69% I think, once again the phrase "undeveloped ideas" applies and prevents this episode from rising any higher, missing out on a first and having to settle for a high 2:1, but there was a lot that was cool. Weir kicking some redshirt ass. Beckett showing us why he's a true hero of the expedition. Caldwell being the mostly sensible one. And we saw lots of the city.

FLIPFLOP OF THE WEEK: Atlantis is having a better second half season than SG1 in contrast to the first half season, where SG1 was the winner. Actually, while Atlantis is doing better than at the beginning of the season, it is in fact mostly due to SG1 that plummetted from a high point of the series to a serious low.

PORTSMOUTH OF THE WEEK: I know what Atlantis really was. It was a commercial space port, hence why most of the rooms in the city are loaded up with cargo and why there is little else of interest. Where are the cultural areas of the city? What did the Ancients do for entertainment? They could watch Christians being eaten in the amphitheatre for all I care, just make it something. What about sport? Where did they socialise? What of the arts? We're nearly two years into the series and we have no insight whatsoever into their culture, despite having seen live Ancients twice! Remember how rich with culture Tolkein made Middle-Earth. Come on Wright/Cooper. Do some work for your living. Those aliens from 'Scorched Earth' got more depth than this and they were an alien-of-the-week!

ATLANTIS UNINTELLIGENCE OF THE WEEK: The leader of expedition is already possessed. Don't compound things by willingly allowing the same thing to happen to the head of military operations.

ATLANTIS UNINTELLIGENCE OF THE WEEK RUNNER-UP: Why is it that whenever a dangerous criminal is being arrested, all the guard stand within slapping distance? Guns work at long ranges. Stand at the other side of the room.

TREKKISM OF THE WEEK: The all-seeing Big Brother computer. And how does fire suppressant for one section get rerouted to a completely different section simply by tapping buttons on a computer? To be fair, this was continuity from 'Critical Mass', but it was still bad.

BAD ENGINEERING OF THE WEEK: The control tower is a critical facility in the city. It should have its own power source that is independent of the rest of the city, including the all-seeing computer.

EVOCATION OF THE WEEK: At first, this episode reminded me of 'Return to Tomorrow' [TOS], with the bit about the husband and wife living on by inhabiting the bodies of our heros for a short time.

PREDICABILITY OF THE WEEK: I knew they'd be husband and wife, for the simple reason that there is no point is having the leading actor and actress not acting like themselves if they can't have a kiss.

UNDERDEVELOPMENT OF THE WEEK: It would have been nice to have more backstory to these people so they didn't just come across psychotic Brad & Angelina wannabes.

SHAKE IT OFF SPARKY OF THE WEEK: Caldwell is hard as nails. A couple of weeks after being possessed by a Goa'uld, he back on the job like nothing but a curiosity happened.

This post has been edited by glom: Feb 15th 2006, 4:39 PM

The aliens got all of Sheppard's knowledge when he took over him, so he would know what that means. That's also how the alien in Weir got her command codes.

even knowing that you think they would use a term more comon to them. I dont know this ep. did nothing for me.

For me this was the alltime worst episode of Atlantis to date. There was potential, a lot of it, in the concept, and the old series trek episode that others have mentioned with the half black half white faces is a PERFECT example of the concept of a perpetual feud being well played because, as I recall, it was towards the end that we found out that their hatred stemmed simply from being opposite in appearance. That was a beautiful episode...

the long goodbye however was an episode in which, try as I might, I could not conceive of a single motive for not-weir or not-shep. I mean really, your consciousness is going to get another 6 hours of existence before you die... so you determine to kill the body the other conscious has landed in.

Weir and Shep are innocents, and NOTHING in your war will be effected or helped by killing them! The consciousness is your enemy and it has a time limit.

I almost wonder how different the episode would have been if each had set out to "persuade" others on atlantis to their side of the conflict, and tried to get our heroes to take up the battle... I can just picture not-Weir telling one and all that her enemy was full of people who tossed innocents to the wraith without hesitation!

And they had access to the Atlantis computers and never ONCE checked to see how their side was doing in the war. I mean really! It was mindless killing.

In the end the lack of motive for the actions that everything in the ep was a reaction to left me hating this ep.

Okay, rant over... I promise, just noticed that this peeve of mine hadn't been touched on much in this thread.

I do like Atlantis, a lot, and the Tower was a fun ep, a take on ren. england coming face to face with Ancient technology, and the gene being what sets the servants apart from the lords, it reminded me of what Stargate started out as... exploring how a culture from earth could have evolved under different pressures.

Oh, and I have to say that MacKay is the FUNNIEST character on the show... there are weeks I tune in just for him, which surprises me as I had originally thought he was a weak choice of someone from the original shows universe to be the one real carryover to the new series.

I can understand why some people thought this was a stupid episode, but I really enjoyed it. The back and forth between MacKay and Cadwell was funny. I love how MacKay wanted to be in charge I mean how scary is that. You know I first started out hating MacKay but somehow he has grown on me. I liked the placement of the music in this episode. I loved it when Beckett said "Well they're headed straight for divorce."
I love episodes where there is just 15min. of bordom and 45min. of action like this one was. I hate it when its 45min. of bordom and 15 min. of action like SG-1 Stronghold was.
Simply put this was a fun shoot em up episode.

This post has been edited by I'm a janitor at the SGC 7150: Mar 8th 2006, 2:08 AM

It was funny when McKay realized that this situation was close to the one he had
It was a little different though. They shouldn't have listened to that woman in the first place. They basically offered themselves to be guinea pigs in a science experiment

Dude i love the pictures and she did open up a can of whoop ass, i hope this brings them closer together

It was so fantastic to see Weir so active and it was good to see her in this light where the storyline is mostly around her and a situation which she forced into.
Sheppard was cute and everyone looked amazing in this episode and Weir...she looked so cute and Shep..well perfection as always.
I think the characters are becoming more itneresting and are working so well together that they now captivate the audience. The storylines are also being pieced together and we see so much culture and it was good to see Atlantis being used and seeing the battle which was going on inside the complex and it being between Shep and Weir.
It also paves the way for Romance...which i think a lot of shippers were looking for.
I wonder if the writers know which girl they want Shep to get with because at this stage he's going to breaking a lot of hearts! The little devil!

Something else i was going to say which i can't remember...*browses page*
Glom...they werent husband and wife.
If you actually watched the episode properly you'd actually listen to them saying how they were from different worlds, they were in a big battle both trying to alienate each other.
If they were husband and wife...wow someone either get them a marriage counsellor or suggest a divorce.

i think this ep had some good parts but I have to agree with travelin It was the worst ep. of atlantis it just dint tell us any thing new about the anciants or the pegesus galaxy or the wraith it dint itroduce any new charchters that effect atlantis it was just filler i think in its self it was ok but it gave nothing to the series, wich is why I was disapointed in it

I didn't really like this epi because its a pointless filler.

fillers sometimes can be very good episodes, eg Duet

Duet was a very good filler...
As he said, this was a 'pointless filler', still a filler, but not such a good filler

I think it depends on the way you look at it. In a way, it was a good episode because ti gave Weir some much needed screen time but then again, the episode was boring. The episode has it's good and bad points, unfortunately the bad points seem to considerably outnumber the good points.

what this episode did was show us everyones reaction to Cauldwell returning after being de-Goa'ulded. had he just returned and nothing had been said then we'd all be in uproar.

though i don't think that they should have made a whole episode to do this in

What striked me is that they don't want to use lethal force but they run around with a p90 ???
Ok by now they have enough guns that can stun (from wraith) . Why didn't they use this it isn't lethal at all and they would be great for capturing people.

The two people that took over their bodies did want to kill each other though. They were trying to use lethal force, they just didn't manage to hit each other. They were pilots on different sides in a war and each wanted to kill the other so their race would win the war.

I mean the security teams of atlantis they where running around with the p90 and there mission was to capture weir or sheppard