Personally this whole stuff on the SGC with Weir made me want to fall asleep. I guess Beau Bridges needed some more screentime so they stuck him on Atlantis. They could have used that show time for much better scenes in my opinion. But then again, this episode felt pretty weak for Atlantis.

Another TBC... wonderful. *note the sarcasm*

Highlight was Ronan getting the "told you" face from Sheppard and McKay shooting a P-90.

It was perhaps a little weak, but good battle, and its setting up for something better in upcoming eps. I seem to remember someone saying that there is no way they get a hive ship... you know who you are...

Why was the Orion so weak? And why didn't the drones split up like they normally do? I more I think about it, the more upset I get. The Orion's sheilds were crappier than the Deadelus. They lost it after one fight, after so much build up. This aspect was very disapointing, but the ep was still entertaining.

This post has been edited by JTMAG1: Jul 14th 2006, 10:17 PM

The sheilds weren't weaker they just didn't have everything working when they got into the fight. When they got to the fight they couldn't get the drones to work so they had to divert power from the sheilds to the drones and thats why the sheilds weren't up and it got blown up ... .... I am a bit sad though that we didn't have the ship for longer but I guess it's better this way because now things are back to a level playing field.

I couldn't agree more.

You're absolutly right, they did say that they had to divert power. I will have to pay close attention when I watch it again.

How is it a level playing field? We have one city and one ship (not ready to count the hive ship yet).

This post has been edited by JTMAG1: Jul 14th 2006, 10:36 PM

I have been a reader of this site starting when episode downloads were still available. I have never felt a need to post before, but there was something about this episode that was sloppy, it almost seems as if the writers overextended themselves between the two series.

1) We get it, Weir is a strong woman. She doesnt have to storm off, a little ass kissing would've helped her and required nothing. But, why doesn't she cover her own ass with the IOA by confronting them, and demanding a response, or at least saying, I'm going to do what I'm doing if you don't give me a response.

2) We get it, Teyla is a strong woman. Why in the hell would Weir give her the instructions instead of the next in command military officer?

3) How can the leader of any such base just simply walk through, knowing she will not be back in weeks. Considering there are no ships, and chaos on Atlantis, she just left without leaving much instructions. They don't know if she could have ever gotten back.

4.) Shouldn't Caldwell have kept a nuke in reserve?

EDIT - Addition: 5.) Considering the fact that Earth with the exception of a few drones is defenseless, wouldn't the Ori be considered the bigger threat? Shouldn't they have had both ships return to Earth? It seemed stupid to sacrifice the new ship, which considering its origins, might be able to stand toe-to-toe with the Ori?

The battles were cool, but watching this almost made me angry.

This post has been edited by SmashFX: Jul 14th 2006, 10:33 PM

2) Well, The top 4 people in command were gone, and Teyla is considered a leader. Similar to when Hammond Jack Sam and Daniel weren't around, people started taking orders from Teal'c.

3)I agree, but there wasn't much for her to do in this ep if she stayed on Atlantis... if you're paying her, you might as well make her act.

4) Why did Caldwell start off using the nukes in the first place... when did that ever work against their shields before.

5) Why does earth only have a few drones. Why didn't Atlantis gate a few thousand back to earth when there took them from the Tower?


**6) Why can the Orian launch drones without a chair, and yet they couldn't figure out a way to do it on Atlantis?

Caldwell was sending out nukes to take out Wraith Darts, they knew the ships would send them out and it was a way to take out a whole bunch of them.

Earth has a few drones b/c Oneill used the lot of them up whening defending Earth against Anubis. Atlantis didnt send any over from ones recovered from the Tower b/c they need them to defend the city, plus they most likely dont have a few thousand, maybe a few hundred which again they need.

The Orion doesnt need a chair b/c its a ship and its easier in the middle of a battle to push a button rather than have someone trying to concentrate on shooting off drones.

What do you mean they couldnt figure it out on Atlantis? the Drone storage on Atlantis is controlled by the chair platform so thats the only way to do it on Atlantis.

But yea good episode, out of both season premieres at least one enemy ship was destroyed! 1 out of 6(counting Ori and Wraith ships), we're good!

Surely, Earth has priority?

If it weren't for the loss of Orion, this episode would have been a lot better, that just ruined it for me. Sheesh, you get an Ancient ship with all that capability and info that they could use to make other ships (hopefully they already downloaded the specs) and they blow it on its first run in how many thousands of years!?

With that exception, NO MAN'S LAND was pretty good, except for the 'to be continued' part.

That wouldn't happen in the real world. Teyla and Teal'c have no authority over military or civilian personnel. Just because the top 4(or whatever) people were gone doesn't mean Teyla(or Teal'c) all the sudden are the leaders. Then again, this is sci fi so whatever.

Why would Nukes be required to take our darts when the air to air missles (not sure if they should worked in space) were working just fine. As a matter of fact, they were working better than fine... Sheppard did major damage with two missles.

Oneill used those drones before Atlantis was even discovered. I was asking why Atlantis didn't share when their drone stores were replenished. They do have thousands of drones. It is mentioned that the stores are replenished... they hold thousands. Caldwell says, "...the chair on earth controlled thousands of drones..." Mckay says that they were used up the first time around.

If it's easier to press a button on a ship, why wouldn't it be easier to push a button on Atlantis? I would assume that they wouldn't only be firing drone from Atlantis while they were in battle. (FYI, with vessels that large, the person or persons controlling the weapons usually don't have much else to concentrate on)

What I meant was that on Atlantis, they didn't even know how many drones they had, until they powered up the chair. Mckay even says, "there was no way to know until we got the chair powered up". The only way to fire the drones was from the chair. On the ship all they had to do was "push a button" as you put it. If the ship didn't require the chair, I think they sould have been able to figured out a way to control the drones from another console on atlantis. The chair actually controlled more aspects of the city besides the drones, and those other aspects have other control consoles. As a matter of fact, in The Tower, McKay just went into the drone storage room and pulled up the info on the control panel down there, despite the fact they there was also a chair that controlled the drones.



You're right it wouldn't have happen in the real world, but it's television. No one knows more about the enemy then Teyla or Teal'c respectively, and she they are the best leadership authority. Remember that Teyla is the leader of her people, and Teal'C was the first prime of Apophis. They have leadership ability, and once you start dropping down below the top four or so military ranks on the show you would have a bunch of poeple with the same rank probably arguing over who is in charge. So naturally the people with the knowledge and leadership experiance step in and take control.

This post has been edited by JTMAG1: Jul 14th 2006, 11:43 PM

1) She did tell them what she planned to do and that they were going to contact her when the ships were ready to go, if they wanted to countermand her orders they could do so at that time but if they did they would have to fire her first.

2) Teyla is they leader of her people and she is quite capable of making decisions. Besides, most of the senior military and scientific staff is onboard the Deadalus and Orion, so I'm guessing Teyla had stayed behind to help Weir in the capacity that she did.

3) It wasn't a request. It was an order from the CIVILIAN oversight committee and she is a CIVILIAN leader. Remember she told Landry that she "can't just leave." But Landry makes it clear that they are there to call her on the carpet and that she's going to listen to them whether she wants to or not. You can see it in her eyes and his expression when she says "understood." Although you're right and they should not have recalled her when there is clearly a need for her in Pegasus.

4) He could have, but what for? He thinks the battle is about to be lost and he doesn't realize that he's got help in the form of Shepard and Michael on the hive ship.

5) They know that the Orii will probably tackle the rest of the Galaxy before heading for Earth, since Earth is a much bigger threat. Once they have the rest of the Galaxy in line they won't even need their ships from whatever galaxy they are from to wage war on Earth.


I agree with Linz that the whole Oversight committee thing was not a good subplot for this episode. It's just stupid for them to remove the leader of a facility when there is clearly a crisis going on. I think TPTB just needed a filler subplot and could not think of a better one.

Overall, a OK beginning to the season. I wonder how they are going to get along in Pegasus when there will clearly not be any help from the Milky Way and now they have destroyed the Orion before they could even fix her up. Could there be another surprise discovery of Ancient warships in the horizon??? I believe so.

And Michael? Is he really accessing some vestige of humanity that remained after his conversion and if so, could this be the real weapon to use against the wraith. Don't slaughter them, but quite literally convert them to our point of view?

This post has been edited by J&S4Ever: Jul 14th 2006, 11:39 PM

He decided to use all the war heads before he dropped out of Hyperspace... the battle wasn't lost yet, and it wouldn't have been lost later if he had that nuke to beam onboard.

Michael wasn't accessing any vestige of humanity. He was trying to stay alive. He knew that the queen was probably going to kill him. He said it himself.

Wow. Lots of bitching and moaning and so much lack of understanding.

I thought this was a great start to season 3. SG-1 and Atlantis couldn't have kicked off any better imo.

Anyway,



Again, he had no way of knowing Sheppard, McKay, and Ronan were on board. He also had no way of knowing Michael would've disabled the beaming jamming technology to even allow that plan of action.

Caldwell made the right decision.

This post has been edited by Natoma: Jul 15th 2006, 12:40 AM

Level playing field my ass. This absolutely KILLED the episode for me. The SECOND they got the ancient ship semi running, they Lose it! This is BEYOND a letdown. To top it off it looks like they just lost the Daedelus in exchange for a wraith ship. I LIKE the daedelus. And now it is a rotting hulk.

I am disgusted, do you know how much I would have LOVED seeing them give the new ancient ship a test run, discovering the extent of its abilities, and the writers, they.... Butchers! Dream destroyers, buzz killers. I mean for gods sakes, WHAT do they think will be more interesting to watch

A. Hive Ship
B. Ancient Battleship


I guess in their world it's A!!!!!! Insanity. This is as bad as when the writers killed off the Tollans, and left us with mindless jafaa, bah!!!!!!!

On a side note, I was not exactly thrilled with look of the ancient ship when we got a full view of it. It was kind of ugly, the Daedelus looked better. When they find another ancient ship, and they had BETTER! I hope it is a different class, with better looks.

This post has been edited by tybert7: Jul 15th 2006, 3:28 AM

My only comment about this episode is that it was a crossover, and they did not handle it well. I mean Weir was going to send Caldwell out there with the Odyssey, and they would probably die, along with Lorne and the Orion. Weir stated, we cannot allow the hive ships to reach Earth. Why didn't she say, "because they are fighting an invasion of their own of the Ori, they don't need someone else." Then once at the SGC, Landy seemed "ho-hum" about everything. Why didn't Landry mention the Ori to Weir once she was there. "This is why the president recalled you to answer because we are dealing with another enemy and we don't need the Wraith too." It would have made so much more sense.

They knew that this would be the season 3 opener and they decided to make it a crossover, so why didn't they handle it better? Why didn't they tie it in better to SG1? I know that they want Atlantis to stand on it's own, but then do not do crossovers at a very highly sensitive time on the other show.

I will say the battle scenes were good. I also loved Shep's one line about how he hid on the hive ship, "I hitched a ride, saw it in a movie one time."

Erm...Seriously though when did people on SG-1 take orders from Teal'c? at one stage they wanted to use him for experimentation.
But i guess Teyla has built up the respect from Weir and so they thought she could handle it...though other Military officers should have been more responsible than Teyla...but then again its not exactly a military base so yeah.

I don't mind the crossover eps...except each of them has lacked something...there's not a lot of passion in the eps.

But i for one am glad to see Atlantis back for another season.

There have been a number of occasions where we have seen soldiers at the SGC taking orders from Teal'c. While he's not a soldier he is given the status and respect of an NCO due to his position on SG-1 and expertise.

Now didn't I say they would get their hands on a hive ship? I did, didn't I...

The episode had great positive points, but also had some negative points. I would say that Weir on Earth at that specific moment was not a good idea (1. I just hate the IOA; 2. She left teyla in charge... ).

Someone else also said that the Orion was going to get blown up in this episode, seems he was right. But did it look somehow to anyone else that the Orion had more than one shield? It looked that there were several shields surrounding key components of the ship. And to make matters worse, their shields looked as weak as the Ha'tak shields, how dissapointing; they would have had no chance against the Ori.

Hey, don't they have a limited time until those humans rebecome Wraith again?

Waiting for next week (not another three-parter)...

Some of the space battles are starting to remind me of the"Battlestar Galactica". Especially when the Daedalus fires all of its missiles and later when the Daedalus is firing into the Dart bays. This is not a bad thing however.

The Orion wouldn't have lasted long anyways. It was just too convenient. If it was not destroyed the ship would have most likely been repaired and then Atlantis would have had two full functioning ships.

They also use a ton of lines from Star Wars, through out the series. Like how Shepard landed his ship on the side of the Wraith ship - the Falcon did that to a star destoryer in Star Wars - and Shepard even said "I saw that in a move."

Yes, but first when he did this, he said: "This is new."