Season 3, Episode 19 - Vengeance
Air date: 2007

Michael returns, and his latest science project means a world of hurt to the Atlantis team.

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.)

This thread will open after the episode has aired.

Wow what a creepy episode! Michael came back and was creating a race of "super wraith" bug things. We will defiantly hear from him next season. All in all pretty enjoyable but a few jump scenes that startled me. Michael had used the people from the super volcano planet who settled on a new world for his experiments. He let the wraith bug feed on them then altered the eggs to create these monsters. Sheppard was right they do sort of look like the creature in Alien. They even move through the ducts of the creepy underground abandoned facility.

Wow how many times have I said creepy in this post. But that's probably the best way to sum it up.

A good episode. Can't wait for the season finale next week!

Nice eppisode, but I wonder why these superbugs are called so super!?
They are slow, and make noise all the time. A wraith is fast and has agility, but these bugs are just as stupid and slow as in a cheap horrormovie.....

They should be insectlike, fast and 1 hit 1 kill with there strength and claws. I wouldn't be afraid for some of these creatures, you can shoot them 1 by 1.
But i understand why the script wrighters did it this way, otherwise McKay Sheppard en Ronan should have been killed by this ultimate bug I admit that wouldn't have been better!

So we have a Dart now, and a Cruiser from 3x18 (at bottom of the ocean but it is there). I hope we use it well and not as a mobile bomb to get past there defenses (as in Independence Day).

What i wonder!
Why didn't use Teyla her ability to make contact with Micheal. She mislead a Wraith Queen before! sure she can do some tricks with half a normal wraith like Micheal, but she didn't even try :S

Well, this a was a very good episode. I'm gonna start with saying that it did remind me of a lot of movies like Alien, Predator, Alien vs. Predator... Those creature were really great pets, and with such a rapid development, I guess that they explain how the Wraith got to high numbers in the first place, because I think they have similar rates of growth.

Michael now looks like a potential great enemy for Atlantis, a third party between us and Wraith with the power to command deadly creatures. Heh, reminds me of Half Life 2 as well...

I give it an 87/100.

Ye I must agree with you there they are slow and stupid lol.
The way Ronan was firing his gun he could have took them all on. 1 shot in belly and they were dead. It was silly that his gun could kill instantly. Also the P90 should have been more affective against them having all them bullets fired at it.
I thought this episode was good, but ye to much like the alien films.

Also to answer your question about Teyla, they said that it was because he was not fully wraith, she could not make contact as she could with other wraith.

No, she said that Michael still has human characteristic, which would explain why she was confused when she sensed his presence.

I was entertained by this ep. I did think of the predator. I can't take credit for thinking of Aliens, because they said it in the show.

Why would Sheppard tell Ronin to set his gun to stun when the other three are firing fully automatic submachine guns.

At the end I thought Sheppard was going to grab Michael too, and take him hostage. I'm glad they left him out there as an enemy, since they killed off Koyla so recently.

We are building quite a fleet. I wonder how we are going to loose it.

Kolya.


EEEEP, creepy bug monsters!

I liked this episode, although the monsters reminded me more of a specific Farscape episode than they did of the Alien movies.

Poor super-volcano people... that means Rodney's hott friend is dead.

Michael is a pretty sweet villain. Good episode.

Ye true, she maybe unable to connect with him, only sense his presence. That maybe why the other wraith don’t like him anymore. He is different from other wraith. Michael makes a good enemy, it will be interesting to see what he does next with his new friends.

Sheppard probably said to Ronan to put it on stun because it could have been a civilian, they did not know what it was. They rely on Ronan a lot to stun people as I only ever see them with the p90s and the pistols. I have not seen them carry any kind of stun guns when they go on off world missions. Unlike sg-1, they carry zats. They could take the wraith stunners tho.

Rodney's friend was really hot!

Also bring back koyla from the dead! He was brilliant.

2 questions When did this ep Air in Canada what time?
and how come its never mentioned in the Program Calander?

Anality strikes again I see .


A nice thought but doesn't seem likely. Unless they play with another AU ep. Which would be a cop out really.


Anyway, back to the ep. Wasn't too bad, but I cant help but think they've sort of regurgitated another SG-1 storyline....do these super-wraith things come across to anyone else as Atlantis's version of the Kull warriors?

And why were they so inconsistent on what it took to take them down? Apparently bullets had practically no effect on the first one, despite massive amounts of gunfire, it still got away. Then later in the ep the things were dropping if Ronan so much as looked at them.....brilliantly done.

Was nice to see Ronan actually use his sword in combat for a change, I don't think we've seen that before, he's usually too busy shooting stuff with his fancy pistol. And the sparring session with Rodney at the beginning was hilarious, you could just tell he was going to smack him again the second he started paying attention to Weir and Sheppard

It's good to see they're setting up more interesting storylines with Michael though. Heck even Teyla got a bit of character work in when she was empathising with him. Who knows, combining the Micheal storyline with the whole Teyla's Wraith DNA thing may be able to give her the development she seems to be lacking.

This post has been edited by Rogue Ashrak: Jan 31st 2007, 7:45 AM

i thought it was a good all rounder, quite a creepy episode compared to what we're used to in stargate. There were a few quirky moments, like ronan disappearing a couple of times and when sheppard poked his head round to have the c4 nearly take his face off.

i think the super wraith did look a little bit cheesy,they would have been better off having them slightly more human like, more intelligent than what they were. it was pretty lame how easy ronan could take them out.

For some reason, ever since reading the spoilers for the season finale episode, i've found all the episodes since to be slightly disappointing, like they haven't lived up to the hype surrounding what is to come. oh well, only a week to go.

That is exactly what I thought. They are developing Michael into a real enemy, with a personality. Just like they did with Ba'al. They turned him to a person who could be smart, and witty, and sometimes come out on top. SGA needs an enemy like that.


That's one of the reasons I stopped reading spoilers a couple of years ago, and the show actually got better for me in that time.

Could have lived without the horror movie-esque bits. Horro movies are dumb, and I'm usually rlling my eyes at them - and there was definitely eye rolling at thsi one.
Could have lived without the bug-people-creatures. I don't understand the reasons for introducing them to the story, especially at this point. They add nothing. They arleayd have Asurnas and wraith, what's the point in adding cheesy bug people?
Could have lived without what they did to Michael in here. I dunno. I lloved the Michael storyline so far. thought it added depth to the wratih. But after Submersion adn Vengeance, the wraith are thrown back and back to square one.
I'm not going to even bother bringing up the obvious Carson comments.

I did like - Ronon. Ronon and McKay, specifically - I really enjoy the banter they've been developing int he alst several episodes - but also Ronon, as a whole. Enjopying the scene he told Sheppard they should kill Michael and that no one listened to him the first time he said that, and generally, I thinkt hey're finally hitting pace with teh character. Now, if only the thing would have been as true for Teyla as it is for Ronon....

Bright side. T'was better than last week's, sigh.

Its a name. For instance, I have a friend named Alexandra... not to be confused with Alexandria... names are different than other words.

Nah, these are creepy bug things. They seem rather like an infestation, actually... maybe they could play that angle.

Well obviously they have a soft underbelly.

I did like Teyla's conversation with Rodney about Michael and all that. And then Ronon ranting baout how he said the genetic experiments were wrong to begin with.

I expected a little more from those "Jaws". They all shot their P90 clips nearly empty ( I presume) and the thing just run away after Ronon chopped its arm off, or died instantly trough Ronon's gun. And why didn't they have any weapons? They just barged in and screamed a lot. Mikey had control of them, he would of been kind enough to give them something. The idea was good but it needed something more.

They were instinctive animals, they were not intelligent enough to use weapons.

Still you would believe that they would've been much more dangerous!
The bug was more scary than the big monsters. They should've made them like predators, or big cat like thing. Like in SG-1 with the mutated animal in the "cloak dimension".

Mayb it'll come when Micheal sees his army of 50beastst couldn't even kill them......I mean.....even the Genii could have done it (they captured them before with less manpower).
So Micheal better goes working on his beasts or converting the Genii

Several things wrong with this episode in my opinion:

1.: Sheppard neither destroyed the DHD with the dart nor did he remove the remaining control crystals. He did not even attempt to strand Michael and the bug creatures on this planet. Kind of stupid and it does not fit his character.

2.: For that matter, how did Michael control the creatures? He programmed convenient voice control into them genetically, so they would follow him from birth/hatching on?

3.: Hard to believe that Sheppard did not kill Michael on sight, after seeing the number of innocent people he had slain in his sick experiments. And near the end of the episode, flying the dart, one would think that Sheppard could have (a) fetched Michael up with the teleportation device or (b) just shot Michael. He admits the grave danger Michael poses (terrible invasion of the bug people from outer space) but still he left him unharmed when he had all the advantage? Did he have any reason to leave him there unmolested, even though he had killed 4 marines earlier that day? While it is nice to have the Michael character around for a bit longer, this is kind of moot if they continue to waste him in episodes like this.

4.: For an alien rip-off there were way too many bug creatures attacking them in the end, and they went down too easily given how hard it was to kill the first one. Sure, they have a really soft underbelly, but it still felt a bit cheap. A close chase with fewer and more resilient creatures would have been more effective in my opinion, but then we would probably have gotten another good look at them, which would have been bad, because...

5.: it was too obvious that they just put some people in cheesy "alien suits", and this even though they kept the creatures in the shadows or hidden by explosive gunfire most of the time.

Sue me, but while I like both Atlantis and SG1 a lot usually, this episode was subterraneous in every way possible.

This post has been edited by Gebosowulo: Jan 31st 2007, 8:40 PM

Well, the plot line for this episode was good, it sets up some interesting future episodes, but the episode itself was too scifi for me, im not a big fan of the slimy giant killer bugs tearing people appart. I think this is Atlantis' equivalent to the supersoldiers on SG1: hard to kill, mindless, loyal to one man... well, sort of man. The only weapon that semed to work was Ronan's (did they make up a name for that yet?) gun, so im wondering if Beckett's replacement (whoever that will be) will come up with some sort of biological weapon to kill them like they came up with the energy weapon to kill the supersoldiers.

This will make the war with the wraith a little easier though, now there are three opposing sides: Michaels superbugs, the Wraith, and Earth. I think there will be some sort of alliance in the future between Atlantis and Michael, as neither of them on their own is strong enough to defeat the Wraith, but working together they woudl have a greater chance... the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Michael has telepathic abilities, I'm sure that's how he controlled the alien.

I think the ep was more about the reintroduction of Micheal and a major enemy, and less about the actually monsters.

id like to know how they survived a direct attack from a hive for like a minute, even if all of the shots didnt hit the exact camp, the radiation left over from it would have to have killed them.

I agree with you 1 to 5... You brought some pretty good arguments to your thoughts. I think that Sheppard would have rather captured Michael (in your #3) with the dart than shoot him, even if he killed marines. That is how the military must act in case an enemy is either defenseless or unarmed. Yeah, and about #2, I think Michael communicated telepathically with the creatures, which makes no sense as a defense against the other Wraith, which could also communicate telepathically with the creatures. Your point 2 still stands.

Unless they were designed/trained to only obey him, like the supersoldiers. They could have just dailed atlantis to tell them to have the daedalus swing by. Sheppard would have had to wait 2 days, it would be instant for Mckay, Teyla and Ronan, then they could have atleast disabled the gate and blew up a few creatres and hopefully Michael. What was that thing that was on sg1 where they destroy all life on a planet that they did on the buyg planet?

Which episode are you talking about. The one where T'qeal got that dragon fly thing on his back or the episode where the ritua (invisible bug guys) invaded sg-1.