Episode of the Week: Young’s Worst Day Ever

AUGUST IS VIRTUAL REALITY MONTH!

Colonel Young sees a recurring vision of Destiny being attacked and destroyed by hostile aliens, causing him to fear he is losing his mind.

Our rewatch of favorite moments in Stargate history continues! Each month we’ll pick a theme, and feature a key episode every week. Join us by watching the episode this week, and then head to GateWorld Forum (or posting below) to talk about it!

In Another Life …

• The Stargate series often made use of a mainstay of modern science fiction storytelling: technology-based virtual reality.
• One way into a VR universe is with the virtual reality unit devised by the residents of P7J-989, in order to ride out an apocalyptic event on their world.
• Or, you could test-drive the Earth-modified version of the tech. But watch out for Kull warriors!
• The Ancients also developed VR technology …
• … and the deep-space vessel Destiny has a VR system built into the heart of the ship, including a chair interface that will put a user into a virtual Destiny environment.

“Trial and Error” Facts:

• An already emotionally despondent Colonel Young finds himself in a Groundhog Day scenario, as Destiny interfaces directly with his mind to force him to relive a no-win battle scenario time after time after time.
• Destiny‘s systems had already shown that the ship has a personality of its own, appearing to Nicholas Rush on the ship’s (still secret) bridge. This episode showed one of those rare times when the ship itself apparently took action toward its inhabitants, manipulating Young to bring him to a place where he is ready to move forward (like it had done with T.J. and her vision of her lost child in “Intervention”).
• With the exclusion of the “Part 1” and “Part 2” notations, “Trial and Error” is SGU‘s first multi-word episode title. The writers started the series with the intention of one-word titles, but gave up on the notion early in the show’s second season.
• It’s the last episode for Mark Burgess‘s Dr. Franklin, a scientist who vanished in the control interface chair only to resurface as a projection of the ship. Once Rush was in control of Destiny’s systems and Young was back in command, evidently the ship had no further use for Franklin’s image. Burgess appeared in a total of 14 episodes of SGU.

“Trial and Error” on GateWorld:

• Episode Guide
• Episode Transcript
• Fan Reviews
• Photo Gallery
• Screencap Gallery
• Discussion Forum

• GateWorld’s “Trial and Error” Podcast
• Stargate Universe Season Two Podcast
• Interview with Louis Ferreira (2010)
• Interview with Alaina Huffman (2010)
• Interview with Brian J. Smith (2010)
• Interview with David Blue (2010)

Download “Trial and Error” now from Amazon or iTunes!

Rewatch “Trial and Error” this week! Then post your comments below, or head over to the “Trial and Error” discussion forum and see what people were saying back in the day. What are your favorite moments?

Every month we’re featuring a new theme from Stargate’s 17 seasons. Watch the weekly episode with us join in the fun!