City Defences...

[RedOak]

I'M sorry guys... but what the hell's going on with the Atlantis writers?

A Wraith hybrid "virus" contaminates over 30 people from the expedition, then goes on to grow what could be a full Wraith entity/ship/whatever... but the city just don't give a damn about it? Just in season 4, we've seen what a simple little thing could trigger that "ancient" system, but yet a full on Wraith incursion doesn't do ****?

Man someone really dropped the ball on that one...

Each season of Atlantis is sinking more and more and it hurts.

[Xaeden]

The issue last season was because of a malfunction brought about by Mckay tweaking the system (which he since fixed). There's no reason for the city to enable quarantine measures on a pathogen which cannot spread to other's in the city though (or every pathogen for that matter). And there was no reason for it lockdown when the tentacles grew out of the pathogen as it was simply an alien organism and we've seen that the city doesn't lockdown when it detects alien DNA. Although the alien organism didn't even show up on the lifesigns detector and they had to reconfigure internal systems to pick it up at all.

[jenks]

Presumably Michael would have known about that and found away around it.

[Jack_Bauer]

Presumably Michael would have known about that and found away around it.

Got any evidence to back that up...?

[jenks]

Got any evidence to back that up...?

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/presumably

[RedOak]

Sorry mate,

i get what you're saying... but its Wraith stuff we're talking about. One of the biggest problem the "ancients" had to deal with... you'd think that even if the bare "smell" of one of them was within a few kilometers of the city, it'd know about it... no? I'm sorry but any "assumption" or half-assed answers from the episode simply don't cut it now.

The issue last season was because of a malfunction brought about by Mckay tweaking the system (which he since fixed). There's no reason for the city to enable quarantine measures on a pathogen which cannot spread to other's in the city though (or every pathogen for that matter). And there was no reason for it lockdown when the tentacles grew out of the pathogen as it was simply an alien organism and we've seen that the city doesn't lockdown when it detects alien DNA. Although the alien organism didn't even show up on the lifesigns detector and they had to reconfigure internal systems to pick it up at all.

[Xaeden]

Sorry mate,

i get what you're saying... but its Wraith stuff we're talking about. One of the biggest problem the "ancients" had to deal with... you'd think that even if the bare "smell" of one of them was within a few kilometers of the city, it'd know about it... no? I'm sorry but any "assumption" or half-assed answers from the episode simply don't cut it now.

You're the one using assumptions here - We've already seen that the lifesigns detector is not capable of telling the difference between a Wraith and a Human (their technology is not magical in nature, it has limitations). And it would stupid of the city to go into quarantine mode whenever it detected a Wraith's presence anyway. If possible it should, at best, sound an alarm so they can send people to investigate. Automatically locking down the entire city whenever a Wraith prisoner comes through is not helpful and we don't even know that they ever had a reason to worry about a Wraith intrustion (another assumption of yours). With the full knowledge of how to operate Atlantis, it's possible that a Wraith never got anywhere closer than the outer edges of the city's shields. Although we cannot know for sure, we can use the show as a reference and the only time a Wraith ever got into Atlantis on their own was during the Seige. Which happened only because Atlantis did not have a ZPM to use its long range sensors to detect the scout and they were unable to raise the shields to prevent them from getting into the city.

[RepliVeggie]

I kinda of have to agree. I was more focused on the Ship growing with the ZPM to notice. But I believe after a month the city should have realized a wraith pathogen was in the city and sounded some sort of Alert.

[tombombadil]

i thought they said that the quarantine problem was caused by the planet's atmosphere interfering with the city's system, and that it was McKay's fault....

[Xaeden]

I kinda of have to agree. I was more focused on the Ship growing with the ZPM to notice. But I believe after a month the city should have realized a wraith pathogen was in the city and sounded some sort of Alert.

The thing though is how does the city know a pathogen is so dangerous that the city needs to be quarantined when all its doing is sitting in one's system and not harming them or spreading to the rest of the population? And when it did make its move, it simply created an alien organism that couldn't be picked up on lifesigns and wouldn't matter anyway as the city doesn't lockdown when aliens are in the city. Further more, why should it pick up something so seemingly harmless and trigger a lockdown when it does not to do for a host of Earth based pathogens which cause physical sickness and spread to the rest of the population, but are not life threatening due to medications and built up resistances?

It would be nice if the city had a magic system that could so perfectly protect its inhabitants by properly analyzing every little germ and bacteria that came through and determining what their future effects will be, but it has never been portrayed as such as so why start now? The only two examples we have of the city locking down were when dangerous nanites known to the Ancients infected a percent of the population and when the system malfunctioned as a result of Mckay's tampering. Which Mckay did because it ignored a bacterial infection prior to that and after he fixed the malfunction it had yet to be tested to see how much better the lasting improvements are. So, really, the city not going into lockdown doesn't contradict anything done in previous episodes.

[Mitchell82]

I'M sorry guys... but what the hell's going on with the Atlantis writers?

A Wraith hybrid "virus" contaminates over 30 people from the expedition, then goes on to grow what could be a full Wraith entity/ship/whatever... but the city just don't give a damn about it? Just in season 4, we've seen what a simple little thing could trigger that "ancient" system, but yet a full on Wraith incursion doesn't do ****?

Man someone really dropped the ball on that one...

Each season of Atlantis is sinking more and more and it hurts.

We've seen that the Ancient dectectors are not infalible. It was such a tiny spore that at first shows no physical signs and the "odor" it emits is not detectable by humans or the senors. Most likely the ANcients never figured out how the Wraith contstructed their ships so they wouldn't be able to program the sensors to detect that kind of pathogen.