now, the first war in Iraq. Paul Wang is separated form the other survivors and is tortured by a Silicate named Elroy. Like POW fliers of the first Iraq war who after being beaten had to give canned taped testimonials on how they thought the war was wrong, Paul must do the same at the hands of Elroy.

Played by  Doug Hutchison who’s had a career at playing bad guys from The X-Files to The Green Mile and even Lost to name a few, Elroy is terrifying as a soulless machine who literally has no limits when it comes to forcing Wang to do and say what he wants. Interestingly enough Elroy was originally a model of robot to act as a comedian with a catch phrase, “Your boy Elroy!” before the Silicates rebelled against the human race.

With the Silicates that you can kill them, as the 58th did to many of them in “Dark Side of the Sun” and Wang does to Elroy at the end of the episode. But since they’re machines with many models that all look alike much like cars you can meet virtually the same Silicate later on that looks and acts basically the same as ones you’ve met before but is a different robot off the production line. Elroy returns in a few episodes later in the season.

The other members of the 58th do have a bit of story from McQueen and Hawkes going “Rambo” on the Silicates, Shane Vansen and Vanessa Damphousse being held together and doing the old “we’ll pretend to fight so we can trick the guards to get out” routine and Nathan West escaping the prison along with captured colonist girlfriend Kylen who isn’t who he thinks she is. But what holds this episode together is the Wang/Elroy story.

Looking at this episode now what’s odd with it, but was a staple of similar shows of that same period, is that while the characters go through some substantial change in this episode — Wang is pushed past his limits with Elroy and is a different person when he returns to the Saratoga, Nathan West goes through turmoil to the point where he questions his whole reasoning behind why he’s a Marine — but by the next episode most of this growth and change is totally forgotten and we’re onto the next adventure.

Grade: A

Stray observations:

Paul Wang’s service number is 9483034828.

Elroy’s full name is “Elroy-L 1327.”

The Chigs nickname for humans is “Red Stink Creatures.”

McQueen was a POW during the AI War.

Favorite dialog:

‘T.C.’ McQueen: “It’s frightening how much pain an in-vitro…a human body can stand. You’d like to believe the body would break before the will. I held out three days. Once when they were doing stuff to me I heard screaming. It sounded far-off. I remember thinking, that poor bastard. What must he be going through? Then, when I came to, I realized the screams were coming from me.”

Elroy: “This war is being run by a bunch of Harvard white guys.”

Elroy: “Your boy Elroy!”

Paul Wang (About Elroy): “Hey eyes were like the living dead. They’ve got no souls.”

Goofs:

The Chig bomber is shot down by a missile and its escape pod falls from space and crashes into the ground and not one of the 58th are killed in all this mayhem?

How does Commodore Ross know that the place the 58th are being held is called the “Kazbek Penal Colony?” We only know it’s name from an on-screen title. I suppose this info could be common knowledge, but it seems like the Saratoga is pretty far behind the lines for Earth forces to know this sort of information.

The Chigs reveal another awesome piece of technology here — they’re able to perfectly duplicate a person and mimic their speech and mannerisms. To the point that one of the main characters is fooled by someone he’s known for years. It would seem that if the Chigs had this sort of tech they could quietly infiltrate our ranks and destroy us from within. But, unless memory fails me, much like the weapon in “The Enemy” this would never be seen again.

Originally aired November 19, 1995

During an attack a Chig bomber is disabled and captured by the crew of the Saratoga. The question becomes should be bomber be disassembled and studied to better learn the enemy’s technology, or should the 58th use it to fly a suicide mission to attack an enemy planet for a little payback?

The first of two parts, “Hostile Visit” is actually one of the better episodes of the SaAB series so far. Here, the Chigs attack the Saratoga but in the melee one of their ships is left behind with its crew dead but the bomber relatively intact. Which is something that hasn’t happened before in the SaAB universe. We’ve never captured a Chig whole anything and mostly undamaged so this bomber is a bit of a bonanza.

Enter Aerotec, the big meanie mysterious corporation that serves a conspiratorial function in SaAB that was trying to harness some of the then very popular The X-Files vibe. Aerotec wants to take the ship apart so they can reverse engineer the tech and eventually use it against the Chigs. But the Marines want to learn to fly the ship and take it back to where it came from and attack whatever’s there using the ship as a Trojan Horse right away.

Which is interesting logic from the Marines. Since the Chigs have never heard of the Trojan Horse story using the bomber to sneak in and attack a Chig base just might work.

The real meat of the episode here is of the 58th coming to terms with the idea that they might have just gotten elected to a mission that would almost certainly end with their deaths but that these deaths might have a bigger meaning in the overall war with the Chigs. The 58th like to think that they’re going on a Doolittle-like raid where US flew bombers off an aircraft carrier during the early days of WW2 to attack Tokyo. But as “Hostile Visit” progresses it becomes clear that while their mission might have some aspects of the Doolittle Raid, it’s more like the Japanese Kamikaze missions during the fading days of WW2 too.

There’s also a through-line here about the military and privatization. The private company Aerotec can fully study and develop new technologies from the bomber faster than the military can. But can a private corporation be expected to do what’s right in a situation where extinction is on the line or will they watch their bottom line instead?

The 58th does manage to fly the craft to the Chig planet, and before they’re shot down themselves they’re able to fire a missile at (what looks to be from above) a Chig city. But after all their effort and sacrifice the missile misses and falls just short of its target.

Which I find amazing. In just about any other show they payoff here would have been the crew of the 58th hitting the target then being shot down to continue the story. But when SaAB is at its best and is firing on all cylinders it’s able to subvert the viewer’s expectations and deliver something a bit more hard hitting.

Grade: B+

Stray observations:

They’re already setting up here (spoiler) that the Chigs originated from the Earth by having Vansen remark that it’s interesting that humans are able to interact with alien Chig technology as easily as they do.

“Geaked” — Means “get psyched” or “let’s go kick butt.” Maybe a replacement for “Gung Ho” in SaAB?

The Chig planet the 58th attacks is located in the “Cerus Region.”

The front-line between the Earth forces and the Chigs is called the “Von Bruan Line,” almost certainly named after Wernher von Braun, the father of modern space travel.

The Saratoga has a crew of about 15,000.

Favorite dialog:

(About the Chig bomber)
Crewman: “Is that thing dead?”
‘T.C.’ McQueen: “If it’s not, we are.”

Shane Vansen: “At least Armstrong had an idea what he’d find on the Moon.”

Cooper Hawkes: “I ain’t no kamikaze – ’cause I’m coming back.”

(About the organic insides of the Chig bomber)
Paul Wang: “I feel like I’m being digested.”

Originally aired November 12, 1995

The 58th are assigned to drop cargo on the planet Tartarus in order support Earth forces battling Chigs there. But after they’re hit by a weird Chig weapon that enhances fears and phobias the 58th find that their greatest enemy on Tartarus might be each other.

“The Enemy” caught me a little off guard. It’s an episode that I remember being one of the good ones, but looking back on it I think I was confusing “The Enemy” with parts of the later episode “Sugar Dirt.” Essentially, “The Enemy” is a take on the same sort of story that was handled so well in “Mutiny,” but dealt with a much less skilled hand in this episode.

Here, the 58th are inexplicably sent on a cargo-run — which begs the question; why send highly skilled fighter jocks to do a job any Marine could handle? The planet that’s being fought over is Tartarus that’s a hellish place of unrelenting heat, bad weather and an unbreathable atmosphere. After they’ve landed the 58th are confronted by a squad of other Marines engaged in a firefight with each other. And when the 58th goes to investigate the situation outside they’re hit by a weird light that turns out to be this secret Chig weapon.

Much of “The Enemy” deals with the 58th freaking out over the effects of the weapon, turning on one and other and finally figuring out that they have to work together to survive.

Which could have been interesting, except that at no point in any other episode did we ever get the sense that Wang was scared of bugs or Hawkes claustrophobic or Damphousse afraid of blood or Vansen scared of the dark or West worried that he’d never find his girl. And all these fears and phobias are multiplied many, many times by the weapon where the 58th are almost incapacitated by them.

Worst of all West once again ditches his friends to run off to try and find his girl like he did so annoyingly in “The Farthest Man from Home.” At least at the end of that episode we got the sense that he had learned his lesson about abandoning his friends, but apparently not.

The set used for the planet Tartarus isn’t up to snuff from what’s come before either. Tartarus looks manufactured from its flat floor to sculpted rocks. I’m guessing this was a redress of the Mars set used in the pilot episode which worked well there but doesn’t here. Why they didn’t use the real outdoors like with “The Dark Side of the Sun” or with the visually interesting “Ray Butts” is beyond me.

If “The Enemy” does have one redeeming value it’s of the character of Sgt. Jackson, a ghost soldier. One of the times West runs off he finds Jackson huddled in a trench in a scene that sent shivers down my spine. But other than that “The Enemy” is mostly forgettable, much like this highly effective Chig weapon was by the writers who would fail to use it again in any other future episode.

Grade: C+.

According to the Encyclopedia of Greek Mythology, Tartarus was an “…underworld zone of eternal torment, where the greatest sinners were punished for their transgressions.”

Stray observations:
The radio aboard the ISSCV is a “T-15-40 LOS Sattellite Radio.”

Shane Vansen’s full name is Shane Autumn Vansen and her service number is “5605103184.”

The Chigs use a kind of mine that when stepped on cuts the person in half. The Marines call them “Buzz Beams.”

Favorite dialog:
Sgt Jackson: “You’ve been here before. Anytime you wake in the dark in a cold sweat…moments before you were here.”

Paul Wang: “Ain’t physics a bitch?”

Nathan West: “So much for working together.”

Marine cadence: “Born in the woods. Trained by a bear. Double set of dog teeth. Triple coat of hair. M – mean as hell. A – all the time. R – rough and tough. I – in the mud. N – never quit. E – everyday. S – Semper Fi.”

Goofs: 
After the 58th’s ship is attacked on landing, in all the shooting the non-58th flight crew are killed in the cross-fire. Except shouldn’t the cockpit be MORE shielded than the cargo container the 58th are in that actively deflects bullets?

Maybe a goof: Wang calls Tatarus a “failed star.” Except in reality failed stars are gigantic, bigger than Jupiter that would have such high gravity the planet would smoosh a Marine flat. But maybe this is just scuttlebutt, not an actual fact in 2063 SAaB but something Wang heard from someone else?