Episode 12 - The Defiant One
Air Dates - Canada: Nov 15 2004, UK: Jan 4 2005, US: Jan 28 2005

Sheppard's team investigates a downed Wraith ship, and find themselves stuck on a planet with a lone Wraith survivor.

Episode Guide | Spoilers | Teaser

(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.)

Sheppard's team investigates a downed Wraith ship, and find themselves stuck on a planet with a lone Wraith survivor. When the wraith finds they?re ship he is clearly surprised that they have an atlantian jumper ? because he is sure they defeated them long ago.

There have been some people speculating that it was a different foe and not the wraith that defeated the Atlantians. But in this episode the wraith confirmed that it was the wraith that won the war.

(He (the wraith) certainly thinks so, it isn?t a 100% proven that there wasn?t anything else?)

This post has been edited by anja: Nov 16th 2004, 7:40 AM

I thought this was a great episode. Suspenseful and creepy at times with one scene that made us jump in our seats when the "wraith shadow'' moved behind a couple of the team members.

Good interaction betwwen MacKay and Shephard. Both of them kick some wraith butt in this episode and its final demise was great.

Almost seemed like a shippy momemt when Wir was talking to Ford and Shephard and going after them. Ford seemed almost too concerned about Shephard, not that there's anything wrong with that.

One recycled actor from SG1 used on Shephard's team. The young actor that played Nyan in New Ground has a role in this episode.

I like this episode, this is the first time that I've seen the Wraith as a credible threat. Most of the ones before have either gone down too easily or seemed too stupid to live.

I hope we will se more of that weapons platform

Wasn't too impressed with this ep. However I thought it was nice how they tied in those glow flies into the story in the end. I was not sure how they would fit into the story.

I want to find out about that satellite though :/

I was expecting those flies to attack the wraith, because he was killing them. Are they or aren't they the same ones from SG-1? Nice episode, though.
A very obvious redshirt on the team
Plus the other guy who shot himself...I didn't expect that. Looks like the Wraith can't live some sort of symbiotic relationship with humans, as their victims seem to die anyway. More proof that they aren't "evil" out of choice.

It was a pretty good storyline, had lots of character development. We learnt more in general about the wraith and the tech of both races. Seems the ancients also had a big honkin space gun, O'niell would've loved that!

The puddle jumper is completely unreactive to the wraith, but it can still be hotwired. Since the war went on for so long the wraith had so much time to learn about the ancient technology building their own dhd interfaces so given enough time I'm sure the wraith would've figured out a way. He even believed severing Sheppard's hands to operate the controls would work, I take it he's done something like that before.

It was good how they re-used another SG-1 actor Richard Ian Cox, who played Gall (spelling?). He played Nyan i Season 3, Episode 19 - New Ground.
Great acting, though it was a shame we couldn't save him.

Those glowing bugs were funny, knew that it had an important role to play, who ever pays attention to bugs on an outing? Yes, you can quite easily make allies with a bar of chocolate!

Now that we've seen the damage a drone can do on the surface in an atmosphere, we can sort of compare it's power to conventional explosives...say a wad or two of C4?

I was expecting McKay to know what to do when he jumped into the saddle and started shooting the wraith, yeah McKay reload! He should've taken Gall's gun since he was dead. You know what? The wraith grenade should've taken off some part of his body! If it behaves anything like a high explosive, the shockwave from being that close should've taken something off, let alone scramble his insides to mush (a.k.a the butterfly effect) unless it wasn't really that powerful. I guess we'll learn more about wraith physiology in the episodes to come.

I was relieved that the wraith was only frustrated when it was screaming and not broadcasting a wakeup call. He did say that he ate his crew, so he was definitely the only survivor of his ship. Well it's ours now hehe, since the distress beacon was so weak, it's unlikely the wraith were on their way to salvage it, it's been thousands of years already. So it's safe to say that we can find the antenna, cut it off and then the ship will be ours to study.

The Satellite was left unobliterated, so perhaps it's shields were powerful enough to keep the wraith at bay (able to keep shooting down the wraith) until it ran out of juice which by then the wraith had gone somewhere else as there was no defeating the defences and nothing worth eating on the planet as well as no Stargate.

8/10 for me.

This post has been edited by dr_n_tesla: Nov 17th 2004, 8:54 AM

This episode was cool. The satellite weapon looked familiar, so I went through an animated movie that I recently saw; Titan A.E. Somehow the weapon that is in episode looks like the weapons that the bad guys in Titan AE had. The episode was scary, I was bit scccared but that soon ended. It's interesting to know that the Wraith would feed off its own species just to stay alive. Does all Wraith look like Steve? Because he looked like him.. but older

Had forgotten about the glowing entities until I saw a preview on Space about the next episode Prodigy (4-19). So not only are we reusing actors now, we are reusing alien life forms - in another setting. Although perhaps they are the same life forms but this time we didn't "p" them off as Shephard actually fed them.

The enemy in this episode just didn't seem Wraith to me. Was he green because he represents an earlier, less evolved Wraith? He also seemed a bit dumber than your average Wraith. Chasing orange smoke and falling for that radio on the ground trick were almost comical. Shepard was just toying with him. Maybe the Wraith were just that dumb back in the day. This makes me wonder how they even beat the Ancients though.

One other thing I noticed was the timing of Ford's arrival. I didn't rewatch it yet, but didn't they say that it took 14 hours to reach that planet from Atlantis? The action on the planet would seem to suggest it took significantly less time between his departure and timely saving of Shepard and McKay.

I guess one more thing comes to mind. I don't know why I'm so hard on Atlantis, but it just stands out to me. Was the only remote for the Jumper the one that the Wraith stole? If it was, why didn't Shepard keep it originally? If it wasn't, why wasn't Shepard able to deactivate the shield?

Despite this, I give the episode a 6.5/10. Nothing really special but an entertaining watch because of all the action. Shepard is John McClain.

This post has been edited by JaffaKree: Nov 18th 2004, 4:02 AM

good fun episode to watch, always funn giveing them wraith a good bollocking, and i agree, it was funny

This episode was good

I really liked the scene when McKay and Sheppard where talking on the radio.

Sheppard: McKay!
McKay : Major?, whats happening
Sheppard: I thought you should know, Round one was a draw.
McKay : I don't like the sound of that
Sheppard: Me neither. I took some fire
McKay : Are you injured?
Sheppard: Yathats what i mean by "I took some fire"

how did you all get to watch this episode it doesnt air until jan 05???

I'm Canadian
jk.
hehehe

I found it on the net and that's all I can say at the moment. Watched it on Squintyvision.

come on u mean none of you people watched this on tv???

Umm... what's going on with PDL? first Affinity, now this.. his episodes used to be amusing.

*sigh*

Why do all Wraith have to be super exaggerated over-dramatic Evil Ones? (just to note the perspective, Apophis, Anubis, Sokar are on the "over dramatic side".) and why do they have to be so dumb? How did this dumb race win over the obviously technologically superior Ancients?... And why did he walk like he was a monster from a 50s B-rated horror movie?...

Teyla was pointless, again. I dunno when she's worse, when she's deliberately pointless like here or supposedly have a depth of character like The Eye... Ford was also pointless, since when did he get the soldier "yes ma'm no ma'm" shick?

Can they please stop recycling actors! Nareem and Elliot were one thing, they're both dead, and elliot played an alien while Nareem was a human in Atlantis. But Richard Cox?... In SG1 he was a scientist who eventually started working for the SGC. In Atlantis he's... a scientist who used to be in the SGC. Couldn't they just call the character Nyan, give some nice sense of continuanity and be done with it....

What's with the timelines? I'm very confused here. Both in Frozen and I'm quite sure Lost City they date the Ancient plague to 50 million years ago. So, the Ancients came to explore the Pegasus galaxy, met the Wraith, started a war, lost ten thousand years ago, retreated to our galaxcy and died out\ascended 50 million years ago?...Huh?...

And - can they stop making Puddle Jumper episodes? This is Stargate. Not Star Trek.

Oh. And the worst part. I don't know if PDL should be wacked or the design team. If the lightning bugs have nothing to do with Prodigy, then glareglare at the design team. Check what you're doing! If they are... I'll go back to my original question, i.e what's up with PDL? What's their significance - was all the securityu over the planet because of them? Where did they originate? Why didn't they bother going through that Wraith when he caught them?! I kept expacting them to either go through Sheppard's hand, or kill the Wraith in the last minute. They did none. It would have served a lot better ending than Ford blowing up the Wraith from space....

This one defintiely takesthe worst Atlantis episode title from Childhood's End - so far.... the only thing that saved it was, once again, McKay, but for how long? Quite nice save though.... *snigger*

"What do I do now?"
"shoot him with all you got!!"
"what now?"
"reload!!"
"what now....?"

If you hate the show so much why do you watch?

Season 1 of SG-1 wasn't so hot either.. I use that as comparison so I won't be dissapointed as much, and hence why I'm liking the episodes..

I don't get what's eating people about recycling actors.. Sure you have seen them before but the people they are playing are totally different and the directors/producers have dealt with them before and know they are good at what they do.

Just my two cents, but I'm sure what I wrote won't change anyone's minds.

season one of any series is slow...they're having to build a series up and so i think that might be why.
Stargate SG-1, Star Trek Voyager...it just takes time.
but the episodes on SGA are proving to be quite good.
This episode was quite good as well.
It's not a lame episode, it isn't lacking anything important.

Whoever commented on the shield, the wraith guy hot-wired the shield to his control, just like if you hot wire an alarmed car by bypassing the alarm arming the alarm would have no effect etc.

The timeline issue is interesting, i must look into that more, perhaps the ancient female from 50 million years ago was an early ancient (with no life signs because she was frozen would mean no way for the ancients to see her on standard scans etc), whereas later on they had already solved the virus problem, then eventually they ascended.

The time is definitely interesting - I didn't think Ford can actually reach them in time. Was the wraith stupid? He can afford to be, there was nothing to lose but everything to gain. This episode is quite good overall, everything from character interation to consequences and action. I'm glad they didn't work with the enemy to get out.

One thing that bugs me - I still hate the main characters - and after this episode even more so. I assume they send there best out to Atlantis but this is terrible!

Dr Wier got persuaded again by Sheppard! Who is the lead negotiater here? Who is supposedly the best?! Dr Wier should have better sense than let them go ahead, these people aren't SG1!

They lost two people in this episode (50% casualty rate) and I blame both McKay and Sheppard. They are like school children seeing some candy and it got their men killed. If it werent for Dr Wier sending Ford out early, they would have been dead, probably best IMO. They really shouldn't be on this mission. Sure they can get themselves out of the situation they put themselves in most of the time, but it is always at a major cost. At this rate, they probably only have the core group left by the end of the year.

Have they not learnt from everything they've seen, did and done?

Some of you have been saying this episode makes the Wraith appear weaker. If anything, I'd say the cunning of the lone Wraith makes them seem more like a real threat now. The grenade under the radio is not something that a Wraith should've been expected to suspect. I will admit that walking out of the jumper after Sheppard baited him and getting shot was pretty stupid. Then again, the Wraith was probably counting on his regenerative abilities to give him the advantage and allow him to be more aggressive. The fact that the Wraith managed to rewire the jumper to put up a shield on his signal shows that they are more knowledgeable about Ancient technology than we had previously seen. Plus, it was implied that this Wraith is somehow different from the other ones. His skin was a different colour, and Sheppard suggested that his enhanced regenrative capabilities were likely due to something other than recent feeding.

I think that this episode presents the Wraith as more than just thugs, and adds speculation into how they've changed over the years, and how it is they defeated the Ancients.

I didn't say I hated that show, I said the episode was bad. I watch it because oit still has some amusing points, and also it has enough potential to become better with time. As for SG1... I dunno., I really liked season 1! Yeah, they had some weird and slow episodes, but some of the best episodes IMHO are in season 1 (Thr Nox, Fire and Water, The Torment of Tantalos, There But for the Grace of God, Enigma, Within Serpent's Grasp...)

It's a bit bothering when its a very known character, such as Nareem. Elliot I actually didn't mind so much. What bothered me with this character is that it had exactly the main charecteristics of Nyan from New Ground - so they could just as well have made it Nyan and be done with it.

I'm quite sure both Window of Opprtunity and Full Circle said they died out because pof the virus... meh. fine fine I'll stop nitpicking now.