posted
A lightweight episode, which for a Wier-centered episode didn't really give her much to do except look bewildered as the plot unfolded around her. Too bad...
-The central point is that the "first" Wier gives the gang a list of addresses leading to Ancient outposts with ZPMs. This could be their salvation, as much as when Daniel went to an alternate dimension where Apophis was just invading Earth.
-The Atlanteans had ships in Pegasus, which were superior to the Wraith hive ships in a one-to-one battle. They were simply outnumbered.
The first timeline had Sumner, Grodon, Beckett, Ford, McKay and a large portion of the expiditionary team drowning when the shield collapsed, as there was no failsafe that would cut the anchors and raise the city.
-The timeship was dismantled when it got back to the past, having been built in the first timeline and then abandonned with the city. It arrives before they built it in the second timeline, and is subsequently ordered NOT to be built. Janus keeps the plans though, and intends to rebuild it back in the Milky Way. It will become a pivotal prop in SG-1 shortly.
-McKay seems stronger and more leadershippy at first than in "our" timeline.
-In the past, Atlantis was already under siege, and the Wraith knew where the city was (though not on the planet). Is a huge city of metal tough to find, even for today's technology?
Though old age makeup in general still has the rather serious flaw of looking like old age makeup, I thought this was pretty good old age makeup.
I was kind of disappointed that it wasn't the same time-traveling ship.
And, it would have been awfully nice for Old Weir to have spent a little while wandering around the city inbetween hibernation sessions, taking notes. Or for her Ancient pal to divulge at least a little more information. "There are some labs here with some deadly nanotechnological diseases, so watch out for that," for instance. Or, say, how about just providing a map with labels on it? "Room where we keep the thing that makes you die screaming."
I sort of have a problem with this show, which is this: I just don't like (or care about) the Ancients. They bug me. They're kind of annoying, but they don't seem to be annoying in an interesting way. Now, you know, so what? There are plenty of other creatures about. But, when the premise of the show is finding stuff out about the Ancients, I am sort of reminded of them more often than not.
(One thing I like about the Asgard is that they aren't afraid to help out a friend in a fight, if necessary. They aren't going to do everything for Earth, but they do what they can, when it seems like the right thing to do. The all-powerful aliens who will not interfere are getting to be a bit long in the tooth, as sf storytelling tropes go. I mean, they ((the Ancients)) could have some Kosh-like reason up their sleeves, but, well, I guess I'll have to wait and see.)
I'd like to see something done with the four race alliance thing, which concept introduced the Ancients in the first place. Why they weren't getting some assistance from the Asgard, Furlings, and Nox would make for an interesting story, or, if they did, why that wasn't enough. (OK, so the Nox are yet another superpowered noninterfering group, but they at one time were interested enough to at least have regular chats with these others, so their attitudes may have changed over the years.)
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Oh, one other thing: the final evacuation of Atlantis seemed to happen pretty quickly, explaining why they may have left lots of things behind, but on the other hand they appear to have been planning for it for awhile, which suggests that they would have already prepared most of the really important and/or interesting stuff for quick shipping to Earth.
Registered: Mar 1999
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Overall, while the time-travel plot device raised some interesting questions and some interesting prospects for future episodes, I was overall quite disappointed, especially with the portrayal of the Ancients.
For all their apparent majesty and immensely powerful technology, they looked like arrogant and fearful boobs who hardly looked like the kind of people who could have built the Stargates and crossed multiple galaxies.
I mean really, how could they manage to get as far as they did by worrying about that sort of stuff? And for that matter, why was that inventor guy so smug and overconfident after the Ancients built that time-loop device from the "Groundhog Day"-like episode of SG-1? Or was the Ancient plague something that happened after they returned to Earth?
I'm still hoping that they've got some kind of big plan that will have this all make sense in a later season.
Registered: Nov 2000
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Maybe these Ancients in this episode were the last of the Ancients - sort of like the 'dregs' that never Ascended? BUT In light of what we've seen about ascended Ancients - they also seem smug and arrogant.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
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