Morally questionable actions of the Stargate Atlantis Expedition

[Mister Oragahn]

To US its parasitic, as its humans being fed on. Would we say our feeding on cows is parasitic? The cow's might.

Now there are shades of that nice SG-1 episode Pretense.
True, they are predators, but parasites can be considered to be predators.
I was talking about the Wraith culture as a whole, but the fact that they so exclusively rely on humans and leech off humans' life. The process itself isn't even totally lethal. It's just the Wraith who really drain humans out of their last drip of life.
It's even possible that what makes humans die and age could be due to a massive stress, like if you squeezed them too much at once.

[thekillman]

My statement was in response to "Mister Oragahn's" statement that their relationship is parasitic..

I know, but it's not parasitic, it's the wrong term. It's a predator relationship and in that relationship the prey has little to say. It's domination by force, and even if the prey can fight back that doesn't make it parasitic.

Not entirely true. Hosts benefit a lot from symbiotes. It's not one way.

Well yea, the relationship is a grey area. A goa'uld is a parasite, but a tok'ra is a symbiont. Strangely, the goa'uld are themselves sometimes called symbionts. I guess it mostly depends on how heavily you weigh the "losing control is negative" thing, as you can argue that if you're not you, how can anything done to you be a benefit, even if it's really beneficial.

[garhkal]

Now there are shades of that nice SG-1 episode Pretense.
True, they are predators, but parasites can be considered to be predators.
I was talking about the Wraith culture as a whole, but the fact that they so exclusively rely on humans and leech off humans' life. The process itself isn't even totally lethal. It's just the Wraith who really drain humans out of their last drip of life..

As we have seen in several eps even having a good chunk of your life sucked out is a death sentence (ancient one).. So whether they suck you dry or take half your life, you are as good as dead.
Though one thing i dearly wish they would have addressed. Can a wraith feed off of a clone of a human or not?

[coolcatkim22]

Can a wraith feed off of a clone of a human or not?

Probably but as we've seen cloning isn't easy for them.

They could only fuel their cloning facility with a ZPM and they only times they had one was when they were at war with the ancients or when they were fighting the Atlantis expedition. In both instances being wiped out was more important then hunger in those instances.

Then again, we don't know if they can clone humans as easily as they can clone wraith. The only clone human there was (least from what I can recall) was Beckett and he was made by Michael who already has done a lot of things that none of the wraith have been able to do before (probably cause they didn't want to but that's besides the point). The facility they had was probably only useful for wraith cloning; they needed a queen to run the thing after all.

Also, it's been very clear in the series that clones (like in real life) are more likely to have genetic problems and a lower life expectancy. Even the Asgard had problems with cloning and they were some of the smartest aliens around. Coupled with the facts that they'd have to raise so many infants or speed up their life growth (which may make them unusable depending if that factor affects feeding at all) it doesn't seem like they be able to make too many before finding problems.

It's very likely they either never figured out how to clone humans or did and found they didn't get enough people out of it to make it worth their while. It could be like you said and they could feed on them but I guess we won't know. Heck, it could be that they do have a human cloning facility on some planet, it's just that it doesn't produce enough clones to feed them all.

I guess we'll never know.

[DarkenLycht]

As we have seen in several eps even having a good chunk of your life sucked out is a death sentence (ancient one).. So whether they suck you dry or take half your life, you are as good as dead.
Though one thing i dearly wish they would have addressed. Can a wraith feed off of a clone of a human or not?

I assume Wraith could feed from a human clone if they manage to create them.
As I can recall from what Dr. Keller said, the clone of Dr. Beckett was without doubt Carson Beckett, even if he had this genetic problem.
So I would say, Wraith can feed from clones, but maybe it does not ease their hunger fully, because with that genetic disorder, clones would die too fast and are not worth the efforts, to create them as a food source at all, that way.
So they had to find a way to fix that first, maybe

[Mister Oragahn]

As we have seen in several eps even having a good chunk of your life sucked out is a death sentence (ancient one).. So whether they suck you dry or take half your life, you are as good as dead.

It is a death sentence because it's always overkill and done too fast. But from Common Ground, we know it's not necessarily deadly.

[garhkal]

Good point. Shep did seem to get drained a lot, but didn't die. But it has been the case with most others who got fed on.

[DarkenLycht]

Yes, though Todd was torn away from Shep before he could take all and later gave back what he took, we don't know if Shep had died soon if Todd hadn't done that

[Atlantea]

I'm not even talking about the grander issues there but just simple stuff like Sheppard opening a PoW's cell and boldly murdering him with a firearm in front of multiple witnesses.

What episode was this?

[jelgate]

What episode was this?

The Siege I

[garhkal]

But would he have really been considered a POW after seeing what they DO to our POWs they capture?

[thekillman]

But would he have really been considered a POW after seeing what they DO to our POWs they capture?

That doesn't change the fact that under current rules, he did something that was wrong, no matter how "morally justified" it may be.

ISIS beheads people they capture but that doesn't mean we suddenly can behead everyone too.

[Starrtom]

If you watch the show looking for things like this you'll find a LOT of it. Some of the things they did were reprehensible, the sort of things you'd expect from the villain characters/badguy alien empire, but because of the light they got presented in it gets missed by a lot of people. Or people just defend it because they like/identify with the characters and refuse to see that the things they're depicted as doing are just wrong when viewed objectively.

I'm not even talking about the grander issues there but just simple stuff like Sheppard opening a PoW's cell and boldly murdering him with a firearm in front of multiple witnesses.

Then you've got the basic fact that the purpose of the expedition was essentially to loot the Pegasus galaxy of powerful ancient tech to use against the SGC's enemies in the milky way. When that got complicated by them waking up the Wraith they hid under their invincible city shield, or literally just hid entirely, while the humans native to the Pegasus galaxy got to pay the price for their little boo boo with the Wraith. Then they turn genocidal robots lose on them and just generally hide in their shadowy corner only coming out to kick the various hornet's nests from time to time, but never really making any progress toward ending the conflict, despite their continued dream of a galaxy wide Wraith genocide.

Then once they've poked them in the eye enough that the Wraith are finally going to hit them where it hurts, namely Earth, they steal the city to defend their own planet, trashing it in the process, and leave the Pegasus natives to deal with the continued wrath of the enemy they've enraged without any hope of defending themselves.

Their arrival and activities in Pegasus can probably be linked to more death and misery, both human, Wraith and sentient robot, than any other event in the 10,000 years since the original Ancient/Wraith war.

Couldn't agree more. Most of SGA was morally questionable, and that is why after season 1 it just went badly IMO.

Other minor and major examples:

Sheppard and the team were considering taking the ZPM from the childhoods End planet to protect themselves. It was Weir (bless her little heart) that was the moral code in this show.

The retro virus, for a Doctor who always takes the moral high ground who insists " Do no Harm"", well Carson caused a lot of harm with some very serious consequences.

Doing deals with Todd the wraith and then more then happy to burn him, even though he once saved Sheppard's life. He is a wraith that you can communicate with and is prepared to come to an understanding.

Some one mentioned the trail in season 5, well they got away with it. How is that justified??

[Kiryk]

I agree with some of this, although overall i think the series tries to get us to be critical of the SGA team at times on these issues and people do at least #9sometimes) ask the right questions or show the other side. I'm surprised no-one has mentioned the intended rough interrogation of Kavanagh by Ronon (with Weir's say-so) in 'Critical Mass' - a classic example of someone appearing to be guilty but compounded by dislike and distrust.

As Weir says at the end '"we crossed a line"

[bvanevery]

I'm not even talking about the grander issues there but just simple stuff like Sheppard opening a PoW's cell and boldly murdering him with a firearm in front of multiple witnesses.

I seem to recall that PoW being a wraith? They aren't Geneva Convention signatories. The moral compass of their species is "winner take all". It's not like they're German conscripts and we have American conscripts and your point of view just depends on which government you have to serve. They aren't getting together to sing "Silent Night" in the WW I trenches one Christmas Eve.

Then you've got the basic fact that the purpose of the expedition was essentially to loot the Pegasus galaxy of powerful ancient tech to use against the SGC's enemies in the milky way.

Salvage rights. And the indigenous obviously suck at it.

Then once they've poked them in the eye enough that the Wraith are finally going to hit them where it hurts, namely Earth, they steal the city to defend their own planet, trashing it in the process, and leave the Pegasus natives to deal with the continued wrath of the enemy they've enraged without any hope of defending themselves.

Who says we wouldn't come back? Can't exactly stay and defend anyways, leaving your home base of logistics in the Milky Way to be completely destroyed.

Their arrival and activities in Pegasus can probably be linked to more death and misery, both human, Wraith and sentient robot, than any other event in the 10,000 years since the original Ancient/Wraith war.

Buncha liberal whining. Really, what is this faff? War's Hell. Didn't you get the WW II memo on that? You cryin' a river over Hiroshima too?