Why is it so hard for people to believe that Shep figured it out? He is a very intelligent man. They have mentioned in the show that he is actually smarter than McKay. McKay was floored when he learned that little tidbit. It ate at his ego.

Why don't I remember that specifically?

Sheppard is intelligent, obviously. You have to be pretty smart to run the entire military operation on Atlantis...

Oh yes, I remember it quite well. Shep and McKay walking with some others. Shep goes on about MENSA and McKay is so totally shocked and so jealous it was priceless!

I do vaguely remember that, what ep was it in?

Also, other than Spin City, where have I seen the guy playing the doctor?

OH, Capt. Harriman from the Enterprise B....

That's an interesting thought, but if it was Sheppard why was she so terrified? You would think if he was getting through to her subconsciously, that she would be trying to reach him - not escape him. Were the nanites that intelligent to be able to detect such subtleties? I was thinking the nanites are more like a bacteria that have a specific mission and know how to accomplish it, but nothing else. Also, I thought that the scenario she was enacting was from her own mind - not dreamed up by the nanites?

They had to overpower her mind.... erase it, take it over... but her mind was fighting back. So they set up a scenario in which they could force her to give up... to back down.

They were overwriting the images of Shep with scary noises... growling, etc.

I remember that, Shep knew the answer to a tricky question, and Mckay asked, "How did you know that?"
Shep: It was on the MENSA Test.
McKay: you were in MENSA
Shep: No, but I took the test

I don't know the exact words, and for the life of me I can't think of the ep.

EDIT: Slight nitpick here. If the nanites were being controlled remotely, why did they take the form of Niam and not Oberon. Right before she walked through the gate. I imagine when Oberon's body was destroyed in the explosion int he previous ep, they would have recreated him form and let him take another body, since all the individual nanites are linked through the subspace connection, and they were able to rewrite Niam's programing.

May I just watch too much BSG.

This post has been edited by JTMAG1: Aug 19th 2006, 7:07 PM

When I saw the preview for this episode I thought that it would be pretty bad. However, I felt that it turned out to be pretty good. Torri did an excellent job in this episode.

Oberoth got blown up, Niam did not. There was no more Oberoth to control the Nanites, and Niam was in relatively close proximity to them.

I didn't even think about Niam in orbit untill you said it. But that could of done something. in the last episode when it showed him, it looked like he moved a bit so I assumed he would be used in a later episode.

And Yes it was awesome to see Carson save the day.

But that aside this is what I thought about the episode.......(I wrote it earlier)

23 minutes. the purpose of a tv show (or a movie) is to make you believe.
In 23 minutes you want me to believe that the last 2 seasons and 5 episodes
did not happen? You want me to believe that I haven't spent 45 hours watching this
show for the last 2 years plus?? come on. It's supposed to be believable. and
it wasn't. There has been more then one of this kind of episode (sg-1 included)
and i absolutely hate them. This kind of plot only works at the beggining of a movie
or show, not the middle. You can't just omit 2 seasons. (maybe one {Dallas})

Forgetting about the realness of the plot, it was at least carried okay. I really
liked the scene when she was playing solitare and the cards showed the gate address
to atlantis. (I think it would of been awesome if when she was in the elevator
that the buttons for the floors were also gate address)
And Dr. Fletcher was good. He was the guy from spin city (very funny) and
the guy on the bus in speed "Of course the police will save us, our taxes pay their
sallary...If we die they will have to take a pay cut." HAHAHA

Ahh, I had forgotten this until you mentioned it. Kudos to the writers. This was brilliant, and I remember saying that out loud. Of course, how would you play solitare when your cards are chevrons? Maybe the Ancients had a card game with the symbols on the stargate...hmm? That'd be cool.

Ty Da you did not get it.

It was not to make US think that the last 2 years did not happen but for Dr Weir to doubt herself and her sanity as to whether the last 2 years happened. Which they almost succeeded at.

Sigh, that was always Sheppard but as someone else said they tried to mask him by erasing his face, masking his voice, adding scary sounds (most likely things from her own mind that scare her). Yet through all that he was there. Only when most of the nanites had been killed was it quite clear to her who infact that shadowy figure was. Shep!

Ah, that episode was brilliant! I don't usually tend to go that way, but Real World does seem to have earned the "Best Atlantis Episode Ever" title. At least for now.

Torri Higginson was excellent. As much as I usually find Weir annoying as hell, this episode seems to show how underused the character really is. She was compltely awesome.
Jack! Jack Jack Jack. I was surprised at how much he appeared in the episode, I thought he'd be in a much smaller part. Okay, it wasn't the real Jack... and yet. ;)
So Mystery Man was Sheppard - huh, I thought some of the blurred close-ups looked like Niam.

The scene I loved the most - back in the hospital, when she's playing cards (how's that game called in English? It's speed here...) and she's getting the Atlantis address on the cards... that was one brilliant bit.
Also the group session, when she's all patronising about the woman seeing aliens and then the psychologist looks at her in a "look who's talking" and humbling her down. Loved that scene.
And the chatter with Jack of course... *innocent smile* the signing -the -treaty bits were excellent.

I wondered about Simon... interesting that they chose to kill him rather than have him around, but I s'poose he already played his part.

So forget all my complaionings about lack of real character development in Sateda and Progeny. This time I really do feel we've seen sides to Weir that weren't there before. Her acceptence of the cover story, for example. Was she running away from Scary Man or actually buying into their story? Thankfully, also, they gave up the kind of "whta if I told you it's all a dream" speech a-la Mitchell in Collateral Damage. On the contrary - I enjoyed how they refrained form having Weir answer the pyschologist's question when he tells her how ridiculous it all sounds.

That clock - is there something more significant in that? I wonder. Weir seemed pretty stricken to see it, and then playing it afterwards when she's conscious and on Atlantis...

Sheppard - I dunno, I don't mind his figuring it out. I don't see it as him being so overly smart, or whatever - the solution, or at least beginning of the solution, was found by Beckett and McKay (BTW! Ha! McKay picking up the credit for Carson's idea and keeping on interrupting him. I just love these two.) - it was rather his stubborness that allowed him to get through to Weir, not his brains. Or at least that's the way I saw it. It was refusal to give up on her that managed to help find her way.

Okay, yeah, it was getting a tad bit Legacy there with the Stargate inside the door - but I liked it nonetheless.

Excellent, all in all.

i thought good acting, boring episode...

as for the clock.. maybe ur right about being paranoid.. she said that it felt like a lifetime but it was only 5 hours...

He isn't actually dead. The nanites killed him off as a reason for her mental degradation. He is probably still happy on Earth, but he is no longer her's. He is with somebody new, since she was gone for like a year.

Loved the ep.

I think it would have been a great time for a shipper moment with weir and sheppard. Just a look or something, somewhere.

I'm not talking as overt as, "John Sheppard, are you defending my honour?" Just something.

I guess I was just speculating, that since all of the Asurans are connected through their subspace link, and they have access to any individual's mind, perhaps there is a backup file database. This would be how they were able to "reset" Naim. If did have this sort of system, they could build a new body and reset it to Oberon.

It was just speculation based on what they do with the cylons in BSG.

Am I the only one that thinks Jack filmed this ep, adn went over to the SG1 set without even changing clothes?

Well John did risk his life to give her hope. It was incredibly stupid of him to leap into that containment chamber. He obviously cares about her... they are his 'family' remember?

Although the acting was good I have to agree it was a boring episode. I found myself at points trying to focus and pay attention.... I did like the cards having the atlantis gate address on them though...

The shadow man could definitely have been Shep (though I'm still a little on the fence about it), but I just wish they had spent a few seconds of the script resolving this since it was important enough to have several scenes in the episode.

I think Shep is definitely smart enough and intuitive enough to have figured out what was going on with the nanites. That's one thing that I've been annoyed with in the show, because the writers originally portrayed him with more character and then just kind of stopped. I'd like to see some more character-driven episodes for Shep, more like what we've seen in the last two or three episodes.

Pitry, I got the impression in that group therapy session that Weir actually perked up and got interested when that lady spoke about "the others" because she thought it might mean there really was something weird going on - and that it really wasn't about her being three fries short of a happy meal.

The shadowy man was definitly Sheppard, and they resolved this in the script multiple times. Shep said something to the effect of ,"Carson, if I talk to her, will she be able to hear me". Carson says, "there are lots of instances where comatose patients report having been able to sense what was going on around them".

That's the writers pointing out the connection. The reason that she couldn't clearly make him out was that the nanites were interfering. Once most of them were eliminated, and Sheppard added additional senses (he touched her and she was probably able to smell him ) to the mix, they were no longer able to block out the image.

EDIT: just corrected some grammer.

This post has been edited by JTMAG1: Aug 20th 2006, 5:08 PM

Yep, it was Sheppard... Weir was unable to clearly perceive him because the nanites had spread and gained a foothold in her mind. He came in loud and clear once they had killed a lot of them. Because there were far less nanites, she was able to effectively fight back.

was anyone reminded of that episode of deep space nine where sisko deals with a similiar situation in a mental institution. I was when I saw this episode.

You know, about Shepperd being the shadowy figure, I guessed it the first time I saw the 'shadowy' figure. I thought it would be kinda obvious that it would be Shepperd. But, maybe that's just me, and I tend to try to think about how the writers want the episode to be like.