This episode, “Pain,” begins with a vocally explicit sex scene, between Lt. James and Matthew. He cuts out early, saying he can’t go on. “You say that, now that you're done,” James responds. Slam! Then she follows that figurative slam with a literal slam, on the back of his head, with a lamp. He’s dead. At this point, it’s pretty clear we’re watching some sort of dream sequence. This week’s problem on the Destiny is hallucination, and Greer, Matthew, Chloe, Volker, Rush, and James have fallen victim to it. This setup is used not only to try to create tense scenarios but to examine the characters under adverse circumstances. Overall, it works.

Each of these six characters’ hallucinations recur throughout the episode. James keeps seeing Matthew’s body on the floor of her room. Greer sees Camille and Rush scheming to take control of the ship again. Matthew sees his son running around. Chloe sees her dad. Rush sees aliens. Volker keeps thinking he’s suddenly caught in some tight space. Eventually, TJ learns that these individuals have been latched onto by some hallucination-inducing ticks that they picked up on the last planet (some of them carried multiple ticks back, which jumped onto others, thus explaining the hallucinations of people who didn’t visit the last planet). Not surprisingly, the hallucinations they are experiencing stem from feelings of remorse, fear, or anger. The most pressing negative thoughts facing the bitten are those that surface in the form of these hallucinations.

The story’s best uses of these hallucinations come from Chloe, Greer, and James. Chloe’s dad, of course, died in the first episode, and he’s been talked about here and there, but we have not been given a full sense of her feelings concerning the loss. She spends some time talking with him, and the desperation with which she holds onto the illusion is more revealing than the actual conversation. Eli finds her and explains to her that she’s talking to a hallucination (that is, after he sees her talking to thin air and asks her, like a goofnut, “Hey! What are you doing?!” knowing full well people on the ship are having hallucinations). She then accepts the hallucination as such but refuses to stop talking with her dad, as this is her last chance to do so in any way. When Eli and Matthew eventually convince her to go to the infirmary to have the tick removed, the saddest moment of the show (so far) occurs as she says, “I love you, Daddy,” just before he disappears. Now we understand the degree of Chloe’s sadness at the loss of her father.

Chloe’s response to her hallucination is not only interesting as it pertains to her character but also in what it says about reality. It presents that trademark postmodern idea that perceived truth is no different from consensual truth. Chloe doesn’t care that her father isn’t “real,” per se. He is real to her, and that is all that matters. Ultimately, the episode falls back on real reality (to use a decidedly non-postmodern term), in that the crew convinces Chloe that the source of the hallucinations has to be removed since it could be causing peripheral harm of which they are unaware. The transitory postmodernism the show does adopt here, however, remains intriguing.

One minute a tick's feeding on you, the next minute you're stuck in a tank full of water. Damn space travel.

As far as the impact the hallucinations have on our understanding of the characters goes, Greer’s is the most rewarding. He becomes more and more aggressive as he continues to hallucinate scenes of Camille and Rush scheming against Colonel Young. In the final ten minutes, he goes into alert mode and begins hunting them down, believing he has been given the go-ahead by Young (there is a subtle LOL moment at which Young says, over the radio, “Don’t do anything,” and Greer replies, “Permission to use deadly force?”). He eventually corners Camille (who has been screwdriver-stabbed by Rush because he thought she was an alien) and gets progressively closer to killing her in order to end the perceived mutiny. Of course, he is stopped in the nick of time (after a further hallucination in which his father appears and tells him to go ahead and kill her, but this doesn’t seem to have much impact on the developments).

The last-second saving of Camille does not diminish the power of the scene, though, because what’s interesting here is not the tension that some may have felt at what Greer would do. The rewarding aspect of this incident is what Greer’s willingness to kill Camille says about his character. The ticks causing these visions do not affect the actual temperament of their hosts. This means that Greer would actually be capable of bringing himself to kill Camille (and presumably anyone else) if he were to have a strong enough belief that she is conspiring against Young. I’ve noted before that his constant tough-guy act tends to paint him as someone who is all talk. This moment gives his character a genuinely threatening quality. Hopefully the writers will use this revelation of the character to build more tension in subsequent episodes. We now believe he’s capable of killing. Do something with that, SGU creative team.

Following this line of reasoning, James’ character should be somewhat threatening now as well, as she has (theoretically) been shown to have a dangerous temper. However, I can’t but help think that her “killing” of Matthew is a slip-up by the writers. Yeah, it was a hallucination, but again, the ticks do not affect the characters’ temperament or ability to reason. This means that she would supposedly be capable of such an act under similar circumstances. The thing is, she has not been portrayed as the kind of character who would act violently in non-military situations. Perhaps sexuality brings out some violent tendencies within her. I could make a million jokes here (well, with my level creativity, maybe ten), but if this is actually what the writers are going for, she could suddenly be turned into one of the more interesting characters of the show. We’ll see how this plays out, but as of right now I’m thinking this was done just to create a fake “Oh ****!” moment to kick start the episode. Hopefully I’m proven wrong.

In the final scene, the Destiny approaches another Stargate, and Young tells his crew to prepare to visit whatever planet awaits them. This is the perfect ending. By this point, we’ve been shown once again how dangerous it is for the crew members to be setting foot on these planets about which they know so little. We leave the episode knowing that, despite the risk of doing so, they will have to keep visiting these planets and putting their well-being, and the well-being of those on the ship, in jeopardy. It adds a sense of danger to the episodes we have not yet seen. Now let’s hope we get to see that tension and the recent insights into SGU’s characters be used to their full potential. For this time, good show.