Woohoo! We start the Atlantis two-part finale, capping off what has been a very impressive first season. I haven't enjoyed a first-run, first season of a show this much since "Earth: Final Conflict", frankly. We can only hope that unlike that show, they won't go overboard fixing what really ain't broke.
-The Wraith cruisers can go FTL on their own, apparently.Why then would they link up like that and seperate after emerging from hyperspace, as we saw last week?
-The episode surrounds getting to work on the Lantean weapons platform discovered back in "The Defiant One", apparently the last of an original number of dozens. Luckily, they figure they can get it going with a naquadah generator.
-UNluckily, the weapons on Atlantis will ONLY work with a ZPM. Seems kinda silly that way, really. Anyway, Miller (new guy - where's he been?), McKay and Grodin (the Brit who's been "Mr. Dialler" since they got here) hop into a jumper and start on the 15-hour trip out there. They figure that the Wraith scout from "The Brotherhood" has discounted the wreck as irrelevant, so when the fleet passes into range, they'll get their shot at taking out some of the ships.
-The conference room is BACK to the three-table configuration AGAIN. This is getting really frustrating - why the hell are they switching them back and forth all the time? It's clear that it's the same room.
-The three places they were examining were moons, given their "M" nomencalture. I think they were deliberately looking for small places out of the way. At least one of them was "swarming" with Genii spies.
-Stackhouse has been leading a team through the gate too. This makes three known teams, counting Sheppard's and Bates'.
-When Shep, Teyla and Ford come back through the gate after almost being eaten by a dinosaur (!), Sheppard fires a burst into the gate. This obviously wouldn't have much of an effect - maybe he just wanted to shoot something.
-Halling, the OTHER leader of the Athosians not seen for a while, is back for a brief scene. He warns against destroying Atlantis to keep the Wraith from gaining access to Earth. Likewise, Zelenka is worried that even if they blow up the city, the Wraith could comb the wreckage abd be able to reverse engineer a suitable hyperdrive for practical intergalactic travel. Dr. Z figures out a way to wipe out the Atlantis database, but even with McKay's compression techniques from "Letters From Pegasus", they wouldn't be able to back up more than 7 or 8 percent on their hard drives. They stand to lose most of the accumulated knowledge of the Ancients if they leave.
-The main discovery is that when the scout scanned Atlantis in "The Brotherhood", it also dropped off its pilot before self-destructing. This guy has been skulking around Atlantis ever since, spying on them and relaying the information back to the fleet. THIS is how they've been finding out where they were trying to evacuate to, and why Teyla's been having Wraith nightmares since about then. After the Wraith attacks (but doesn't feed on) Bates, they capture him, naming him Bob.
-McKay's team succeeds in powering the weapons platform just in time, requiring Rodney to go EVA to fix stuff. Unfortunately, he reroutes power away from the platform's airlock, trapping Grodin inside. Grodin manages to take out one of the hive ships before he's blown up along with the platform. The Lantean weapon is a powerful beam a la shadow crab from B5, slicing right through its target.
-Teyla's getting pretty good at initiating the Wraith mind probing thing - but it seems to not work so well if the target knows and resists. This leaves things to Shep, who finds an effective means of interrogation is to fill Bob with slugs, multiple times.
-With the plan failed, Wier makes the painful decision to abandon and destroy the city.
...And that's it. The high-stakes are evident, we've lost Grodin and Bob, and there's little chance for survival. Now we sit back and wait for the arrival of massive reinforcements and a new battlecruiser from Earth. Hold your breath, campers.
Mark
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
And Ford is still trying to name stuff. When Sheppard explained that a certain planet was "the one with all the waterfalls", Ford asked why they can't just call it "Planet Waterfall".
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Ohhhhhhh JUST FINISHED WATCHING IT! Wooooooooo! Brilliant. I agree this season has been absolfriggin'lutely fantasmagorical! I've loved every episode. It's brill.
Heheheheh Bob.
Stackhouse - have we seen him before? Was he ever on an SGC team!?! I'm probably just remembering his name from another episode.
Grodin was given a surname a while back - possibly halfway through the season - but I think "Peter" was said for the first time this episode. He was a semi-main character.
It's a wonder Bob didn't feed on Seargent Bates... maybe it though it'd give away the fact that there was a wraith on board.
Doesn't the trip to the mainland take a while by puddlejumper? Why aren't the Ethosians already back on Atlantis?
The two different conference rooms - are you sure they aren't just the same one and that they can move the tables in and out? They are both behind those funky doors.
Wouldn't you also think most of the stuff would be packed up and in the gate-room ready to be shipped off to an alpha-site? I mean there's medical equipment all the stores, computers galore - personal effects (and remember how each person could bring one personal effect from home - I noticed last episode that Shepherd's must have been a poster of Johnny Cash - which is above his bed! Hehehehehe.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
-Sheppard also brought some football DVDs or something, as shown way back in the second episode.
-No, it's the same conference room, and they MUST be swapping the tables all the time - for no real reason. I'd have thought originally that this could have been due to shooting the episodes out of order, but I find it extremely unlikely that this late in the first season they'd be filming segments that would go into the first few episodes.
-The trip to the mainland is about 25 minutes. I wonder though if Atlantis is or isn't drifting around on the surface of the ocean. They could be much closer or farther, for all we know, especially after that hurricane.
-Stackhouse and Markham showed up in "Thirty-Eight Minutes", and sporadically ever since. Markham was killed in "The Brotherhood" offscreen.
Mark
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
The security guy was one hundred percent right about Teyla, and if he hadn't been such a jerk about it, well. . . he didn't have to be such a jerk about it. He was still absolutely right; there's no (known) reason the Wraith can't use the same trick she used in reverse.
Also, having him just get beat up, rather than killed, rang a little false after the big reveal. The Wraith had no reason to leave him alive. (And even if Bob had fed on him, and then not wanted anyone to know a Wraith was around, he could probably have hidden the body. The fleet is only a few hours away, so it wouldn't have to be hidden for long.)
I wonder what the range is on those squid missiles. (And how long it takes to fire one, or whether they can be launched while the ship is cloaked.) Because McKay's ship could probably take out several smaller Wraith ships and maybe slow down their progress even further. That is, if they can get a shot off from far enough way to give them time to recloak and then move to another spot. (Assuming they need to be visible to shoot.)
I've been avoiding the season two spoilers, but I think it would be neat if they actually did lose the city for awhile.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
I've been avoiding season 2 spoilers too - but LOSE the city? As in what happened with the Genii?
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Yeah, sure. I mean, they have it pretty cozy in Atlantis, all things considered. They could mix things up a little.
I should note that I'm just talking about what I think might be interesting here, Andrew, and not any actual spoilers. I mean, as far as the show goes, they've already done the bad guys taking over plot, so that's probably out no matter what. Though I guess I could just read the thread for part two and find out.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Losing the city is an interesting notion - the SG producers are usually good at takeoffs of stuff done before. How would the Atlantis team respond to being booted off the island for, say, six episodes?
Mind you, apparently they'll have a lot more hardware to play with in season two. Combined with a number of interesting established races,odds are losing Atlantis for a while could be a lot of fun.
Mark
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
One factor against such a story, though, I think, is that this particular production team has, in the past, seemed reluctant to let a specific story last for very long. Like, OK, the Goa'uld as a threat lasted years and years, but no specific Goa'uld was ever in more than a handful of episodes before being deposed or killed.
I guess, I don't know, sometimes it seems like they rush things. Or, not even rush them, but not let them play out to a degree I might like. (Of course, there are far too many examples of shows going to the opposite extreme.)
Also, a number of established races? You've got the, uh, Teyla's people, the Genii, and the Wraith. And I guess the Ancients. (And I'd only consider one of those groups interesting, but I am mean Mr. Mustard.)
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
Athosians.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
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The Lantean weapon is a powerful beam a la shadow crab from B5, slicing right through its target.![[Wink]](wink.gif)