SGU 2.18 "Epilogue" Episode Guide

Précis

Destiny reaches an abandoned modern civilization on a planet in the throes of seismic destruction. While the crew retrieves valuable data archives stored underground, Rush discovers a possible way to help the planet's survivors.

Guide | Transcript

MGM/Syfy.com Official Summary

With the Novans onboard, but their planet frosted over by some kind of natural disaster, Young and the crew feel compelled to explore to see if anything is salvageable - and to see if there's any hope for the Novans' survival. What they find is the digital equivalent of thousands of Alexandrian libraries in a bunker 30 stories underground, a treasure trove of information on the 2000-year-long development of the society built by the descendents of the crew of Destiny. Eli finds a way to compress the data and uplink it to Destiny, but they'll have to work fast - there's a black hole in the galaxy that is literally tearing the planet apart.

Some crew members gather supplies, like food and filtration substances for life support, while others pore over documents. Chloe and others find kino footage of Novus's firsts: she and Matt were Novus's first marriage, while Lisa and Greer named their firstborn son Dale, after Dr. Volker, the first crew member to die on Novus. Vanessa and Varro built a family together, as did Eli and Corporal Barnes. And tragically, TJ finds out that her counterpart died of Lou Gehrig's disease some years after the nation's founding. Her friends try to comfort her, saying that the alternate timeline could have been at fault, but she knows that to be false. She carries the disease now, and will die of it in a few years.

Yaozu, an elder member of the Novan party, tells TJ that his culture found a cure for her disease - undoubtedly, the information is somewhere in the database. But tremors have been rocking the bunker, due to the growing strength of the black hole, and the crew must evacuate, leaving with only a third of the information stored on this strange planet. They maneuver through the crumbling cement and scrape through to the shuttle just before gravitational forces devour the planet.

A review of the information they managed to salvage does not reveal the cure for Lou Gehrig's disease, and TJ faces her own mortality even as she tends to those, like Varro, who were badly injured in the escape from Novus. But she is comforted, in part, to know that her alternate self had a life full of love with Young and their two children. The society that was built by Camile, through the constitution; by Eli, through a profound and respected educational system; and countless others through love, perseverance, ingenuity and faith enabled the crew of Destiny - a group of rootless voyagers for so long - to build a new, imperfectly perfect, home.

Modified by Solutions.

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:

• August Schellenberg as Yaozu
• Mike Dopud as Varro
• Peter Kelamis as Adam Brody
• Patrick Gilmore as Dr. Dale Volker
• Jennifer Spence as Dr. Lisa Park
• Julia Benson as Lt. Vanessa James
• Reilly Dolman as Jason
• Katie Findlay as Ellie

Closing Credits:

• Leanne Adachi as Cpl. Barnes
• Shaughnessy Redden as Steven Young
• Lane Edwards as Matthew Wallace
• Shauna Johannesen as Sara Young

Production

• Written by Carl Binder
• Directed by Alex Chapple

Related Articles

Keywords

• Destiny
• Novus
• Time Travel

Other

• Stargate Universe: Season Two
• Previous: SGU 2.17 "Common Descent" Episode Guide
• Next: SGU 2.19 "Blockade" Episode Guide

Related Links

Official

• MGM Official Website: Search Results for "Epilogue"
• Syfy: 2.18 "Epilogue" Guide

Fan

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

Production Notes

• "The rest of the day was spent yakking about Carl’s first draft of Hope, episode #14, my outline for The Hunt, episode #16, and whether or not Radio, episode #18, still worked given the preceding episode." — Joseph Mallozzi, June 25, 2010
• "201: Intervention, 202: Aftermath, 203: Awakening, 204: Pathogen, 205: Cloverdale, 206: Trial and Error, 207: The Greater Good, 208: Malice, 209: Visitation, 210: Resurgence, 211: Deliverance, 212: Twin Destinies, 213: Alliances, 214: Hope, 215: Seizure, 216: The Hunt, 217: (Rob’s script), 218: (Carl’s script), 219: Blockade, 220: Gauntlet. Yep. All we need are a couple of titles." — Joseph Mallozzi, July 10, 2010
• Boris writes: "What happened to episode 218: Radio that you mentioned some days ago?" Answer: "That’s still under discussion." — Joseph Mallozzi, July 11, 2010
• "Carl, meanwhile, is multi-tasking – being on set for his episode, Hope, while simultaneously hammering out the story for his final script, Epilogue." — Joseph Mallozzi, September 2, 2010
• "Radio has been renamed to the far more appropriate Epilogue." — Joseph Mallozzi, September 3, 2010
• "And Carl has promised us a first draft of episode 18, Epilogue, tomorrow." — Joseph Mallozzi, September 27, 2010
• "Alex Chapple directing. Very, very big. Still one week left to shoot it. ... The episode is titled "Epilogue." Shoots 19, but will air 18 (out of 20 eps for this season). ... Not the finale. Episode 18 (in air order, but it's shooting 19th). We just finished day four of nine days shooting. ... The finale is the next episode to shoot. ... We usually do 8 day shoots per ep. Some are 7, some (like this one) are longer." — Carl Binder, Twitter, October 30, 2010
• "We watched Carl’s producer’s cut of #218, Epilogue this afternoon. This one gets a 3-hanky alert. You’ve been warned!" — Joseph Mallozzi, November 18, 2010

Further Reading

• Joseph Mallozzi's Blog
• Carl Binder's Twitter
• Solutions: Stargate Universe: 2.18 "Epilogue", April 25, 2011

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--DeeKayP 02:32, 11 July 2010 (UTC)