Season 3, Episode 11 - The Return (Part Two)
Air date: March 2007

The Atlantis team must rescue General O'Neill and Richard Woolsey when they are taken captive by the Asurans.

Episode Guide | Spoilers

(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.)

Let me be the first to say i enjoyed this episode, plenty of laughs in it and i felt like the old O'neill was back with us.

Sfx are good as always with some awesome shots of the city - Liked the drones chasing them through it.

And this showed how good mkay is with his completely false plan to mislead the replicators. I wasnt too sure about the rewind thing but it was different.

So how long is the city going to keep the 3 zpms they have now, or will they stop working for no reason

Good episode, ***1/2

What can I say? GREAT Episode. RDA was at his absolute sarcastic best, and McKay's plan was brilliant, even if "the fast rewind" bit was a little cheesy. Too bad none of the Ancients survived, although they did get a new ZPM out of it.

Small possible nitpick though. When the Daedalus embarked on its mission to destory Atlantis, it got there pretty fast. (Perhaps less than a day after Sheppard & Co left Earth). What was it doing anywhere near the Pegasus Galaxy? I assume O'Neill travelled there by the Gatebridge, so there would be no reason for the Daedalus to be in Pegasus. I would have assumed it would have been recalled back to the Milky Way to help against the Ori....

*EDIT: 3 ZPM's Rax? I thought the Ancients only brought one?

This post has been edited by Rogue Ashrak: Nov 30th 2006, 4:52 AM

teh ancients only got one but the replicators have 2 onboard their ship which was then dismantled thus giving atlantis all 3..
but the next episode will tell you what happen to all 3

ps: thanks to arcady for opening the thread

Superb episode. RDA did a great job in this episode... sweet underwater work!

Well that main problem with having ZPM's has been resolved... no more stardrive, so the city is permanently stationary.

I wonder if they are going to use the underwater jumper bay ever again, because that was pretty cool.

Awww poor Woolsey got tricked into helping them.

The shots of the jumper weaving between the buildings of the city was amazing.

This would have to be one of the best Atlantis episodes ever! Loved the whole team working together and Shep 'Gibbs slapping' McKay Loved pissy Woolsey, but RDA certainly stole the show, Jack was brilliant, closer to the old Jack than the past few years. The underwater scenes were fantasic *wet Jack*



I assume the Replicators bought their own, they certainly had enough.

The Replicators brought 3 fully charged ZPM's. We know they had them because they were preparing to lift off, that is why Carson destroyed the stardrive. You cannot fly the city with the 3 ZPM's, says McKAy, which makes in canon.

SGA 312 spoiler:

Actually, it's

Well the writers COULD have kept at least one or two of the Ancients alive. With such small numberes they'd hardly be in the position to deny the Atlantis team access to the city again.AND we could have had a new Ancient character or two for the writers to play around with. Could have been interesting. A missed opportunity....

well, i was thinking that with the star drive destroyed, they can always go back to the tower and get that one. with the asguard beaming tech it'l be easy getting it out of there ^^.

Oh damn.... my bad...



TPTB probably knew what they were doing. There was no reason for the Asurans to leave any Ancient alive, given their intention is now to eradicate them and all their descendants from the face of the galaxy. TPTB even put it in, how the Captain of the Tria tried to resist the mind probe.



The stardrive is a highly integrated system. It would be nearly impossible to simply 'beam' it out. Also, the city-ship on that planet was buried under a lot of earth, the sections with the stardrive in them might have collapsed by this time.



I do wonder.... what happened to the Tria?

Good question, where is that other Ancient ship.

I guess we can presume it got destroyed, but they didn't say anything in the episode.

Hooray! Excellent episode. I need to stop beign shocked at how good Atlantis episodes should be, but two years of habit...

The arrogant Ancients... well, they've been shown to be really arrogant, bnoth on SGA and SG1. Did I mention it's no wonder that race got extinct? Twice?... But TBH, it can bring in some interesting results. Pegasus Project

The same in Return part 1 - Jack's commetn about Elizabeth not being able to let go, etc., her own reaction when the Ancients came to Atlantis...

But now on to part 2, as there were no Anceints there
Jack and Woolsey, who would have guessed they can be such a pair! "I'm not very good at this", bwahahaha. And Jakc's initial comment about him being good for something
Okay, I really didn't see the whole "Plan B/C/F" coming. The whole "That's how we did it", while re-hashed to death on television, was done really really well. Entertaining plan, too.

So, Repliactors are super-fast at reconstructing Atlantis? I have to say tho, it's pretty entertaining - someone mentioned in an interview how the conference room is way too small and they're having a hell of a time shooting there, I guess they decided to seize up the opportunity and change it...

McKay was wonderful He's been down-played this year, which while necessary and a decision I agree with is a tad bit sad cos he's my favourite character. But they got him jsut enough this time - and McKay and Jack were extermely entertaining, too. I don't think these two ever had the chance to work so much together before? I don't recall they had a lot of scenes together in Redemption.

Jack on the whole - I really, really missed him. All the scenes he had - and how much Jack he was, felt better than several episods of seaosn 8 when he was a regular. Oh, yeah, and the "workoholic" line... that was a hoot.

Weir didn't have too much to do.... btu what she did was lovely. And I love hopw Weir and Jack work together. I did get mutual respect and a sort of friendship. They;ve worked together in the past, not just in Elizabeth's head - there's an unacountable period of time between New ORder and Rising, when she was heading the Antarctica research and him the SGC. I think after Lost City ("I sense there's hope for you") and the ending of New ORder - and then that - they did develop some sort of a friendship.
I've really grown to love her - and that scene in the end was really sweet. Carson.... not so much to do, and again, Teyla and Ronon.... but that's repeating myself ad infinitum, so I'll stop.

So, excellent. More, please?

I thought this ep was awesome. Iloved the flying through the city being chased by drones. I'm hoping that in later epsiodes they find the ancient leader in statis somewhere in the city. they never said that they'd killed her. Lots of ZPMs now thats a good thing.

Man what a great episode!! But first thanks Canada!! We couldn't have seen this without you!!!

Now loved the episode. I was a little surprised at them blowing up the gateroom, but the SFX of the jumper breaking through the glass was awesome!! Speaking of SFX of the Jumper, the chase through the city was awesome! Much better than the chase back in Brotherhood. If you noticed you could see through the windows of buildings with lights on. Very cool, makes it feel much more like a city. And that line "Then I'll try to hit the buildings we like the least!" haha I love it.

The underwater Jumper Bay was a neat idea. Makes you woder though if that was added on after the ancients came to Pegasus since their would be no need for it if they were on the ground. Or maybe it was intended as an alternate to the other bay when flying so jumpers wouldn't have to fly to the other side. Also makes you wonder if their are other jumper bays...hmmmm maybe but I doubt it. Anyway I loved the entire underwater sequence, esspecially with a RDA cameo! So I guess though that the flooded areas of the city were the sections that flooded during the super hurricane back in season one. AH I'm probably overthinking it.

Now brief moment, when they mentioned the Tria crew I started to wonder, what happened to the Tria? Did we just beam the crew to the Deadalus and left the Tria in the Void between our galaxies, did we tow it back, or the ancients somehow bring it back to Atlantis. If so did the Replicators destroy it, take it back to their homeworld, or something else to it. The Replicators never mentioned it, in fact they didn't even acknowlege the Lanteans as Tria's crew. Which mean we may have left it out in the Void, if so we should use it! I mean come on we've lost enough ships, we could use an ancient warship which it's only damage is the hyperdrive. We could easily fix that and the other systems should work, which means unlike the Orion working sheilds and weapons at the same time! I think the writers need to explore that option.

Let's see we've had 2 goa'uld ships. One crashed killing Apophis and thousands of Replicators, another blew up under the Pacific ocean. We've had several gliders one in which is drifting towards the Kuiper belt as we speak, several other unaccouted for. A cargo ship we may still have but no confirmation probably gone since it disappeard after season 5, another cargo ship got sucked up by a black hole. We had an Al'kesh which we stripped so Prometheus could have a hyperdrive, Baal crashed one more recently but it may never fly again. An Orii ship but the Orici stole it back (curses). The Aurora, although damaged majorily it was still a shame to have it blow up, then the Orion which also blew up thanks to the Wraith (I'm seeing a patter here), We have many PJs but they keep crashing...a lot! Then we had a hive ship but it also blew up! (I don't like were this is going), There's the Wrait cruise ship on the other planet in the Lantean star system but we seem to be leaving it alone. A Wraith Dart from season two that we seemed to have forgotten (probably blew up as well). The Prometheus blew up, as well as the Korlev. You know someone needs to teach these people how to drive. We haven't lost the Odyssey or the Deadalus yet but they do get serious damage in many episodes.


So it would be really nice if we can keep the Tria!

Now back to the episode, I'm guessing that since the city was about to fly that the Replicators brought some ZPMs meaning we have 3 ZPMs nice, too bad Bekket destroyed the Stardrive though. I would love to have a flying city, would solve a lot of problems. BUt I bet Earth will take one for itself so that the Antartic outpost can protect our planet. Hopefully we don't fully drain any of the ZPMs as quickliy as we did with previous ones we got our hands on.

Now the using the shield as a giant ARG was a great idea. I was thinking that they should have done something similar to that before the episode. Though makes me sad I was able to predict how they would retake the city. I hate being able to do that. Well great episode in all can't wait for the completion of the midway space station. It may come useful in the future so I'm intrigued by it still.

9/10

The seeming leader of the Asurans was talking about how they killed all the Lantians...

Yes, Canada is indeed awesome! But I have no idea what you are talking about, you must have traveled to Canada or something, because the alternative is to do 'something that must not be mentioned', ever.

This was indeed an ingeniously made episode IMO. The plan they made to take back Atlantis was simply a writer's heaven. McKay of course devised the best part of the plan, and I was simply expecting that. O'Neill rocked the episode, along with Woolsey.

If the writers could have done a perfect episode, this is the one... Great action, great strategy, great acting, great writing. All in all, ummm... the best episode of Atlantis ever made...

I thought this ep was great. Jack was great, The plan was brilliant, I actually didn't see it coming. I absolutly loved seeing a jumper bay full of jumpers. It looks like RDA lost weight between his earlier cameos and this one. All and All, I think this was a great ep.

i just thought RDA looked like he was getting on a bit. how old is he now anyways, jacks character that is, not Anderson,

As for the episode, it was quality. i loved the action scenes and especially the twist with the way they used the shields. a gem of an episode!!

I feel that The Return Part 1 was very rushed, very. And The Return Part 2 wasn't that good either. I could tell how Part 2 was going to end before I was even finished watching Part 1.



I am a huge fan of both SG-1 and Atlantis but I feel that after such a long run the shows have finally run out of good cliffhangers. In my opinion the best cliffhanger was Stargate Atlantis' The Siege (parts 1,2,3). The story was very exciting and kept you on the edge of your seat. Unfortunately I don't think they will ever come close to topping The Siege.

There's been a few conflicting dates as to Jack's age. In Brief Candle he said he was 40 years old, which would make him 50 now. In Entity there's another date on his service record that conflicts, but I couldn't find a screencap with the res to read it. And, in Fragile Balance, his ID card states his birthday as 20/10/52 which would mean he is 54 years old. RDA is 56, and lookin' damn fine.

As for the underwater scenes, I read an article on Hugh Jackman where he was immensely praised for doing underwater stunts for X men 3 (I can't if they were similar or not, as I haven't seen it yet), and he's only in his 30's. It's a real credit to RDA to be doing the same thing at his age.

This post has been edited by magnavox: Dec 19th 2006, 5:14 PM

RDA did a damn fine job with his underwater work in this episode. I do not think I would be able to do that sort of stuff, it looks quite difficult.

When was Hugh Jackman underwater in X3?

I've been trying to figure that out all day. I don't remember seeing it at all. I will have to fast forward through the DVD.