You didn't read my post did you ?? That one just before yours...

They could have made a device which simply materializes them when you need them
(when you don't need them they doesn't exist as solid object which you would need to
store somewhere... they exist only as energy signatures in some buffer system.. kind
of like some files in your computers hard-disc... that way you would only need to store
that buffer device somewhere which maybe very small... maybe even smaller than a
drone but that device could contain the energy signatures of billions of drones...)

It is so stupid... Why would they store them as solid object which needs thousands of
cubic meters of storage space when they could easily store all those drones into some
buffer device which won't take even one cubic meter of storage space... ?? (Especially
when they no doubt could and it would have been so easy for them.. they had devices
which did the same thing in use everywhere...)

This post has been edited by ALIEN_JL: Feb 5th 2006, 10:19 AM

Sorry, no I didn't. My son was being fussy and I just read enough to get the gist of the thread, but now that I have read it I'm reminded of an episode of Star Trek where they were caught in the transporter buffer. Also now that I've had some time to think about it (I made my son go to sleep! BAD Mommy!) a civilization as advanced as the Ancients should have some sort of replicator technology that would allow them to replicate thier weapons on command. Although even in Star Trek the weapons were stored in an arsenal, including the photon torpedos.

OK, I found a MUCH better version of this episode:

Intergalactic Man of Mystery

It's pretty funny

(The link is to a 25 MB wmv file. Smaller and larger versions are here.)

Hurricane, that was hilarious and so appropriate! I think the writers have gotten a little carried away with the John and the alien babe hook-up storylines. They're getting a bit tiresome. And furthermore, as long as I'm on a "John's character" rant, why can't he ever make mistakes sometimes?

It seems like this season, the writers have moved away from portraying his darker side and he's all about the fluff. He's going to end up as a two-dimensional parody if they don't write some deeper storylines that show some vulnerability and inner motivations.

i definitely agree that although this wasnt the worst episode, it was kind of a disappointment after a string of really good atlantis eps lately. saw the plot twist a mile off, and the whole wine cellar storage idea for the drones did seem quite silly.
it did have its moments though: some good sheppared and beckett lines, and a good old fashioned ronan-kicking-five-people's-a*&@es-at-once fight scene. i do enjoy those

Storing them as energy would probably use energy I would think They looked like they where stored like we store bulets.

The honeycomb drone storage system seems to me to be the best and most efficient way to store them. Storing them indefinitely in some energy form would be inefficient, a waste of power and possibly impossible. They could not simply put them in a pile somewhere, so it stands to reason they are storing them in the most effective and space-conscious way. Remember that they are physical objects and have to be kept somewhere. There were racks and racks of them in a fairly large space. Apparently there are such storage spaces all over the city. That or there happened to be inactive drones laying all over.

This post has been edited by Revan: Feb 6th 2006, 2:53 AM

Are there more of these city/ships?

I might have possible reason why the drones might have been stored in racks. Since the city apparently only had the one ZPM, and would eventually run low on power, one of the Lord Marshalls (one that still had a better understanding of the Ancient tech) made a stockpile of drones. So even with a nearly depleated ZPM that city would still have a means of defending itself.

I also have no problem believing that the Wraith would have left the 2nd city alone. The whole reason they assaulted Atlantis for 100 years was to gain access to the only stargate that could get them to Earth's galaxy, and the countless people they could feed on there. The 2nd city protected only a relatively small number of humans. The Wraith could destroy it, but they would suffer huge losses in doing so. The 2nd city was immobile, was not building up forces for a counter attack on the Wraith, and again defended only a small number of humans.

The cons of attacking and destroying the city outweighed the pros.

i do believe that when the ancients came from the galxzy of the orii they came to milky and the tech there is all primative compare to atlanis then they build atlanis and when to pegasus and build more citys right well some citys could have just been in construction when they all left right. well i think the city in this ep was a newly constructed city maybe. i say this because the city is almost completely under ground as if there were hiding it but to build city such as the atlanis-class would probally be build in a large factory.

The Wraith did not find out about Earth until [1]The Rising[/i] when Colonel Sumner was fed upon by the Wraith Queen and then killed by Sheppard. They laid seige to Atlantis because they wanted to kill all the Atlanteans, or at least stop them from interfering.

The wraith questioned Col Sumner and discovered that he was from Earth, however it is safe to assume that the wraith were already aware of its existance. They would have just as easily discovered that the Atlantians came from another galaxy by questioning an Atlantian prisoner.

Beside, when the Atlantians were fleeing the Pegasas Galaxy, the Wraith would have known that they were going somewhere.

No, I don't think its safe to assume that. The female Wraith had no knowledge of Earth. This was news for her. Why question an Atlantian prisoner? They had no need. The Wraith were completely aware of who they were. I sincerely doubt the Wraith even considered the possibility of humans in another galaxy.

Not a bad episode. It was obvious that Otho was the one who poisoned the Lord Protector though. The scene of those who lived in the Tower eating was a bit over the top.
One thing I would like to know though, is why the Tower didnt shake when the earthquakes shook the rest of the city (and why did the villager call them earthquakes, since earthquakes only occur on Earth)?

Did anyone else recognize Otho? He's the host for a show that shows how Medieval knights handled their weapons and stuff like that. It's on the History Channel or a channel like that.

A nice different episode i thot. i loved the way Tavius was so pompous and arrogant lording around like he owned the place, quality!



wouldn't the central tower have some kind of dampeners cos its the most important area just like on atlantis is probably the most protected.

His name is Peter Woodward. He has been in Crusade too, the Babylon 5 spin off. Have you ever heard of a programme called The Equalizer? The actor in that was Edward Woodward, Peter's father.


If that is the case then why did the Tower shake when the star drive was activated?

This post has been edited by Dafmeister: Feb 8th 2006, 4:53 PM

65% We get some cool ideas for the first time in ages, and it was fun, but the episode was letdown by focusing on the wrong thing.

M&M-ISM OF THE WEEK: Another goddamn conspiracy! Things got lame for me after the host of Crystal Maze revealed his duplicity.

GOOD JOKE OF THE WEEK: That one goes to Arcady for his initial post featuring the line "Why this episode sucked:" and a screenshot. The reason it was funny is that for me the screenshot took a while to download so I was confused at first at what a picture of Weir was supposed to prove until the download finally got to the credit, "Written by Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie." That was a good chuckle when that credit finally appeared.

EUNUCH OF THE WEEK: Thank you for destroying the entire premise of this series. Atlantis is supposed to be the greatest city ever built and now there's freakin' two of them. I have for a while been thinking that Atlantis itself is not as much of a city to match it's reputation, but now that's it has been snipped, the city really has lost stature. I want my 30,000ft tall mega-city pyramid.

MYSTERY OF THE WEEK: So what is a copy of Atlantis doing buried in the ground in British Columbia? What was really wrong with this episode was that no-one really cared that much about the city and was far too concerned with petty Versaille politics. I was really hoping some great discovery was to be found, possibly involving a little adventurous exploration. But no. Big Ancient city's are a dime a dozen to the Atlantis expedition and apparently to M&M.

RECYCLING OF THE WEEK: Didn't we see that Canadian village a few weeks ago? It was okay during the golden age of SG1, but after eleven seasons of the franchise, the quaint Canadian village look is old. I know it's tough for an episodic television series to get about, but frankly, it can't be that difficult to give us cheesy alien planet sets with styrofoam rocks. Sure it would look tacky, but at least it would look different. Hell, even a filter on the camera to make everything look purple would be a start.

BUDGET CUT OF THE WEEK: Did we really need a duplicate of Atlantis at all other than to save money on new sets? That being said, the decor was good.

CHEAP EFFECT OF THE WEEK: When the first quake blocked McKay's way out, the effect of dropping a bit of dust in front of the camera looked so Blue Peter.

WINERY OF THE WEEK: I think 42030 was a very good year for squids. (And I hate them being called drones. That's so lame. They were already calling the Kull Warriors drones when the squids were introduced. How about ATM for Autonomous Tactical Missile? That way we can have various puns relating to withdrawing money. Okay it's crap, but it's better than "drone".)

SPATIAL ANOMALY OF THE WEEK: If making large Ancient city's mass produced wasn't enough, now apparently, McKay can easy cross from one part to another on foot without difficulty. Unless of course all those rooms were conveniently located in the same part of the city, in which case I will rename this point CONTRIVANCE OF THE WEEK.

TREKKISM AVOIDED OF THE WEEK: I only mention this because it came up on this thread. It's a damn good thing we find more evidence that squids are manufacturered and stored like physical objects rather than replicated a la pattern replication from ST and stored as crapion particles as some suggested they should be. The thought of introducing pattern replication to SG makes my skin crawl.

I completely Agree with you, As i was reading through this thread and someone mentioned the idea of storing them in a buffer, It reminded me of how they stored the Team in one of the wraith darts beams, It took more energy the bigger the item, Physics also dictates the same thing, if you were to compress matter to be held in a buffer it would take a LOT more energy to sustain it and keep it there. Im sorry to say - But it also reminds me of trying to keep someones Transporter signature in the buffer on star trek.

I believe that the way the ATM's were stored were fine, im guessing they didn't show, but just a bit further in that room there is a ATM (hehehe) shoot in the ceilling that the ATM's used, If you can remember back to the first episode, they were simply studying an ATM on a desk when the doctor used the chair to activate it, so there is no need for some kind of Loading mechanism, im guessing they get fired from where they are and then unleashed through the chambers. Now if thats the case, why didn't McKay use that to get signal on his radio?(pfff)... An answer to that could be that the doors to the chamber are the same as the actual surrounding structure, so he wasn't able to get signal. I really dont know, This episode DID suck, BADLY. The Main reason, Atlantis was meant to be the one and only city, the main refuge, the Capital of Ancient Society, if there is two it DOES remove the importance that atlantis has in the first place, also if there are two, Send more people to that planet, scour that City "The Tower" and find other things, if there is a storage room for ATM's (5th time used!!) there might be a storage room for ZPM's that are currently offline, How else were ZPM's manufactured if not in one of the big Ancient City's?!?

That leads me to another point, The wraith DIDN'T know about earth until we (i say we, i mean them) stepped through the stargate and got questioned by the wraith, If the wraith knew the Atlantiens left then they would have followed them, I think the wraith assumed they drowned when they lowered atlantis into the ocean, that way they could get away and the wraith would be like "Wtf?! ok" And if the wraith wanted to destroy ALL atlantiens, why not also destroy the 2nd city rather than leaving it completely stable? Dont say it was built underground, That was just the cause of 10,000 years of growth by the surrounding vegetation. One thousand years is good enough to put a car or a house underground, even an entire village, so 10,000 years would be more than plenty to do that to atlantis.

Another point was raised, about a villager calling them earthquakes? Remember that atlantiens brought humans to the pegasus galaxy, The villagers surrounding the city were there because of the atlantiens.. Earth, meaning Ground (hense the name of our planet!) or soil would naturally mean Earthquakes, they are not called Earthquakes because our planet is called Earth, our planet was named after the soil. Im sure out there somewhere there is a planet called 'Ocean' So never fear :/

That ends my rant, I know i haven't been here in months and months.. But i do still check out this site :o)

This is what kills me in this episode, to think the ancients had the capability to produce a WHOLE SISTER CITY! This is all just too far fetched, especially since the plot of atlantis was that it was the Ancients capital and hope, i see they must have tons of hop since another was built.

It stands to reason that from the pilot Rising, the hologram said that they evacuated to atlantis after the wraith attacked, and in Before i sleep the ancients said that the last convoy was shot down. This points to the wrath destroying all the ancient colonies, cities, ships, outposts during thier conquest. Eventually only atlnais remained to be sieged, its not like the wraith woke up one day and said "Hey you guys wanna just go for the heart of the ancients and siege atlantis, that way all the other ancients can build stuff and attack us from behind!"

This episode just screams re-supply and spare atlantis parts for future problems. for example, if the wraith damage the drive pods or destroy the shield generator, we could just hit up ol PGR-533 and go and get the replacement parts.

I'm all in favor of finding Ancients technology, but did they have to make the city an exact duplicate of Atlantis. Atlantis is supposed to be the last, great city of the Ancients, except now there's 2.

It also makes me wonder why the Wraith, spent a century attacking a fully powered & shielded Atlantis, yet they gave up on the city in this episode, which had 1 ZPM and was inhabited by primitive people.

The episode itself, was fairly average and predictable. And am I right in assuming they've drained the cities ZPM, taken all their drones and have left the planet defenseless against the next Wraith attack?

Pretty much. Sheppard said they got drones and a few Jumpers in exchange they gave the villagers medicines and an IDC for Atlantis if they ever wanted help.

And they've provided the gene therapy so they can use the jumpers. They didn't leave them entirely defenseless. Without the ZPM they couldn't use the drones anyway.

They cant use the Jumpers that are left on that planet because they are out of power.
Sheppard never mentioned anything about the gene therapy at the end of the episode, all he said was they got the drones and a few Jumpers.