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Posted by: Arcady Dec 13th 2005, 3:14 AM

Season 2, Episode 15 - The Tower

Air Dates:
CA: Dec. 19, 8 PM (TMN)
US: Feb. 3, 9 PM (Sci Fi Channel)
UK: Feb. 8, 8 PM (Sky One)

The team finds a world that possesses Ancient defense technology, where Colonel Sheppard finds himself a pawn in the rivalry between the heirs to the throne.

http://www.sg1archive.com/atlantis/s2.shtml#215 | http://www.sg1archive.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=12580 | http://www.sg1archive.com/teasers/a215.html

(This topic is for people who have seen the episode to discuss it. If you don't want to be spoiled, don't read this topic.)

Posted by: Arcady Dec 20th 2005, 3:32 AM

Why this episode sucked:



What a waste of time.

Posted by: Auntie Em! Dec 20th 2005, 3:58 AM

This episode was pathetically pathetic. Useless piece of sh*t.

It was so bad I forgot I even watched. Usually I sit and wait for this thread to open to post but not this time. It sucked that bad!

For the life of me I cannot even remember how it ended!

Posted by: Carter-Hot Dec 20th 2005, 5:37 AM

I fear as much.

After 4 great episodes (2x11) to (2x14), the next one bound to be crap.



I haven't seen it yet, but it doesn't stop me from talking to people who has, lol.

Posted by: beat-boxing rulez Dec 20th 2005, 8:46 AM

Why are All the episode that have ancients or Ancient tech, crap, poorly written and ended really bad?

these are supposed to be episode where we get all excited (eg: i was excitied about trinity but that was crap, Aurora was alright but made the ancients look like neanderthals in funny clothes)

Im getting really annoyed with this

Posted by: Auntie Em! Dec 20th 2005, 8:51 AM

How did this episode end anyway? I cannot remember. I remember Sheppard approaching the guy that killed the Keeper after he sat in the chair and all the hundred or so drones failed. Sheppard said ....."You are not the keeper because the keeper is able to work the chair...." That is all I remember.

Posted by: man named enis Dec 20th 2005, 9:20 AM

Why is it that I always feel like the odd one out? I enjoyed this episode. I'll admit the ending was a little contrived but the twist with the bald guy actually being the one who poisoned the lord protector was pretty clever IMHO. And they now have drones!!!

Posted by: Arcady Dec 20th 2005, 11:15 AM

Did anyone else notice that the actor that played the lord protector also played http://www.sg1archive.com/characters/h.shtml#harlan on SG-1?

Posted by: Atlantians Dec 20th 2005, 12:11 PM

We have Drones now?

Posted by: hobo_joe20 Dec 20th 2005, 12:46 PM

I'll agree that this episode sucked. Good concept, bad followthrough. Another "Atlantis" - now its something else for them to explain. Why have we not heard mention of it before? etc.

I think the only good thing that came out of this one was that we now have drones.

Yes, Atlantians, if you had watched the episode you would have seen that we have drones now. Additionally, the answer of how they are stored has officially been answered.

Posted by: Auntie Em! Dec 20th 2005, 1:23 PM

You know I am starting to get a little sick and tired of the perfection of everything in the Stargate universe. Nothing is flawed. The lighting is perfect. The characters even the bad ones are perfect. There never is a real sense of jeopardy when the main characters get in trouble. This episode highlighted that to a T. I knew the village would never come to harm so there was never a sense of realism to it.

Posted by: ALIEN_JL Dec 20th 2005, 1:35 PM

YES...

They appears to be stored in some pretty damn stupid, space-wasting wine-cellar
shelving in which it would definitely take millions of cubic meters of storage space
to hold that kind of amounts of drones what Jack used to destroy Anubis fleet...
(If all space in Atlantis would be filled with them like that there still would be no
where near that many drones...)

Posted by: Auntie Em! Dec 20th 2005, 1:56 PM

Not only that but how the hell does it load the drone? The drone has to be picked up in its case, taken out, inserted into the drone shoot. How the hell was that done with storage like that?

Also another nitpick: McKay blows a hole right up through ceiling to get a radio signal out? I am like huh?

Posted by: jetsetter Dec 20th 2005, 2:20 PM

Damn guys, take it easy. The episode was ok and it adding something to the series that could come up later. We know have more drones and more Jumpers. These may come into play in the season final.

Posted by: ALIEN_JL Dec 20th 2005, 2:32 PM

And also I wonder why (In Season1 Finale) the ZPM was required to find out that
there were only few dozen drones left in atlantis if those drones are stored same
way there. Why didn't they just walk into that "wine-cellar" and check if they can
see any drones in any of the shelfs ??

Posted by: Yamarin Dec 20th 2005, 4:05 PM

The drones don't need to be packed out and put into anything..."drone shoot" is just a opening for the drones to fly out of, they are all capable of taking off and flying on their own...(seen in the ep where they discover they can go to atlantis) the reason for the "drone shot" opening is to prevent them from making a swiss cheese out of the place they are in, which explains how McKay were able to "blow" a hole through the ceiling...

My best guess is that the drones are made penetrating like this to be more letal...I.e blow stuff up from the inside rather than making small dents on the outside...

And yeah, the episode wasn't the most exciting, but did give of a few pointers about the ancient tec and what happened to most of their tech...

Posted by: ziostilon Dec 20th 2005, 4:20 PM

I enjoyed it alot. I like how they re-decorated Atlantis and put a Medieval society into it. I like it when they visit a planet where the society is like Medieval Times!

The episode also explained some aspects of Atlantis, and some rooms that we haven't seen in Atlantis. I'm guessing this is one of those episodes where they talk about Atlantis. And show some parts of the city where we haven't seen before

But i'd have to agree that the ending sucked a lil' bit. They probably tried to squish everything to the end so they couldn't have a good ending.

Posted by: rkenshin Dec 20th 2005, 6:15 PM

Couldn't they have shipped the drones from Earth (Antarctic site) to Atlantis?

Would be great since they could replenish the PJumper's drones there too before this episode actually happened..

Posted by: Salibaba Dec 20th 2005, 6:25 PM

not been on in a while but i thought that was a decent enough episode, not up there with the greats of course, but just think of all the stuff we have now, drones, jumpers and a whole city full of spare parts if we need them, im sure that we could trade for the parts if we ever had to. We also got a little more of the city to see as well, and i always wondered how the drones were stored as well, i cant remember who but the person who pointed out about just checking the wine cellar instead of waiting for the ZPM , thats a good point , i bet the writers are sitting now saying "sh*t you were supposed to make up a reason for the story being like that" - "sh*t i thought you were doing that."

anyway the ep gets a 6.5 from me, not quite good enough for a 7, and im not so harsh to give out 6s.

Posted by: Zoidman Dec 20th 2005, 6:32 PM

This episode could have been SO much better

But it was ok.

Posted by: wteaocb Dec 20th 2005, 8:22 PM

The whole purpose of this episode was to find Atlantis drones in order for them to use during some future episode.

Little character development occurred, and the plot was more or less linear and boring. Its only saving grace was the plot twist, which reveals the bald chancelor as the mastermind behind the protectors' assassination.

Also, shepherd gets laid *again*. This seems to happen almost every episode. The bastard is starting to remind me of Captain Kirk; having sex with every willing participant that he can find. I can't see how Weir is going to want to have anything to do with him in the future; especially since he likely has any number of sexually transmitted diseases at this point.... Damaged goods... Really, he should be more careful about exposing himself to foreign disease that he likely has no natural immunity to...

As for the episode being lousy, I don't think that it was too much worse than the other atlantis episodes, I mean, it's hit and miss really. Of course, it was lightyears better than some sg-1 episodes... 2010 and Heroes part 1 and 2 come to mind.... Ugggh, I had to skip those altogether.

Anyway there is still hope for episodes 216 and 217... When do those air by the by?

Posted by: Carter-Hot Dec 21st 2005, 9:30 AM

I got the chance to view this episode and I rather enjoyed it. It might not be the best one but it was kinda entertaining. I love the 18th Century style, minus the peasants of course.

Shame we didn't see a revolution.

Sheppard know gets laid way too much! He's like a freakin horn-dog, what's up with that?

Anyway an 8 out of 10

It was going to be a 7.5 but it was lifted to an 8 cos I love the 18th century style approach to this episode.

Posted by: Source Dec 21st 2005, 5:55 PM

In the pilot episode of Atlantis, that hologram said, "the Wraith destroyed everything and that only Atlantis remained.

So does anyone else wounder why the Wraith didn't spend time blowing this city up like the others? They didn't seem to have a problem sending wave after wave of ships to Atlanits.

We also know that Atlantis used up it's supply of drones during the first war with the Wraith, except for a few, so why does this city still have loads? especially if the lord protector as been knocking Wraith ships out of orbit for the last 10,000 years.

And why wasn't the Stargate in the control tower!?!?

Posted by: dr_n_tesla Dec 21st 2005, 7:18 PM

Ugh, how many toes do Mallozzi/Mullie have left cos I think they've just about shot them all off!

They have seriously dug themselves a nice hole with the drones on wine racks! They are now stuck with little drones and when the time comes will run out again. Now they have to find the drone factory and manually reload the drone chamber.

I would have been far more satisfied to see a set of transporter rings in the bottom of the chamber below where the drones exit to imply that the drones are at least mass stored somewhere else. If not then having a console nearby that shows how they've modified the transport rings to reintegrate drones on demand. Mackay would then just have to blab on about the only drawback would be the power requirements to "reload" and that the ZPM could not support it in it's current state. They would have not needed any extra CGI, just props which they already had. Fair enough if they needed to physically store drones on standby, but to have small acces corridoors into the facility is rediculous. I can't imagine a bunch of people pushing carts of drones through those corridoors when under attack.

What makes it even more unbelievable is that they got the design wrong twice!!! Two intergalactic space cities with a very poorly designed weapons storage and maintenance system. I have a feeling that this city was built shortly after arriving in the Pegasus galaxy as there were still no enemies to defend against, it seems to be the only plausible explanation for the rather inadequate defence system of the cities.

This episode is so depressing I cannot bare to continue commenting. 5 more episodes to go, they better knock our socks off!

Posted by: ziostilon Dec 21st 2005, 7:36 PM

I agree with Carter-Hot, I enjoy how they mix the 18th century with the modern style. It's like P-90 v.s. swords. That's why I watch Stargate. Especially Season 2 of SGA and Season 9 of SG-1. I think the writers are going more towards that point, so if you're not into the 18th century stuff. This show might not be for you. Cause SG-1 is changing to all that European ancient mythology stuff, no more Egyptian mythology. Atlantis is going to have some of that European Ancient Mythology. I'm guessing when they don't have anymore ideas for Atlantis, they'll use that European Ancient Mythology to start a new storyline.

Posted by: Krystian SG1 Dec 21st 2005, 8:42 PM

Damn, where in this episode did they have to reload any drones?? The drones just sit there and when someone activates them they fly through an opening in the city and destroy the target. They dont need to be put into any cannon or launcher. Remember Rising Part one, Becket sits in the chair and a drone suddenly activates and flies off by itself.
My guess is that there are three rooms like that in Atalntis (in Siege part 2 there are three exit points where the drones fly out of).

I think those rooms are under those openings. The drones are probably stored like that to avoid one drone from crashing into another on its "take off".
Overall i think this episode was average. Hey better than nothing.

Posted by: Auntie Em! Dec 21st 2005, 8:50 PM

How they went about getting the drones for Atlantis is just bogus. Geeeze they just screwed up so badly. I mean come on. Suddenly they find a duplicate Atlantis with all the same weakness, buried in the ground (which also does not make sense) and that has protected the surrounding country side but for some reason the Wraith just leave it alone.

It is just beyond stupid.

Posted by: Mental Case Dec 21st 2005, 9:58 PM

They don't just leave it alone, they probably sent scout or culling ships and such there but they were shot down.

Anyway I think this episode was alright, and to be honest I had been dissapointed with the past few, they seemed really miscelaneous and not very enjoyable. This one however had a little bit of intrigue to it, and some unexpected.

I do find it a bit odd that it's said to be a complete replica of atlantis though. Atlantis was meant to be like.. their main big hope, their centre, their heart, yet.. to have a second one seems so far fetched. Also it does really make me wonder how they're going to keep that safe and out of wraith hands because they've barely explored atlantis itself, so to have a replica just as big, there could be who knows what secrets down there that could perhaps help the wrath if the alantis team doesn't get to it first.

So I suppose it's part bad that they've opened that box so to speak, but I didn't think of that while watching and I did enjoy it. Also there is some potential for some interesting stories stemming from it.

Posted by: JaffaKree Dec 21st 2005, 10:19 PM

I liked this episode better than the last one. At least there was no daydreaming excuse to get Carter half naked.

The idea of there being a second Atlantis is hard to explain though. The whole idea I thought was that the Ancients put all their time and effort into building their home city. This totally cheapens it now that we know there are at least two of them.

Posted by: Krystian SG1 Dec 21st 2005, 10:41 PM

Maybe the Ancients used cityships like Atlantis to colonize other worlds. They could have had Atlantis as their capital city while other similar cityships went from world to world to help colonize the galexy.

Posted by: Carter-Hot Dec 22nd 2005, 5:22 AM

I think the Ancients were in the middle of constructing another city to be launched to another galaxy, due to the over-whelming Wraith threat. But it was incomplete, with only the central tower being the strongest and safest of the entire city complex.

So that may explain why the city was prone to "earthquakes" (instability of the internal infrastructure of the peers), also the fact that the city has remained where it has (on the ground) for the past 10,000 years, so vegetation could have damaged the incomplete parts of the city.

Atlantis was fortunate that it was situtated on Earth on the now-Antarctica location and then submerged under the ocean (once arived and settled in the Pegasus Galaxy) then risen up (present day).

Another member asked why the gate wasn't in the central tower, maybe again the city was incomplete, so no major control systems were installed, just the main command centre (where McKay augmented the ZPM), the weapons, the engines and the control chair, in fear the Wraith does begin to attack the city.

Another member also wanted to know why the Wraith didn't besiege and constantly attacked this city, that is a good question, why didn't they? The Wraith could seize that city and take the technology but then, the Wraith may not be able to detect the city and that whenever the Wraith does come, in cruisers or darts, they were always shot down, or they may have found out that the city has nothing they need, it was just a hollow skin.

Posted by: Auntie Em! Dec 22nd 2005, 8:18 AM

But they said the Wraith knew of the planet and had attacked in the past. The Wraith surrounded and atacked never ending for 100 years the Atlantis city. So why leave this one alone? It was not empty Carter-Hot it is full of drones.

Posted by: Carter-Hot Dec 22nd 2005, 8:28 AM

But it may have been incomplete.

They had a lot of drones but the Wraith don't use drones, and it could be a hollow city full of drones, the Wraith just went onto Atlantis, for a full working city. Besides the Wraith, 10,000 years ago just wanted to drive the Ancients out.

Now they're wanting the city but since the Wraith are becoming more territorial, they might have forgotten about this planet.

Posted by: Atlantians Dec 22nd 2005, 12:49 PM

Can anyone post picks of the "Drone Room"?

Posted by: Carter-Hot Dec 22nd 2005, 1:50 PM

Basically this... lol

Posted by: SomeEvilGuy Dec 22nd 2005, 2:39 PM

Remember, the Wraith rn't after Atlantis now (or were when they knew it still existed) All they want is the control crystal that lets a DHD dial an 8th chevron (in other words to get to Earth)....for new vast feeding grounds.

Posted by: ALIEN_JL Dec 22nd 2005, 3:36 PM

Just look at this... Imagine how insane amount of storage space it takes to store
the amount of drones Jack fired at Anubis fleet... (even if all the drones would be
stored as tightly as possible it would propably still take cubic kilometers of space
but when they are stored as loosely as in that screen... huh huh...)

Posted by: Atlantians Dec 22nd 2005, 3:50 PM

Maybe that storaget area was unfinished when the City was abandoned and they ever had time to efficiently store them?

I wish.

Posted by: tfwarlord Dec 22nd 2005, 4:40 PM

as i remember in that episode, we where told that there only where a few drones back "in the buffer", maby a large ammount of the drones are stored in a kinda energtic state in a buffer when they are about to be fired... just a thought.. the drones we saw where kinda "extra rounds"..... just a tought... or maby its different fireing systems on earth and atlantis then the tower... maby the tower is of an older version....

Posted by: Atlantians Dec 22nd 2005, 5:08 PM

It can't be older. Maybe it is unfinished?

Posted by: Source Dec 22nd 2005, 6:17 PM

Also i'd like to point out that in the "The Siege Part 3", McKay needed to power the chair with that enhanced naqueda reactor they brought from earth, inorder to see how many drones were left in Atlantis.

Posted by: beat-boxing rulez Dec 23rd 2005, 5:40 AM

I think this was a temporary Way of storing drones because the "wine Racks" that hold the drones look to me like they are portable and like Atlantians said Maybe that storaget area was unfinished when the City was abandoned and they ever had time to efficiently store them

just think about it. do u think a race as smart as ancients built and stored such powerful weapons like they did there.

Posted by: ALIEN_JL Dec 23rd 2005, 6:57 AM

You just think about it.! Do YOU really think a race as advanced as Ancients would
even build or store projectiles for projectile weapons ?? When they clearly have the
ability to convert energy into matter ?? They could just create a device which drains
some power from ZPM and converts it into fully functional Drones when ever they
need them...

But no no... Ancients blacksmiths just forge them in their workshops and then they
propably carry them by hand in to those wine-cellars... (and then when the wraiths
attack their weapon fires them soo fast that the cellars are empty in few minutes
and then they again need to spend few years to fill it back up...)

Posted by: Carter-Hot Dec 23rd 2005, 7:27 AM

Maybe when they create these Ancient drones, they come in a wine rack that have to be transferred to a main storage area but for reason they never got transferred.

Posted by: Mental Case Dec 23rd 2005, 9:24 AM

Well, atlantis/replica atlantis are big places. Could easily accomodate numerous pod-decks. Also I'd like to think the sparseness is for allowing a takeoff trajectory. Like, think about a plane needing a runway, maybe drones need a short space to move out of to take off and manouver upwards. Now you'd think with them as advanced as they are, they'd be able to just.. hover out and up.. but maybe they made cut-backs on that to preserve power or some such.

Posted by: Hack-Slash Dec 23rd 2005, 7:51 PM

It does seem quite an inneficient way to store them, and did anybody notice the lack of gel on the chair

Posted by: dr lee Dec 23rd 2005, 8:16 PM

i've just seen this episode and i agree that this was a weak episode. the only thing interesting in this was that there is at least one other 'atlantis'. it's good to see that they've refueled the drones and replaced the destroyed PJs.

one thing of note in this episode was when mackay is standing over the hole you see something move across screen behind the trees, though you can't make out what it is it looked shiny.

Posted by: Cons Dec 24th 2005, 11:04 AM

dr lee can u post a screen shot or give the time it happened, i just went over that seen and i didnt see anything.

dave

Posted by: dr lee Dec 24th 2005, 12:50 PM

i'll try but it may take me a few days. it is literally a two second thing.

i've just gone and looked at that scene again and all i can see moving behind rodney is a butterfly

i'm going mad! soz

Posted by: Source Dec 24th 2005, 2:35 PM

^^^I realise this may be a stupid and off topic question but, Where does everyone get those character smilies from?

Posted by: Atlantians Dec 24th 2005, 3:44 PM

Could somone please post more screenies of the Drone Chamber.
Thanks.

Posted by: Carter-Hot Dec 24th 2005, 3:54 PM

That's the only shot you get to see.

Posted by: Atlantians Dec 24th 2005, 4:54 PM

Seriously? That sucks.

Posted by: Raxor Dec 25th 2005, 6:01 AM

still a nice pic anywya
J+P episiodes generally suck as a rule

this is no execption
**

Posted by: Ilzy Dec 25th 2005, 6:09 AM

When you write a post there's a list of smilies on your left and under them is a text: Show All. That's where the best stuff hides

About the episode, my brothers saw it before me and they really liked it. Hearing their excited comments I was really expecting to see something cool but compared to the previous 3 or 4 episodes of Atlantis this really wasn't anything special.

The only interesting and non-predictable thing was the Atlantis city v.2.0. under the ground.

Posted by: Sibylle Dec 25th 2005, 9:34 AM

The episode was quite good imho...

some nice effects, nice character development..

But the best part is that this episode contributes a great thing to the main story!
Now they have drones! they know the ancients build other city's!!!! imagine the possibility to fly one of those things back to earth and do research on it!

P.E. the episode "Grace under pressure" was nice, but pure for character development, no further contribution....

Posted by: ha'tak Dec 25th 2005, 1:24 PM

they were created by Deus Wrath and can easily be found in the show all section when you post

click the show all link and all the sites emoticons are there including the characters

Posted by: Teyla Sheppard Dec 26th 2005, 8:38 AM

i agree comletely. for me it was the worst ep from season 2. i had to force myself to watch it to the end ...but now they have new drones and PJ

Posted by: implor Dec 27th 2005, 6:17 AM

they tok ships and drones but did they any ZPM? it was i few left =)

Posted by: dr lee Dec 27th 2005, 8:57 AM

the ZPM was almos completley depleted when they arrived.

if i remember correctly (i watched it a couple of days ago) they depleted it fully when they saved the village.

Posted by: Ilzy Dec 27th 2005, 9:05 AM

You're right about that!

It just occured to me that the Atlantis team has left yet another planet completely without protection. There is even no use for any gene-theraphy now without a ZPM. What good is the end of such class-divided society if they lose all the protection they had?

There's no such thing as wraith-alarm so there's not much use of the invitation to run to Atlantis.

Posted by: Auntie Em! Dec 27th 2005, 9:58 AM

I have a disturbing question. Why do they feel they have the right to take resources from the planets they come to? Why should they have some of the drones when those people need them to protect themselves.

Why do they have the right to even contemplate the right to take the ZPM?

Posted by: Ilzy Dec 27th 2005, 11:24 AM

Well in this case the drones wouldn't be any good to the natives since their ZPM isn't working anymore... But the overall tendency really is disturbing

Posted by: Carter-Hot Dec 28th 2005, 7:50 AM

Well from their perspective, Atlantis is HQ -- they have a better chance of kicking the Wraiths' ass by centralising resources.

Posted by: Source Dec 28th 2005, 1:00 PM

But the Ancients had all of those planets under their control with Atlantis as HQ and the Wraith still kicked their ass's.

We still don't have a way of stopping the Wraith, But we still take resources of any planet even if it leaves them defenceless.

Posted by: KattChan Dec 28th 2005, 1:12 PM

If u played any strategy you would know how hard is it to defend all your teritory againts max AI cmming from all sides ! ^_^

The way to stop the wraith may be reveiled in later episodes , however leaving drones and P.J in the hands of cavemen is a bit unlogical , so the SGA team traded them with other supplies they could use .

Posted by: Cons Dec 30th 2005, 5:50 PM

this is a bit of topic but does anyone know when the next episode is avaliable for download.
dave

Posted by: Auntie Em! Dec 30th 2005, 7:10 PM

Con that is not allowed on the forum. We do not discuss that in the threads.

Posted by: Mattthegreat995 Dec 30th 2005, 7:19 PM

I liked this ep a lot...i dont see why everyone hates it.
The wine cellar of drones was cool IMO.
8/10. Better than Grace Under Pressure.

Posted by: Weiland Jan 1st 2006, 5:13 PM

Someone pointed out about the actor stealing between sg1 and sga with the lord protector... well, i guess you didnt notice the many others so far???

The dude from taylor's people / village, the one who challenges wier against blowing up atlantis during 'The Siege', was the same actor as the dude from SG1 season 7, Forsaken.

The guy who was the leader of the kid planet, was the same actor as a Lt. who became host to lantesh in his last hours.

Theres more, but i cant remember. Also you have other actors spotted but not with a full role, eg. the guy who plays the prior who turned mr. Jaffa leader (bad with names, i am) and was also another character from earlier in SG1.


But back to the ep...

I wonder what happened to whats left of the city, and why it didnt pop up on the 'ZPM HERE' list, and also in the database.

It makes u ask how many more like atlantis were there, and how many more remain.

We also have a near full ZPM in Atlantis, yes? Well, why the hell dont they just fly it back to the milky way and plonk it on the moon or something?
:)

Posted by: SorCerer Jan 2nd 2006, 11:39 AM

The military-science part of this ep just sucked. Bare with me for a second on a drone fire-destroy sequence.

We have the physical part of the drone, the big honkin` glowy torpedo. We've all seen the power of a drone, so no argue there. We have a launching chair, a launching shaft, a little dance around the tower (that was absolutely ... farfetched, i mean it wouldn't scary anyone and a lot of time had been lost for nothing), and away they go.

Next the ZPM gets depleted and the drones fall from the sky with a STUPID sound. Boing, boing. :dooorkish:

As i said, this is a total nonsense from the military point of view. The moment the drones went boing-boing, i recalled the scene where the PJ takes out two darts and heads for the gate, in mid season 1. Think about this, you have 3 PJs (or 3 Ancient Fighters) engaging lets say a carrier. All 3 PJs have darts on their tail, but the main target is the carrier. One of the PJs manages to lock on the carrier and launches 3 drones. The dart that was after that PJ fires and destroys the PJ. What will happen to the drones? Remember the boing boing sound ? :lame:

I mean come on, even we have missiles that once they have locked on a target you cannot make them abort unless you either destroy them, or have the code that was built for that purpose. But never will a locked-on missile disengage if the plane that fired it was to be shot. This is just plain stupid.

Posted by: Pitry Jan 2nd 2006, 11:41 AM

Because unlike SG1 Atlantis seems unable\unwilling to comit itself to a moral ground and stick there. They seem to think the best way is trying not to step on anyone's toes, which obviously leads to being ignorant fools? ;) The truth is they have left that planet unprotected - what they were unwilling to do with the Childhood's End planet. Why is it any different, cos these aren't all kids? Hypocrisy. Just like Critical Mass, Poisoning the Well etc, they should decide what's the moral ground they're trying to follow and stay there, have a real agenda like SG1, instead of throwing ideas into the air and then ignore them - or worse, as in this case, make a plot-spin that would leave the question hangin' "cos it just isn't relevant anymore". Sorry, the fact the question is irrelevant (whether it's a tortured fainted guy or a ZPM out of power) doesn't mean the question doesn't still exist.

The episode per-se wasn't all that bad, light hearted buzzing entertainment without real substance. Which is sad in itself cos the idea of another Atlantis could have been used so much better :| Can Sheppard stop getting the girl, tho. Another once or twice and even the joke about "got the girl"\ Sheppard being Kirk won't be able to make up for it.

Oh, and Comtraya! :D

Posted by: Radagast Jan 2nd 2006, 11:26 PM

I don't think the drones were actually locked on, I think the guy was toying with them to make it look more impressive. If they were on manual control they would deactivate as soon as they lost that control.

Another possibility is for safety reasons when the city ran out of power perhaps it sent a shut-down code to all the drones.

I also thought the sound of them falling was about right.... they look like they'd go boing hehe.

Posted by: SorCerer Jan 3rd 2006, 4:22 PM

Oh, now that makes a lot of sense. When you are under attack and on the verge of being defeated, you call off your last fired drones, your last hope, just as a safety procedure? Sheesh.

Manual controlling 20+ drones, now that's nice.

Posted by: Tonten Jan 10th 2006, 10:09 AM

Did anyone notice that when Mckay said "We may need to panick a little" half way through the episode right after the ceiling collapsed, a camera walks right pass him in the background?

Posted by: Radagast Jan 10th 2006, 11:28 PM

The Ancients had to lose the war against an inferior race technologically somehow.

I still really think they were on manual control, I was throwing another option out there.



It seems obvious to me that at least at the start when the drones were doing that little spinny thing around the tower that they were being manually controlled. I'm not sure if you think that would be hard or something?

Posted by: Atlantians Jan 11th 2006, 12:52 AM

Radagast! Ever found Alatar and Pallando?


Anyway... I looked at the Drone cellar, and it seems that the area McKay was in was simply as mall maintenance and viewing area. I would guess that the Drones get much more efficiently packed the farther that they go and that their are several shoots that they go through, and then merge... not just that one.

Maybe 3 or 6 different viewing rooms at the shoots, and after a few sets of drone casings, they get much more compact with barely enough room to walk between two crates.

And maybe their are like 3-4 entire floors dedicated to Drone storage. McKay was on the closest floor to the ground, it seemed like.

So maybe 6 shoots, and 24 observation rooms, going over 4 floors.

Something of that nature. That would be certainly more efficient.

This is substantiated by the fact that when the drones came up from the ground, they came from several different locations. Furthermore the "dance around the Tower" Was probably a demonstration of control(IE: He was testing his control of them to make sure he could use them completely).

And they did not make a "Boing" noise, they made a sturdy "thump".

I liked the episode BTW, but it would have been a better two parter.

Posted by: engle115 Feb 3rd 2006, 10:17 PM

wasn't the best of episodes, that is for sure. I was already in a bad mood because SG-1 blew up my favorite ship . At least Alantis got a crapload of drones and jumpers

Posted by: MessianicCadet Feb 3rd 2006, 11:56 PM

I guess i can understand why some would call this episode crap, but personally i thought that this episode was even better than the episode of SG-1 Aired tonight.

The fact that a midevil people lived in a giant spacecraft, and didn't even spend most of their time trying to find out its secrets does puzzle me,but then agian some king in the past might have forbidden his followers to go into the "catocombs"?

Anyway atleast we have more jumpers.
(how did they power them back up? with a naquada generator?)

And as for why the Ancient in Rising said that only Atlantis remained, well maybe the other city was shot down and never heard from again, or suffered form a virus that killed them all off, then some primitive culture finds the planet, settles down and sets up its own culture lasting for thousands of years.

Posted by: HurricaneMB Feb 4th 2006, 12:24 AM

Nobody is going to mention the part where Sheppard gets his ass pinched? Fine, I'll do it:

That part was funny.

Rest of the episode... not so good.

Posted by: UMichSpeedCubist Feb 4th 2006, 1:24 AM

I think you might mean SGA episode 112 - Epiphany.

I'm going to ask some pretty obvious questions (that either haven't been asked and should have or no one has bohtered to answer yet).

Why was this city found buried? I would imagine very deeply too, considering that Atlantis (the true one) must have at least a couple floors under sea level (I'd think there's something down for boyancy and that the entire city isn't "walking on water"). Also from what I can see, that was only maybe 2/3 of the central spire of the city. There's bound to be a lot more down there... how would it be found buried like that after 10,000 years? Was it like that 10,000 years ago?

In order to feed on that planet, why haven't the wraith gathered together to destroy (or capture) that city in the past? They had 10,000 years to do it, it wasn't like it was under many miles of ocean... They must have known about it since a Lord Protector has been shooting down darts (and perhaps cruisers) for so long. We already know that it is not uncommon for darts to send out a long-distance data-burst message last minute before they explode.

The lack of a gate, I didn't even think of while watching it, so that was a good observation. But I'm not terrible concerned with it now that I think about it. Could have been a city in the process of being built and not everything has been installed... would be one of many plausible explanations.

Also due to the amount of drone debate going on, I'd like to point out a few things. It seems hat some of you don't give the drones as much credit as they deserve. I would suspect that individual drones are quite "smart". One person said something about them being stored so sparsely to avoid them from running into each other; I'd like to think that drones are smart enough to not explode when touching another drone or say a passing bird as it's on-route to a target. It could be that the drones or something in the chair-control would automatically re-load the drones into some firing-chamber. Although it's not clear that there would even be a firing chamber. It could be that they just get up on their own, when called for, and fly out of a hole after passing through a long series of winding pipes/channels that pool from many other ammo-rooms.

I don't see anything morally wrong in this episode. The very last thing said before end credits was that they traded them medicines and stuff (gosh it was 3s ago and I forgot already) in exchange for the drones and jumpers. To be realistic, I'd think that making allies with the SGA people would be key to their survival now that they don't have any more ZPM juice.

BTW, I'd like to point out to whoever mentioned "why don't they just fly a city back to our galaxy (the moon?), that the writers have hinted clearly that it requires all 3 ZPMs in place to do that sort of thing.

I think that instead of thinking about the drones as either manual controlled or automatic controlled, it's more of a gradient depending on how skilled the chair operator is at multi-tasking. For O'Neil a stream of drones flew around the Prometheus to hit Anubis... speaking of which, I never saw that one coming tonight. Are we going to share the Daedelus between the two shows now or have they already been building a new ship for SGC?

Hem... a city full of spare parts... the Daedelus could just fly by and beam up whatever they needed.

So I am confused about one little thing. I thought that the Puddle Jumpers would automatically charge while stored in a hanger. This episode either shows that this is not the case, or that those people where too incompetant to even power one up.

In regards to the post about how much "action" Shepard is getting and how Weir would still want him, you know there are ppl that desire a more "experienced" partner . I don't see how he could have refused. That would have just been plain rude! I kinda see how including this would make the show more believable (besides getting better ratings), it's a common part of life, nice to see that one of the characters has a life outside of fighting. And who says he'd be full of STDs by now, lol? He looks like a responsible person that would practice S.S..

Posted by: IndyJan Feb 4th 2006, 3:36 AM

Em, they don't have the right to consider or take. It's the one thing about Atlantis that truly bothers me. I can't remember SG1 doing that. They just tried to get them to stop believing in false gods. In fact, SG1 made a point of never taking stuff. It's why the NID existed.

Regarding this episode, I guess the point was to get the PDs and some drones. I guess because their ZPM for the tower was depleted now, they could take the drones with a clear conscience. Other than that I saw no point to this episode, M & M have struck once again.

Posted by: Linz Feb 4th 2006, 3:54 AM

Not the best cap but it was pretty much the funniest part in the episode!

Sheppard thinking WTF?!

Posted by: Trudi~ Feb 4th 2006, 9:23 AM

Well this episode wasn't that good, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. It had it's funny moments, I (like always) loved it when Beckett made his appearence! He's so cool!! Anyway...I didn't like the fact that there was another Atlantis on this planet. It sort of takes away the whole thing about Atlantis being the capital of the Ancients and all. But oh well. Overall an okay episode. 6/10

Posted by: TheCordler Feb 4th 2006, 10:31 AM

I rather find this episode a complete bust, it has soo many thigns wrong with it.

First* A sister city the ancients built? I'm no genius but one atlantis is enough to explore, but two? from the looks of the city its intact, just that the wieght of the soil is now causing the structure to collapse after 10,000 years.

Second* The wraith just stopped attacking? uh when atlantis was working with 3 zpm's the wraith constanly attacked for months!!! you telling me that we have to accept a non ancient Lord marshall + his lack of anicient tech understanding scared them away?

Third* working StarDrives? i'm gussing that this whole sister city thing will get used when the wraith bust Atlantis up in the future, it seems that the whole point of this episode was to say "OMG the wraith have wiped out 20% of atlantis ma'am!" "its alright we have spare parts remember ^^"

fourth* No ancient devices like the hand phazers? i guess when the ancients abandoned this one too they decided to pack up like atlantis, leave nothing that would be deemed useful for the new inhabitants.

fifth* Ancinets... agai i wonder were the ancients really intelligent... they obviously gave the gene to these people, then left an underdeveloped people behind and with the power to use the city? what possible reason would anyone do that, you don't just give a child a radio and push him into the pool, the outcome isn't going to be nice.

sixth* Sister city? Well seeing as the city was in construction it proves that the ancients had no problem build new and huge ships without interruptions. So why do i ask do we not just activate the chair, have shepard think about ancient facilities and see the map appear over the chair. They obviously had no problem building new ships during the war, i mean building a whole sister atlantis is the pinnacle of we have no problems. This specifically is what i hate about this episode. We keep getting continuity breaks on the wraith vs ancients war. According to old wier they won all thier battles against the wraith, yet the hologram in rising states they were losing. We learned that the wraith destroyed many ancient planets and kept them from building anything else, yet obviously they weren't powerful enough to stop a new atlantis being built. You'd think the wraith would commit to destroying it, seeing as they couldn't blow up the first one.

seeing a sister city to me was not the way to go, they should have instead found a small munitions hanger, basically a section of a once bigger base that the ancients used. The lord protector could have just found the control chair else where and built his castle around it, and the rest of the story could be intact. Rodney discovering the source of the drones, ZPM depleted, Some jumpers, and shepard doing his thing. Another whole city is just too much, especially one basically intact and nearly complete.

Posted by: HurricaneMB Feb 4th 2006, 10:40 AM

She looks like a christmas centerpiece gone awry!

Beckett's "you stay here wee man" at the end was pretty funny too.

Posted by: That Chevron Guy Feb 4th 2006, 12:29 PM

The city was probably attacked and sevearly hit. The communications with Altantis were probably knocked out, so the Lantians presumed the worst and left for Earth. The surviving Altarans then might have mingled with the culture already on the planet, Like the Lantians did back on Earth. Might explain why such a primitive culture has the Altaran gene.


Anyway, I thought this episode was good, not great, but i'd definatly watch it again. It's a shame we didn't learn more about this city, it's name, etc.....
Glad to see Altlantis plucked up the drones amd the jumpers. I hope they just don't do a Voyager and start blowing them up left and right.

I'd give this episode a 7/10.

Posted by: Radagast Feb 4th 2006, 3:13 PM

thanks for spoiling the SG1 ep guys....

Posted by: IndyJan Feb 4th 2006, 11:41 PM

I did like Beckett's comment when both he and Shep were detained, "I need to stop making house calls."

Posted by: blackbelt83 Feb 5th 2006, 1:41 AM

I like this ep. it was funny that was cool that chick drops her robe, shepard " I never see this coming" I thought that was great. not to mention a chick taking her cloths off makes everything better. I admit it wasent an impresive ep. but it had its moments

Posted by: Revan Feb 5th 2006, 1:49 AM

At the very least this episode had some good moments. It may just be that is is a means to an end... a way to get more drones and jumpers. I personally liked this episode. Beckett is awesome as always. Perhaps Sheppard should realize he is a bit of a sex symbol, and that girls are going to hound him.

I also sometimes wonder if McKay will ever chill out...


hm, nope

Posted by: Arcady Feb 5th 2006, 1:49 AM

In another thread, you say you have seen it. It doesn't air there for another 11 days. You obviously downloaded it. If you know you are going to download it, why would you come here and read related threads a day earlier?

Posted by: startreksuite Feb 5th 2006, 8:54 AM

Not a bad episode! It was interesting to see another Alterran ship like Atlantis out there, and see what a different level of technology of people would do with it. Obviously absolute power corrupts absolutely! I was a little surprised that the servant was as sneaky as he was, poisoning the head guy, who played Harlan in Tin Man (Jay Brazeau). Not surprised that one of the locals was hitting on Sheppard, though! I wonder if they were able to get any drone missles, since the servant fired a bunch (but they didn't detonate, so they might still be active!) And there was an episode discussion a while back that the ZPM can't die, because it will recharge between uses! Hmmm....

Posted by: Radagast Feb 5th 2006, 9:04 AM

I wasn't aware that Atlantis 215 was related discussion to SG1 915. My mistake, apparently.


Startreksuite, at the end of the episode they do say they traded medical supplies for puddle jumpers - and drones.

I don't recall the thing about recharging ZPM's, do you remember what episode that was in?

Posted by: ALIEN_JL Feb 5th 2006, 9:27 AM

The idiotic thing about this episode was the Drone "storage shelving"...

It doesn't make any sense why they would store those drones like that...

Ancients have made many devices which can convert matter into energy,
store that energy form in some buffer system and transmit it into some
other device which then converts the energy back into matter. (stargate,
ring trasporter, atlantis closet transporter, ...)

So the Ancient would definitely have been able to store those drones as
energy signatures in similar buffer systems and that way they could have
stored millions and billions of times more drones than they could store in
those wine cellar type storages...

And most likely they wouldn't have needed to really store them at all...
Most likely they could have taken raw power from the ZPMs or what ever
power source they used and converted that into drones...

Posted by: J&S4Ever Feb 5th 2006, 9:43 AM

Not one of the best episodes, but it was entertaining. I agree with the whole drones-on-the-wine-rack argument. That would just take up so much space, although I can't really think of another way to store them.

Somebody made a point about this city being buried when Atlantis was found under so many hundreds of feet of water. My take on that is that not all cities were necessairly on an ocean.

Why didn't the wraith finish it off? The pilot episode did say all the Ancients in Pegasus evacuated to Atlantis as a final attempt to survive, so the Wraith would of course follow them and not destroy that city since they knew where to deal the final blow--Atlantis. Only a few were left behind apparently, since the Royals has the Alterran gene.

My final take on the ep: Not the best we seen, but certainly not the worst.

I agree with Sheppard becoming the Kirk of the Stargate world. That boy needs to learn to keep his pants on. Although he did say he turned her down????

Posted by: ALIEN_JL Feb 5th 2006, 10:07 AM

You didn't read my post did you ?? That one just before yours...

They could have made a device which simply materializes them when you need them
(when you don't need them they doesn't exist as solid object which you would need to
store somewhere... they exist only as energy signatures in some buffer system.. kind
of like some files in your computers hard-disc... that way you would only need to store
that buffer device somewhere which maybe very small... maybe even smaller than a
drone but that device could contain the energy signatures of billions of drones...)

It is so stupid... Why would they store them as solid object which needs thousands of
cubic meters of storage space when they could easily store all those drones into some
buffer device which won't take even one cubic meter of storage space... ?? (Especially
when they no doubt could and it would have been so easy for them.. they had devices
which did the same thing in use everywhere...)

Posted by: J&S4Ever Feb 5th 2006, 10:27 AM

Sorry, no I didn't. My son was being fussy and I just read enough to get the gist of the thread, but now that I have read it I'm reminded of an episode of Star Trek where they were caught in the transporter buffer. Also now that I've had some time to think about it (I made my son go to sleep! BAD Mommy!) a civilization as advanced as the Ancients should have some sort of replicator technology that would allow them to replicate thier weapons on command. Although even in Star Trek the weapons were stored in an arsenal, including the photon torpedos.

Posted by: HurricaneMB Feb 5th 2006, 1:59 PM

OK, I found a MUCH better version of this episode:

http://www.streamload.com/hyperio1/@lantis/SGA_-_Man_of_Mystery_large.wmv

It's pretty funny

(The link is to a 25 MB wmv file. Smaller and larger versions are http://derry667.livejournal.com/66396.html.)

Posted by: Sighfienerd Feb 5th 2006, 2:38 PM

Hurricane, that was hilarious and so appropriate! I think the writers have gotten a little carried away with the John and the alien babe hook-up storylines. They're getting a bit tiresome. And furthermore, as long as I'm on a "John's character" rant, why can't he ever make mistakes sometimes?

It seems like this season, the writers have moved away from portraying his darker side and he's all about the fluff. He's going to end up as a two-dimensional parody if they don't write some deeper storylines that show some vulnerability and inner motivations.

Posted by: tauri129 Feb 5th 2006, 7:14 PM

i definitely agree that although this wasnt the worst episode, it was kind of a disappointment after a string of really good atlantis eps lately. saw the plot twist a mile off, and the whole wine cellar storage idea for the drones did seem quite silly.
it did have its moments though: some good sheppared and beckett lines, and a good old fashioned ronan-kicking-five-people's-a*&@es-at-once fight scene. i do enjoy those

Posted by: blackbelt83 Feb 6th 2006, 2:05 AM

Storing them as energy would probably use energy I would think They looked like they where stored like we store bulets.

Posted by: Revan Feb 6th 2006, 2:50 AM

The honeycomb drone storage system seems to me to be the best and most efficient way to store them. Storing them indefinitely in some energy form would be inefficient, a waste of power and possibly impossible. They could not simply put them in a pile somewhere, so it stands to reason they are storing them in the most effective and space-conscious way. Remember that they are physical objects and have to be kept somewhere. There were racks and racks of them in a fairly large space. Apparently there are such storage spaces all over the city. That or there happened to be inactive drones laying all over.

Posted by: Historywiz Feb 6th 2006, 2:40 PM

Are there more of these city/ships?

Posted by: BlueHeeler Feb 6th 2006, 7:38 PM

I might have possible reason why the drones might have been stored in racks. Since the city apparently only had the one ZPM, and would eventually run low on power, one of the Lord Marshalls (one that still had a better understanding of the Ancient tech) made a stockpile of drones. So even with a nearly depleated ZPM that city would still have a means of defending itself.

I also have no problem believing that the Wraith would have left the 2nd city alone. The whole reason they assaulted Atlantis for 100 years was to gain access to the only stargate that could get them to Earth's galaxy, and the countless people they could feed on there. The 2nd city protected only a relatively small number of humans. The Wraith could destroy it, but they would suffer huge losses in doing so. The 2nd city was immobile, was not building up forces for a counter attack on the Wraith, and again defended only a small number of humans.

The cons of attacking and destroying the city outweighed the pros.

Posted by: zero302154 Feb 6th 2006, 9:09 PM

i do believe that when the ancients came from the galxzy of the orii they came to milky and the tech there is all primative compare to atlanis then they build atlanis and when to pegasus and build more citys right well some citys could have just been in construction when they all left right. well i think the city in this ep was a newly constructed city maybe. i say this because the city is almost completely under ground as if there were hiding it but to build city such as the atlanis-class would probally be build in a large factory.

Posted by: Revan Feb 6th 2006, 11:58 PM

The Wraith did not find out about Earth until [1]The Rising[/i] when Colonel Sumner was fed upon by the Wraith Queen and then killed by Sheppard. They laid seige to Atlantis because they wanted to kill all the Atlanteans, or at least stop them from interfering.

Posted by: BlueHeeler Feb 8th 2006, 3:52 PM

The wraith questioned Col Sumner and discovered that he was from Earth, however it is safe to assume that the wraith were already aware of its existance. They would have just as easily discovered that the Atlantians came from another galaxy by questioning an Atlantian prisoner.

Beside, when the Atlantians were fleeing the Pegasas Galaxy, the Wraith would have known that they were going somewhere.

Posted by: Saffron Feb 8th 2006, 4:08 PM

No, I don't think its safe to assume that. The female Wraith had no knowledge of Earth. This was news for her. Why question an Atlantian prisoner? They had no need. The Wraith were completely aware of who they were. I sincerely doubt the Wraith even considered the possibility of humans in another galaxy.

Posted by: Dafmeister Feb 8th 2006, 4:19 PM

Not a bad episode. It was obvious that Otho was the one who poisoned the Lord Protector though. The scene of those who lived in the Tower eating was a bit over the top.
One thing I would like to know though, is why the Tower didnt shake when the earthquakes shook the rest of the city (and why did the villager call them earthquakes, since earthquakes only occur on Earth)?

Posted by: Saffron Feb 8th 2006, 4:26 PM

Did anyone else recognize Otho? He's the host for a show that shows how Medieval knights handled their weapons and stuff like that. It's on the History Channel or a channel like that.

Posted by: 38_mins moo Feb 8th 2006, 4:29 PM

A nice different episode i thot. i loved the way Tavius was so pompous and arrogant lording around like he owned the place, quality!

wouldn't the central tower have some kind of dampeners cos its the most important area just like on atlantis is probably the most protected.

Posted by: Dafmeister Feb 8th 2006, 4:48 PM

His name is Peter Woodward. He has been in Crusade too, the Babylon 5 spin off. Have you ever heard of a programme called The Equalizer? The actor in that was Edward Woodward, Peter's father.


If that is the case then why did the Tower shake when the star drive was activated?

Posted by: glom Feb 8th 2006, 4:49 PM

65% We get some cool ideas for the first time in ages, and it was fun, but the episode was letdown by focusing on the wrong thing.

M&M-ISM OF THE WEEK: Another goddamn conspiracy! Things got lame for me after the host of Crystal Maze revealed his duplicity.

GOOD JOKE OF THE WEEK: That one goes to Arcady for his initial post featuring the line "Why this episode sucked:" and a screenshot. The reason it was funny is that for me the screenshot took a while to download so I was confused at first at what a picture of Weir was supposed to prove until the download finally got to the credit, "Written by Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie." That was a good chuckle when that credit finally appeared.

EUNUCH OF THE WEEK: Thank you for destroying the entire premise of this series. Atlantis is supposed to be the greatest city ever built and now there's freakin' two of them. I have for a while been thinking that Atlantis itself is not as much of a city to match it's reputation, but now that's it has been snipped, the city really has lost stature. I want my 30,000ft tall mega-city pyramid.

MYSTERY OF THE WEEK: So what is a copy of Atlantis doing buried in the ground in British Columbia? What was really wrong with this episode was that no-one really cared that much about the city and was far too concerned with petty Versaille politics. I was really hoping some great discovery was to be found, possibly involving a little adventurous exploration. But no. Big Ancient city's are a dime a dozen to the Atlantis expedition and apparently to M&M.

RECYCLING OF THE WEEK: Didn't we see that Canadian village a few weeks ago? It was okay during the golden age of SG1, but after eleven seasons of the franchise, the quaint Canadian village look is old. I know it's tough for an episodic television series to get about, but frankly, it can't be that difficult to give us cheesy alien planet sets with styrofoam rocks. Sure it would look tacky, but at least it would look different. Hell, even a filter on the camera to make everything look purple would be a start.

BUDGET CUT OF THE WEEK: Did we really need a duplicate of Atlantis at all other than to save money on new sets? That being said, the decor was good.

CHEAP EFFECT OF THE WEEK: When the first quake blocked McKay's way out, the effect of dropping a bit of dust in front of the camera looked so Blue Peter.

WINERY OF THE WEEK: I think 42030 was a very good year for squids. (And I hate them being called drones. That's so lame. They were already calling the Kull Warriors drones when the squids were introduced. How about ATM for Autonomous Tactical Missile? That way we can have various puns relating to withdrawing money. Okay it's crap, but it's better than "drone".)

SPATIAL ANOMALY OF THE WEEK: If making large Ancient city's mass produced wasn't enough, now apparently, McKay can easy cross from one part to another on foot without difficulty. Unless of course all those rooms were conveniently located in the same part of the city, in which case I will rename this point CONTRIVANCE OF THE WEEK.

TREKKISM AVOIDED OF THE WEEK: I only mention this because it came up on this thread. It's a damn good thing we find more evidence that squids are manufacturered and stored like physical objects rather than replicated a la pattern replication from ST and stored as crapion particles as some suggested they should be. The thought of introducing pattern replication to SG makes my skin crawl.

Posted by: TeamX76 Feb 9th 2006, 8:46 AM

I completely Agree with you, As i was reading through this thread and someone mentioned the idea of storing them in a buffer, It reminded me of how they stored the Team in one of the wraith darts beams, It took more energy the bigger the item, Physics also dictates the same thing, if you were to compress matter to be held in a buffer it would take a LOT more energy to sustain it and keep it there. Im sorry to say - But it also reminds me of trying to keep someones Transporter signature in the buffer on star trek.

I believe that the way the ATM's were stored were fine, im guessing they didn't show, but just a bit further in that room there is a ATM (hehehe) shoot in the ceilling that the ATM's used, If you can remember back to the first episode, they were simply studying an ATM on a desk when the doctor used the chair to activate it, so there is no need for some kind of Loading mechanism, im guessing they get fired from where they are and then unleashed through the chambers. Now if thats the case, why didn't McKay use that to get signal on his radio?(pfff)... An answer to that could be that the doors to the chamber are the same as the actual surrounding structure, so he wasn't able to get signal. I really dont know, This episode DID suck, BADLY. The Main reason, Atlantis was meant to be the one and only city, the main refuge, the Capital of Ancient Society, if there is two it DOES remove the importance that atlantis has in the first place, also if there are two, Send more people to that planet, scour that City "The Tower" and find other things, if there is a storage room for ATM's (5th time used!!) there might be a storage room for ZPM's that are currently offline, How else were ZPM's manufactured if not in one of the big Ancient City's?!?

That leads me to another point, The wraith DIDN'T know about earth until we (i say we, i mean them) stepped through the stargate and got questioned by the wraith, If the wraith knew the Atlantiens left then they would have followed them, I think the wraith assumed they drowned when they lowered atlantis into the ocean, that way they could get away and the wraith would be like "Wtf?! ok" And if the wraith wanted to destroy ALL atlantiens, why not also destroy the 2nd city rather than leaving it completely stable? Dont say it was built underground, That was just the cause of 10,000 years of growth by the surrounding vegetation. One thousand years is good enough to put a car or a house underground, even an entire village, so 10,000 years would be more than plenty to do that to atlantis.

Another point was raised, about a villager calling them earthquakes? Remember that atlantiens brought humans to the pegasus galaxy, The villagers surrounding the city were there because of the atlantiens.. Earth, meaning Ground (hense the name of our planet!) or soil would naturally mean Earthquakes, they are not called Earthquakes because our planet is called Earth, our planet was named after the soil. Im sure out there somewhere there is a planet called 'Ocean' So never fear :/

That ends my rant, I know i haven't been here in months and months.. But i do still check out this site :o)

Posted by: TheCordler Feb 9th 2006, 9:34 AM

This is what kills me in this episode, to think the ancients had the capability to produce a WHOLE SISTER CITY! This is all just too far fetched, especially since the plot of atlantis was that it was the Ancients capital and hope, i see they must have tons of hop since another was built.

It stands to reason that from the pilot Rising, the hologram said that they evacuated to atlantis after the wraith attacked, and in Before i sleep the ancients said that the last convoy was shot down. This points to the wrath destroying all the ancient colonies, cities, ships, outposts during thier conquest. Eventually only atlnais remained to be sieged, its not like the wraith woke up one day and said "Hey you guys wanna just go for the heart of the ancients and siege atlantis, that way all the other ancients can build stuff and attack us from behind!"

This episode just screams re-supply and spare atlantis parts for future problems. for example, if the wraith damage the drive pods or destroy the shield generator, we could just hit up ol PGR-533 and go and get the replacement parts.

Posted by: JC1 Feb 9th 2006, 11:10 AM

I'm all in favor of finding Ancients technology, but did they have to make the city an exact duplicate of Atlantis. Atlantis is supposed to be the last, great city of the Ancients, except now there's 2.

It also makes me wonder why the Wraith, spent a century attacking a fully powered & shielded Atlantis, yet they gave up on the city in this episode, which had 1 ZPM and was inhabited by primitive people.

The episode itself, was fairly average and predictable. And am I right in assuming they've drained the cities ZPM, taken all their drones and have left the planet defenseless against the next Wraith attack?

Posted by: Dafmeister Feb 9th 2006, 11:22 AM

Pretty much. Sheppard said they got drones and a few Jumpers in exchange they gave the villagers medicines and an IDC for Atlantis if they ever wanted help.

Posted by: Saffron Feb 9th 2006, 12:54 PM

And they've provided the gene therapy so they can use the jumpers. They didn't leave them entirely defenseless. Without the ZPM they couldn't use the drones anyway.

Posted by: Dafmeister Feb 9th 2006, 12:58 PM

They cant use the Jumpers that are left on that planet because they are out of power.
Sheppard never mentioned anything about the gene therapy at the end of the episode, all he said was they got the drones and a few Jumpers.

Posted by: Saffron Feb 9th 2006, 1:07 PM

You sure the gene therapy wasn't mentioned again? I could have sworn...oh, well. Not important. Without the ZPM they couldn't do anything with anything anyway.

Posted by: IndyJan Feb 9th 2006, 1:39 PM

Shep mentioned the gene therapy to the bad guy that poisoned the leader. Shep actually gave a vial of the stuff to him. Shep told him it could operate the throne. I'm pretty sure that is how he did operate it. I'm sure he took that therapy. But that is the only time it was mentioned. Shep took jumpers and drones. The jumpers were useless for the villagers without a ZPM.

Posted by: JC1 Feb 9th 2006, 2:30 PM

Seeing, as they drained the ZPM, you'd think they'd leave them a few drones and give them a Naquada generator to power the chair, so as they won't be totally defensless.

Posted by: Dafmeister Feb 9th 2006, 3:06 PM

Sheppard said to Weir that they would help find a way to run things when the times comes. I took that to mean they would help getting the technology working again but it could refer to helping the villagers become something other than second class citizens.

Posted by: togar Feb 9th 2006, 6:17 PM

ok, 3 things 1: if that city is one of the sister cities to atlantis, what if the wraith get it? then they can get to earth (maybe this would be a good time for that explosive zpm, evacuate the ppl and destroy it so the wraith cant get to earth)
2: so, the drones just fly off of shelves, and how did they get the drones out, because mckay was sealed in there
3: so now they just need a few more zpms and they can fly atlantis home?


oh, and the bad guy didnt use the gene therapy, he already had the ancient gene, remember he used the palm pilot at the beginning?

Posted by: Auntie Em! Feb 9th 2006, 8:00 PM

Guys, the whole premise of the show was that those citizens with the ancient gene were the elite and considered part of the upper class. Their genes were guarded as only they could operate the ancient technologies and safe guard the city. The gene had slowly been filtering out of their people. The last leader had the gene the strongest of them all. Don't forget that they used the scanner as Togar said to scan the Atlantis team and they noticed right away that Shep had the gene the strongest which is why he was invited to the city and the rest were rejected. They saw him as the answer to the gene being slowly bleached out of their gene pool.

Posted by: togar Feb 10th 2006, 2:00 AM

ok, people here always argued that they didnt know how to fly the city, but this episode proves that they know how, so they could move it to a different planet in the galexy... to further hide themselves from the wraith

Posted by: Dafmeister Feb 10th 2006, 5:16 AM

Think of it like a car, just because you know how to start the engine, doesnt mean you know how to drive it.

Posted by: Trudi~ Feb 10th 2006, 9:26 AM

I think the whole sister city thing was really kind of dumb on the writer's part, however I am looking forward to them getting to kick some wraith butt with their new puddle jumpers, drones, and such...as far as flying Atlantis...in the words of Jack O'Neill "A flying city?"

Posted by: Dafmeister Feb 10th 2006, 9:42 AM

Well that's what happens when Mallozzi and Mullie are allowed to write.

Posted by: Trudi~ Feb 10th 2006, 11:30 AM

They wrote the episode Intruder right? Well I quite enjoyed that episode, but this...this was quite dreadful at most points.

Posted by: Dafmeister Feb 10th 2006, 11:45 AM

Dont get me wrong they write a good episode on the odd occasion but they are nowhere near as good Brad Wright or Robert Cooper.

Posted by: Trudi~ Feb 10th 2006, 2:21 PM

Yeah their great, I also really enjoy Damian Kindlerm, and Martin Gero.

Posted by: hobo_joe20 Feb 10th 2006, 2:37 PM

Remember how unstable the city itself was? The wraith wouldn't be able to use it to go anywhere. I mean look at how much repairing Mackay had to do just to get all those systems online. and systems online != space travel. Plus, the wraith would need enough power to do it all too.


they clearly got them out the same way they got Mackay out or else he would still be stuck in there!

Posted by: togar Feb 10th 2006, 2:42 PM

and, they know how alot of other ancient stuff works...

and, give any idiot car keys and they can figure it out

Posted by: Dafmeister Feb 10th 2006, 2:48 PM

Thats because they have been translating the Ancient database.


You've just proved my point for me. They will eventually figure it out but they dont know automatically.

Posted by: togar Feb 10th 2006, 6:45 PM

and, knowing mckay, he probably figured it out within the first few weeks they were there (just never had enough power to use it)

Posted by: Revan Feb 19th 2006, 8:36 PM

The stardrive requires 3 ZPM's. I didn't think anything was wrong with a sister city. Atlantis was the FIRST of its kind. It was built and occupied long before the Ancients left the Milky Way for Pegasus. They may have built it specifically for this purpose. I don't think it removes from the wonder of the Lost City of Atlantis. It makes sense that they would have built more than one. Those things probably came in handy, and the Wraith may have destroyed many of them. OR it could be like DS9 and there were 3 of them... The Wraith did not concentrate on it more because it was not the main base of the Ancients.

Posted by: Aticus Mar 7th 2006, 10:43 PM

This episode was really poorly written.

Posted by: I'm a janitor at the SGC 715 Mar 8th 2006, 2:53 AM

I think what happened was that the writers simply wrote too much and alot of the story had to be edited out. I mean it like only took few minutes of the episode for Teyla and Ronan to start a revolution in that small town.
I actually did like this episode but it just felt like everything happened too fast.

I loved that part when that woman in the other cities says to Sheppard "Iv never known anybody by the name of Leutinant Colonel." (She thinking his first name is Leutinant and last name Colonel.)

Posted by: Revan Mar 23rd 2006, 12:56 PM

The feudal village in this episode looks like it is the same location and a few sets from the Sodan village in SG-1.

Posted by: Dafmeister Mar 23rd 2006, 1:33 PM

It was and it also doubled as the village seen in 'Epiphany'.

Posted by: cdpage Oct 12th 2006, 9:35 PM

I Love it,

Zee. P.M. or Zed P.M.

I love how they toss that in there...

EP was Sub par, but they can't all be great.


its good to know there is another atlantis tho...might need that one as a back up...lets say in season 7?

Drones!!!!!

send them home :>