Season 1, Episode 18 - The Gift
Air Dates - Canada: Jan 17 2005, UK: Feb 22 2005, US: Mar 11 2005

Plagued by terrifying nightmares, Teyla begins to recall a time when she and her father were captured by the Wraith and subjected to disturbing experiments.

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 episode was good. It got into Teyla's shocking abilities to sense the Wraith. We also learn that the ability to sense was a mistake by the Wraith as they were doing experiments on humans to learn from them. Another shocking evidence is how the Ancients CREATED the wraith. Of course it was accident, this happen by experimenting with the Wraith bug as seen in 1.04.

When Teyla went wild during hypnosis, I said to myself, now is a good time to have a zat. It would have been better if they brang them. In this episode she went wild like when a Goa'uld takes over your body.

Another thing I wonder, how come McKay wears the black "military" coat instead of his beige one?

Seeing Kavanagh again complaining was great, even though this time, McKay actually agreed with him and hated to agree with him.

This is building up great for the finale, can't wait till next Monday.

the start of this episode kinda bugged me.
and it looked like above Sheppards bed there was a poster...isnt that another personal item?
i think that they should have been able to bring more than one item with them...its kinda sad if they werent allowed to.

hey, how come sheppard got a double bed while Ford has a single bed?
it seemed Ford has cramped quaters while Sheppard got good ones.

This was a good episode.

The information contained within, however, I think is significant. First off, its great news for Atlantis. Without any defences or any way to power them, Atlantis was target practice, however if the Wraith want to connect to Earth then they wont come in and destroy the entire city. This gives Atlantis a (small) fighting chance.

We also finally get to see some Wraith technology showing they are just slightly more advanced than we previously thought. But not much so.

Their psychic powers are, however, concerning. Their ability to go through the psychic network and go into another persons body creates a much more powerful enemy than before. They all seem to have individual personalities but they share information but apparently they can limit what information they share.
We also learned that they can extract knowledge from a person by feeding on them. Thus, any wraith feeding on any member of Atlantis would be quite devestating - the person could simply "switch bodies" with another wraith, or diseminate the information gained throughout the entire network.

Also, it seems that they were quite advanced when it comes to genetic manipulation, and usually if your so advanced in one area...your pretty advanced in another.

Though it is slightly encouraging - Teyla, when approaching the Wraith ship, was able to get in as if she were a wraith. Perhaps this would allow her to use Wraith technologies in the same way Sheppard uses ancient technologies? Not only this, but with enough mental conditioning she could glean much information off of the Wraith.

However, the Wraith were able to extract at least some of Teylas knowledge (thus, how they got to the Alpha site). Depending on how much they extracted, they could know command codes, strategies employed by Atlantis, etc etc which obviously would not fare well for SGA.

Interesting ep!

I liked this episode a lot as well, but one nit. They can't extract knowledge from a person merely by feeding on them. The reason the wraith female got the information from Sumner is because she used her jedi mind tricks on him and forced him to spill the beans. But she didn't glean the information from just sucking his life force.

I can say that I haven't been disappointed by a single Atlantis episode this season. Bravo, and I can't wait for The Seige! Go Daedelus!!

Oh, well thats slightly encouraging.

One thing I'm worrying about though is that, at first they made the Wraith seem very weak and unable to do anything. Now, as we learn more, it seems they are going the other way - the Wraith seem to have superpowers and defeating them is near impossible - they are uberpsychic with technologies that can't be stopped.
I wonder how TPTB are going to handle it...

I so expected this ep to be a complete flop and based around solving teylers mental issues but it was sooo much better.... Very suspenseful how we had to keep guessing what they had found in the lab and what teyler could do with her "wraith" heritage. The thing i really dont get is why the wraith just dont fly to our galaxy....I would imagine that they had the technology to do so.... even the asguard we can fly to pegasus with the asguard technology...i cant see y the wraith.

Another issue that i'm still having with the storyline is why the ancients didnt stay in Pegasus and keep building more cities with the shields atlantis had or just staying in atlantis since the shields should theoretically hold against any wraith seige.

My guess is...when the Female Wraith extracted the knowledge from Col Sumner about the existance of Earth and it's population.She wasn't able to get the eight symbol address needed to go there,by Stargate or Spaceship.Either Col Sumner never gave it to her or he wasn't required to know the symbols,so hence she could not pass it on to the others before she died.

They now know of Earth but not it's location which would make sense why they would want to infiltrate Atlantis rather than destroy it this time around.

They seem to be taking a long time to get to Atlantis from the Original Awakening which lead me to believe perhaps they don't have hyperdrive capability at their disposal.

I thought this was a good suspenseful episode without alot of special effects. It was first amusing and now a bit frightening that the Wraith can control Teyla's free will. I also like the psychiatrist Dr. Hightmeyer (sp?) and hope she becomes a recurring character.

One thing I'm not liking is the writing for Ford. He seems to becoming more and more a token character while guys like Bates and Zelenka are getting more important lines. The whole scene when they gated to that Wraith laboratory, Ford was just plain annoying. Maybe it's time for a Ford-centered episode.

They do have Hyperdrive capability, it's probably just at the level of the Goa'uld rather than the Asgard.

Was a pretty cool episode, not sure if it completely leads us up to the next episode though, we'll have to see how well it's connected.

wickid episode, luved it!! i like'd the bit at end, it really sets up for the final!!!!! and was it just me or did at the start in the control room was that Carter on the console in the back??

Fair episode...

Don't have much to say about it really, nice buildup to a finale though.

I'm really enjoying McKay's and Zelenka's (is that the name?) antics.

Teyla's legs are so toned, they make me so jealous!
she looks so great in pants.

the episode started slow and it seemed to go over the same thing which i didn't like.
I wonder if Kate Heightmeyer took her own chairs because they look really cool.
Im glad Teyla doesn't have the curly...well i guess it was actually wavy, hair anymore and it looks nice on her this new straighter hair.
Weir needs to have straight hair...the curls bug the hell out of me.
Sheppard seems to be showing a lot of caring for Teyla...and he and Weir aren't really showing any relationship signs so it does make me wonder.
The labratory was interesting and then to see Weir actually looking at information...we finally see her doing something other than giving orders, talking to people...we see her being smart! and she can translate! so cool.

"McKay, you have a little what!?"

*LOL*

yeah i was thinking of that, if they have hyperdrive then why don't they just mosy on other cause apparently they have the address. and the eigth chevron odesn't really matter all that much cause she would have already had it from sumner. So never mind all that i guess that it would be fair to assume that the Wraith's hyperdrive is s*** and is a lot easier to get to earth through the stargate which provides another problem. If they could get the stargate intact and with that thing, how would they get past the iris?

LOL yeah Ford is getting screwed, one of my frends told me taht he won't be a main character next season

even if they had the hyperdrive equivalent of the asgard, how far is Pegasus from the Milky Way as compared to how far the Milky Way is from the Asgard home galaxy (dun remember the name )

that those connecting through teyla was really cool, shes all searching through her mind then all of a sudden "UR GONNA DIE BITCH!" *shock* "omg, what happened?" haha kinda wierd, but fun...
can't wait till the season finale it looks awesome

she didn't actually say that word though...she said you're all going to die.

i think this episode could have possibly been a 2 parter...with so many things going on...i would have liked to have seen more of the labratory.

I thought the episode was really good. Looking forward to the finale

I especially like how their showing the wraith as a more unbeatable enemy. It would have been a lame storyline to have humans beat them so easily and yet the wraith beat the ancients. (Although we have yet to see in the next two upcomming episodes)



Just my Speculation, but it could have been emotional. They feel guilty for creating the wraith which they can't defeat dooming possibly the entire universe .
Based on previous episodes they gave up to easily, which could be another reason.
Another possibility was their epidemic (started by wraith?)they had (sg-1 frozen, among other episodes), making them die off.




Some things to chew one. OT + Possible spoilers:
In "It's good to be king" from sg1, they find a PJ capable of time travel, assuming built by the same guy who built the one from Before I sleep. It doesn't seem to correspond with Window of oportunity also from sg1.where those ancients couldn't get it to work.

The wraith most likely know about the shield protecting atlantis since it's been there for over 10,000 years, I don't know why they wouldn't assume that Earh would also have one, since they've never been out of the Pegasus galaxy (as far as we know). Therefore, my guess is they don't have the gate address to determine where eath is.

I think the Wraith are coming to Atlantis, because need the coordinates to the Milky Way galaxy. If they tried to fly randomly to galaxy, they might never find Earth. It's like searching for a "needle in a haystack of infinite size", as Thor would have said. So, they will probably use Atlantis to dial Earth and send a probe, and the probe will send back the exact location of Earth. Then, the Wraith will fly to the Milky Way and feast. That my take on the situation.

P.S. Great Episode!

This post has been edited by Scarran-Wraith: Jan 19th 2005, 3:47 AM

good idea, hadnt through of that, if that was the case then the Wraith realy screwed the ancients, infact they wiped them out

but remember we havent seen the 3rd race yet the ones that created the nano virus


, but yer i enjoyed this pe and i'm looking forward to the next dam i cant wait

This post has been edited by bsport: Jan 19th 2005, 4:22 AM

You people are always forgetting Daniel's speculation in the pilot.
"So why did they leave?"
"Who knows. The other Ancients on earth were suffering from a plague, maybe they were trying to start over, seeding life in a new galaxy."
So the plague was there in the first place, before they went to Pegasus.

We learned in this episode that the Wraith probably didn't exist before the Ancients came to Pegasus.

Another indication:
The frozen woman, Ayiana, was several million years old. But as far as we know, the Wraith appeared 10,000 years ago and overran the Ancients.

A third point:
The Wraith woman didn't even know of earth when she interrogated Col. Sumner. So how could the Wraith have brought the plague to earth in the past?

Each argument alone shows that the "Wraith made plague" theory is nonsense.

This post has been edited by ted_simple: Jan 19th 2005, 6:34 AM

well there ya go, some good answers by Ted_Simple.

i'm wondering just how long the ancients were in the pegasus galaxy and how long they could live before they went and ascended.

not a bad episode.... the experiments were a supprise to me.... and the fact that the ancients might have created the wraith... the fact that the wraith wanted the atlantis gate wasent a supprise..

if they got it i wounder what will happen.... will they be able to use the "GDO" to open the iris..? just fly straight through itand go splat on the other side? but with the SGC they can blow it up if needed so nothing could really happen...

They could send some information back about its location and they could come in ship.. thats something

Also i agree the Wraith are/or caused the Plague is nonsense. In WOO (SG-4.06) they Ancients (from long ago) were trying to build a time machine to save themselves from the plague. It was different style tech to Atlantis stuff and probably before the even met the Wraith.

I also agree that the Wraith hyperdrives are obviously not as advanced as say the Asgard, but you have to remember they dont need them to be, they just plod along having snacks a long the way, they need to store up because they probably expect to be fighting Atlantis for a while.

This post has been edited by Nnahrino: Jan 19th 2005, 8:31 AM