I don't think the drones were actually locked on, I think the guy was toying with them to make it look more impressive. If they were on manual control they would deactivate as soon as they lost that control.

Another possibility is for safety reasons when the city ran out of power perhaps it sent a shut-down code to all the drones.

I also thought the sound of them falling was about right.... they look like they'd go boing hehe.

Oh, now that makes a lot of sense. When you are under attack and on the verge of being defeated, you call off your last fired drones, your last hope, just as a safety procedure? Sheesh.

Manual controlling 20+ drones, now that's nice.

This post has been edited by SorCerer: Jan 3rd 2006, 4:23 PM

Did anyone notice that when Mckay said "We may need to panick a little" half way through the episode right after the ceiling collapsed, a camera walks right pass him in the background?

The Ancients had to lose the war against an inferior race technologically somehow.

I still really think they were on manual control, I was throwing another option out there.



It seems obvious to me that at least at the start when the drones were doing that little spinny thing around the tower that they were being manually controlled. I'm not sure if you think that would be hard or something?

Radagast! Ever found Alatar and Pallando?


Anyway... I looked at the Drone cellar, and it seems that the area McKay was in was simply as mall maintenance and viewing area. I would guess that the Drones get much more efficiently packed the farther that they go and that their are several shoots that they go through, and then merge... not just that one.

Maybe 3 or 6 different viewing rooms at the shoots, and after a few sets of drone casings, they get much more compact with barely enough room to walk between two crates.

And maybe their are like 3-4 entire floors dedicated to Drone storage. McKay was on the closest floor to the ground, it seemed like.

So maybe 6 shoots, and 24 observation rooms, going over 4 floors.

Something of that nature. That would be certainly more efficient.

This is substantiated by the fact that when the drones came up from the ground, they came from several different locations. Furthermore the "dance around the Tower" Was probably a demonstration of control(IE: He was testing his control of them to make sure he could use them completely).

And they did not make a "Boing" noise, they made a sturdy "thump".

I liked the episode BTW, but it would have been a better two parter.

This post has been edited by Atlantians: Jan 11th 2006, 1:20 AM

wasn't the best of episodes, that is for sure. I was already in a bad mood because SG-1 blew up my favorite ship . At least Alantis got a crapload of drones and jumpers

I guess i can understand why some would call this episode crap, but personally i thought that this episode was even better than the episode of SG-1 Aired tonight.

The fact that a midevil people lived in a giant spacecraft, and didn't even spend most of their time trying to find out its secrets does puzzle me,but then agian some king in the past might have forbidden his followers to go into the "catocombs"?

Anyway atleast we have more jumpers.
(how did they power them back up? with a naquada generator?)

And as for why the Ancient in Rising said that only Atlantis remained, well maybe the other city was shot down and never heard from again, or suffered form a virus that killed them all off, then some primitive culture finds the planet, settles down and sets up its own culture lasting for thousands of years.

This post has been edited by MessianicCadet: Feb 4th 2006, 12:47 AM

Nobody is going to mention the part where Sheppard gets his ass pinched? Fine, I'll do it:

That part was funny.

Rest of the episode... not so good.

I think you might mean SGA episode 112 - Epiphany.

I'm going to ask some pretty obvious questions (that either haven't been asked and should have or no one has bohtered to answer yet).

Why was this city found buried? I would imagine very deeply too, considering that Atlantis (the true one) must have at least a couple floors under sea level (I'd think there's something down for boyancy and that the entire city isn't "walking on water"). Also from what I can see, that was only maybe 2/3 of the central spire of the city. There's bound to be a lot more down there... how would it be found buried like that after 10,000 years? Was it like that 10,000 years ago?

In order to feed on that planet, why haven't the wraith gathered together to destroy (or capture) that city in the past? They had 10,000 years to do it, it wasn't like it was under many miles of ocean... They must have known about it since a Lord Protector has been shooting down darts (and perhaps cruisers) for so long. We already know that it is not uncommon for darts to send out a long-distance data-burst message last minute before they explode.

The lack of a gate, I didn't even think of while watching it, so that was a good observation. But I'm not terrible concerned with it now that I think about it. Could have been a city in the process of being built and not everything has been installed... would be one of many plausible explanations.

Also due to the amount of drone debate going on, I'd like to point out a few things. It seems hat some of you don't give the drones as much credit as they deserve. I would suspect that individual drones are quite "smart". One person said something about them being stored so sparsely to avoid them from running into each other; I'd like to think that drones are smart enough to not explode when touching another drone or say a passing bird as it's on-route to a target. It could be that the drones or something in the chair-control would automatically re-load the drones into some firing-chamber. Although it's not clear that there would even be a firing chamber. It could be that they just get up on their own, when called for, and fly out of a hole after passing through a long series of winding pipes/channels that pool from many other ammo-rooms.

I don't see anything morally wrong in this episode. The very last thing said before end credits was that they traded them medicines and stuff (gosh it was 3s ago and I forgot already) in exchange for the drones and jumpers. To be realistic, I'd think that making allies with the SGA people would be key to their survival now that they don't have any more ZPM juice.

BTW, I'd like to point out to whoever mentioned "why don't they just fly a city back to our galaxy (the moon?), that the writers have hinted clearly that it requires all 3 ZPMs in place to do that sort of thing.

I think that instead of thinking about the drones as either manual controlled or automatic controlled, it's more of a gradient depending on how skilled the chair operator is at multi-tasking. For O'Neil a stream of drones flew around the Prometheus to hit Anubis... speaking of which, I never saw that one coming tonight. Are we going to share the Daedelus between the two shows now or have they already been building a new ship for SGC?

Hem... a city full of spare parts... the Daedelus could just fly by and beam up whatever they needed.

So I am confused about one little thing. I thought that the Puddle Jumpers would automatically charge while stored in a hanger. This episode either shows that this is not the case, or that those people where too incompetant to even power one up.

In regards to the post about how much "action" Shepard is getting and how Weir would still want him, you know there are ppl that desire a more "experienced" partner . I don't see how he could have refused. That would have just been plain rude! I kinda see how including this would make the show more believable (besides getting better ratings), it's a common part of life, nice to see that one of the characters has a life outside of fighting. And who says he'd be full of STDs by now, lol? He looks like a responsible person that would practice S.S..

Em, they don't have the right to consider or take. It's the one thing about Atlantis that truly bothers me. I can't remember SG1 doing that. They just tried to get them to stop believing in false gods. In fact, SG1 made a point of never taking stuff. It's why the NID existed.

Regarding this episode, I guess the point was to get the PDs and some drones. I guess because their ZPM for the tower was depleted now, they could take the drones with a clear conscience. Other than that I saw no point to this episode, M & M have struck once again.

Not the best cap but it was pretty much the funniest part in the episode!

Sheppard thinking WTF?!

Well this episode wasn't that good, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. It had it's funny moments, I (like always) loved it when Beckett made his appearence! He's so cool!! Anyway...I didn't like the fact that there was another Atlantis on this planet. It sort of takes away the whole thing about Atlantis being the capital of the Ancients and all. But oh well. Overall an okay episode. 6/10

I rather find this episode a complete bust, it has soo many thigns wrong with it.

First* A sister city the ancients built? I'm no genius but one atlantis is enough to explore, but two? from the looks of the city its intact, just that the wieght of the soil is now causing the structure to collapse after 10,000 years.

Second* The wraith just stopped attacking? uh when atlantis was working with 3 zpm's the wraith constanly attacked for months!!! you telling me that we have to accept a non ancient Lord marshall + his lack of anicient tech understanding scared them away?

Third* working StarDrives? i'm gussing that this whole sister city thing will get used when the wraith bust Atlantis up in the future, it seems that the whole point of this episode was to say "OMG the wraith have wiped out 20% of atlantis ma'am!" "its alright we have spare parts remember ^^"

fourth* No ancient devices like the hand phazers? i guess when the ancients abandoned this one too they decided to pack up like atlantis, leave nothing that would be deemed useful for the new inhabitants.

fifth* Ancinets... agai i wonder were the ancients really intelligent... they obviously gave the gene to these people, then left an underdeveloped people behind and with the power to use the city? what possible reason would anyone do that, you don't just give a child a radio and push him into the pool, the outcome isn't going to be nice.

sixth* Sister city? Well seeing as the city was in construction it proves that the ancients had no problem build new and huge ships without interruptions. So why do i ask do we not just activate the chair, have shepard think about ancient facilities and see the map appear over the chair. They obviously had no problem building new ships during the war, i mean building a whole sister atlantis is the pinnacle of we have no problems. This specifically is what i hate about this episode. We keep getting continuity breaks on the wraith vs ancients war. According to old wier they won all thier battles against the wraith, yet the hologram in rising states they were losing. We learned that the wraith destroyed many ancient planets and kept them from building anything else, yet obviously they weren't powerful enough to stop a new atlantis being built. You'd think the wraith would commit to destroying it, seeing as they couldn't blow up the first one.

seeing a sister city to me was not the way to go, they should have instead found a small munitions hanger, basically a section of a once bigger base that the ancients used. The lord protector could have just found the control chair else where and built his castle around it, and the rest of the story could be intact. Rodney discovering the source of the drones, ZPM depleted, Some jumpers, and shepard doing his thing. Another whole city is just too much, especially one basically intact and nearly complete.

This post has been edited by TheCordler: Feb 4th 2006, 10:32 AM

She looks like a christmas centerpiece gone awry!

Beckett's "you stay here wee man" at the end was pretty funny too.

The city was probably attacked and sevearly hit. The communications with Altantis were probably knocked out, so the Lantians presumed the worst and left for Earth. The surviving Altarans then might have mingled with the culture already on the planet, Like the Lantians did back on Earth. Might explain why such a primitive culture has the Altaran gene.


Anyway, I thought this episode was good, not great, but i'd definatly watch it again. It's a shame we didn't learn more about this city, it's name, etc.....
Glad to see Altlantis plucked up the drones amd the jumpers. I hope they just don't do a Voyager and start blowing them up left and right.

I'd give this episode a 7/10.

thanks for spoiling the SG1 ep guys....

I did like Beckett's comment when both he and Shep were detained, "I need to stop making house calls."

I like this ep. it was funny that was cool that chick drops her robe, shepard " I never see this coming" I thought that was great. not to mention a chick taking her cloths off makes everything better. I admit it wasent an impresive ep. but it had its moments

At the very least this episode had some good moments. It may just be that is is a means to an end... a way to get more drones and jumpers. I personally liked this episode. Beckett is awesome as always. Perhaps Sheppard should realize he is a bit of a sex symbol, and that girls are going to hound him.

I also sometimes wonder if McKay will ever chill out...


hm, nope

In another thread, you say you have seen it. It doesn't air there for another 11 days. You obviously downloaded it. If you know you are going to download it, why would you come here and read related threads a day earlier?

Not a bad episode! It was interesting to see another Alterran ship like Atlantis out there, and see what a different level of technology of people would do with it. Obviously absolute power corrupts absolutely! I was a little surprised that the servant was as sneaky as he was, poisoning the head guy, who played Harlan in Tin Man (Jay Brazeau). Not surprised that one of the locals was hitting on Sheppard, though! I wonder if they were able to get any drone missles, since the servant fired a bunch (but they didn't detonate, so they might still be active!) And there was an episode discussion a while back that the ZPM can't die, because it will recharge between uses! Hmmm....

I wasn't aware that Atlantis 215 was related discussion to SG1 915. My mistake, apparently.


Startreksuite, at the end of the episode they do say they traded medical supplies for puddle jumpers - and drones.

I don't recall the thing about recharging ZPM's, do you remember what episode that was in?

The idiotic thing about this episode was the Drone "storage shelving"...

It doesn't make any sense why they would store those drones like that...

Ancients have made many devices which can convert matter into energy,
store that energy form in some buffer system and transmit it into some
other device which then converts the energy back into matter. (stargate,
ring trasporter, atlantis closet transporter, ...)

So the Ancient would definitely have been able to store those drones as
energy signatures in similar buffer systems and that way they could have
stored millions and billions of times more drones than they could store in
those wine cellar type storages...

And most likely they wouldn't have needed to really store them at all...
Most likely they could have taken raw power from the ZPMs or what ever
power source they used and converted that into drones...

Not one of the best episodes, but it was entertaining. I agree with the whole drones-on-the-wine-rack argument. That would just take up so much space, although I can't really think of another way to store them.

Somebody made a point about this city being buried when Atlantis was found under so many hundreds of feet of water. My take on that is that not all cities were necessairly on an ocean.

Why didn't the wraith finish it off? The pilot episode did say all the Ancients in Pegasus evacuated to Atlantis as a final attempt to survive, so the Wraith would of course follow them and not destroy that city since they knew where to deal the final blow--Atlantis. Only a few were left behind apparently, since the Royals has the Alterran gene.

My final take on the ep: Not the best we seen, but certainly not the worst.

I agree with Sheppard becoming the Kirk of the Stargate world. That boy needs to learn to keep his pants on. Although he did say he turned her down????