It was an okay episode, but I kept wanting Michael and his buds to get away. Bad writing when you pull for the bad guys in a TV show.

I think it actually adds to the interest and dimension of the show when the premise is not completely black and white. We saw the moral dilemma concerning the fate of the Wraith being played out between Shep and Beckett. TPTB wrote one of the show's main "sympathetic" characters (Shep) as almost a Wraith in his amoral attitude toward another species.

We've been allowed to sympathize with Michael who could have completely been portrayed as a nasty, life-force sucking alien that deserved death, instead of a creature with thoughts and desires and fears just like the rest of us.

Yeah in that video Dr Lee that is PDL. He loos to be only a 140-150 pounds now. He is so skinny that if he was in an episode it would be most difficult to spot him now.

Complete agreement here. I can't believe nobody some point along the development for the 'humanising' drug didn't ask if it would be better just to kill instead, that nobody had a problem with attempting to remake a race the way they want them to be.

Going back to 'Allies', when Michael talks about being unable to resist the instinct to feed, has it been said definitively that the wraith have to feed to survive? (memory too sketchty to be sure but that was my impression). It is an interesting consideration, if the Wraith are only doing what they need to do to survive is it any worse than what the atlantis team are doing?

Michael definitely comes out of that episode with the most integrity, Beckett might have whined a bit but he didn't object to turning Michael again. I just hope the (when/if) next time he appears he isn't in archetypal evil wraith mode, the moral ambiguity has potential if the play it right

Athgar, moral ambiguity is the perfect phrase. It would be too easy and too predictable to make Michael one-dimensionally evil and to make Shep out as some kind of knight in shining armour. In the real world, things just really hardly ever happen that way. There are always shades of grey and I think this storyline portrays that nicely.

If it were simply a case of the Wraith feeding on people only as a form of survival and nothing more, they wouldn't be concidered an "evil" enemy. It would be understood that this is what they need to do to survive, it's not their fault. It's nature's way, so to speak. And humans just need to stay out of their way if they want to stay alive. What makes the Wraith evil, is that they show no mercy and they even go so far as to mess with the minds of their prey. They'll toy with them, intimidate, lie, manipulate, etc and for no reason other than taking pleasure in it and to get their way. If they just captured, fed and left, they would be thought of as a typical predator. No different than what lions do. And they wouldn't be hated like they are.

But regardless of the Wraith's evilness........Michael put it best when he said it wasn't a disease that they can cure. The Wraith are who they are and the Atlantis team has no right to play God and try to change it, especially to suit their own needs. It only makes them just as evil as the Wraith...especially when they don't seem to be overly concerned about what happens to the dewraithified humans.

I think the point is, humans have the potential to be and often are just as evil. We just refuse to see ourselves in that way.

osy : i refer to the treatments of cattles and chickens on earth..

the wraith are not evil.. they are merely the top predators in that galaxy..

besides it was mentioned in the first episode that they want prey with spirit to make it taste much better
they don;'t want sheeps

I like the moral ambiguity, I think that's what sets Atlantis as a series apart from SG-1.


BUT as far as this episode goes, my favorite part has still got to be McKay's remark about falling for the this trap just as he gets spyware when downloading porn! You'd think he would have learned...

Well, McKay's remark was in No Man's Land, not in this episode. But I agree with what you have said though.

Great episode! I love the whole, should we save these wraith, destroy them because they are our enemy mantra! I didn't expect Micheal to go from hero for the humans to villian who seeks to destroy us! But it shows what occurs when you allow too much paranoia to fester. Even if the wraith didn't know what had happend previous to their exposure to the retrovirus, they would eventually suspect something and try to overpower the Atlantis team. As Weir said, (paraphrasing) I did the best I could! I didn't have a lot of options. This could just be what I think what I heard, and need more sleep! I'm not surprised the wraith ship was destroyed, since the last ship to give us an edge was destroyed! Well, if a ship is too hard to figure out, it must not be worth keeping anyway! Even McKay's past DOS experience didn't help much, you'd need wraith to help fly it! Yeah, I'd like to see that happen!

Overall I didn?t much care for this episode.

Although some parts were good.

I am actually starting to like Woolsey!

As another poster put a line I love by Beckett



Hehe. I thought that was funny.


Why would they try to control 200 ?Wraith? when controlling 1 was so hard? Wouldn?t it have just been easier to kill them from the first place? I knew something bad would come from it, and it did.

This episode wasn?t a super good one in my opinion.

There's a difference between how the Wraith treat humans and how human's treat livestock. ALL Wraith treat humans cruelly but not all humans treat livestock cruelly. In most countries, there are laws in place to protect farm animals meant for human consumption. There are also many farms that are "free range" rather than factory farms. So, there are truly humane alternatives because there are many people, like myself, who care about how the animals are treated and how they live their lives beforehand. Because not ALL humans are evil.


That's exactly why the Wraith are evil. They are basically saying that fear makes their food taste better. So to make their food taste better, they will cause their prey to be terrified. That's cruel and evil. There is no need for it. (Besides, they really aren't tasting anything, are they? No taste buds in their tongues or their tongues at all for that matter, are being used at all. So they are just tormenting their pray for the fun of it.) As long as they get their sustenance to survive....there's no need to "play" with their food.

But Osy it sounds like you're saying that the Wraith are inherently, genetically evil when we've been shown that they aren't (necessarily).

I can't remember the name of the episode, but it was the one where the Wraith girl had been raised by a human. She felt disgust and fear at her feeding urges and didn't desire to hurt anyone. So by nurture, she was more human than Wraith.

Instinct?.... EXACTLY... while some Wraith are certainly monstrous, they are just predators looking to feed. I wonder if the writers are making a political commentary here...

Even though she felt disgust, she still did it. She was still inherently, genetically Wraith. Her "father" was not able to change/save her.

True. But humans can choose whether or not to eat livestock and some choose not to where the wraith cannot make that choice. It was shown in Instinct that although it had been tried nothing can be done. They are not evil by nature just because they are on top of the food chain but it does seem that in time they have begun to enjoy their possition and play with their pray and that is cruel and evil... and it is where the drama comes from, humans are very much evolved in comparison to the other animals and they aware of their condition and can suffer terribly....

That's exactly my point. (Regardless of whether humans choose to eat meat or not. It's beside the point. By nature, we are omnivores. Despite popular belief, it isn't healthy to be vegiterian or vegan. We end up lacking vital nurtients we get from meat that don't always break down properly in our system in suppliment form. But since people usually overdo their red meat intake, people associate meat with high cholesterol, etc and see it as unhealthy. We are only supposed to intake small amounts of meat in our diets. But intake it, nevertheless. But how we choose to treat the beings that we feed upon is what is hugely important. But I digress....) I know the Wraith have no other choice but to feed on humans. That's not what makes them evil. What makes them evil is how they treat the humans they are feeding on. They are unnecessarily cruel.


I never recall even implying that. The Wraith are evil because they want to be. Like I said, they could simply capture, feed and move on, like any natural predator should. But they don't. They choose to intimidate, terrorize, manipulate and toy with their pray because they like to and because they can. That's what makes them evil.

This post has been edited by Osy: Jul 26th 2006, 6:08 AM

osy : but they do capture, feed and move on.. most of the feeding that occurs is done on captured prey.. they terrorised those that would become a threat.. jsut like we kill lions, tigers and otehr top predators that is a threat to us..

and if you look up the slaughter at cattle farms,.. you will see that we are also terrorising the cows as well...

ps: have you look up the way, some of us force feed ducks in order ot get a huge gibbet(spelling?) in order for it to taste better... tell me what is more evil... force feeding animals or the wraiths feeding..

and my example is one of many..

i think you are stuck a bit on the concept that humans are food to the wraith and are in no position to call their actions evil when we are doing exactly the same thing in more cruel ways

Yeah, I know all about Foie Gras and I think it's horrific and cruel and I have signed many petitions and written to many politicians to try to ban the practice. Only two states in the U.S. (New York and California) still force feed ducks and geese in order to enlarge their liver. That's what Foie Gras is. It's specifically fatty liver made into a p?t?. Apparently it is a very expensive delicacy. A delicacy that's made from the suffering and agonizing prolonged death of ducks and geese. It's banned in most countries. Fortunately, due to the petitions, letters and emails, Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a bill to completely ban the production AND sale of Foie Gras in California by 2012 and is already starting to stop the production of it, meaning millions of birds will be spareda cruel existance and a terrible end.

As for the cattle farms, as I said, there are many out there that are free range. These cows live happy lives roaming freely out in the fields to graze as they normally would. They are not subjected to living a life in confinement, like cows in factory farms are. When it comes time for them to be slaughtered, the free range cows are carefully brought inside and their death is made as quickly and painlessly as possible. It is all done humanely.

My point is, there are millions and millions of humans that DO care for the welfare of animals even though they eat them. Now we know the Wraith are an intelligent and advanced society. Do you think for a second there are any Wraith petitioning for the welfare and humane treatment of the humans they feed upon? Of course not! Because they don't care. They like watching the humans suffer. And no the Wraith don't just feed and move on. They capture their prey and store them alive...and aware of their impending demise. Look at the things that they are kept in on their ships. That's like a factory farm to the 1000th power but worse. The humans don't get medical care, regular meals or social interaction. And while factory farms are a terrible place, they at least get that and the livestock are at least blissfully unaware of why they are there. Whereas the humans stuck on those ships all know they are going to die, which is worse.

Look, I'm not saying humans on Earth are perfect. We do a lot of evil things. The way many humans treat animals is unforgivable. But not all of us are that way. With the Wraith, ALL of them are that way. That's the difference. Do you get what I'm saying?

I'd hardly call him a villain, he gets mutated against his will, lied to and held prisoner even after he helped save the Daedalus crew. What would you do in the situation? I doubt I'd sit contently in my prison camp and think positively of the people who had betrayed and 'altered' me




Can we really conclude all wraith treat humans cruelly? If a hypothetical alien witnessed war crimes on earth, could he conclude that all humans are war criminals? I sincerely hope the Wraith will not be written so blandly as a whole race stereotype.

I'd also bring up the Tok'ra in the same sort of principle, though I further hope that sort of parallel doesn't appear or at least not in a similar way

So far, this is how the Wraith are being written. Though, I personally think it would be cool to see activist Wraith fighting for the humane treatment of humans.

i beleive your analogy is wrong.. it was scientifically proven in an article a couple of years ago that the cows waiting outside the slaughterhouse know that they are going to die.. the final bleats of their breathen being killed cause their muscles to stiffen and make their meat less tasty.. i can;t rememebr hte exact detail but its there..

also you have to remember that the wraith store humans alive but are mostly i nsuspended animation.. most of the ones that are alive are mostly asleep or unconciious.. only a very few strong willed ones manage to move and talk...and the humans don't need medical care or food.. they are mostly in suspended animnation.. so half of your point is moot..

also the simple fact that humans have a choice as to not eat meat allow for the creation of a class of people petitioning for better animal rights.. the wraith can only feed on humans..and most of the feeding which happens are offscreen but from waht could be seen the feeding is done on a one to one basis.

so the wraith are not exactly evil. they make no pretense as to what they are. unlike humans

Unless I am remembering things incorrectly here, but weren't humans not the Wraith's original food source? Didn't they have to create an enzyme or something to better allow for the absorbtion of the life force from the humans?

If I am remembering that correctly, then your entire point is moot, fan_83. That would make the Wraith most definitely evil, because they never needed to feed on humans in the first place. They chose to because they prefered them and they changed their physiology to accommodate it.

This post has been edited by Osy: Jul 26th 2006, 10:29 PM

That enzme seems to be part of the bugs what the Wraith evolved from. I think it is naturally part of what the Wraith are.