Late for the Canadian airdate, early for the US/UK. But LOTS to go over in a very satisfying cliffhanger, which brings true one of the predictions I've had for the show since the beginning - that Atlantis itself wouldn't be stuck on the same planet for the entirety of the show!
-Enter the new Daedalus class starship Apollo, and her no-nonsense skipper Colonel Abe Ellis. He's purported to be a recurring character in the next series. Why? Will the Daedalus herself be rotated to duty with the Odyssey fighting the Ori? Obstensibly bringing in the Apollo was to potentially remove Mitch Pileggi's character from the show in case "Daybreak" was picked up as a proper series (it's been cancelled). But if that was the case, why not just put Abe in charge of the Bid D? It's not like they were constantly replacing the commander of the Prometheus back in the day...
-The Horizon warhead was supposed to deliver six nukes, but the VFX show ten warheads when it pops.
-Time marches on... Now they're able to sink, raise, fly, and JUMP the whole city with only one ZPM. The other ones are mounted on the Odyssey to use as a cloaking device in "The Shroud", and at the Antarctic outpost (which will apparently be used in the SG-1 finale). Of course, they're pretty stuck by the end of the episode, though of course the Apollo will ultimately find them of course.
-Enter the very cute Doctor Kelly, played by the very cute ex-Firefly engineer Jewel Staite. She isn't given much to do here, and I think they just wanted to establish her as the reluctant new doctor before giving her something meaty to do starting with next year's premiere - while at the same time FINALLY acknowledging that Carson is in fact dead. Still, despite being the new new doctor she's already got the cooler grey jacket than the regular medical peons.
-Speaking of which, Sheppard and McKay have graduated to yet another new uniform set. This time it's black versions of the same blue / green BDUs that SG-1 tends to wear. This season has seen the most variations yet - at the top of the year they were using the grey outfits, but occasaionally used black versions of the same without any departmental panels. Shep got a cool leather jacket, which also disapperared. The current black BDUs have also been used in the field (on Shappard), though they really should not have been... Methinks that Joe Flanigan simply doesn't like wearing the standard jacket, much as Torri does. In any case, the Atlantis team has been pretty inconsistent in what they're wearing from week to week this year, far more than their counterparts on Earth.
-There is significant dialogue here dealing with what will ultimately play into Torri Higginson's departure from the show. I'm sure the actress hated having to say it, but the character is correct - she was placed to be the boss, but all too often the city is placed into military situations where she is not the expert. Like it or not, the expedition is fighting a war, one that a diplomat should not be leading. I haven't questionsed Weir's ability as a negotiator or a politician... But as a soldier she's been very lacking. As such, the move to replace her next season with Colonel Carter makes sense... I'll miss her.
-Regardless, while she goes out with a literal bang (I did NOT see that coming!), she'll be around at least through the initial "Lost in Space" arc of the next season. I trust the writers will exit the character with more respect than they did the hapless Lieutenant Ford last year, who didn't get even a verbal nod this season.
-Yeah, they supposedly won't have any replicators to fix the damage this time. Who gets to repair the stained glass windows?
Mark
Posted by Mucus (Member # 24) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: -The Horizon warhead was supposed to deliver six nukes, but the VFX show ten warheads when it pops.
Not 100% sure, but I thought he said it was 6 warheads plus 4 decoys.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
*Checks*
Yeah, you're right... Though I find it interesting they'd make that kind of allowance in the script. So either they made a VFX gaffe and had to cover it up with one line of dialogue from Ellis, or they acutally worked the (very interesting) notion of dummy warheads with propulsion and everything as a small detail.
Notes Part 2:
-When Ellis gives the command to beam McKay up to the Apollo, the chair he's sitting in gets beamed up too. This is a little wierd, since we've seen the Asgard beaming technology not only able to beam people up from separate chairs, benches, etc., but they're also able to re-integrate the transportees in standing position. Perhaps the Apollo beaming tech was as new as their ship.
-McKay and Sheppard are wearing the same outfits, but Shep has a black one and McKay's is grey - or possibly the same blue as the ones SG-1 wears.
-The Apollo ship patch says "Advanced Tactical Deployment", "Second Tactical Wing", "USS Apollo" and "Daedalus Class". I'm a little curious as to why each ship patch has said different things. The Odyssey, for example, says "USS Odyssey", "Deep Space Carrier", and "PB3865". It's possible that the Apollo is a specialized variant that has, among things, a large bomb bay and ventral deployment hatch that has not been seen on the Daedalus, Odyssey or Korolev.
-Ellis (and presumably the rest of the Apollo crew) wear a standard SGC patch on the right shoulder, but a very strange patch with a different stargate glyph on the left. I quickly looked at all the symbols for the Milky Way and Pegasus gates, and I can't seem to match them up - it's not the Earth symbol, and it's not the home symbol for Atlantis. It MIGHT be Monoceros, but it's not a very close match. Maybe it's the symbol for a home base world in the Milky Way?
-Chuck, the ubiquitous Canadian Atlantis gate technician, is mentioned by name for the first time here. Oddly enough, the actor that plays him is Chuck Campbell.
-I dunno if it's been tried before, but beaming through the Atlantis shields seems to be no issue for Asgard tech.
-Cool music cue - as the city is sumberged and rises again, we hear a little bit of the music suite from "Rising" when Atlantis first emerged from the waters.
-Agree or disagree: Sheppard = Mr. Fantastic, McKay = Human Torch, Ronon = The Thing, and Teyla = The Invisible Woman.
-Hey, Shep calls the planet "Lantea"! Good thing we're leaving!
-Back to patches... Major Lorne (who has had quite a bit of exposure in the second half of the season, here and on SG-1 as its alternate universe leader) jumps into an F-302 to move a small asteroid into the path of the Asuran weapon's beam. In the cockpit, he wears a jumpsuit with a patch from the Daedalus' fighter wing. It's different from the 302 patch everyone else wears, including the female XO on the Apollo. Man, I wish we had a repository for all these cool patches!
-Uh, were Teyla's people at all mentioned this week? Were they all left behind?
-I dunno if it's moved before this episode, but this is the first time I've noticed that the Atlantis chair room is no longer in a room identical to the main tower conference room (i.e. using the same set with the fancy rotating doors, which has also been seen as the hologram room). Now, it's at the end of the second floor of the large hallway set that the franchise inherited from "Blade Trinity" after that movie was done with it last season.
-I know the gang was busy enough with just making the city fly in the first place, but wouldn't it have been prudent to at least move the whole thing sideways a little? It would have saved them a lot of grief in the interm.
Mark
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"-Agree or disagree: Sheppard = Mr. Fantastic, McKay = Human Torch, Ronon = The Thing, and Teyla = The Invisible Woman."
Sheppard made himself Mr. Fantastic by virtue of being the team leader. However, if we consider that Mr. Fantastic is the scientific genius of the group, shouldn't he be McKay?
Then again, there's much less chance of a McKay/Teyla romance than a Sheppard/Teyla one, so who knows?
Posted by Chris (Member # 71) on :
The Lost City is now lost! *snicker*
And I was unaware of the news the Carter is replacing Weir. I guess I've been remiss in my 'Gate spoilers...
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
quote:I dunno if it's been tried before, but beaming through the Atlantis shields seems to be no issue for Asgard tech.
When the replicators took over Atlantis, McKay was instructed to come up with some way to beam a nuke past its shields. I suppose we can say that's only an issue if they have three ZPMs powering said shields.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:-Time marches on... Now they're able to sink, raise, fly, and JUMP the whole city with only one ZPM
Possibly a result of the "vast improvments" to Atlantis' power grid Rodney made while hurtling toward ascension.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Additional - the patch worn on the left shoulder of the Apollo crew is fittingly of the Pegasus glyph. Ellis just had his on sideways (I don't blame the costuming guys much, since unlike the Earth symbol there is no clear "up" that can be referenced), and no one bothered to corect him.
Also, apparently the Daedalus crew wear this patch as well. Just haven't noticed until now. My eyes are weak, obviously.
Mark
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Cool - I was wondering about that patch.
I've just watched the episode - last night actually. As usual - I have had the episode downloaded since it aired but I've been pacing myself - one or two a week - so I have Stargate longer.
The beautiful stain-glass window is broken!
Weir is DEFINATELY going!?! WTF? *WHY*? WHY do they have to re-tool the show like this all the time. It's worse than Voyager.
I thought she was just being religated to guest-star status.
I like Torri Higginson - she has a good style!
So first Rainbow Sun Franks, then Paul McGillion and now Torri Higginson!?!
Grr.
The BIG thing I wondered about was - yes - what about the people on the mainland!?!
They also couldn't move the city sidways from the beam - they said it would reposition itself... this doesn't explain the asteroid? Why didn't it just go infront of the asteroid? Presumably the Asurans had a camera on that ship.
Why not somehow - tractor the 'ringship' to another system - or into hyperspace? The gate would then shut off.
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
They could have grabbed a gate from elsewhere, set it next to this gate, then gone to the Asuran homeworld and nuked the gate there to make the wormhole jump. Might have taken too long, though.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Hang on - I never got that one...
To disengage a gate - like the Ori supergate - you put a large amount of energy at which end?? The open-end? I'm sure they've changed the rules a few times.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
When they killed the supergate link they established this year, they did it from the Pegasus end. I can't remember exactly how, though.
Mark
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
Tsss, I never saw that episode with the crossover. What season was it? I've seen all of Season 3 but I think I missed most of Season 2.
About the Asuran gate-laser-weapon-cool-ship: Why couldn't they just fly a gate in front of it, dialed to an uninhabited planet, and jam it right up against the Asuran's ship so it couldn't fly away from it? That would at least buy them 30 minutes, and they could redial at the end.
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
The crossover was "The Pegasus Project" early S10 SG1.
I'm pretty sure the rules have been consistent on making gates jump. Direct a large energy surge at the outgoing gate, and the receiving gate jumps to another one nearby. Worked that way all three times I can think of.
Daniel, your solution wouldn't work because they wouldn't be able to dial the second gate while the first was still active. You can only have one active gate in a given region of space, which is why Atlantis couldn't dial out.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
OK so they jumped the Ori supergate over to a smaller gate?? My memory is shot - what happened then? They disengaged it - or it just stops large ships from coming through?
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
The point was to get the supergate to dial OUT, so the Ori couldn't dial in from their galaxy.
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
No, no, here's what happened:
Our Heroes wanted to establish an active wormhole to the Supergate, one way or the other, permanently. This would keep the Ori from coming through (so long as it wasn't a wormhole from their galaxy, obviously). Sam and the Asgard couldn't find a way to dial the supergate out, and the supergate would only accept incoming connections from another galaxy. So they took a gate to Pegasus, and Teal'c put another gate right next to the supergate. The Pegasus team put their gate in orbit of a black hole, since the time dilation allows the wormhole to remain open indefinitely, instead of the 38 minute limit. They dialed Teal'c's gate, thus establishing a wormhole that would never close so long as both gates remained intact. The Pegasus team then made a big boom on their outbound gate, making the incoming wormhole jump from Teal'c's gate to the nearest inactive gate, i.e. the supergate. Thus they created a permanent incoming wormhole to the supergate, preventing the Ori from dialing our galaxy, or from dialing home for that matter. Basically, that took the supergate entirely out of play, short of more wormhole-jumping shenanigans.
It all hangs together very well (unlike "Unending"...). The only real hole I've noticed is that they never address the fact that they've basically created a permanent gateway from Pegasus to the Milky Way, meaning the Wraith can send darts through! Of course, they'd have to know about it, and all the darts in the world really aren't a great threat with no hyperdrive...
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
That plus it's sat on the event horizon of a black hole.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
And it's not the time dilation that keeps it open - it's the unlimited power OF the black hole that gets absorbed by the gate, allowing it to remain open indefinitely.
Mark
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
I think both explanations have been used.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Hang on the boom at the Pegasus end causes the gate to jump at the Milky Way end?? When they first used the jumping technique - was that the first Antarctica episode - where was the 'boom' from??
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
They nuked it. Several times, actually, but then the combination of a nuke plus an exploding Wraith ship (long story) finally caused the intergalactic wormhole to jump to the supergate. The small gate in the black hole then kept the supergate permanently open. For whatever reason, the Ori forces apparently could not create another supergate while this one was occupied, so no further ships could come through to reinforce the four already in the Milky Way, one of which was also destroyed in that episode. It was quite a high body count between the Ori and the Wraith that week, really...
Mark
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
mm I'd forgotten the one-gate-in-one-region thing. I would think that would be a software safety feature, though, not a law of physics - I mean, it seems kind of arbitrary (as in, plot device *cough*). Actually it's probably to do with the limitations of the coordinate system (although they seemed to quietly let the six-points-in-space thing slide for awhile...) That's another post, though.
Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
All wormhole jumps I recall had the blast on the outgoing end and the jump on the receiving end. The discovery of the Antarctic gate (Jaffa fire), the dialing of the black hole (purposeful bomb), tracking down the renegade NID group (special device, I think), and this one (uberbomb). Were there any others?
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