Stargate Atlantis Season 4
SPOILERS TOTAL. You've been warned.
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401: Adrift 2007 September 28
(First watched 2007-09-28) Nice. A bit standard, but I enjoy watching the Atlantis team at crisis management.
The scenes with Carter and Dr. Lee felt really tacked-on. Obviously as the cast addition they didn't want to leave her out, but it reminded me of that woman from Riding With Death watching the action on a screen during the second half of the movie. I imagine it will pay off a bit more as this crisis concludes next episode.
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(First watched 2007-10-05) Acceptable. Not as many twists of problems as last episode, but it moved along some plot points. Weir (anti-Locutus?) is stuck with the Pegasus Replicators, who are now fighting the Wraith due to reactivated code. Atlantis is on a new planet (Five moons; two visible. Safe but for a large poisonous snake/reptile on land, which I'm guessing we'll see sooner or later.). Sam isn't officially part of the Atlantis team yet; I suppose that's next episode.
So this didn't strike me before, really, but considering this should be after the SG-1 movies, I guess the Atlantis Season 3 finale also must've taken place at that time. So even that early in a fictional sense the Ori had been taken care of, and whatever happens in Continuum had happened. This isn't the first time the SG-1/Atlantis tracks have been a bit uneven, like when SG-1 Season 9 began, then was immediately followed by an Atlantis conclusion that actually took place weeks prior.
Also, more Bill Lee! I don't suppose he'll be transferring over with Sam, but it's nice to see him again.
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403: Reunion 2007 October 12
(First watched 2007-10-12) A night of guests. Teal'c! I was not expecting him, but it was a Good Thing to see a small going-away scene for Sam at the SGC. Though considering the events of SG-1's finale, I would think Teal'c is internally balking when she says what a long time 10 years is. :) I believe he's the last of the original SG-1 cast to show up on Atlantis (the show, not the city). A more prominent guest role was for Mark Dacascos, Iron Chef America's chairman, as another surviving Satedan (Tyre?). His character actually survived the episode, so he could be back.
The episode didn't do much special. We knew Ronon wasn't really going to be leaving, which meant either the other Satedans would be killed, be bad guys, or he'd realize that Atlantis needed him more. Turned out to be the middle option: Wraith collaborators.
Fun to see Rodney hearing the rumors that the IOA picked their new leader based on expertise with Ancient and Replicator technology, and assuming they're putting him in charge and not Sam.
I believe this episode marked the change to their new uniforms, but... whoopty doo.
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404: Doppelganger 2007 October 19
(First watched 2007-10-19) At first I was worried this would be a rehash of SG-1's Cold Lazarus, but this crystal-based lifeform turned out quite different.
Good fun in Rodney's dream.
So Dr. Heightmeyer kicked the bucket... for a change, a change I didn't know was coming. However, as a viewer it doesn't really affect me. She wasn't on much, and wasn't a very interesting character. She never exactly screamed out that she was the type of person to be part of Earth's expedition to another galaxy, and was mostly used to try and convince characters with legitimately unknown things affecting them that it was probably just psychological.
This is the biggest role Dr. Keller has had yet, but she's no Carson.
In addition to Cold Lazarus, the events of Morpheus were referenced and The Gamekeeper played a role in the eventual solution. Quite the SG-1 knowledge-dropping fest.
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405: Travelers 2007 October 26
(First watched 2007-10-26) Pretty standard episode. Sort of a... bizarro Prometheus Unbound plus Wraith.
No Sam this episode. I know she's not in every episode this season, but it seemed a bit conspicuous that the expedition's #2 leader went missing and the highest-up people we ever saw working on the problem were McKay and Lorne.
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406: Tabula Rasa 2007 November 2
(First watched 2007-11-02) Wow. What a really solid episode. It leaned toward Rodney, but pretty much all the primary and secondary base characters had a notable role. McKay, Ronon, Teyla, Sheppard, Carter, Lorne, Zelenka, Keller.
Mysterious diseases are a dime a dozen in Stargate, but the nearly complete amnesia it spread was a worthwhile twist. It's fun to see how characters act when they have little more than instinct to go on. Also made sense to have the Pegasus members immune, as it was a sort of... mutated space chicken pox.
So sweet to see hypochondriac Rodney try to ignore his preference to stay away from the sick for the sake of Katie.
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407: Missing 2007 November 9
(First watched 2007-11-09) Meh. My least favorite member of the core team plus the undistinguished non-Carson must survive for a day.
The disappearance of Teyla's people should really give her some drive, though. The ending of the episode was made to be a bit mysterious... but dammit I think I've run across the spoiler for what it means. Otherwise it would be very effective.
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408: The Seer 2007 November 16
(First watched 2007-11-16) Nice. Though with so much of the episode centering around a man who could see the future and whether what he saw could be changed, it seemed incongruous for Sam to never mention that she had experience in such things when Jonas gained such abilities in an SG-1 episode.
So they've got a new Wraith ally/prisoner... wonder where that will go.
And surely now that they've pretty much established that Bad Things will happen to Atlantis from the guy's visions, this will end up playing a part in either the mid-season or full-season finale.
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409: Miller's Crossing 2007 November 30
(First watched 2007-11-30) So one of the advantages of being based in another galaxy is that they've mostly stayed away from Earth-based conspiracy stories. Luckily, this didn't turn out to be one, even if it seemed that way at the beginning. Rarely do we have a chance to see Rodney vulnerable and not being a smartass like he was in much of this episode.
Especially now that SG-1 the series is gone, it's great to see the SGC again. I really never thought I'd see a Walter/Ronon scene. The biggest... parallel universey feeling thing, though, was seeing Sheppard and Dex there at the SGC gate as a wraith arrived; having seen O'Neill receive Goa'uld there on multiple occasions.
The ultimate solution of feeding the wraith so he could complete his work... pretty brutal, but that guy wasn't exactly an innocent bystander, either.
Not only a Carter-free episode (which is funny for one largely taking place at the SGC), but a Teyless one as well.
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410: This Mortal Coil 0207 December 7
A non-two-parter mid-season? What an oddity.
The overall plot progressed... but the episode was a bit of a bust, methinks. It felt like another idea ripped from SG-1. How do they top robo-SG-1? With nanite-copied Atlantis team. We learn that the original Weir is dead, but I doubt that's really the case; they don't let major characters die off-screen like that. The copy team is left a loose string... I'm sure we'll see them again, too.
What a waste that they had to go "sacrificing" themselves to let the original group leave. All they did was pilot a jumper for a few seconds and crash it; I'm sure one Rodney could've set an autopilot and fake life signs, let alone two.
I'm embarrassed to note I didn't realize at the beginning they were using the old-style uniforms, though that should've been a dead giveaway that something was up.
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