So! In this episode, a Wraith hive knows where Atlantis is. They offer a deal to the Atlantis personnel, and if they don't cooperate, the Wraith will broadcast their location to every hive ship in the galaxy. The deal is to develop a weapon for the hive. Then another hive ship shows up so they cloak the city. Then the two hives fight.
Um...Getting a feeling of deja vu here...I mean...really bad deja vu. This related to the writers strike, you think? It's...*so* recycled.
I didn't like the whole seeing the future bullshit, either.
Well, direct onscreen confirmation - Teyla's preggers.
This ep gives me a chance to bring up something I've been thinking about for awhile. The Atlantis cloak must be more sophisticated than a mere invisibility device. If it simply made the city completely transparent, you would see the shape of the bottom of the city in the water. I mean, Atlantis actually floats, right? From those diagrams in the first season it actually looked like there was a huge spike hanging down under the waterline which wasn't there when they took off in season 3. So, where's the displacement of water? It must be actively projecting an image of plain water. But, even if this were the case, water is unstable - there are waves. They'd pass into the cloak in disappear unless the cloak can detect incoming waves and calculate how to project an image of the wave across the cloaking field.
Edit: I demand more Dr. Zalenka!
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
"Um...Getting a feeling of deja vu here..."
Well, you are watching season 2 again, apparently... B)
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Well, yes, I meant 4x08...Dunno why I put 2, maybe I was thinking of Heroes.
Edit: Holy God, I just looked - I've been writing 2x for *every thread so far for a fourth season episode* since 4x02. And nobody noticed till now? ...Geez I feel stupid.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Interestingly, this episode was filmed after Robert Picardo guested at my improv comedy show. No sign of it here, dammit!
But Woolsey reveals that standard procedure for travelling to (and from?) Pegasus includes a day's quarantine at Midway station, a new policy following the events of "Tabula Rasa". We'll se the ramifications of this policy later this season.
Also, was the footage of the two hive ships destroying each other recycled? It's not the first time...
Mark
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Recycled footage, recycled plotline...
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Silly question, but what is the big deal about cloaking the city? Sure it leads them vulnerable if someone has an exact fix on their location, but what's to stop them from moving the city under cloak? There must be a mechanism to hold station, so they should be able to slide sideways a few miles.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Uhhh. Huh. I've never even thought of that. Here I was talking about the waves and the ocean and etc. and it never occurred to me... in fact... hang on...brilliant idea here (I say that with a measure of sarcasm) ... why don't they turn the 'anchor' off at all times? There must be a way to steer the city if it's meant to float; even if not they surely could rig one up using the 'anchor' system and engines (or even using the inertial dampers to change the mass of various areas of the city). So then they could circle the planet's oceans constantly. That would mean any ship coming out of hyperspace suddenly to surprise them without cloak would probably have to scan for a few seconds...they could easily get McKay to write a program to automatically activate the shield when it detected a hyperspace exit.
Of course if they had another ZPM or two, they could keep the cloak active at all times and just keep circling the oceans and never be in any real danger...unless somebody carpet-bombed the planet, I guess, but that's what the shield is for Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Floating around the oceans takes MONTHS...
I'm guessing that the cloak either compensates for the city's footprint and makes it looks like there ISN'T a hole in the water where the city is, or else the enemy simply wouldn't be abel to manually find a hole in the ocean. Planets are pretty big, after all.
Mark
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Yeah, I know it would take months - what's your point? (That sounds blunt, it wasn't meant to be.)
Well, as I said it must compensate for the hole, I'm just saying I wish they'd address it on-air. I think it would be easy to see the hole if they already knew where Atlantis was (as in the second season when they pretended to have been blown up) - they'd already be looking right at the spot.
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
So, it's either shields or cloak. Did they borrow some Klingon engineers when installing that system?
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Well, the shield generator and cloak generator (not Atlantis's specifically; I mean the technology) are really the same thing, but 'inverted' ... shields 'face' outwards and cloaks 'face' inwards. So the generator can only be used for one or the other, and the switchover takes several minutes since apparently the Ancients never thought to incorporate it into their design - Dr. McKay set up the procedures for changing Atlantis's shield to a cloak (or the jumpers' cloaks to shields [although they can't be used in combat...too weak]). It all seems a bit contrived to me, but not implausible.
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
Is anyone else getting tired of seeing those new Atlantis wall panels? They remind me of a mausoleum or some kind of gothic morgue.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Better than the relatively mundance blank walls we've been seeing until now. I'm only confused as to why they didn't upgrade the gatrium while they were at it, since they blew up the whole damn thing last year only to have it rebuilt by the replicators. As it is, we see they've fixed the window that exploded into Wier's face, by replacing the exploded parts with normal glass...
Mark
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
I like the new wall panels. But I like dark colors, low lighting, grays, blacks, very deep blues. I've come to learn more people like bright colors than dark, and more people like bright sunny days (urgh) than dim fuzzy overcast ones, but I like what I like Posted by OverRon (Member # 2036) on :
I thought McKay had written a program to swap between shield and cloak nearly instantly. As back when they were under Wraith Hive fire they swithced from the shield, and as soon as the main blast of that nuke passed, they switched to cloak.
Surely he would have written a code to switch back from the cloak to the shield?
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Mm, you're right, yet in this ep it was stated that it took some doing to switch back...I dunno, maybe for some reason it's more difficult to go from cloak to shield? Maybe for some reason (software reason, even) it's got to be shut down then restarted?
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
I think you guys are focusing too much on the nitty-gritty. Sure, the plot was more than a tad recycled. (I'm not sure if the footage was � at the most, the first shot of the ships shooting at each other was. But the shot of the ships exploding couldn't have been; we've never seen two hive ships blown up that way before.)
But consider the larger ramifications: the writers are setting up a major arc here, with the Wraith guy (is Sheppard going to name him, too? I say he should be called Bill.) obviously not going anywhere any time soon. There are going to be various elements in play: the Replicators, the Athosians, Dr. Weir, the various Wraith factions... and who knows exactly how or why they're all related.
Oh, except one thing: ten bucks says that once Rodney and Bill the Wraith finish their work, they're going to get or use Weir to upload the new virus.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
I *strongly* want a good Wraith. I don't *like* monolithic evil. I *strongly* want an honest-to-God, good Wraith, with a conscience, who doesn't want to eat people, the way some humans are vegetarians. I know we had the little girl Wraith before, but I mean an adult who decided for himself. I want a real ally, and they figure out how to give him the virus without wiping his memory, and he becomes a valuable member of the team. I guess I just wish it so bad because the Wraith are so damn cool.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
There might be some hardware swapout that someone has to accomplish too - remebmer, they're using a cloaking generator off of a puddle jumper. They have to physically connect or disconnect some stuff for this to happen, or power up some components, or whatever.
I'm mostly just curious as to why the Lanteans didn't figure this out ages ago... After all, they cloaked their jumpers.
Also, the Wraith EAT PEOPLE. It's fundamental to them. I don't see anyone willing to give up the ability to eat a thick, juicy stake, even if they got gout from it? I didn't. Still, the Wraith's crutch of wanting to eat anyone they come against has been a big problem in "humanizing" them to the point where they can be true allies. I could see it happening, but it'd be pretty contrived, IMO.
Mark
[ November 23, 2007, 10:29 AM: Message edited by: Mark Nguyen ]
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Mark - ever hear of vegetarians....?
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Do they have to feed on humans? Is there no large non-sapient animals in that galaxy?
As for the ancients not cloaking Atlantis, I suppose they didn't think of it because everyone already knew where they were, hence being under siege.
Posted by Zipacna (Member # 1881) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: I don't see anyone willing to give up the ability to eat a thick, juicy stake
*raises hand* Well, there's one person who's done that here for a start...and no doubt others somewhere. People don't need to eat meat to live, and the question must be are there alternatives for the Wraith other than culling? Do they choose to cull people, or are they simply slaves to their biology? If they're just doing what their bodies demand of them, then in my opinion they're an incredibly one-dimensional villain.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
To be fair, it's not as if the Wraith consume matter the same way we do in order to feed. They have a very specific and fundamentally parasitic method of consumption, which we still don't fully understand. I really don't see a Wrath successfully sucking the life out of a tree or a vegetable, however comical it would be to watch the attempt, so unless there's a way to feed them through an IV with some kind of organically grown enzyme (or something) then I think they're stuck as they are. Like I said though, I wonder if there isn't a good reason why they specifically have to feed on humans rather than large domesticated animals. Perhaps it's something to do with their hybrid nature.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Well, I think it would be nice to at least see a Wraith who didn't *want* to feed on humans, even though he had to, and perhaps devise a retrovirus to alter Wraith cells so that they could use another food source.
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
Well, when they visited that planet that had the Stargate on a prison island, the guy in charge sat down and ate a normal meal with a Wraith. I think the Wraith said something about how they used to eat like this or something, but I can't remember exactly what.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
He said that they used to eat like that long ago, and that although they no longer are able to derive sustenance from that kind of food, he still enjoyed the 'finer things in life.'
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
Still, the Wraith's crutch of wanting to eat anyone they come against has been a big problem in "humanizing" them to the point where they can be true allies. I could see it happening, but it'd be pretty contrived, IMO.