Season 3, Episode 10 - The Return (Part One)
Air date: September 22, 2006

The Ancients, long thought to be extinct, return to Atlantis and reclaim it for themselves.

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.)

Jack: General, I am quite fond of maidens and voyages... put the two together and...

Would something need to travel at .999 the speed of light to keep it's mass from becoming infinite?

That lady didn't seem very Ancienty to me. she wasn't passive at all, she came in and kicked us out of Atlantis. We shoulda taken them to Earth first. But then maybe they would try to kick us off the planet...

This ep was very slow to me, I couldn't wait for it to pick up. It just seemed to drone on and on for the first 30 minutes.

So Dr. Weir went into a depression, that sucks. I like that Carson went to talk some sense into her. He is turning into the heart and soul of the group.

I was expecting this episode to be better than it was. I guess I was expecting more action.

And Siler takes a Zat shot. That sucks.

I bet the Deadalus gets them out of whatever trouble they get themselves into, and they get to keep the Asuran's ZPMs

AAAAAAHHHHHHHh I hate waiting for the second ep of mid season two parter. I don't know if BSG can keep me entertained enough...

This post has been edited by JTMAG1: Sep 22nd 2006, 10:17 PM

Wow, who would have thought... At first I figured the Ancients they came across were the replicators, but then that they were really Ancients and then the replicators came... This wasn't as good as SG-1 by far, but thats really just because of the magnitude and amazingness of SG-1 tonight; Atlantis was still pretty good. I liked the ending I suppose, but in March when I see the next episode I probably won't think so anymore...

Well, that was an interesting episode. I didnt really think that thoughs were 'real' ancients. To bad the city is taken over by the ancient replicators. I kind of think that the Ancients that controled the city would raise the shield when the huge ship was over the planet, but I guess after a few million years in a .999 the speed of light ship will make you stupid. All in all a cool episode.

This episode did drag a bit but it wasn't that bad. I mean it did get sorta exciting when you saw the ancients have to activate the sheild, I mean thats what they get for being not cautious enough. The ending was a killer, I can't believe I have to wait til march ... such a shame ... oh well .. i'm sure it will be worth the wait.

Why would they raise the shield? As far as they knew the replicators were incapable of harming them. That wasn't their fault. And when the realized what happened with the jumper, the woman said to raise the shields. Obviously they still lost.

Why did they wait for the ship to get that close before trying to communicate? Why wasn't someone manning the drone chair to take out that ship?

I liked the episode. I also thought the ancients were replicators at first. Can't wait for part 2 - March, ugh!

Carson's poor turtles!

Wasn't that head ancient, Helia, that actress who played the young version of Linea on SG-1 where all the people on the planet grew young and lost their memories? The older version of her was in a previous episode of SG-1, in the prison where they escaped using the "superpowered moss plants" and manually dialing the gate.

Whoever made the trailer for this episode needs to be shot. How many commercials for Atlantis have we seen over the past week? And each one ends with O'Neill yelling "We're under attack by Replicators!" Why don't you just spoil the whole damned episode?

Anyways... I liked this one a lot more than SG-1. The cliffhanger ending was WAAAAAY better. Although, it did seem slightly reminisicent of something I've seen before..... Perhaps it was a previous Stargate episode... hmmmmmmmm... I'll have to think about it...

I wish they didn't say there were going to be Replicators in the preview, I thought the whole time they were on Earth, they were under another Replicator's-Hand-In-Your-Head-Hallucination again. That was kind of annoying to have that looping in the back of my mind the whole time.

Did Weir seem kinda like a pussy to anyone else? I mean, she recently experienced the exact same thing in a Replicator delusion and I thought she handled it pretty well. She didn't just give up, and everything around her was just completely insane. However, when everything is Normal and she does it again, she nearly has a complete mental breakdown? What's up with that?

I think the ending is what really did it for me. I was jumping out of my seat to see what happened next!

I think we're going to have a Voyager complex though. We've got a bunch of Ancients who can build ZPM's and show us all this cool stuff. How much do you want to bet that something's going to happen in the next episode that's going to kill, incapacitate, or ascend them so that all of their knowledge and help is going to be completely usless to us? Any takers on that bet?

I bet we'll get a ZPM or some other thing out of the deal, maybe that ship... but that's it, they're going to fade away and we'll completely forget about them

Anyone besides me find humor in the Genii trying to recruit Tayla and Ronin?

When I saw this, all I could do was laugh because it made me think of his "Why me?" from SG-1's 200th.

This post has been edited by Reignfire: Sep 22nd 2006, 11:22 PM

I'm glad that they finally got the gate bridge up, that looked pretty cool. They should make the bridge in the middle shielded or something so that it could have life-support and you could just walk across instead of needing a ship.

McKay said the midway station wasn't completed, so they were going to use a jumper for the initial test. I took that to mean that it would be able to have life-support when finished.

It just occurred to me that now we have another Ancient ship. I wonder if we are going to try to fix it up. I thought there were a couple hundred people on board, since the Ancients didn't want us in Atlantis, did some of them stay with the ship... in which case we still have some Ancients alive on the ship?

EDITYeah, there is going to be life support, it's a space station, but it isn't finished yet. That's why they used the jumper. It was a cool way to get the jumper to earth thought.

BTW, why did the Ancient's let us keep a jumper...? Maybe we didn't tell them it was on Deadalus...

This post has been edited by JTMAG1: Sep 22nd 2006, 11:15 PM

I'm going to bet that the ship was destroyed.

Something I didn't notice on my first viewing, Woolsey was actually using a gun!?!

Yeah, he was firing a rather puny gun.

How long did it take the Asurans to get through the sheild? Did the Ancients not have time to grab any of the weapons that will kill them?

Within minutes of them being there, they were already accessing systems that we didn't know were there. Why didn't they make their way to the weapons.

They were not expecting to need them, and who is to say they were not fighting?

I liked the episode for the episodes sake, but I hated and abhored the fact that the Ancients were slaughtered, it just isn't right.

TPTB spent years showing us how great the Ancients were, every meating was like insanely cool and important... then we meat them on the Aurora, 500 die.
Then we meat the ones on the Tria, 100+ die.

Seriously, they shouldn't be getting killed off like this.

This post has been edited by Atlantians: Sep 23rd 2006, 1:39 AM

I agree....because of that teaser, the whole time I kept thinking that the Ancients from the Tria were more ReplicAncients. I mean, what are the odds that the Gatebridge would be being tested JUST at the right time in the 2 million year journey of the Ancients so that they'd be within sensor range while they were testing it? Why would the Lanteans be trying to reach the Milky Way, knowing several million years would have passed there before they reached it, and if the Ancients were even still around, they'd be like cavemen compared to them? Isnt it more plausible that the Tria Ancients were really Replicators trying to trick us into giving them back Atlantis?

Why didnt Rodney want to test the Ancients to make sure they were the real deal before they handed Atlantis back over to them? If he had gone to Weir and said we should make sure we're not being put on before we just give them Atlantis, she would have gone with it, had one of them submit to Carson for testing or something. After all, we wouldnt be very good caretakers of Atlantis if we just handed it back over to the first people claiming to be Lantean, and if they were the real deal they should appreciate that

They need to make sure the teasers for the rest of this season's SGs are less give-it-away...or at least, dont give away such major plot points as twist enemies and endings and such, or it will just spoil the whole rest of the episode while we're waiting for it to come.

How come we were pulling out of Pegasus altogether? The Athosians were being given a new planet with a stargate, we still have the Daedalus and Rodney could apparently rewire the Gatebridge to any gate in Pegasus we needed, why not set up a beta site on New New (New?) Athos and continue operations in Pegasus ourselves, collect up some more Ancient tech, etc etc? They seemed to be pretty satisfied to rely on diplomacy and good-natured sharing with the Ancients who just summarily evicted them.

Plus, what happens to the team if they do reclaim Atlantis? They're still going rogue, or at least Sheppard is. Will all just be forgiven because they were right? Will the Lanteans (assuming they dont all get conveniently killed off by the vengeful Replicators) just be like "uhh ok, i guess you can stay after all"? Something has to happen to them, we cant just have a bunch of ZPM- and drone-building, massive-technology wielding roommates and still get a few more years' worth of episodes out of the Wraith storyline.

That's exactly what I thought! I had to look it up but according to tv.com it is the same actress, Megan Leitch.



It reminded me of Season 1, Within The Serpent's Grasp (121), when SG-1 is taking off against orders to try to stop Apophis' attack on Earth... maybe that's what you were thinking of?

did they also have ZPM's.. else how did they dial earth ROFL!!

now we can all see why the atlantians lost the war to the wraith LOlz..

"they cant hurt us, so we dont even have to worry about shields"... wraith destroys 60 of their battlecruisers "whoops, too late, now were stuffed"

sorta serves em right for being so stuck up.... hopefully they all die, most likely they will.. painfully, and slowly being tortured by the replicators... maybe thats when they will ascend..

This post has been edited by Lagger: Sep 23rd 2006, 2:58 AM

I really hated this episode. The start was waaaay too quick. Lantians just came in and took everything. And i thought in previous episode that is there anything more they can lose so stupidly. Apparently there was: Atlantis itself. Weir and others didn?t even bothered to question Lantians that were they really qenuine Lantians. That seemed so stupid. Most of the episode was misspent for those dialogs where they packed their stuff. The end didn?t created any thoughts that "i want to see solution". Only thoughts were what will happen to Becketts turtles. Really bad episode overall. I?m now seriously thinking to stop watching Atlantis.

I thought it was a good episode and yes i have to admit I too thought that the ancients were replicators and when they turned out not to be I was o crap now were really screwed but all in all good ep. Things I like were the gatebridge way cool and the new replicator pistol things seemed pretty cool but why not use the gun that we had originally that killed the replicators. They only used that gun twice. one in stargate 200 and another when they first made it. Now they wasted money on this new prop when they could have just reused the old one. All the ancients will probably get killed there too much of an advantage and something will probably go wrong And the aroura class ship. We probably won't get that either. we will probably just keep the zpm thats already there and boom end of episodel.

Yeah, I'll take you up on that. I thought that myself. At first I thought the 'Lantians' were replicators on their way to Earth, but once I figured they were Ancients I figured they'd all be klilled off. I hope too that we get to keep the ZPM's and the Ancient war ship. How killer would that be to have THREE fully charged ZPM's?


@Daedalus101: The Apollo will first be seen in the season finale titled "First Strike"