Gateway to Atlantis

[Danny R]

Well, here's my attempt at starting an everlasting Atlantis thread.

So what do folks think of the new series? It was better than I hoped actually. Not only do we get the standard Stargate style missions through the wormhole, but it looks like we can have plenty of local missions as the explorers discover secrets about their new base as well.

The cast dynamics are pretty good, although it would be nice not to have killed off the colonel so quickly.

I'm hoping we'll see more of the Ancient that left the holographic message. She's a hottie. ;)

Dr. Weir's husband (cameo appearance) has been on the show before. What role did he have?

The Wraith seem to be powerful, and with their mind control and vampire like powers are definately dangerous. I've yet to see anything that would challenge the Ancients however.

While entering the city might have triggered the Wraith, there is also the possibility of a traitor among the refugees brought back to Atlantis.

And finally I don't see any reason why at the end of this or next season the two shows can't establish contact again. The idea of being stranded will make them have to deal with the wraith rather than just shut the door and ignore them for now, but in the future that won't be needed and the door can be opened back up.

[dfergie]

Gee thanks, have not watched yet :) had to work last night. Tuesday will be Atlantis night :D Replay and X1 have to see which pq is better, the one hooked to my 6000u or my hughes sd D*

[Chris Blount]

I'm not sure what to think at this time. The first episode didn't impress me all that much.

I do think the Wraith look pretty nasty though so it will be interesting to see what happens with them.

[HappyGoLucky]

I liked it. I would like to see, and hope they do go into it, more about the "ancients" themselves. Now that they are in the ancient's "home", they have ample opportunity for that. Also, to discover if the Wraith really did wipe out the ancients, or are they merely "dormant" or "trancended to another plane"... I don't think it was clearly conferred that what the away team blew up was the Wraith's ship, which had been there so long trees had taken root on top of it, it had become almost part of the landscape. That leads me to believe that isn't the Wraith's "homeworld". I was also confused as to why they didn't keep that Wraith weapon which was used to kill the red-haired one. If they are so difficult to kill any other way, I would think that weapon would have been extremely valuable!

There's a lot of questions, which means they have a lot they can use for storylines. I'm looking forward to it, I just hope they don't blow it.

[MikeSoltis]

Thought it had good points and bad points, though more good than bad.
Much cooler looking gate and DHD, nice effects shot when the city came up out of the ocean though that is discussed in other places on the net.
Didn't like it as much as SG1, but it has potential. SG1 had the advantage of premiering on Showtime, so they could hook the male demographic in the first episode with boobies :icon_bb: although the show was probably strong enough to get noticed without them (and interestingly enough, never again after the premiere ep).
A couple of things surprised me, but we'll wait until everyone catches up and watches to discuss...

[wkomorow]

Well, here's my attempt at starting an everlasting Atlantis thread.
Dr. Weir's husband (cameo appearance) has been on the show before. What role did he have?


I think that he was the Tollan Narim, who was infactuated with Sam. The Tollans were the ones that decided that Skaara should be separated from the Gou'ld that infested him. Remember, they could walk through walls. The Tollans were later destroyed when the Gou'ld overcame their technology and attempted to blackmail them into betraying the earth. Narim was one who discovered the deception of the Tollan leadership.

[Danny R]

For those who've see the show, do you think the short prelude is in disagreement with the explanation for why the Ancients went to the Pegasus galaxy?

The woman seen in this short sequence didn't seem all that happy.

Do you think this was supposed to be the same woman who was defrosted by the SG:1 team after being found in Antarctica?

Why is the woman who gives the holographic projection so easily understood by the Atlantis team, when all prior interactions with the Ancients have had a language barrier. ;)

[djlong]

That's the one thing that's bugging me about Stargate.. Uncountable light-years in transit, completely different human civilization being preyed upod and...

...they speak English.

[dfergie]

That's the one thing that's bugging me about Stargate.. Uncountable light-years in transit, completely different human civilization being preyed upod and...

...they speak English.
A similar universe to Star Trek, everyone speaks english :)

[djlong]

At least DS9 tried to 'handwave' it with "translators".

I though Farscape had the best solution.

[Mike123abc]

That's the one thing that's bugging me about Stargate.. Uncountable light-years in transit, completely different human civilization being preyed upod and...

...they speak English.

The super advanced computers of the ancients simply translate everything to English. After all, all the pilot guy had to do was think of things and they would happen. The computers simply are advanced enough to read their minds and provide a translation.

[Danny R]

Explains the computers in Atlantis, but not the humans they encountered. ;)

[djlong]

My point exactly - I'll buy into the Ancient's with Super-Mega-Hyper-Advanced, Babel-Fish-Augmented computers. ...but the villagers?

[Argono_]

It was good. Not great, but good.

While I think the gate and shield look cool, it seems like they want to get away from the Egyptian angle too much. Plus, part of the gate is buried in the floor. I suppose it could be explained as bein made of material like the gate so it's resistant to the wormhole, but I found it distracting.

Also think it's unnecessary to "create an enemy that defeated the Ancients". But this too can be explained. They went to the Pegasus galaxy in their human forms. So, they were probably of the level of the Asgard at that point. So, the Wraiths are probably at or just above the Asgard (they seem to hiberate for long periods of time - discourages technical growth. Perhaps they also are like the Gou'ld in that they derive knowledge through their feeding). Those that went back to Earth (or were already there) eventually "ascended" and formed an alliance with the Asgard before moving on, out of the galaxy for more adventures.

I think where the major shot T2 (couldn't help think of that when they showed a shot of him behind the Wraith's prison bars - "Use your metal arms, T2!!!) was very good - shows that they still have some of best SG1's conflict of morals - which will help the show grow.

Otherwise, it was slick, sometimes too slick. Some of the characters are interesting, some aren't. Keep the stories at a high level, and keep the money in the production, and I'll keep watching it - alongside SG1.

[dfergie]

I liked it, (finally got a night off) :) It had some interesting things going on and the jlo lady and the major seemed to hit it off...btw on my x-1 the pq was identical from a sd D*receiver outputting to a replay vs a E* 6000u outputting to another replay :)

[pjmrt]

A similar universe to Star Trek, everyone speaks english :)
Actually the first several episodes of stargate sg-1, the humans of other worlds didn't speak english. Poor Daniel spent a lot of time translating - I guess he decided he didn't want to work that hard so they discovered babel-fish ... :roundandr

[dfergie]

Actually the first several episodes of stargate sg-1, the humans of other worlds didn't speak english. Poor Daniel spent a lot of time translating - I guess he decided he didn't want to work that hard so they discovered babel-fish ... :roundandr
Ahh the babel-fish, they came in handy on my old C64 Hitchhikers guideto the galaxy game :) I did not anticipate the amount of people who gated to Atlantis, I figured there was just a 4 person gate team. Btw I understand that those from "Canada" get it in HD

[Danny R]

2nd episode has come and gone. Look away if you haven't seen it.




While I enjoyed watching the show, it is otherwise a forgettable episode.

I hope the "personal shield" remains deactivated. Otherwise it could become far too much of a crutch for future encounters. As it was, I found the lack of concern for the scientist's life somewhat strange. Yes it was good comic relief, but it could have served as more than that.

The discovery of the "elevator" was also interesting and bodes well. With a civilization so much more advanced, I would expect there to be lots of things that are just overlooked because their significance isn't immediately obvious to a less advanced being.

Just curious, but what is the rational for the Atlantis gateway being the only one that can reach Earth? Is it just the only one that has the proper coordinates present on the dial?

While this show also explored some of the relationships among the indigenous people Atlantis discovered, I wish they did more. Teyla still seems pretty one-dimensional to me.

Previews for next week look interesting. Thats one trick the old show hasn't ever used. ;)

[Danny R]

Those of you who might have missed the season premier, SciFi is repeating it and the next episode this Tuesday night.

[Chris Blount]

I kind of enjoyed the second episode. Lots of humor. Sometimes I get tired of these shows taking themselves too seriously. Might as well use up the humor chips now because when the wraith show up again, things will get dark fast.

I agree with you Danny. The lack of concern for the scientists life was a little strange.

[dfergie]

Looking away :) tonight(sunday) will be sg1/atlantis/bb5 night after I get in from work :)

[invaliduser88]

Was traveling and don't have a dvr yet (921 for Christmas...oh please oh please). This Friday's episode was the first I saw.

Looks like with they could spend a lot of time just dealing with the city without dealing with offworld travel too much. We'll see if it works.

[Mike123abc]

If they want to do more city episodes they need to invest more in the sets. The second episode and the sets started to look a bit weak. They only have so many rooms and rearranging crates is going to get old after a while.

[The Stargate lurker]

That's the one thing that's bugging me about Stargate.. Uncountable light-years in transit, completely different human civilization being preyed upod and...

...they speak English.

It's that at least from i have read goinng throught they stargate mess with dna or whatever and allow to know the native language

The Stargate lurker :)

[pjmrt]

Ahh the babel-fish, they came in handy on my old C64 Hitchhikers guideto the galaxy game :) I did not anticipate the amount of people who gated to Atlantis, I figured there was just a 4 person gate team. Btw I understand that those from "Canada" get it in HD
think he brought some canadian brew with him too?

[dfergie]

think he brought some canadian brew with him too?
molson/coors? or is it coors/molson :D

[MikeSoltis]

What about last night's episode (Thirty eight minutes)??
Pretty cool shots of the ship caught in the gate, a rather interesting episode.

[Danny R]

I definately enjoyed last nights show. Being stuck in the gateway might have been drama enough, but having that super-leech in the picture definately made things all the more interesting.

Someday however writers will discover that a show with a countdown timer doesn't always have to have a solution found in the final minute. ;) It might be nice someday to see someone say ... we only have 10 minutes... ah, here we go, and the clock stops at 9:57. *grin*

[wkomorow]

What about last night's episode (Thirty eight minutes)??
Pretty cool shots of the ship caught in the gate, a rather interesting episode.

I liked the episode. There were lots of threads that could be developed in future episodes. It allowed the development of several secondary characters. We got a clear insight into Weir's leadership style "follow orders or leave". It offered a bit of insight into Athosian religious beliefs and their ethos when facing a seemingly hopeless situations.

The only thing that I am disappointed with is that there does not seem to be a clear plan yet as to what they are going to do in Atlantis. They started to explore the city, but stopped because of the power drain. They went out to only a couple of planets finding the Athosians and the Wraith, but do not seem to have clear plan of exploration. Have they even circled the Atlantis in the puddle jumper yet. Is it all ocean or are there land masses? Can an all water planet even sustain a breathable atmosphere without plant-life?

[Danny R]

Have they even circled the Atlantis in the puddle jumper yet. Is it all ocean or are there land masses?

I wondered that too. The planet has to have something interesting on it, or why would the Ancients have gone there.

Can an all water planet even sustain a breathable atmosphere without plant-life?

Easily. Most of our oxygen (50-70%) is obtained from the ocean via photosynthesis in plankton and other marine life. In fact, before such life, the atmosphere was almost devoid of free oxygen, as was most of the ocean. The occurance of single cellular photosynthesizing life is what created our atmosphere as we know it today and eventually led to the further spread of life onto land masses.

[poeppe]

Did it bother anyone else that when they went to check up on the wraith that they didn't take along one of those handy little wraith locaters? If they had they wouldn't have been taken by surprise and probably wouldn't have encountered the super-leech.

And when everything ancient seems to respond to mental commands (if you have the correct gene) then why didn't they just mentally tell the puddle jumper to retract the engines.

I hope that this isn't going to be the norm for Atlantis (introduce a piece of tech in one episode then pretend it never existed in the next).

[Danny R]

Wow, good observation about the "life detector" (you can name it later!)

As for the engine retraction, I believe the point was that the engines were damaged and thus didn't retract all the way. The "mind" control part of the ship was likely in the forward section which was already past the event horizon.

Of course the biggest flaw is this: if the engines wouldn't retract normally because of damage, then why would they magically retract using the manual controls later? The damage that prevented them from pulling in before was still present.

[poeppe]

Yeah that little problem bothered me too. But of course they couldn't have half the main characters die in a single episode. So the damaged engines had to retract before the gate closed. It would have been better if they had found a way to eject/disconnect them. But thats been done to death in the Trek universe.

[Mark Lamutt]

Maybe using the manual controls routed more power to the retraction mechanism than the thought controls usually do. Enough additional power to negate the effect of the physical damage and allow full retraction.

Or, maybe the damage wasn't to the retraction mechanism itself, but to the relays providing the thought controlled power to the retraction mechanism. So, with those relays damaged, there was insufficient power available through normal means to fully retract the engines. Using the manual control from the back provided the additional power necessary for full retraction.

Or, maybe it's just that they have about 6 days to write the script before production and they were in a hurry to get it done, and didn't think it all the way through... :D

[Danny R]

One other thing: Here you have a civilization advanced enough to beat back the Ancients. However they leave a device set by their enemies (the orbiting gateway) unguarded and unwatched.

Even accepting that, word that they were back on planet should have been given. So how did the team have 30 odd minutes to spare stuck in the gateway without being blasted to cinders, with a team of wraiths or a nuke following the embers through the wormhole back to the source. ;)

[Mark Lamutt]

Maybe when they left the planet between the previous episode and this one, they flew away at hyperspeed (or whatever it's called), so they didn't have time to get back to blow them up. And with the gate open, they couldn't establish a connection to get back quickly. So, even with the small contingent left on planet, and assuming that their communications systems are advanced enough to cover the distance that fast, they may very well have communicated it back, but the wraith couldn't get back fast enough.

Or, they did leave the planet to go eat, and I imagine they were pretty hungry after hybernating that long...one little ship stuck in the gate may not have been a priority.

[poeppe]

I made the assumption that the wraith had vacated that planet so no longer cared whether someone came through the gate.

I also presumed that the wraith that remained on the planet were being punished and were left behind intentionally. I am assuming those left behind are the wraiths version of the human Peta group or maybe their version of a vegetarian. This is backed up a little bit by the fact that the wraith passed up an easy free lunch.

My guess is that most of the wraiths were ready to leave the planet and go on a feeding spree, the small group that got left behind were arguing against it and ended up getting kicked off of the ship.

This is all probably just a load of BS but it at least makes it a little more believable :)

[Kevin_F]

The ancients may have selected the location of the city due to the water/ocean. In the latest episode the super-leech re-acted "defensively" to the combination of water and salt. The city was submerged under the water. This left the gate as the only entrance that we have seen. Was this for defensive reasons? Maybe the wraiths are vulnerable to salt water. But if this is true, you'd think such an advance race could come up with a super soaker weapon.

[MikeSoltis]

...you'd think such an advance race could come up with a super soaker weapon.

Maybe not, remember the Asgard 'would never come up with' a weapon that uses a chemical to shoot a small projectile...

[Danny R]

Maybe not, remember the Asgard 'would never come up with' a weapon that uses a chemical to shoot a small projectile...

I don't think they would "never" come up with the weapon, so much as they would shrug it off and not even consider it, probably assuming that if their advanced energy weapons did little good, less sophisticated weapons would also be useless. Thus they didn't even test them.

Suppose the greek warrior Achilles came along against one of our modern day soldiers. After shooting him, throwing a grenade, firing a missile and then a tank round into his invulnerable body, would you really think to just stick him in the ankle with an arrow?

[Pepper]

"38 minutes" was overall a great episode, however, at the beginning there was this guy whose arm was sticking out of the wormhole and they just pull him back out? Or can an "object" be removed from the wormhole until it's completely in? Next to that, the rest of it was quite believable.

[Danny R]

We've seen simular effects before with the wormholes. How many times have we seen someone walk up to a wormhole and put their finger or hand in and then pull it back out.

Of course this brings to mind even bigger questions, such as if blood is flowing in and out of the event horizon, and if so what does that mean for the person almost totally inside the wormhole? ;)

[MikeSoltis]

Danny, I was actually referring to a line by Thor (I think in 'Small Victories'), where Thor said "the Asgard would NEVER..."
Looking back, maybe it was Thor being sarcastic :eek2:

[Danny R]

This week's Atlantis was definately a great episode and posed some interesting moral problems for the crew. Spoilers follow:




I loved the jab at Star Trek as well. ;) Quite fitting since next week we see our first guest appearance from a Star Trek veteran.

The imprisoned wraith did a pretty good job intimidating his captors. Despite his claims, its obvious he could eat something other than humans, since they were around long before the Ancients ever came to the Pegasus galaxy. Obviously he wasn't hungry enough to reveal that yet, and the good doc said he didn't die of hunger.

[Mike123abc]

Perhaps the wraith came from a different galaxy and found the ancients tasty treats and stayed a while.

[Danny R]

Interesting possibility. I'd think if the Ancients had intergalactic abilities (the Asgard regularly travel from Andromeda and they are apparently less advanced), then the Wraith probably do as well.

Along the same lines, it could be the Wraith had to go into sleep because they totally devoured all the food in the Pegasus galaxy. The Ancients say they came to bring life to a lifeless galaxy. What they didn't realize was they were ringing the dinner bell.

Of course I wonder how lifeless Pegasus was when the Ancients came. Didn't an older Stargate SG:1 postulate that there were so many habitable worlds because the Ancients terraformed them?

[Mike123abc]

The whole defeating the ancients is a bit strange. The ancients were able to defeat the replicators in a matter of minutes where the Asgard were losing planet after planet. Yet a primitive society was able to develop a protein poison. Seems like they could destroy the hive ships while the wraith were snoozing. Maybe the anicients had some no violence credo...

[Danny R]

The whole defeating the ancients is a bit strange.... Seems like they could destroy the hive ships while the wraith were snoozing.

Agreed. But perhaps its just a simple matter of being outnumbered. And probably like the Atlantis team, they awoke the Wraith and didn't realize the extent of the threat until after they had mobilized.

Maybe the ancients had some no violence credo...

Perhaps, but I think it unlikely. They had their squid missiles which are pretty effective it seems... not to mention some interesting devices able to turn a Gateway into a time bomb as seen in Redeption at the beginning of season 6.

[waydwolf]

My point exactly - I'll buy into the Ancient's with Super-Mega-Hyper-Advanced, Babel-Fish-Augmented computers. ...but the villagers?
In Trek, the only thing I can remember of any sort of attempt at explaining this was in one book or another. Evidently by the time of TNG, universal translators were merged with the comm badge system and could translate on the fly.

Suppostion: ease and cost dictate that this little interplay of created alien languages and english being heard be ignored.

Yup, Farscape had the best solution.

[waydwolf]

We've seen simular effects before with the wormholes. How many times have we seen someone walk up to a wormhole and put their finger or hand in and then pull it back out.

Of course this brings to mind even bigger questions, such as if blood is flowing in and out of the event horizon, and if so what does that mean for the person almost totally inside the wormhole? ;)
Despite SG-1's inane blather about molecular deconstruction(molecules? what about atoms? subatomic particles?) strictly speaking, wormholes are not a lot different from normal space.

From any point of view outside any other point, that other point looks twisted and mishapen. From that point's view, it is the first point that is warped. Spacetime itself warps and all within spacetime merely follow the curvature. However, while there's curvature, the fundamental geometric relationships are maintained so nothing is actually warped as in a warped piece of wood.

The mathematics are insane, and that's a good reason to ignore them for the sake of keeping people watching("and in today's episode, we will go over tensor calculations for temporal distortions, so if all you viewers will please turn to page 3211 of your texts, we'll begin and if there's time, we'll look at some action..."), but the concept is easy to understand.

If you take a post card, fold it in half, and cut it across from one edge ALMOST to the other, alternating from which side you cut, and then cut the spine bends on the inside, leaving only the two on the outside(you might have done this in school for art class), you can then unwind the card in a big loop like something out of a food processor and step through the card. Other than the cuts you made for this trick, nothing really has changed about the geometery of the card. Text printed on it continues right where you expect.

Come on, we need to suspend some disbelief here.