posted
I figured we'd need a thread to discuss the good Stargate episode this week. We get a lot of continuity and great moments between the two casts.
Shepherd passing the lemon to Mitchell! Brilliant!
McKay telling Carter about his hallucination last season was downright hillarious.
Carter: Was I naked? McKay: (pause) Partially.
I thought for sure that the plan would wind up failing in the end, but sure enough, they've got the supergate dialed from Pegasus. This doesn't stop the Ori from building another supergate, but at least the Milky Way just got itself a short reprieve.
Yet another Wraith hiveship taken out, but also an Ori toilet! One down, three to go.
So the hologram was that of Morgan Le Fey? Am I correct in understanding that the Le Fey hologram was only actually Le Fey in this episode, and that previous instances seen on Atlantis were just a hologram?
-------------------- "Kirito? I killed a thing and now it says I have XPs! Is that bad? Am I dying?"
-Asuna, Episode 2, Sword Art Online Abridged
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quote:So the hologram was that of Morgan Le Fey? Am I correct in understanding that the Le Fey hologram was only actually Le Fey in this episode, and that previous instances seen on Atlantis were just a hologram?
I would assume so, yes. However, was this the same actress who appeared in "Rising," describing the basic quickstart guide to the Pegasus Galaxy? If not, are they supposed to be the same character?
Regardless, this episode sure was PACKED with great story elements. They managed to seamlessly combine portions from both series, yet it was obviously an SG-1 episode. Lovely to see Sam and Rodney sniping at each other again (recapping "Grace Under Pressure" was something I was eagerly expecting). And that lemon! (Did we know that Sheppard carries a lemon with him all the time? Regardless, that was hilarious!)
So, how many times now has it been that Teal'c's incredible coolness under pressure has saved the day and scored a major victory for the Good Guys? It sure was satisfying to see that toiletship explode in that prolonged blast, rather than just a simple, quick vaporization. (Naturally we can be sure Adria wasn't on that ship... dammit, when are we going to see how much more attractive the conversion to Origin can become?! )
Still, Stargate seems to be getting VERY confident in leaving big downers at the ends of many episodes. The Ancients don't want to help us? Wow, that's a bit of a shocker, despite their obvious noninterference beliefs.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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posted
I only just watched the episode this afternoon, so my notes are late. I didn't read Krenim's post while writing these notes, so nevermind any repeated observations...
-Strangely, it's SG-1 that provides new VFX shots of a Daeldalus-class ship approaching Atlantis from the air, during daylight no less. I've never noticed any moons orbiting Atlantis' planet until now - we see one small one here.
-The big display whatsit at the aft of the bridge is at an odd angle today, probably to hide any wierd reflections from the lighting or something during the establishing shot.
-So are we alternating what ship heads to Pegasus now? The Daedalus has been the only ship to do so thus far; we know that the Prometheus as capable of doing so too, but this is the first time some other ship besides the Daedalus has made the journey. I'm guessing this is because she's on her way home now, and Odyssey can get our gang there faster; there's no real point in keeping one ship on station in the Milky Way anyway, as it doesn't stand a chance against an Ori toiletship.
-I'm glad they waited until the third season of Atlantis to do a big crossover like this; we get to have more established characters not just playing second fiddle to the older team, despite being the secondary characters. The banter between equivalent characters (McKay and Carter, Mitchell and Sheppard, Jackson and Weir) is great, and shows the known contrasts between them. Fun stuff.
-There's a LOT of tech in the opening act. In short, they want to establish a wormhole between a gate in Pegasus (powered by a local black hole) and one in the Milky Way, which Teal'c has placed right next to the Ori supergate. Then, using a trick from way back in SG-1's first season, they will detonate a nuke at the Pegasus gate, making the wormhole jump to the Milky Way supergate, thus preventing the Ori from dialing in to it and sending more ships. However, there's nothing to keep the Ori from building another one, so this is at best a stopgap measure.
-The Atlantis expedition has managed to explore about half of the city in two years.
-McKay hasn't forgotten the time that Carter didn't save him from certain doom when he was almost drowning int he back of a puddle jumper, and he makes sure she won't forget this favor she never did.
-Shep apparently keeps a lemon on him at all times to antagonize McKay, who is deathly allergic to citrus. He literally passes the fruit to Mitchell to keep the torch aflame. It's good to know that entire casts from two shows can't stand the guy.
-Meanwhile, Daniel and Vala head to the Lantean holographic room (not seen since the first season finale) to query the database to find Merlin's weapon. The room is a little redundant, as you can access the database from any regular terminal and without the avatar, but it was designed to help newcomers or young children about the city and how to use it.
-The holo room is also apparently an energy guzzler - strange when you have a ZPM. One wonders if they keep the ZPM reserved for shield, cloak and earth-dialing use, and otherwise just use their existing network of naquadah generators for day-to-day activities?
-The hologram is not the younger woman who showed up in a taped message in "Rising". I don't think it was meant to be... Incidentally, the actress is Sarah Strange, known in anime circles as the first voice for the male Ranma in "Ranma 1/2". FYI.
-The Lantean database is current as of Atlantis' abandonment. In particular, when Daniel points out Proclaroush Taonas (the place where O'Neill finds their first ZPM), the database notes that it was one of the first Lantean cities, abandonned when the sun was going red giant on them. This fits with what was actually seen in "The Lost City" two years ago.
-Vala cuts through Daniel's extensive and boring research methods and get him to simply ask where the damn planets are. They are thus pointed out automatically as completely differently named places. Strangely, the database gives them a gate address with Earth as the point of origin.
-The Odyssey brings their own gate to use for the wormhole jumping plan; note that it's a Milky Way gate and not a local Pegasus gate. This probably helps circumvent the Peagsus limitation that you need an extra module to dial other galaxies. BTW, they're probably using one of the leftover gates they salvaged last year from Baal in "Off the Grid".
-The writers don't forget the relativistic effects of having fun next to a black hole - the messages back and forth from Teal'c at the supergate are slowed by time dilation.
-This episode makes use of an unplanned coincidence in casting between both shows. Matthew Walker has been on Stargate a couple times, but in Atlantis' first season he showed up as Moros, the high councillor of Atlantis, in "Before I Sleep", where an alternate version of Dr. Weir was transported to Atlantis during the Wraith siege of the place. Walker was subsequently cast as Merlin the following year, and gave the writers a reason to tie both characters together through the same actor. In other words, Moros = Merlin, who once ran Atlantis and came back to Earth during the exodus.
-Just in time to spoil the fun, the Wraith detect the Odyssey and head to intercept. Unfortunately, they're too close to the black hole to warn, so Atlantis dials Earth and gets them to send SG-11 to the SGC Gamma Site closer to the supergate, there to warn him by subspace communication. Meanwhile, the Ori also show up on the Milky Way side.
-And so, we find out that the educational hologram was created by Morgan Le Fey, who was once on Atlantis as well. Better still, the REAL Morgan became an ascended being, but has been watching SG-1's progress against the Ori. She ended up inhabiting the hologram to give Daniel the location of the two planets as a way to "cheat" the ascendeds' dumb noninterference rules. It doesn't take long for Daniel to figure out this ruse.
-Okay, so here's the deal. When the Lanteans came back to Earth after the Wraith siege, they found Earth to be way too primitive for their liking. So, some spread out amongst the galaxy via the Antarctic gate, some seeded the local Earth cultures, and some (like Morgan and Merlin) ultimately ascended. This is all before the Goa'uld came by. Anyway, some time later Merlin figured the Ori would be coming back and descended again to create his weapon, recruiting a batch of locals to help him (thus giving birth to the Arthurian legends). Merlin maintained all his ascended knowledge and most of his powers, which naturally made his former co-workers pretty nervous.
-Morgan is eventually convinced to try to help out the "lowers", but is naturally caught and whisked awy at the critical time. She leaves in the same VFX flurry that Daniel went through when he tried to kill Anubis a few years back.
-The Wraith show up and attack! The Odyssey lures them closer to the black hole via a slingshot maneuver, which screws up the Wraith's scramblers enough for our heroes to beam a nuke on board. Then, a remarkable series of deus ex machina events: the exploding Wraith ship is channeled through the wormhole instead of destroying the gate; the added energy causes the wormhole to jump to the supergate and activate it JUST AS THE TOILET SHIP PASSES OVER IT; and the kawoosh subsequently destroys the toilet ship! So, the gang has a happy day by killing a Wraith ship, killing an Ori ship (their first real victory in doing so), and disabling the Ori supergate. Not a bad day.
posted
Oh, one other thing... was anyone else getting bad Andromeda flashbacks during the slingshot maneuver? All we were missing was Doctor Lam...
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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posted
Something else I completely forgot about that was incredibly hilarious: Vala demanding that everyone stop making cultural references that she couldn't understand. Was that a Farscape shout-out or what?
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: -The hologram is not the younger woman who showed up in a taped message in "Rising". I don't think it was meant to be... Incidentally, the actress is Sarah Strange, known in anime circles as the first voice for the male Ranma in "Ranma 1/2". FYI.
Mark
I think I can second this guess. The actor for that previous hologram also showed up as an Atlantian in that episode where Weir goes back in time and I'm pretty sure that she was supposed to be the basis for the hologram (even if it was not explicitly said)...so if they went to the trouble of bringing her back once, then it would be weird not to for a third time...although not impossible.
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WizArtist II
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posted
OK, if a gate horizon can hurt/destroy a toiletship, wouldn't you be able to use a cloaked jumper with a stargate attached to sidle up to the bridge of one and then...FLUSH? Or you could drop a cloaked gate in the path of one and when it gets close, open a wormhole to the blackhole star. If it doesn't destroy it, you probably still gain several years actual time to develop a way to deal with that ship thus neutralizing it.
-------------------- There are 10 types of people in the world...those that understand Binary and those that don't.
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posted
I think I missed a couple minutes of dialogue early on, so maybe they explained this, but... A gate's address is determined by its location. I.e., if you took the Earth gate, stuck it on a ship, and transported it to, say, Abydos, you'd have to dial the Abydos address to reach it. So, the gate that they set up alongside the supergate... how did they dial it? What would its address have been?
In fact, when the whole "move a gate, change its address" thing was established, didn't it seem like the addresses corresponded to planets? Weren't they unable to use the gate on the ship until the ship was in orbit?
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posted
Good points- it implies a more fundamental understanding of how a gate address system works than what has been stated before- If they can determine a gate's address by comparing it a fixed location (galactic center for example) then the SGC could start exploring all of Earth's neighborhood systematicaly by dialing an address based on a known planet's location.
But I've not seen every episode...maybe this was already covered am ongst all the amazing Atlantian discoveries that we never hear about?
Also, what does this make? Five Wraith Hive Ships destroyed now? Six? Even the System Lords were not this....pussy. SGA's biggest weakness is that they lack a tough threat- the Morlocks just dont cut it. They could have the Ori as a threat though- now that the super-gate is offline, the Ori will have to get arounf the old-fashioned way- or by grabbing the proposed "gate network" mentioned on SGA this week to hopscotch around.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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posted
While I do agree that the Wraith aren't as tough to beat as the System Lords were in their day, just look at where Earth was sitting back then. The expedition DOES have their own ship, puddle jumpers, and ten years' collective experience in gate travel, wormhole physics, and dealing with alien threats. Had they bumped into the Wraith ten years ago, they most certainly would have been a lot tougher for them to handle.
As it stands, it's been established that their tech isn't so tough - it's their nmbers that make them a threat. Only now that at least some of them are potentially capable of reaching Earth are people starting to worry back home.
posted
Wiz, remeber that it was the supergate that destroyed the Ori toilet, not the little one. A little one would do little damage to a ship that big.
The Gate addresses itself by planet, mostly like by planetary galatic position, which changes as the planet orbit the galatic center. This is why they couldn't dial any but the closets ones in the very beginning, since the ancient information was dated. After they corrected for time/orbit they could go to any gate. The dialogue said the the gate contacted the others nearby to establish itself. Like propagating an IP#/site name, only more plug and play. The 39 positions could have been a better number for creating the XYZ of a gate, and the distance.
Jason, the power of the Wraith was never an issue for the Lanteans, but the overwhelming numbers of them. Take the scene of the people of Abydos attacking the two Jaffa, although very weak in contrast, sticks to staves, the sheer numbers took the two Jaffa down. The System Lords, being far fewer in number, had to be far far stronger to maintain control. Once they lost the strength of the Jaffa they fell rather quickly.
Running a jumper through the gate bridge, er tunnel, system to the alpha site wouldn't be too bad, but the SGC seems like it would have limited accommodations for a jumper.
-------------------- "You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus "Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers A leek too, pretty much a negi.....
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posted
Also, everything else that we've seen hit by the vortex has gotten completely vaporized, right? The fact that there was anything left of the toiletship afterwards is impressive in and of itself.
-------------------- "Kirito? I killed a thing and now it says I have XPs! Is that bad? Am I dying?"
-Asuna, Episode 2, Sword Art Online Abridged
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posted
On the contrary... That's exactly what they did at the end of the eighth season IIRC, with their captured time jumper (them or the alternate universe them - can't remember). Either way, there is enough room in the gate room for the physical size of the jumper, and directly above the gate room is the missile silo they've used to haul the stargate itself out of the SGC before. Less space than the gatrium on Atlantis perhaps, but enough.
quote:Also, what does this make? Five Wraith Hive Ships destroyed now? Six?
Ten, I think. This little group is making a sizeable dent in the Wraith population, for the number of casualties they've had.
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![[Wink]](wink.gif)
It sure was satisfying to see that toiletship explode in that prolonged blast, rather than just a simple, quick vaporization. (Naturally we can be sure Adria wasn't on that ship... dammit, when are we going to see how much more attractive the conversion to Origin can become?! ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
)![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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