Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

I enjoyed the first episode. I thought it wrapped up the fourth season cliffhanger in fine fashion.

*** Spoilers Below ... Since this is a discussion thread I'm not using "tags" ***

It was quite a coincidence, though, that there were only four survivors out of the entire initial search and rescue team and three of them were main characters!

By the way, it was fairly obvious that Michael left on the cloaked "Jumper" before his ship was destroyed.

I was a little concerned about how they were going to handle Tapping's exit. (I was afraid that they might kill her character off.) So I was pleased that it was handled in a fashion that would allow her to return at any time.

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

Whenever I see Woolsey walking around I start looking for his holographic emitter ...

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

Or his Johnnycab

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

So Michael has the Atlantean gene? How else would he have been able to fly the jumper?

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

Don't forget that he had access to a clone of Carson Beckett for over a year. It's reasonable to assume that that that was one of the first things he asked for.

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

Not to mention, they tied it into the upcoming Stargate: Continuum movie.

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

Killing her off was never an option- MGM would love to have a successful SG-1 direct-to-DVD movie franchise.

As far as how they handled the 'hand-off', I guess it's better than what they've done before (SG-1, O'Neil leaving SGC for HPS, which was nothing), but it seemed pretty quick and cheap. It make the IOC seem all the more-so of a bumbling international organization (which may be the point). I think better would have been Gen. O'Neil or Gen. Hammond meeting her at the gate stating that a situation of planetary scale required her reassignment - Woolsey being a 'temporary' replacement until the situation was in hand. That would be a better build-up to Continuum, and seem more a likely reason.

Otherwise, a good episode. Not great, but not bad.

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

Not really. There's no "situation of planetary scale" at the beginning of Continuum. The movie begins with exactly what was mentioned in the episode.

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

Then set it at the end of Continuum. While I understand it's only a TV show, it's still a weak resolution to the situation.

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

I don't see anything "weak" about it. And setting it at the end of Continuum? How would that improve anything? How would it even make sense, considering Carter's already back on Earth in Continuum?

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

I gave it 2 and a half stars out of four.

It was a decent "alien disease ep" combined with a lesson for Woolsey that going "by the book" isn't going to work too well when circumstances are dynamic. Of course, you would have thought that the IOC would have figured this out by now ...

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

SGA has been a major dissappointment from the beginning for me. I keep hoping it improves. Maybe it's that SG1 ran so long, but SGA runs into the major problem that it seems to revive old storylines at will, and sometimes they seem very out of place. I'm still having trouble rectifying them creating a second batch of replicators out of nowhere, which seemed like the ultimate rehash.

I think part of what is really hurting SGA is that there are fewer adventure episodes, where they go, discover things, learn some stuff, etc. Instead, there is too much focus on the technobabble and war elements. SG1 Pulled those off too, but you have to build chemistry where the characters have shared experiences beyond those that bring them together.

When SGA tries it, it comes off bad (Harmony is a good example)

I'm going to stick with it, not a lot else in the summer for Sci-Fi fans, especially with 4400 gone. But the scriptwriting on this show really needs work.

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

This season has been pretty bad. The episode about Elizabeth Weir....without Tori Higginson was pretty damn weak.

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

About the only thing you can say about the ep is that it tied up some loose ends from Season 4.

The thing is, I really thought that we might be seeing the introduction of a strong replicator ally -- perhaps even a semi-regular -- with this epsiode. I mean, otherwise why go to all of the trouble to place the Weir character in a new body? (And that part of the show did demonstrate some strong legerdemain on the part of the writers -- pulling together many elements of the past two seasons in a rather ingenious fashion in order to allow the Weir character to live in a new replicator body. But then they threw the whole thing "out the window", so to speak, at the end of the ep.)

I'm about to take this show off my active DVR viewing list. I'll still purchase the Season 5 DVDs, though. For some reason this series just seems to play a lot better on DVD.

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

Time after time they have the opportunity to find out how ZPMs are made and no one bothers to ask.

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

Very true. Add into that that most likely Atlantis has the capability to create/recharge them since the last Athosians had them all working right before the replicators attacked and defeated them.


It would improve it because a more plausible explanation could be shown. Getting told just as one goes through the gate? Especially given what Atlantis accomplished during her tenure - ultimate defeat of the replicators, not only rescuing Teyla from Michael, but recovering tactical information about his movements and plans. Only the most incompetent organization (and given government, not to mention, multiple governments, perhaps one should not be so surprised) would remove a leader after a success record like that.

They did temper it a bit the next episode with the "she's a victim of her own success" line, but the whole offhand conversation would not happen in life, and comes off cheap and throwaway on a television show - "Oh, we can't be like SG-1 and not explain why the leader steps aside, so let's write a 20 second scene so people will understand why Woolsey is now the leader of Atlantis".

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

There is actually a very simple explanation and fits well within the show's history. The IOC doesn't like the fact that the military has control of the Stargate and one of the requirements for the Atlantis mission was that it be lead by a civilian. Once Weir was gone they needed another leader. If we just excuse that they chose Samantha Carter for expediency (rather than TV production / writing), we know her days are numbered because the IOC doesn't like military control of Atlantis. Her "success" but being reckless the whole time just reenforces the IOC's resolve the put a civilian in charge who plays by the book.

I would like to see an episode where Woolsey does play by the book over the desires of Col. Shephard and turns out to be correct. That would give him standing as a leader and that Col. Shephard doesn't always have the right plan. The problem has always been that "The leader" position has little or no screen time in each episode. To make Woolsey (or previously Carter and Weir) a major character requires that the episodes be generally confined to Atlantis and that tends to be the weaker episodes as we have yet another "something went wrong with the holodeck, I mean ZPM" type episode.

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

Cancelled.

GateWorld - Stargate Atlantis will end this season

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

The most interesting thing about that article to me is reading the talk back portion and seeing how passionate some folks still are about Stargate:Atlantis. My own reaction, after all these years of SG-1 and Atlantis, is more along the lines of, "Oh, OK."

There was a time when SciFi owned Friday evenings in this household. It was SG-1, followed by Atlantis, followed by BSG. That was the peak, but it couldn't last. Cancellation, schedule changes (BSG), scheduled ending (BSG), and another cancellation (Atlantis). Once these shows are done, I'll officially have no reason to watch SciFi. Maybe they'll do another Dune miniseries.

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

I can't say that I'm all that surprised by this cancellation. For whatever reason, it just seemed to me that the 10th season of SG-1 had more energy associated with it than Atlantis' Fourth Season. So I was surprised when SG-1 was canceled and Atlantis was extended. (I really did enjoy the first two seasons of Atlantis, though; and the third season was "pretty good". But since then it seems to have fallen off a cliff ...)

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

Well crap. Just another reason I watch little television these days.

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

No surprise there. No series has ever gone more than five seasons on Sci Fi.

And the only previous series to even reach that far, at least that I know of, was SG-1.

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

At least Stargate will live on in Stargate: Universe

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

Did anyone see last Friday's episode with Rodney turning into Rainman?
Pretty bad in my opinion.

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

Pretty good in my opinion.

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

I saw it (and will see every episode until it completes, despite the fact that I don't consider it must-see TV). It didn't register as any new ground on the ineptitude scale for me. But then, since I'm caring for a parent suffering from Dementia, maybe it was just a little more poignant for me.

Re: Stargate: Atlantis Season 5

This actually concerns me. Takes place on a ship? New mythology? Attract younger viewers? Darker tone (BSG)? I'll give it a shot, but I'm not jazzed.

I think one of the main problems with Atlantis was the absence of a mythology - SG-1 was neat to see how the Egyptian mythos played into the series. Atlantis doesn't have any 'old stories' to fall back on. Add to that the musical chairs as far as personnel, and it's not real surprising that it's being thrown to the side.

I liked The Shrine; I'm not one of those Keller-haters you find on Sci-Fi or GateWorld. I also liked that R. Dax wanted to do it for Rodney, showing that while Sheppard is definitely his best friend, he's got a deep loyalty to his team.