Season 2, Episode 5 - Condemned
Air Dates - US: August 12 2005, Canada: August 15 2005

The Atlantis team finds a culture that lives in relative safety from the Wraith, because they hand over their criminals to them. Their puddle jumper crash-lands in the volatile penal colony.

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(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.)

Cool episode. I think that in the future, anytime they take a puddle jumper through the gate, they should be cloaked. How many did they start off with? 9? And they've already destroyed 3 or so?

Lt. Ford, is he no longer a regular cast? Is that why they have that new guy, the tall guy with the Snoog Dog hair style to replace Ford?

Yeah i was wondering about the puddle jumpers too. Did they find the one Ford swiped? Thought this episode was pretty good though except the end where the wraith ship was shooting at them, you would think a machine like that would have better aim but I guess not.

The look on that guy's face at the end was priceless.

I think they started with an even number, my guess would be 12. And by my count they've definitely lost 3 (Siege 1 & 3, Condemned; I might have missed one) and they might have lost the one in 112-The Defiant One, although I think they were able to repair it.



Yes, unfortunately, they replaced his character with Ronan Dex, although you do Snoop a disservice by comparing his hair to Ronan's. Snoop's hair was never that bad.

As far as this episode goes, it was one the better ones to date IMO. The whole "selling your soul" plot was great, and those bastards got what they deserved in the end. And it's great that we get to see Ronan getting back to his military roots "following orders" but he either needs to comb his hair (or let Teyla do it) or leave it free. No more tying the deadlocks back.

It was cool seeing one of the Wraiths actually make a deal with a human. It shows that they're not all exactly alike and there's some individuality among them. It would be boring if every single Wraith were exactly the same and thought and acted the same way.

Great episode exept the end i didnt like so much, I think they should've shown the city getting bombed besides that guy just looking at the ship with an over dramatic face on. Those people in that city walked and talked weird.

Darlin', Steve is dead, and he ain't comin' back.
IMO=in my opinion


Oh boy.... They didn't need to shoot them down the first time, they had already landed. Setting up cannons to shoot in the proper direction takes time, and not knowing when and what direction a ship will be coming makes it impossible to have the cannons setup properly. Since they knew the puddle jumper had to get back to the gate, they could setup on the direct line from the gate to the city.



Yes they did it all for the food..... Am I the only one who heard the Wraith say exactly why he liked the deal during the dinner with the city's administrator? (sometimes having a good memory is a curse I guess) The Wraith made the deal so his hive ship (or maybe just himself, I don't have a perfect memory) wouldn't have to hibernate between cullings.

Good episode, but: I think that they were too hostile toward the Magistrate, esp. Weir near the end. That's not how diplomats work. (Speaking of which, they would never just let her go offworld into a situation they know nothing about.) I also think it was a little morally deficient to basically condemn the city to the Wraith at the end.

Also: No mention of Caldwell or the Daedalus...again...

That girl came to Weir confessing everything, and then Weir lets her go! At least she could have taken her back or something. Now she's food.

He made the original deal to fulfill his own needs, basically he would allow them to live in peace & untouched from the Wraith provided they gave him humans to feed upon. Then because all the other Hive ships have awoken, others are obviously going to start sniffing around the planet. So therefore he has promised to feed others that have just awoken, this means that he wants more people sent to the island to feed their needs or else.

So the first Cruiser comes in to take them all as feed. When the PJ firs a Drone it causes damage & the Cruiser retreats. There are another two in orbit & they obviously detect the weapons fire & come in to help. This is when all the prisoners escape through to one of the backup planets. Then the Cruisers turn around & head towards the city to begin culling.

I personally would have sent them to the planet that the energy being from 'Human Error' was or the ones that had the T-Rex's on it.



Weir is the lead of the entire expidition, So nobody could stop her going off world. She was more concerned about her people & found out that he had called off the search. What would you have had her do, Tell him Jokes. He deceived all of them, However got what was coming to him in the end. There isn't anything that could have been done to save the city. All they had was one PJ, that needs to De-Cloak before firing against 2 Fully working Cruisers & another one that would still have been combat ready, Should the need arise.

Even if they did somehow manage to destroy the ships, More would have come in place & it would have blown their cover.

Okay, So of the bad points about this episode. Weir letting Marin (Maron) be taken away, Despite her risking her life knowing the consequences of being caught by warning them. That bit I think she could have stuck more to her guns on & insisted that she be allowed to leave freely with them abord the Jumper.

The Cruiser when it come down above the trees seemed far too small. Not to mention the worst part was whey they were running & it started firing like a headless chicken. They defeated the Ancients, yet couldn't manage to hit a few people on foot. Surely they had a bigger weapons that they could have took them all out together. That bit was extremely unrealistic in my opinion.

Caldwell was only scheduled to be in 5 epsiodes. He was in 3 of the first 4 & Daedalus was in 2 of the first 3. As much as I like to see ships in action, It's not Star Trek & if every episode involved ships then the show would lose some of it's essence. Besides if Daedalus had been there then it would have blown Atlantis' cover. That was supposed to have been destroyed while Atlantis went up & all it would have took was a single message to be sent out & all the Wraith ships would go back to Lantia & go over it again with in minute detail. Perhaps even destroying the planet.

Seeing that Wraith eat food made me laugh so hard, and the line about the last chef tasting better then the meals he made was great.

I found it unrealistic how a bunch of prisoners with cannons could shoot down an ancient ship, but the episode was still good.

One can assume, one of the reasons the cannon could damage the puddle jumper was because they hadn't activated its shields, leaving it open to damage.

Also consider that the cannon was designed by imprisoned scientists that had knowledge of their civilizations technology, as well as the "non-radioactive fissionable mineral" (which as I recall they mentioned earlier was being tested to stabilize it for use as a power source).

If the mineral needed to be stabilized to be used, then that would imply that it is unstable material, which could mean potentially useful as an explosive. It could be the same material that the scientist said he was using in his cannon balls.

Also remember even Go'uld death gliders (which are based off of ancient tech) can be shot down by primitive projectile weapons (by ancients standards) as well, as shown since Stargate the movie and SG1. Also haven't we seen a few Wraith darts being shot down by explosive or projectile weapons as well?

So its really not any less "realistic" than anything the franchise has already shown us, IMO.

Its been established on the show as I recall, that wraith defeated the Ancients due to shear numbers, not necessarilly due to skill. The Ancients could hold out for a while, but they knew they couldn't hold out against all of the wraiths.

This post has been edited by Valiento: Aug 13th 2005, 5:21 PM

If they couldn't target properly then it wouldn't have mattered how many of them there were.

They must have only been a couple of hundred yards from the thing, they would have been like ants acurrying away. So surely they could at least hit one from that range.



Actually you can't, because Jumpers don't have shields.

Actually with sheer numbers not all have to have "perfect aim" to cause damage.

Its been established in history in earth that attacks made with shear numbers didn't necessarily have "perfect aim", and yet still caused damage or death.

For example teams of archers who laid down arrows on marching armies were not directly aiming at any specific target. They simply had to lay down a blanket of arrows, and it was guarenteed that at least some of those arrows would hit their targets, wounding or killing them. The same can be said for mortars. They can only lay down mortar fire in a general area, they however don't have "pinpoint" accuracy. But it is known if mortar's are shot in the general area, that some should blow up on the troops they were intended to land on. We know that aiming wasn't always right by the examples of friendly fire that occured during earth's wars, .

Since said wraith weapons caused explosions on impact, if enough from many ships were firing on an enemy emplacement it would be sure to impact on what they were shooting towards, even if they didn't make perfect shots. If the beam didn't hit the target, potentially the explosion would.

Even in siege part 3 we saw that the weapons were being fired all over the shield rather than focusing on just one spot). If they had gotten through the shield the weapons most likely would have impacted all over Atlantis, even though each one wasn't necessarily specifically aimed at any one spot or target.

If back during the war with the ancients, there had been enough wraith to knock out atlantis shields over time if they stayed on the planet, as was implied in first season of Atlantis, using the similar style of attack they used in "Siege" then wraith would have overwhelmed the Ancients easily, simply by shear numbers. The damage would have still been done to atlantis.

Also it may be alot harder for a wraith cruiser to target small beings on the ground. Their sensors may work better on power sources, and technology, than life forms. It may be a reason why the send out wraith darts to do the culling. Since individual pilots may have a better line of sight.

However you may also notice that the weapons aim was getting closer and closer to the Atlantis team by the time they were almost to the gate. So it would seem that while the weapons targeting and aiming systems might have been slow, that ultimately they could get close to their target if they had time, and the gate hadn't been activated.

Also consider that wraith would rather not kill its food sources, and most likely would want to frighten their "cattle" into submission before being forced to do so. So not directly aiming at potential food source may actually be intentional, in hopes that "food" will freeze up and become easier to harvest.





Then that makes it all the easier to be hit by "primitive weapon fire"(by Ancient standards) projectile or explosive damage which we have seen has been effective to other devices based on Ancient tech, as shown in earlier stargate material.

Course I could probably point out the "good guy" factor... You know the rule in fiction where it seems whenever heros are being targeted by the "badguys" that the badguys are always lousy shots, and never seem to hit their target (unless for sake of dramatic story they want a hero injured near death, so they can save him/her through some bit of newly used medical skill, or technobabble).

Its been this way in stargate, throughout most of SG-1, and even the movie.
Not to mention something that occurs in plenty of non stargate fiction .

The problem here is, this is fictional, So previous Earth references cannot directly be compared. You line up hundreds of Archers closely grouped together & fired in the general direction of their enemy & there is bound to be a high percentage of hits.

Cruisers use Energy based weapons. So they only come out a few shots at a time. There aren't tons of guns lined up together & all firing together at the same point.
When those energy blasts hit the ground the made a good impact, So if they were close enough with their shots then the blast radius will have forced them to at least dive for cover.

The fact is, it was only a couple hundred yards away from them & fired a whole bunch of shots to no avail, More likely they need to show them the way to specsavers.



Those were Hive ships that were doing the bombarding from Orbit, they are like 100 times the size. So the energy output of the weapons will be greatly increased. The reason why they didn't try for a single spot was, that it was far more efficient to go into formation & hit multiple points simultaneously. They knew that they weren't going to get through the sheilds. So had no intention of destroying the city at all. All they were doing was draining the power source to disable the shield. If they had any serious desires to destroy it, then they would not have stopped bombarding it when Teyla delivered the message. After all if they were prepared to blow themselves up then why not let them & save yourself the trouble of having to do it, if that's what you were really hoping to achieve anyway. The simple fact is they didn't want Atlantis destroyed. Each Hive ships was aimed at specific tagets though, that's why they got into a formation before starting their assault.

The Wraith couldn't have overwhelmed the Ancients easily though, they had Atlantis under siege for years & still couldn'tmanage to get past the shield. That simply means more ZPM's were created & replaced frequently by the Atlantians, the Ancients basically gave up because they didn't have the foresight of seeing a way around getting rid of the Wraith in orbit.



It's pretty obvious that it'll have a harder time on individual targets compared to a Dart. However since it's hundreds of times larger than a Dart then as the team were running in a pretty close formation. One big blast in their direction should have done some sort of damage to them, if not directly then at least the blast impact. The only time this happened was at the end where Dex was forced to dive through the gate because of the impact at the base of the Gate.



The gate was already active when it started to fire. So if it wanted to capture them then the fire would have been ahead of them, which in turn would have left them with no option but to turn back. Instead if you actually watch the scen again closely the first few shots are way way off. Simply the Cruisers weapons are sh*t, that's all it comes down to.



Not really, because Jumpers were used before they even encountered the Wraith. So jumpers were presumably originally used for exploration by the Ancients. Perhaps to check on the human inhabitants of the seeded worlds. So Ancients weren't forseeing their own people to target them when they made house calls.



Yep, That's the obvious choice. They obviously can't have them dying. SO like anything with gunfire & explosions, You have the Heroes running & all the impacts & explosions going off behind them. A more likely scenario would have been to send out a couple of Darts from the Cruiser & have them blast away or even try to sweep them up in a beam.

It was the exact same in 'The Lost City' where the Al'kesh & Gliders are dropping shots far short of their targets.

Just once I'd like to see the enemy get it on target & actually hit something for a change.

Ok, personally I don't really care if the enemy weapons are crap, or the ones controlling them suck, or if there is some other reason why the aim was off.

Either way we all know the heros aren't going to die, not unless the writers decide they don't want a character anymore. Especially not during the last few minutes of the episode, not unless they intend for the show to end on a true cliff hanger moment, for the next episode. Its only the no-names soldiers or special guests that are allowed to die otherwise.

I mainly was trying to speculate based on known physical laws or historical evidence in order to try suspend my own disbelief on the matter, it adds to my own enjoyment of the series if I can try to rationalize the more awkward moments during the series based on similar examples in real life.

But hey if you are all for throwing out realism and just viewing the show as being pure fantasy, I have no issue with that. You are entitled to your own opinion and way of enjoying the show.

Let it be known that I made no intention of offending your way of enjoying the show.

That is my own viewpoints and interpretations should not be viewed as an attack on how you interpret the show, even if I may not necessarily agree with the way that you interpret things on the show.

However about this commment;



Huh, what's your point? Are you saying that ancients weren't forseeing being shot at by their own people, and that's why they can be damaged by "primitive weapons"?

...or are you trying to argue towards why its "stupid" and/or "unrealistic" for the ship to be damaged by "primitive" weapons?

What has that got to do with my point?

My point was that explosive and projectile fire can damage "ancient technology", and it isn't any less "unrealistic" than what we have seen in previous material in stargate.

The point being that we have seen in previous shows that "ancient technology" can be damaged by "primitive weapons". That is it is realistic by the rules that the franchise has already defined. Even if it may not be realistic by "earth standards".

But hey you know that, you already brought up your viewpoint that physical laws/historical evidence on earth doesn't necessarily have to apply in "fictional world".






However part of your comment made me think about something else...

I have to ask why would a ship designed mainly for exploration if that is indeed what puddle jumpers were designed for would have a weapon system? Is it usual for exploratory vehicles to have weapon systems?

Yet since it has a weapon system, why doesn't it have a defensive system (energy absorbtion/shields whatever) beyond the cloaking device?

I wouldn't be surprised if a character brings up Puddle Jumper "shield systems" if a plot demanded it . Its not like show writers haven't pulled things out of nowhere before for dramatic purposes, , all hail the great "plot device".

Not to mention I can't remember any quote specifically saying stating that "puddle jumpers, don't have shields" mentioned during the series. You can of course correct me if I missed a quote discussing the issue?

If no quote has been made in the show establishing if they have shields or not, it could be interpreted several ways;

1. They don't have shields, based on the fact that no known shield system has been mentioned.

2. They have shields but they haven't been used yet as far as we know of.

3. They may not have shields since no shield that we know of has been established on the show.

4. They may have shields they just haven't been used yet.

etc. etc. insert different variations of qualifiers for one's own hypothesis or postulate.

However ultimately it would mean we don't have enough info to know either way, to say in 100% surety on if they have shields or not, if no qualifers establishing either way, was made during the show.

This post has been edited by Valiento: Aug 13th 2005, 8:57 PM

so basically what they did in this episode was... condemn a few corrupt men (government) and lots and lots of innocents (civilian population) to save lots of criminals, and "less than lots" of innocents (innocents to reach the wraith quota) and themselves. hmmmm... makes you think no?

Nice joke about the death penalty in the US but not in canada between mckay and sheppard lol

"Nice joke about the death penalty in the US but not in canada between mckay and sheppard lol"

Was that the one where Teyla asked if earth had death penalties, and killed all violent criminals? Then Mckay said something like ya some countries still do? Then Sheppard says, lets not get into this right now...

If he was specifically referring to the US(...and not some 3rd world countries), its pretty arrogant of him to assume that all violent criminals in the US get "death penalty", (which would be exactly in character for him, LOL).

Considering that in many states, people on "death row" are there for years or die of old age before even getting the chance to be put to death. Also not all violent crimes are given the death penalty, , considering many get life imprisonment, while others only get a few years before being let out, or get out sooner if they have good behavior.

Last I heard there are only a few states that believe in quick justice, and issue the death sentence soon after it is given. But that is not the case for all states.

Yes, James, for the sake of the devil's advocate, I know that in your viewpoint Stargate's U.S. doesn't necessarily follow real Earth's U.S. laws since "Stargate is Fiction", and one could interpret what McKay said in the literal sense to mean that in the U.S. and some other nations of the stargate universe, "That the U.S. kills all violent criminals, and Canada doesn't".

As a I rule ya I know that stargate's version of U.S. is slightly different from the real world (it has a different president for example), however for the most part it seems mirror the U.S, and events of the real world. As I recall there was even implied references to 9/11, and the war on terror in an episode or two of SG-1.

However if not, I have to wonder did 9/11 occur in the SG universe, or does the world trade center still exist? None of the wars after occur? ...or is earth in stargate universe at relative peace with itself?

This post has been edited by Valiento: Aug 13th 2005, 9:51 PM

I burst out laughing when Maccay said something like Being shot down by the cast of Braveheart ...

I too didnt like the fact the Puddler Jumper was shot down so easily, I mean this is Ancient tech but then I thought well no shields and the fact these Puddler Jumpers are not exactly attack fighters, Im sure they are more like Humvees and that we are yet to see real Ancient attack vessels which were probably took back to earth when they left, dis mantled or so... Or just flew back

I quiet liked the episode...