TV Review: Stargate Universe/Jamie's American Road Trip

Published on Tuesday 6 October 2009 18:53

Stargate Universe, Sky One Jamie's American Road Trip, Channel 4

A MONTH ago, Robert Carlyle told this paper that he couldn't survive on one independent, low-budget film here a year and had to take the Yankee dollar. It's hard to blame him, but this is becoming a luvvie drain, with our best talents going abroad. In Carlyle's case, he has gone to Vancouver to make Stargate Universe, in which his character, Dr Nicholas Rush, gets stuck on a spaceship "several billion light years from home".

The Stargate franchise has a convoluted history, first as a film then a long-running TV series and a slightly-less-long-running spin-off (Stargate Atlantis, which sank, ho ho). Unlike the optimistic liberalism of Star Trek, where the aliens were just bumpy headed friends that you hadn't met yet and, given time, even the Klingons or the Borg would end up with a seat on the bridge, Stargate SG-1 was firmly a product of Bush's America. Led by Richard Dean Anderson's gung-ho military colonel, they seemed to find new enemies wherever they went. Even after several major wars with aliens, in the Stargate universe it's all kept top secret from ordinary people by the military, with civilians usually cast as interfering bureaucrats out to cut budgets.

But this is a new era now and it's perhaps not fanciful to say that, over the past few years, the franchise has suffered as long wars of attrition with mysterious enemies began to seem less appealing.

If so, then perhaps Carlyle's character is the Obama of the new spin-off Stargate Universe, an intellectual who – after a series of events leads to a group being marooned on the alien ship – tries to take control, something bitterly opposed by the soldiers on board. They don't know where they're going, are divided among themselves and the economy – sorry, the life support systems – are failing. Can Dr Rush fix it? Yes, he can!

Heck, he even has a healthcare policy. Before the mission, he and Anderson's O'Neill – making a cameo appearance to launch the new show – recruit a young computer nerd who, in solving an online game, has shown that he has the right stuff to wisecrack with them full-time. If he agrees, they'll pay for his uninsured mother's medical care. "And if I don't?" he asks. "We'll beam you up to our spaceship," says O'Neill, dryly. He's not kidding: they do.

Carlyle is, obviously, a bit wasted in this. He has been given the obligatory tragic backstory of a dead wife, which has stopped him from being able to shave properly. And he's adopted a smoothed-out version of his accent, though claiming that his father "worked in the shipyards of Glasgow".

Carlyle is intriguingly creepy, perhaps with a secret agenda, and is certainly more interesting than the rest of the cast, who so far seem bland. Eli, the nerd and comic relief, stands out a little as a TV version of Jonah Hill from the movie Superbad.

Suspending disbelief about alien spaceships is one thing, but then the blustering senator who is also on board dies to save everyone. A politician sacrificing himself for the people? Pure science fiction.

Jamie's American Road Trip concluded with a visit to the Navajo reservation in Arizona, where he learned about their traditional philosophy ("it's all about a respect for nature and not taking the piss out of it") before trying to wean some teenagers off junk food. A bit patronising, but sincere, no doubt.