SGU 1.13 "Faith" Episode Guide

Précis

Destiny stops near an uncharted star orbited by one planet, this time without activating the countdown clock. Lt. Scott leads a small team to the planet's surface, where the explorers are amazed to find an abundance of food, water and sunshine.

Guide | Transcript

MGM/Syfy.com Official Summary

Still recovering and weak from his recent surgery, Rush insists on working to repair damage and find out more about the ship. As he and the scientific team are working, the ship drops out of FTL—but no Stargate is detected nearby. Rush gets reports that a star is visible, but the crew is stumped as to why no Ancient seeding ships marked its presence.

Soon Rush discovers an Earth-like planet in the star's range. The crew is excited, but this is a further puzzle: Given the star's age, the planet should be a molten ball of rock. Officers and scientists make a recon trip to the planet and discover breathable air, drinkable water, plentiful food and no apparent predators. As they conduct a flyover on their way back to Destiny, however, they discover a mysterious, giant obelisk.

Rush deduces that an alien race, far more advanced than even the Ancients, must have created both the star and the planet. Because of the gravitational pull of the star, Destiny is on an elliptical course around the planet, giving the ship two windows during which a shuttle can reach the planet and make it back to Destiny. Rush and Young, attempting to work together after the recent coup, devise a plan to send a shuttle of military and civilian team members to the planet to gather resources during the month in between those two windows, then return to Destiny with water and food. Eli cautions against this plan—the aliens who ostensibly built the planet may be hostile—but Young contends that it's worth the risk.

The mild conditions and natural beauty of the planet—and relief from the drudgery of Destiny—soon creates a feeling of comraderie and joy, and some team members, including Dr. Caine, start to think that Destiny may have been guided to this Earth-like planet by a higher power. As TJ and Chloe are researching flora on the planet, Chloe makes the startling discovery: TJ is pregnant. Although TJ wants to keep quiet about it, she begins to think of raising her child on the planet.

Conditions on Destiny continue to be grim: Brody and Dr. Park have had limited success in attempting to repair a shuttle, and other crew members, while exploring new areas of the ship, discover strange devices in one of the bays—but have no time to investigate what they might be used for.

Chloe wonders if Dr. Caine is right about the planet being their true "destiny." Just as she rhapsodizes on the possibility of their being meant to be there, she and Scott notice a blue beam emanating from the obelisk. Destiny is almost back in range, and the planet crew prepare, sadly, to go "home."

Dr. Caine makes the case that the aliens will be benevolent, and maybe even help them get back to Earth, and TJ tells Scott that she's decided to stay. Scott tries to persuade her otherwise, but she reveals her pregnancy to him, and he quickly surmises that Young is the father. With this news, Scott reports to Young that a group, including himself, want to stay on the planet, but Young refuses. He offers to leave one of the shuttles for the defectors, contingent that all military return to the ship. Under these conditions, Scott, TJ and Chloe are compelled to return, but carry their doubts about the planet's meaning back with them.

Cast

Opening Credits:

• Robert Carlyle as Dr. Nicholas Rush
• Louis Ferreira as Col. Everett Young
• Brian J. Smith as 1st Lt. Matthew Scott
• Elyse Levesque as Chloe Armstrong
• David Blue as Eli Wallace
• Alaina Huffman as 1st Lt. Tamara Johansen
• Jamil Walker Smith as MSgt. Ronald Greer
• and Ming-Na as Camile Wray

Guest Starring:

• Peter Kelamis as Adam Brody
• Tygh Runyan as Dr. Caine
• Jennifer Spence as Dr. Lisa Park
• Patrick Gilmore as Dr. Dale Volker
• Vincent Gale as Civilian Scientist

Closing Credits:

• Julia Benson as Lt. Vanessa James
• Darcy Laurie as Airman Dunning

Production

• Written by Denis McGrath
• Directed by William Waring

Related Articles

Keywords

• Ancient Shuttle
• Ancients
• Destiny

Other

• Stargate Universe: Season One
• Previous: SGU 1.12 "Divided" Episode Guide
• Next: SGU 1.14 "Human" Episode Guide

Related Links

Official

• MGM Official Website: Search Results for "Faith"
• Syfy: 1.13 "Faith" Guide

Fan

• Solutions News and Spoiler Blog
• Solutions at LJ: Universe Tagged Entries
• Solutions Universe Forum

Production Notes

• "Tuesday was a quietly productive day spent helping to break a story (a possible episode #12) with a new freelancer. This one promises to be another interesting studying conflict and character." — Joseph Mallozzi (January 20, 2009)
• "Well, back in the office today where we spun what will be episode #7. It made sense for it to follow the events of Earth, so we moved it up and shifted the other episodes. For those of you worried, fear not. The mid-season two-parter will still fall in the mid-season two-parter slot." — Joseph Mallozzi (January 30, 2009)
• "...freelance script and episode #12 is shaping up to be a very interesting dilemma story." — Joseph Mallozzi (February 12, 2009)
• "Carl Binder will be assuming revision duties on Faith, episode 12." — Joseph Mallozzi (April 23, 2009)
• PG15 writes: "1. Did the same freelancer write Faith and #14, or were they written by different people? 2. Will you be able to tell us the Freelancer’s names eventually?" Answers: "1. Nope. Different freelancers. 2. Yep." — Joseph Mallozzi (June 2, 2009)
• "Today, we set aside an hour to talk stories – specifically, the back half of SGU’s first season. Okay, okay. I think that, this time, I’ve got it right. Space shoots next in the #11 slot, followed by Divided in the #12 slot, and then Faith in the #13 slot (Carl promises to have his pass out before week’s end)." — Joseph Mallozzi (June 3, 2009)
• "Carl was on a location scout to Widgen Park all morning as he and director Will Waring continue prep on Faith. This will mark our first return to Widgen since Atlantis’s fourth season when we shot Harmony there. I was on hand for most of the festivities on that one – also, coincidentally, with Will. It’s about an hour’s drive there and another hour’s drive back, through winding back country roads surrounded by dense forest. “Yep,”I remember telling Larry, my driver “This is great corpse-dumping territory.” I believe that was the same day a bear meandered across our path, oblivious to us, before disappearing into the trees. Come to think of it, years earlier, when SG-1 shot in the same location, a bear sighting kept actor Chris Judge holed-up in his trailer, much to the delight of his fellow castmates. Someone please remind me to warn Carl to pack his bear spray or, at the very least, give him some worst case scenario advice. Now I forget. If he runs into a bear, should he be playing dead or rubbing its belly to calm it? Also, I seem to remember someone telling me that you should run AT a bear, making as much noise as possible, because they are easily spooked. Does that sound right? Any bear experts out there?" — Joseph Mallozzi (June 29, 2009) Entry also a picture of the designs for Scott's quarters.
• Image of designs for Destiny shower room in Joseph Mallozzi's weblog (June 30, 2009)
• "For the most part people seem to be heading back to their city of origin. Then Comic Con. Then 'Faith' at the end of the month." — Patrick Gilmore, Twitter (July 1, 2009)
• "First day on 'Faith' done. Quick scene with Bobby & @DavidBlue. So hot! ...the weather. And the scene, why not. No sign of @ivonbartok. ;)" — Patrick Gilmore, Twitter (July 27, 2009)
• "Well, second day back at work and no work completed. On the script front that is. Production has, however, started on Faith (Episode 13)..." — Joseph Mallozzi (July 28, 2009)
• "We’re presently shooting Faith, episode #13." — Joseph Mallozzi (July 29, 2009)
• "I think we have an ability to reach a huge audience and take these questions that we could experience; race, religion, cultural boundaries and it won't offend anybody because we're talking about aliens and we're not talking about specific religions. We do have an episode coming up called Faith and it explores the idea of faith and possibly the Ancients as saviours. We're not talking about a Messiah of one particular religion, we're speaking about the idea of believing that something greater than us exists and I think that's a really great topic to talk about and not to go over to war over. So yeah, it's absolutely my favourite part of the genre. We are military based as well and we've got to watch yourself in that regard, but I think it's safe to say that you can sort of challenge that and I think we see a little bit of that too, again in Faith when some of us are like "what are we doing?" you know, "why are we here?" and you kind of go back and forth, you then have the realisation that we need a ruler we can't have a majority vote, it's not going to work that way, but does it? And I think that transcends to a lot of the issues that we have going on in the world right now." — Alaina Huffman, Moviehole interview (August 2009)
• "We recently wrapped an episode called Faith and I thought it played very well, and the location we worked at was breathtaking." — Brian J. Smith in Mallozzi's Weblog (October 1, 2009)
• "A lot of wonderful Tamara moments throughout the back half, but Faith, episode 13, is the episode that fans of the character (and fans of actress Alaina Huffman in particular) should really look forward to." — Joseph Mallozzi (January 27, 2010)
• "Faith, episode 13, in particular offers us a better understanding of [Lt. Matthew Scott's] selflessness and willingness to self-sacrifice for the greater good." — Joseph Mallozzi (January 27, 2010)
• "As several of you pointed out, the show is called “Stargate: Universe” so you want to see us make use of the gate. Well, some interesting gate use upcoming in the back half of season one and into season two which goes hand in hand with another fan request: “More aliens!” and “More alien worlds!” Done and done, in the case of the former sooner, and the in the case of the latter just a tad later. Space, Faith, Lost, and Sabotage come to mind." — Joseph Mallozzi (January 28, 2010)

Further Reading

• Joseph Mallozzi's Blog
• Moviehole: Stargate Universe Cast, August 2009.
• Patrick Gilmore's Twitter

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--DeeKayP 17:02, 24 April 2009 (UTC)