Stargate Atlantis – Freaky Friday, Pegasus style

(Season 5, Episode 18 – “Identity”)

On paper, this episode really didn’t look good going in. I’ve already made it clear that I’m just not a Keller fan, and here comes a Keller story. On top of that, my other gripe as we get closer and closer to the big series finale has been that this is the time for big mythology episodes, and here comes a standalone. Fortunately, just as with baseball, the game isn’t played on paper. You have to play the games, and you have to watch the episodes. This one won me over, despite those early warnings. The Pegasus galaxy twist on Freaky Friday didn’t contain anything that plays into the bigger picture, but it was a fun time.

A lot of the credit for that goes to Dawn Olivieri’s Neeva. She’s yet another of those actors that look really familiar, but I couldn’t quite place. It turns out that guest spots on How I Met Your Mother and Veronica Mars were where I had seen her before. I really liked her as the unKeller (like the unCola, but hotter). And perhaps that’s part of why I liked this episode, because the unKeller is a lot more interesting than the real Keller.

The idea for the body swap was ultimately pretty simple. And given how many times we’ve seen ideas appropriated from SG-1, I was left thinking that I should have jumped to the ancient body switching tech sooner than I did. ‘Borrowing’ from SG-1 is often a mark against Atlantis, but I’m giving a pass here. The situation for Keller and Neeva was different enough from what we saw with Daniel and Vala that it works for me.

One thing I’m kind of torn on is the way they handled the body switch. If we had seen Jewel Staite playing Keller with Neeva in her head it would have been quite a different start to the show. With the Olivieri-Keller stabbing Zelenka (just a little), we were left asking “Who is that? And what the hell with the Zelenka stabbing?” If things had kicked off with the Staite-Keller stabbing Zelenka, it would have been a whole different set of questions. I would have also enjoyed getting to see Staite play Keller as more of a badass.

Unfortunately, everything that would have been good from the Keller angle, would have been worse with Neeva. With no frame of reference for the character, it would have been hard to convey just how changed she was with Keller in her melon. In that case, the Staite-Neeva was the better way to go.

For the rest of the team, there’s not a whole lot to say this week. It’s always good to see Beckett, and really, it’s time to just give him his old job back, don’t you think? Sheppard, Teyla, and Ronon were mostly along for the do as you expected ride. As was McKay, with the addition of the touching scene at the end, which didn’t really work for me. If you’ll excuse me dragging out the dead horse to kick a couple more times, it is again why I don’t like the relationship stuff in Atlantis. It didn’t seem to fit with “Brain Storm.” Like their relationship is going backwards.

At the end of the day though, it was a fun hour. I like Neeva, and considering that we didn’t see the body, I’m going to just assume that her well-honed fighting skills allowed her to slap Jannik’s gun to the side just in time. And I’ll just throw it out there, no reason that Neeva couldn’t show up in Universe. Olivieri seems to fit the bill for what they are looking for in casting the show.

Finally, two links and a video. There is an interesting interview with Dawn Olivieri over at Gate-Ship One. I got the link from CliqueClack reader Morjana’s blog, Subduction Leads To Orogeny, which is great. The interview is worth a look because it’s really not what you would expect to hear. There are drug dealers, the DEA attacking, and the bassoon. And for the video, it’s really not Stargate related, but crazy enough that I’m adding it anyway. It’s the trailer for Dozers, featuring Dawn Olivieri, an independent movie that tackles the tough topic of stress leading to zombies. Probably not coming to a theater near you, but I’ll be looking for the DVD.

Clacked by Brett Love
on Dec 13, 2008 @ 09:11 EST5EDT