[DWF]

Spoilers

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After a team from Atlantis goes missing, the expedition finds itself in the middle of a Genii coup.

[QueenTiye]

WHY WHY WHY Would the majority of the people with the Ancestor's gene be on a single mission all together - when that gene is its own skillset???

QT

[Christopher]

It wasn't the majority of people with the gene, just the majority of gene-endowed people included among the "wanted posters." We don't know what percentage of the actual gene-bearers (through inheritance or gene therapy) that represents.

Not a bad episode, though I regret seeing Cowan's reign come to an end. True, Colm Meaney hasn't managed to come back between his first episode and this one, so I guess it's reasonable to replace him with an actor who can appear on a more recurring basis. But Meaney played the role with a lot of style and puckish charm.

Nice to see them acknowledge that the regimes that overthrow dictatorships are rarely any better. Which sets up the possibility of future conflicts with the Genii, of course, but it's also a historical truth that it's nice to see they didn't gloss over.

And Ronon is still an annoying thug with more muscle than brain in his head.

[DWF]

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Not a bad episode, though I regret seeing Cowan's reign come to an end. True, Colm Meaney hasn't managed to come back between his first episode and this one, so I guess it's reasonable to replace him with an actor who can appear on a more recurring basis. But Meaney played the role with a lot of style and puckish charm.

Actually Colm Meaney has one scene in The Storm with Robert Davi.

[Caretaker]

I feel like an idiot for not seeing the double cross. In retrospect, it should have been obvious. Of course, Ladon could have been on anyone's side.

Nice episode, and nice to hear about the city now having 10 puddlejumpers. In fact, this episode had some nice, brief continuity references. And it's always good to have a character like Beckett who knows what his job is, what his oath requires, no matter the "gray" situation in which his fellow team members find themselves.

[Christopher]

Caretaker, on Feb 17 2006, 11:59 PM, said:

Nice episode, and nice to hear about the city now having 10 puddlejumpers. In fact, this episode had some nice, brief continuity references.

Yeah, but how did the Genii find out about that? The Atlantis personnel should've been more concerned about how an enemy power gained so much specific intelligence about their current state of affairs. Is there a spy in Atlantis?

This post has been edited by Christopher: 18 February 2006 - 10:13 AM

[DWF]

Christopher, on Feb 18 2006, 10:13 AM, said:

Caretaker, on Feb 17 2006, 11:59 PM, said:

Nice episode, and nice to hear about the city now having 10 puddlejumpers. In fact, this episode had some nice, brief continuity references.

Yeah, but how did the Genii find out about that? The Atlantis personnel should've been more concerned about how an enemy power gained so much specific intelligence about their current state of affairs. Is there a spy in Atlantis?

The Genii did take over Atlantis for a while in The Storm/Eye so I'm sure they gathered alot of infomation about the place.

[cylkoth]

^Exactly. They counred how many there were, when they took over last season

Side note, shouldn't they have more than 10 now anyway, getting some from the other cityship from The Tower?

[Crazy 'Scaper]

QueenTiye, on Feb 18 2006, 02:44 AM, said:

WHY WHY WHY Would the majority of the people with the Ancestor's gene be on a single mission all together - when that gene is its own skillset???

I don't find it too implausible. When the Atlantis expedition was being put together they would have needed three kinds of people. Scientists, military and those with the Ancient gene. Now as it wouldn't make much sense to take along a whole bunch of folk whose only contribution was the gene then you'd be hoping to find people in the first two categories who had the gene in addition to their normal skills.

Now when it came to chosing the scientists there would have been quite a small pool to chose from anyway so the odds are that not too many of them would have the gene. If a scientist had needed skills they'd go whether they had the gene or not. But when it came to filling out the ranks of the grunts, there would be no shortage of potential redshirts that could be drawn from the militaries of the various contributing militaries, so it would make sense to make the presence of the gene would be one of the factors that would determine who was selected. The end result would be a disproportionately high number of Atlantis' military with the gene and they were precisely the ones that would get sent on military missions such as this raid.

[Mercurys Winter]

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Yeah, but how did the Genii find out about that? The Atlantis personnel should've been more concerned about how an enemy power gained so much specific intelligence about their current state of affairs. Is there a spy in Atlantis?

I was confused by that. I thought he demanded "all the jumpers", then Weir is saying "We're not giving him 10 jumpers." It seemed kind of an arbitrary number but maybe that's how many they had when the Genii were there in the Storm, hopefully (if she were to give in to him) she'd be smart enough to hold back the new ones they got from The Tower...

I liked this ep but something seemed off to me. Maybe it was that they killed Cowen I agree he was an awesome bad guy on this show.

I thought it was kind of dumb of them to send Rodney and John together to the Genii homeworld...I can see why John had to go but someone else should have gone with him. I know he joked about why Rodney was with (LMAO btw) but I don't remember hearing a legitimate reason. Not that I'm complaining It doesn't seem like those two have enough scenes together lately. I miss the chemistry and the SNARK!!

Was sad when I thought Lorne was dead, was happy when he wasn't Could be interesting to find out what the Genii experiments on the Ancient Gene could turn out...

This post has been edited by Mercurys Winter: 18 February 2006 - 12:30 PM

[Christopher]

cylkoth, on Feb 18 2006, 11:37 AM, said:

^Exactly. They counred how many there were, when they took over last season

Side note, shouldn't they have more than 10 now anyway, getting some from the other cityship from The Tower?

I wondered if that might be it -- that the Genii's info was out of date. But I was under the impression that Atlantis only had six jumpers to start out, and it would only have been in the last few episodes (with the gain of several from the Tower and the loss of one in "Grace Under Pressure") that the number would've changed.

Crazy 'Scaper, on Feb 18 2006, 11:45 AM, said:

Now when it came to chosing the scientists there would have been quite a small pool to chose from anyway so the odds are that not too many of them would have the gene. If a scientist had needed skills they'd go whether they had the gene or not. But when it came to filling out the ranks of the grunts, there would be no shortage of potential redshirts that could be drawn from the militaries of the various contributing militaries, so it would make sense to make the presence of the gene would be one of the factors that would determine who was selected. The end result would be a disproportionately high number of Atlantis' military with the gene and they were precisely the ones that would get sent on military missions such as this raid.

But keep in mind that it's now possible to give people the Ancient gene through a gene-therapy injection. That's how McKay got it, and that's why the Genii were capturing gene-bearers to begin with: so they could devise a gene injection of their own. So even if your logic was valid to begin with, I'm sure a lot of the scientists have by now been inoculated with the gene.

[Orpheus]

My take on the posters was different:
They listed people who *commonly went offworld* and had the gene. These are the ones the Genii could a) catalog, b) photograph, c) scan for the Ancient gene (Pegasus is full of "Ancient-gene" scanners left by the Wraith, as well as Ancient "gene-scanners" like the one used by the chamberlain last week), and most importantly -- the only ones where an wanted poster would do the slightest bit of good. In fact, IIRC, Teyla's first words on seeing the photos was "They are pictures of some of Atlantis' off-world team members.

The nature and makeup of the project has changed considerably since the Genii takeover. Then, the Atlantis expedition was self-selected for a one-way mission. It had to explore for essential resources--or die. Why would anyone even sign up for such a mission if tehy weren't heavily motivated by exploration of one kind or another? On the old team, almost everyone probably went off-world at some point. On the new Atlantis, there's little reason for an IT Warrant officer or a specialty tech pipefitter {You call that vacuum-welding? I'll show you vacuum welding!) to go off-world.

Exploration is no longer Job One. Job One is maintaining/manning Atlantis, researching its tech and databanks, etc. -- especially now that there is regular transport to/from Earth (vs. the original permanently stranded expedition) and a desperate need for info/tech to fight the Ori. Most of the current Atlantis project probably rarely if ever leave the city.

They never said the posteres listed most/all team members with the gene. That was simply ONE common factor-- we can guess that they also all went off-world enough to be surreptitiously catalogued, DNA-scanned, and photographed for the posters. The military- and revenge-minded Genii would have been cataloguing military personnel as "potential threats" from Day One -- it's just how they think. Further, most/all off-world teams were heavily military anyway (defense against unknown beasties and dangers) With frontline off-world military units so heavily over-represented, it's not surprising that many were on a major off-world military op

If Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, an eighty year-old "researcher" (it isn't plagiarism if you cite it) arrived on Daedalus, never went on a field mission, but showed up on a poster, *then* Lucy would have some serious 'splainin to do. The Genii shouldn't know he exists, much less his gene status. Ditto, recent gene recipients, replacement staff via spaceship, etc.

As for the number of puddle-jumpers:
Cowan said that he *believed* they had ten. Having stated his expectation, that would be the number under discussion, even if they had 20 or 100. We wouldn't give more than he demanded -- and note that no one ever said "but then *we* wouldn't have any puddle jumpers for our own use -- and we need them!" My guess is that Cowan guessed too low.

The number of puddle jumpers is in constant flux. The team can repair damaged ones (Grace under pressure). Major Ancient facilities remain (Trinity, The Tower, many other eps), and puddle jumpers would be minor spoils from such sites, hardly worth mentioning (PJs aren't in short supply, while drones and ZPMs are desperately needed. Guess which one would get all the screen time?) On the flip side, PJs have been lost, too.

I'd be pretty surprised if 10 was an accurate count. If that turns out to be true, it does indeed require explanation.

[Jazzer]

If the Genii can figure out just from discreet observation of Atlantis teams that Atlantis must have survived, I would think it's just a matter of time before word somehow gets back to the Wraith about Atlantis' survival. Something else that has bugged me is why don't the Atlantis off-world teams dress in a way to better blend in with the civilians on other worlds? SG Atlantis uniforms make them stand out like a sore thumb. Even if they use the claim that they now have another home base elsewhere, why call unnecessary attention to themselves?

[DWF]

I wonder if they picked up those stunner weaspons from the Tower ep., it's a nice counterpart to SG1's Zat guns.

[Caretaker]

DWF, on Feb 18 2006, 09:41 PM, said:

I wonder if they picked up those stunner weaspons from the Tower ep., it's a nice counterpart to SG1's Zat guns.

I was wondering about those, especially since Sheppard used a simple tazer back in CRITICAL MASS. It seems like, sometimes, they go out of their way not to use zatnikitals on the new series - too much backstory or explanation of these alien weapons, perhaps? Anyway...

I for some reason always assumed Atlantis only had two jumpers. But I guess they may have had more than that (I think I need to rewatch THE GIFT - isn't that the episode where the Wraith darts buzz the city?)

[Kosmokrat]

Caretaker, on Feb 19 2006, 06:01 PM, said:

I was wondering about those, especially since Sheppard used a simple tazer back in CRITICAL MASS. It seems like, sometimes, they go out of their way not to use zatnikitals on the new series - too much backstory or explanation of these alien weapons, perhaps? Anyway...

Well, the tazer served a different purpose. As they didn't want Caldwell to loose consciousness in order to get the info out of him, these stun weapons would have been rather counterproductive.
Same goes for the zatnikitals.

These stunners that they use more frequently now are actually Wraith stunners. The smaller, handy version of the big ones introduced in season 1.
I guess quite a number of those Wraith guns have been found after the dramatic attack of 'The Siege' parts 3+4.
They are used now as an alternative to the deadly earth weapons at disposal.

And that Wraith would primarily use stun weapons is absolutely convincing, if you consider their dietary requirements.

[KathyW2200]

What happened to Weir? She seemed more aggressive in this episode, even looked more aggressive. Was some of Phoebus left behind? I liked the change, wherever it came from.

[Hibblette]

Actually I've always seen Weir as aggressive.

I just have.

She's a little more thoughtful about certain issues, you know torture and blowing up databases, but for the most part she's a pretty aggressive person.

[Christopher]

KathyW2200, on Feb 19 2006, 06:41 PM, said:

What happened to Weir? She seemed more aggressive in this episode, even looked more aggressive. Was some of Phoebus left behind? I liked the change, wherever it came from.

I think it was simply that this episode was written in such a way as to focus better on Weir's responsibilities as administrator, negotiator and decision-maker for the expedition. She hasn't changed, it's just that she was given more to do here than usual -- and far more successfully than last week's approach of "Give Torri something to do by having an evil alien possess her."

[DWF]

Hibblette, on Feb 19 2006, 08:04 PM, said:

Actually I've always seen Weir as aggressive.

I just have.

She's a little more thoughtful about certain issues, you know torture and blowing up databases, but for the most part she's a pretty aggressive person.

I agree it didn't take her long to stand up to Kinsey and she was pretty aggressive in dealing with the System Lords as well in New Order and she quickly put Caldwell in his place in The Intruder, I just wish she'd do things like that more often.