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    "Exploring the City" Episodes

    Is it me, or did the writers drop the ball on exploring the city? The last Atlantis-based exploration episode I can think of is "Submerged" from late Season 3. There was Janus's secret lab in "First Contact," but that was mostly setting up a larger story. Most of the fourth and fifth season action was off world. Sure, we still saw plenty of the city, but it seemed to me like the exploration-based stories dropped off the map along with Dr. Weir. Does anyone else here feel the same way? I'm still miffed that they wrote her out. She gave the show this grand sense of wonder. During Carter and Woolsey's time, it felt less like the lost city and more like a base of operations. It was so much more than that!

    At least in the series finale, the city had one last glorious moment.
    Spoiler:
    It was when Sheppard was about to detonate the nuke after having nothing profound to say before he and his team died. Carter radios in, there's another ship... it's Atlantis! That shot of the city passing from behind the hive with those awesome vocals. That was just a beautiful scene with very dramatic music. It was like a final reminder to what this city is and what it's capable of.

    #2
    I think part of the reason there was a reduction in new areas in later seasons was money. Whenever the writers wrote about a new lab, with strange new machines and funky displays, the set designers and builders would have to spend large sums of money making it all real.
    It was much easier and cheaper to head off into the hills and film on location and utilise the existing sets for the city shots rather than spend out on new expensive sets and effects that would probably only get one use.
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      #3
      I don't buy that. Would it have really killed the budget to do one or two "exploring the city" episodes in the fourth and fifth seasons?

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        #4
        Maybe they already figured out everything else in the city and there was nothing more to explore? As for base of operations, I agree. They rarely built more Atlantis sets after Season 3. And I don't like that some of the "every day" sets (like the corridor Teyla used to hide from Michael) never appeared in Weir's "era".
        "I have never understood why it should be necessary to become irrational in order to prove that you care... or why it should be necessary to prove it at all."

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          #5
          Budgetary reasons probably. But it's funny how many of the same people who complain of the lack of exploration of Atlantis also lament the lack of gate travel (planet exploration) in SGU.
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            #6
            Originally posted by rushy View Post
            Maybe they already figured out everything else in the city and there was nothing more to explore?
            Do you have any idea just how big the city is? They could occupy it for ten years and still have plenty to discover. Granted, with the city on Earth, that will accelerate as it would be easy to increase the man power for exploration, but we're talking prior to the finale.

            Originally posted by rushy View Post
            As for base of operations, I agree. They rarely built more Atlantis sets after Season 3.


            Originally posted by maneth View Post
            Budgetary reasons probably.
            That didn't stop them from spending lots of money to do space ship based episodes.

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              #7
              Originally posted by rushy View Post
              Maybe they already figured out everything else in the city and there was nothing more to explore? As for base of operations, I agree. They rarely built more Atlantis sets after Season 3. And I don't like that some of the "every day" sets (like the corridor Teyla used to hide from Michael) never appeared in Weir's "era".
              Unlikely, since Atlantis is supposedly as big as Manhattan. Even in the 5th year, it's unlikely the entire city had been explored.

              Budgetary reasons or not, I would like to have seen more of the city, since there were likely some very interesting bits of it we didn't get to see.

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                #8
                Originally posted by hedwig View Post
                Unlikely, since Atlantis is supposedly as big as Manhattan. Even in the 5th year, it's unlikely the entire city had been explored.

                Budgetary reasons or not, I would like to have seen more of the city, since there were likely some very interesting bits of it we didn't get to see.
                Exactly!!!!

                If I remember right, Dr. Weir said something about only having explored about a of third of the city by the SG-1 episode, Pegasus Project. I think she also said something about not really understanding a lot of what they had found. The writers really dropped the ball on this, IMHO.
                I tell you Teal'c, hockey is the coolest game on Earth!

                Did you not say it is played on ice, O'Neill?

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                  #9
                  Agreed.. I would have loved at least 2 eps a season after S2 devoted to just exploring the city..

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                    #10
                    Originally posted by garhkal View Post
                    Agreed.. I would have loved at least 2 eps a season after S2 devoted to just exploring the city..
                    I would have liked that. I'm sure they could have come up with something better than finding a machine that caused exploding tumors if they had tried.
                    I tell you Teal'c, hockey is the coolest game on Earth!

                    Did you not say it is played on ice, O'Neill?

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                      #11
                      Or that worldbuilding game that was no game, even if the ep was okay...
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                        #12
                        I actually liked the game...

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                          #13
                          I think the last ep that had a new Atlantis set was the one where Daniel finds that secret lab.

                          Seasons 4 and 5 grew kinda... repetitive. Except some awesome eps like Doppelganger.

                          And whose idea was to blow up the Stargate and have a new one next ep with no problems at all?
                          "I have never understood why it should be necessary to become irrational in order to prove that you care... or why it should be necessary to prove it at all."

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                            #14
                            More exploration of the city would have been great but obviously TPTW didn't think it was necessary at all.

                            A lot of the city sets were re-used for different locations, a corridor which is then turned into a room, or vice versa. Seen it happen more than once. And they had an entire collection of props that could be rebuild to suit a different purpose. They did it with the device that could capture the ascended being. It used to be something else in SG1, to make 4th dimension bugs visible or something.
                            Heightmeyer's Lemming -- still the coolest Lemming of the forum

                            Proper Stargate Rewatch -- season 10 of SG-1

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                              #15
                              I'm another one of those people who would have loved to have seen them explore more of the city, I mean it's such an incredible place, I mean McKay even says that exploring every room in the city would be like exploring every room in Manhattan, that place is huge. One thing that I think would be interesting to see more of is the fact that it is a city so there has got to be more public places where the ancient could go to just relax etc. things that aloud the ancient to just be humans for a while, but also things that could give the people of today more of an insight into the ancients lives.

                              I have to admit that while I do loved the flying scenes I was a bit surprised that they actually had the guts to do it considering that they knew that there were machines that creates exploding tumors, I mean, who knew what else the city hides.
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