In Grace Under Pressure McKay along with Captain Griffen test fly a recently repaired puddle jumper when an engine malfunctions causing them to crash into the ocean between Atlantis and the mainland. The jumper quickly sinks and soon it’s transponder signal is lost to the scanners in the city and as they sink deeper the integrity of the ship itself is put to the test. Ultimately the damaged screen shatters and take the heroic Griffen to his death leaving McKay trapped in the rear compartment desperate to find a solution to the dilemma of limited power and life support and little chance of being located by his friends. It’s not long before the head wound and conditions have McKay hallucinating but in a twist he envisions one Samantha Carter who points out is the one person smarter than he is and coupled with his attraction to her perhaps understandable why his mind when down that path.
It’s me baby!
Meanwhile back at the city John and company are devising a rescue plan based on some grappling hardware and the belief the jumpers were always intended to double up as submersibles. However Zelenka and his people have to jump through hoops to try and calculate a approximate position for the search to focus on but eventually John and Radek fly to the rescue and do a passable Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea impersonation but with clocking shields being used as physical shields the opposite of when the city re-tasked it’s shielding systems. Mckay continues to have lively discourse with his version of Sam and soon comes to understand decisions she is making are those of his own logical mind trying to keep him alive but eventually the jumper is almost flooded and hang on is John’s voice an hallucination and if he opens the rear hatch will he drown but does he have a choice?
Grace Under Pressure is in many ways a bottle show despite money being spent on bringing in Amanda and the use of the large waters tanks to simulate ocean conditions, it is perhaps to the credit of all involved such a complex story was told and told well. Yes we’ve seen the lone survivor having to deal with a crisis before on SG1 and the threat of drowning in a downed spaceship again SG1 but this take on those core elements works very well. David is one of the few television actors who could pull off such intensity and claustrophobic story both with humour and drama as and when required.
I want to thank Philip for joining me for the show, it took some organising but the recording went by without a hitch, he has recorded with me before on the episode Trio (an experiment) which again went well and will probably be used as our take on that episode of Atlantis. Big thanks to Misa and Dan for the feedback and a nod to Brad for the recordings which will be used in later shows but for now that’s this show wrapped up and as always we want to hear from you and if you can a review/rating on itunes would be most appreciated. This weeks featured promo is for The Book Cave Podcast a show covering mainly pulp publications (books, magazines and comics) with author interviews and next week we are going to be looking at the SG1 episode Ethon.
Promo…
Links…
- Grace Under Pressure IMDB
- Grace Under Pressure Wiki
- David Nykl
- Amanda Tapping
- Nimet Kanji
- Peter Abrams
- William MacDonald
- Chuck Campbell
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