posted
This episode isn't as much of a direct continuation per se, though it does follow up on where everyone was at the end of last week, starting new plotlines and concluding old ones. So it's not really a "part 2", but just what happens next.
-Weir is still stuck on Earth; however, I was wrong in that she was wearing her stylish black top from Lulu Lemon when she came back to Earth. No, this makes absolutely no difference to the story, but I send my brother's girlfriend a Lulu Lemon gift certificate every Christmas and otherwise don't shop there.
-I guess they also cover who's in command while Weir's away - WEIR is! In the opening, she does all her usual command stuff remotely from Earth, while at the same time blocking anyone from using the Atlantis stargate (the forcefield does this anyway - but at least this way no one can even connect).
-Ahh, THERE be Beckett! Apparently he's the only one besides Shep an O'Neill who has fired a drone from the chair platform, so they plug him in to defend the city. Ironically, the only time he fired a drone, he nearly killed those two other people.
-Shep contacts Atlantis from the bridge of their gooey new hive ship. Isn't that bridge the same set as the Wraith transport they used to ESCAPE said hive ship last week, though?
-The Daedalus is still hyperspaceless, and dips into the doughnuthole gap in the hive ship's superstructure to piggyback home. This was mentioned in "Allies" last year as possible, and shows just how freaking big the hive ships are.
-There are around 200 suriving humanized Wraith - everyone else was killed in battle, or they killed each other when they started converting.
-The IOA has grudgingly let Weir remain stay in command of the Atlantis expedition. The problem is that no one on Earth ever thought the Wraith would be a real threat to anyone outside of Pegasus; now that they have the potential of coming to Earth, they are reconsidering her suitability to the mission. In the end, they approve of it, but only after Woolsey has come along to do his "witch hunt" schtick.
-BTW, Weir and Woolsey are shuttled back to Atlantis via unseen Asgard ship. It takes only a week to get from Earth to Pegasus in non-souped-up Asgard ship; for reference, it's three weeks for the Daedalus, and if the big D had a ZPM, it's only four days.
-One can assume that the Asgard would have been there even sooner had they a ZPM; and in the end, it's probably why no one was TOO worried about being stranded in Pegasus for the first year. No one ever mentioned the Asgard in Atlantis' first season, and at the time they were really busy cleaning up after being nearly wiped out by the Replicators again. I guess they've cleaned up to the point of being able to help out against the Ori, and acting as a taxi service for W&W.
-Atlantis' new hive ship is still severely damaged, and while it can move, it can't fight, and McKay can't easily fix the technology, especially without spare parts. Still, it can be operated with a minimum crew, though the lack of functionality is what ultimately kills it.
-Michael is re-humanized against his will, and dropped into a humanized colony that Atlantis has set up. The cover story is that they are the victims of an amnesiac illness that have been isolated pending a more permenant "cure" from Beckett. Oddly too, Beckett removes his medical/science colour panels for no apparent reason; everyone else keeps their black military panels.
-Why does Michael have normal human hair (with hair gel and coloured tips, natch), while everyone else has white hair (if they have hair at all)? Maybe it was a consequence of the prototype retrovirus that they used on him; the humanized Wraith from last year's finale was also white-haired.
-Cover story fails, Wraith show up to rescue, Atlantis loses their gooey new hive ship. Not all the Wraith were re-Wraitified, so the retrovirus does work to some extent more on some of them (who were to be made into sacrifices for the rescuing hive). No clue as to who among them survived, but odds are that Michael may be back, commanding a faction of his own, and perhaps with a nuke of his own.
posted
I'll be pissed if it turns out that Michael didn't survive. It's great to see Connor Trinneer again, both in and out of the Wraith makeup. (Concerning the Human-like hair, my guess is that Beckett's first treatment specifically addressed that, since they were not only humanizing him, but also planning to integrate him with the expedition.) Michael makes for a great adversary, who's not quite a villain, who also has some very legitimate beef with our protagonists. To quote our favorite red-headed, psychopathic starship captain, "I doubt we've seen the last of him!"
You forgot to mention that they recruited Teyla to pilot the Wraith hive ship, because the Wraith apparently stole some ideas from the Ancients and required certain genetic markers to be in the pilot's system.
Wraith ships also seem to have some kind of automation capabilities, along with a general "failsafe" lockout system, in that the ship's subsystems won't generally function unless there are (non-Humanized) Wraith within a few hundred thousand kilometers. Though it was strange that the Wraith hive's subsystems seemed to automatically reactivate when it detected Michael's re-Wraith-ified bunch, even though they obviously weren't on board. If I were designing such a feature, I'd want an automatic cutoff and manual reactivation. Now that they know about the feature, it's possible that the team �should they ever be lucky enough to capture another hive ship� will just need to keep one Wraith alive and intact, lock him up in some room (maybe even in stasis?), and the hive's subsystems won't shut down.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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posted
I never quite caught why that other Wraith ship showed up. Does Wraith telepathic contact work over those distances? And was it just me, or was there an obvious flaw in the plan to take out the Wraith colony before the new hive showed up? The Daedalaus's hyperdrive doesn't work, so... what, it's impossible to get it anywhere? No, you just freaking took it back to Atlantis in the hive ship! The Daedalaus can be repaired in transit just as easily as in orbit, it's not like Atlantis has a drydock to take advantage of. Piggyback the Daedalaus on the hive ship, and you'll have both ships there, one with weapons and transporters, the other with a hyperdrive. Would have worked out much better that way. Was there some explanation for this I missed, in-story? Besides that we couldn't actually have our heros keep a hive ship, any more than we could have them keep the Orion?
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:I never quite caught why that other Wraith ship showed up. Does Wraith telepathic contact work over those distances?
I think that's what that little fire-lit circle ritual that Beckett found was about... a bunch of the Wraith combining their telepathic capabilities to contact another hive. Didn't Michael say something about not normally being able to communicate with Wraith over large distances or something like that?
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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quote:Originally posted by AndrewR: Did anyone find it weird to have The X-File's Skinner talking to Voyager's The Doctor?
Stargate does seam to have allot of veterants of cancelled sci-fi shows. Personally I'm wait for the rest of the cast of Firefly to show up. (I know Jayne & Kaylee have already appeared)
posted
Jewel Stait was in an episode of Atlantis last season... she was the little Wraith girl, remember? Also, don't forget that Morena Baccarin is going to be playing Adria in a few weeks on SG-1!
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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-------------------- "You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus "Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers A leek too, pretty much a negi.....
Registered: Sep 2000
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