Lack of understanding? Just because someone's opinion differs from your doesn't mean they don't understand. When someone thinks that way, intelligent people usually refer to them as ignorant.

What do you mean he had no way of knowing that they were onboard? It was part of their plan before they were betrayed for them to be on board. He may not have know if they free or alive, but he definitly knew that Mckay and Ronin were on one of those ships. Sheppard on the other hand is a different story. IMO Caldwell shouldn't have been depending on the getting through the shield. He had superior weaponry in the drones on Orion which were going to blow right through the shields. Now he did not know if Orion's drone firing capability was going to fail, but it seems like he wasted all of his nukes before Orion even got out of hyperspance.

Its not about him making the right or wrong decision... there was more than one possible course of action, some people are disagreeing with the course that he took. I would have waited on Orion. I mean, with the tech that they had, they disabled the wrait ship with rail gun fire? It seems a little anticlimatic to me. Usually the drones target multiple enemies at once, and the writers conveniantly forgot about this for the purpose of their story line. I think one drone could have disabled their hyperdrive, and that would have kept them from getting to earth. As a matter of fact, they only had to disable the hyperdrive of one ship because Shepard did half the work.

All that said, I still think it was a good episode. I was just so excited about the Aurora and they lost it, so then they teased me again with the Orion and now thats gone to. It leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Thats why I'm not counting the Wrait ship as part of their fleet. Its just like in SG1 how they never really got to keep any glider or Goauld ship they got their hands on. I guess I shouldn't be suprised.

This post has been edited by JTMAG1: Jul 15th 2006, 10:54 AM

Well I very much liked this episode.

1) Told ya so. I knew the Orion was going to get destroyed, it gave them too much of an advantage. The special effects were very good though. I really liked the drone weapons tearing the Hive to bits.

2) I liked Michael's part in this episode. And I see that Connor Trineer is back.


Why didn't the retrovirus affect the queen?

This post has been edited by Revan: Jul 15th 2006, 11:35 AM

It's a give an take situation. Atlantis gives up the Orion and the Daedalus is damaged but a few Hives are destroyed and Atlantis gets a Hive.

Well he also had no way of knowing if Orion could fire a single shot once it exited hyperspace, so if he waited for it and that actually happened, they lost the element of surprise as the bulk of the darts would now be defending the closest hive ship..

And the rail gun fire directly at the dart bay when the darts were coming out, you've got to remember that would cause secondary explosions (from mid season 2 eps) so it wasn't just the Daedulus dealing all the damage, the wraith ended up helping them too

I understand that, my point was that the rail guns shouldn't have been able to penetrate the shields so easily, even without the cipher.

When did any Wraith ship have shields?

Everytime I see something (be it a ship or weapons fire) impact a hive, it actually hits the ship itself and not impacting some sort of barrier

You can have a difference of opinion and I wouldn't say you don't understand. I'd say you have a difference of opinion. However, some of the things you and others have stated clearly show a lack of understanding.

See the next section as an example:



1) Wraith ships don't have shields.

2) If McKay and Ronan were eaten by the wraith, they wouldn't have been on board. They'd be dead.

3) Their objective was to stop the wraith ships by any means necessary.

What did Caldwell know?

1) The wraith ships would only be "resting" for another hour or so, and then they'd be unreachable until they got to earth. They had to be stopped by any means necessary. Again, their objective was to do as much damage as quickly as possible. The 15hr rest stop was an estimate, but for all they knew the wraith could've jumped to hyperspace as soon as they were detected. They needed to take them out immediately by all available force.

2) Loading every nuke onto the missiles was their best attempt to take out the hive ship as quickly as possible. Remember, they were not functioning at full capacity either and needed to make sure they used their element of suprise.

3) They had no way of knowing Sheppard would've attacked one of the hives and taken out its hyperdrive, thus leaving the wraith darts out in formation ready to absorb some of the fire.

4) He was gambling that the Orion would be able to fire its drones and take out the other hive, which it was indeed able to do. And even if the Orion couldn't fire, they could've set the Orion on a collision course with the other hive ship and taken it out that way.



1) Daedalus disabled the wraith ship by concentrating all of their railgun fire on the dart bays. And it still took a significant chunk of time for the dart bays to go up and cause the secondary explosions that disabled the ship.

2) The Orion didn't have nearly the # of drones that Atlantis or the Ancient Outpost had. They used some of their ordinance on taking out one of the ships.

However, if you recall, the Orion was trying to fire again and couldn't. They blew out their capability to fire in the first salvo. Had they had the capability to fire again they would have.



The Orion was barely functioning as it was. You expect miracles. Frankly I would've thought it completely unrealistic for them to have fully repaired the Orion in such a short amount of time.

Real world doesn't tie everything up in the neat bow you seem to have wanted it to be.

This post has been edited by Natoma: Jul 15th 2006, 12:35 PM

Wraith ships do not have shields. They use a form of interference to stop us locking on and beaming bombs aboard their ships.





The Orion had sustained too much damage to fire again. Their shields went down the moment they fired the drones. They had to divert power to weapons to fire, thus disabling their own shields.

They had over a month to repair that ship. They only reason it was not in 100% working order was their lack of knowledge.

This is a TV show, not reality. Things are done for the sake of storylines.

I distinctly remember the conversation on the Orion between Major Lorne and Dr. Zelenka where Zelenka stated that they blew out their capability to fire again after the first salvo, and they couldn't raise shields anymore either. That's why they had to abandon ship.

Does someone have a link to a transcript?

Btw, where did you get the idea that they'd had the Orion for a month? Just curious.

Here, Natoma, the conversation:

LORNE: Just one more shot, Zelenka, that's all I'm asking...
ZELENKA: I just cannot give you what I do not have.
...
ZELENKA: There's too much damage. We have to abandon ship.
LORNE: Hey, Doc! Listen to me...
ZELENKA: We've lost our shield capabilities with our first salvo. The ship is going to blow any moment, Major.

There isn't mentioned anywhere about losing fire capability, just shield capability.

I remembered incorrectly then. Thanks for the transcript.

Correct me if i'm wrong. i remember that sheppard or somebody said they already got a month to get the Orion working. I think it was at the beginning of the season 2 finale- Allies.

All I can say is YAWN! Oh please this is the best they could come up with? This!

BARF. This is why SG1 is going to out live SGA. The writing sucked. The story lines SUCKED!

People bitch and whine that Weir is weak and never makes a decision and so apparently the TPTB heard and responded. That is the only strong part of the show. Here we find out Weir does in fact have a set of steel balls inside her pants. About freakin time too. Good for her!

Well, Auntie, you're kind of right. It doesn't seem like one of Gero's best idea... Still it had some pretty well done visual effects. It seemed to me that everything happened just too fast. In only 10 minutes the Orion gets blown (not before it blows a hive), the Daedalus uses stupidly all their nukes, they lose their shield, they damage the hive, the are left without air, they transform the Wraith into humans, they kill the queen and take over the ship. This could have easily been stretched a bit more, it would have made much more sense as Michael proved to be the key of the episode.

I like this episode, though it seemed a bit slow. Good figthing and wondering what they will do with the wraith humans and was the Orion destoryed ? seems to me SGC is loosing ships left and right atm.

Orion gave them a distinct advantage over the Wraith if it has been fully repaired. TPTB destroyed it so the balance can be shifted back.

Which makes me wonder... Will we ever get our hands on an Ancient ship again? The answer probably is "Not any time soon... Or maybe never", but still...

The episode seemed slow at the beginning, but the last 10 minutes were devastatingly fast. Boom here, Boom there, get that, destroy that, convert that, kill that, and here we go... cliff-hanger.

I thought the ep was weak I mean come on we get the Orion and then we blow it up. How many ships is that now? I mean I know if would be boring if we had the ship and used it in as tactical advantage all the time but come on...one ep...why bother to even name the ship? I did love the scene with Rodney and Ronan in the cocoons. I was cracking up

Best thing for me in this episode:

The CG

i mean we had some new shots of the battle at the end of S2 (what was the point of that anyway?) and some of the shots of the Deadalus were great. The bit where the camera is stuck to the underside of the ship as it moves away from the wraith ship was amazing. Also is it me or is the image quality of SG1 and SGA different form the last seasons?

Shame about the Orion, it would have been nice to have it a bit longer though it's good that Lorne and Zelenka got off.

I'd heard that this was a TBC episode and i was expecting a twist at the end and i was surprised when it failed to appear.

Big spoiler for later S3 episode

I liked this story, liked it plenty. No yawns from me!


And Weir has a set of balls? Not really, she bitched about the bureaucrats behind their backs. She should have called them on their bullsh*t, only she pussed out. I think the writers should have had her call the diplocrats out on their idiocy, right to their faces. But maybe that's just me.

Well the ep was average, not the best story but very good s. effects.

Dont u all think that nukes are a little weak in the show i mean they should do a little more damage.
Caldwell did the wright think in launching all of the nukes but unfortunatly the timing was bad since alot darts were outside because they were chasing Shepard if they would be in bays probably a lot of nukes would hit the hive and destroy it.

It realy sucked that they destroyed Orion writers really f***** up there if u ask me.

I'm sorry, but did anyone else catch Zelenka using the term "FTL"?? Since when did they start using that as a term for "hyperspace drives" ..... everybody knows that the term FTL now belongs to BSG

I think the EP was fine... But it did make that Ancient war ship look patheticly weak...

I know it was damaged and not 100% working and all and they had to turn off their
shieds in order to use their weapons and thats why the Wraiths were able to destroy
it so easily... But what really made it look poor was its weapons... Drones ?

Sure the drones can tear apart the enemy ship if you shoot out everything you got
but but even if they do tear it apart it takes time and then you have to run because
you are out of ammo...

Why didn't they install some big powerfull beam weapons like in those satelites and
use them to take out big hives and such and use those drones for darts and such...

But anyway... The WORST part of the episode was: To be continued...

I think the episode was excellent ! A really good kick-off. Maybe the only bad point about Atlantis is that they begin to repeat themselves a lot.. Except the part where Shepard is on the ship in hypersapce, really surprising. But for the other things, it's again : them trapped in the Hive ships, the doctor complaining and a rescue. I mean, al right; they're doing it really well but we have been through that process really often...