How would have the SG-Atlantis expedition ended if it wasn't cancelled?

[Arica15]

No. NOT EVERYBODY! I am sure they would keep large farms of humans alive to keep the species going.. ....Maybe the lucky ones would be kept like veal.

Who is up for a singsong......"Old Wraith Todd had a farm.... ee i ee i oh"

[Lt.UrsulaKenmore]

Who is up for a singsong......"Old Wraith Todd had a farm.... ee i ee i oh"

With a Sheppard here and a Ronon there, here a McKay, there a Teyla, everywhere a Zelenka, Old Wraith Todd had a farm, ee i ee i oh!

I've already turned my thoughts into a stories that I had hoped to get published by Fandemonium, but that didn't work out so now I've turned them into a blog where I release a chapter a week for those that are busy like me and can't get online every day. The site's banner is my signature. And it's address is easy to remember: stargateatlantisseasonsix.com.

Swing by, read, and hopefully enjoy. You can even signup as a follower or post comments directly to the post just click on the Recent Post of your choice and scroll down to the bottom.

[Peterking72]

Well, nice thoughts here and there. I also agree with and like that idea where they go back and kick some wraith ass again, but with a muccchhhh greater force. Probably 8-10 Daedalus class ships with Asgard laser beams would be nice. Only problem would be the cost and the time to build such starfleet. Or they just borrow the plans to the Death Star from ol' Darth Sidious and make use of it. The core would be a big ZPM, size of a skyscraper. Main weapon: a slightly oversized version of the Asgard laser beam. They would only had to find that elusive galaxy far far away and that would be how SGU would come in handy. However that would have resulted in the real world Lusasfilm sue MGM's ass twice over and back again.
I like Snowman37's comment on the self destruct problem, my thoughts exactly. That self destruct would have turned on the minute they left the Pegasus galaxy and by the time season six would have started they would've been all fried chicken in a very large crater of "pan". I would have gone with the issue of they go back because they just have to. It's like they left the gas lighter turned on, and they wouldn't like a meal overcooked or do they? Or never leave a man left behind, even though the Pegasus people are not exactly their crew but still a kin on some degree.

[Peterking72]

It also could have end in a way someone did on another SG site, that SG-1 is still on the pods on the planet within the "Gamekeeper's" virtual reality and they suddenly wake up, this time for real and realize that OMG Apophis frenchfried the planet. Goa'uld still at large. They don't have spaceships and what the heck happened to never leave a man behind.

[Ouroboros]

I would have ended it with the increasingly desperate Wraith civil war leading to the emergence of increasingly nastier weapons and technologies from them, eventually culminating in one of the factions creating a sort of low rent knock off version of the ancient cloning machine and using it to make infinite clone humans for themselves.

With their newfound freedom to grow in unprecedented numbers, they quickly wipe out all their opposition, gather up whatever nasty doomsday projects the others were all working on, and get started rebuilding a new Wraith nation in Pegasus that takes a far more active and brutal involvement in human affairs and doesn't hibernate anymore. Non cloned humans are no longer needed so they're casually killed or displaced by the growing Wraith influence, as they now seek to create permanent living space for themselves and their vat grown food clones on former human planets.

The team's attention then turns to evacuation and relocation of human populations as the Wraith reorganize themselves and consolidate under one leadership. Eventually hostilities spark off again and the SGA team is driven from the Pegasus galaxy by overwhelming force.

The series ends on a note that sometimes best intentions mixed with poor planning and institutionalized arrogance can have catastrophic and far reaching results. And how even well intentioned tampering with the balance between alien cultures can sometimes force those cultures to change and adapt in unexpected and disastrous ways. The "Pegasus Catastrophe" as it comes to be known, is studied by numerous future generations of explorers and is used as a basis to shape new first contact protocalls to govern how future Earth expeditions will interact with off world human populations, as well as how they will approach first contact with newly discovered alien species.

The Wraith meanwhile are left as a large unknown quantity in the Pegasus galaxy following the evacuation of the Atlantis team. The SGC and free Jaffa nation deploy a series of listening posts and monitoring installations in the galactic halo to keep a watchful eye on Pegasus for any signs of a Wraith invasion crossing the void. The galaxy holds its collective breath and wonders whether the alien bear the SGC flew 3 million light years to poke, is still angry, and if it will one day be able to find them.

Not a happy ending for sure, but it's got a useful message, and I can't really see how you can pull a happy ending out of the mess they made of that galaxy without it seeming totally dishonest and out of the blue.

[Arica15]

I would have ended it with the increasingly desperate Wraith civil war leading to the emergence of increasingly nastier weapons and technologies from them, eventually culminating in one of the factions creating a sort of low rent knock off version of the ancient cloning machine and using it to make infinite clone humans for themselves.

With their newfound freedom to grow in unprecedented numbers, they quickly wipe out all their opposition, gather up whatever nasty doomsday projects the others were all working on, and get started rebuilding a new Wraith nation in Pegasus that takes a far more active and brutal involvement in human affairs and doesn't hibernate anymore. Non cloned humans are no longer needed so they're casually killed or displaced by the growing Wraith influence, as they now seek to create permanent living space for themselves and their vat grown food clones on former human planets.

The team's attention then turns to evacuation and relocation of human populations as the Wraith reorganize themselves and consolidate under one leadership. Eventually hostilities spark off again and the SGA team is driven from the Pegasus galaxy by overwhelming force.

The series ends on a note that sometimes best intentions mixed with poor planning and institutionalized arrogance can have catastrophic and far reaching results. And how even well intentioned tampering with the balance between alien cultures can sometimes force those cultures to change and adapt in unexpected and disastrous ways. The "Pegasus Catastrophe" as it comes to be known, is studied by numerous future generations of explorers and is used as a basis to shape new first contact protocalls to govern how future Earth expeditions will interact with off world human populations, as well as how they will approach first contact with newly discovered alien species.

The Wraith meanwhile are left as a large unknown quantity in the Pegasus galaxy following the evacuation of the Atlantis team. The SGC and free Jaffa nation deploy a series of listening posts and monitoring installations in the galactic halo to keep a watchful eye on Pegasus for any signs of a Wraith invasion crossing the void. The galaxy holds its collective breath and wonders whether the alien bear the SGC flew 3 million light years to poke, is still angry, and if it will one day be able to find them.

Not a happy ending for sure, but it's got a useful message, and I can't really see how you can pull a happy ending out of the mess they made of that galaxy without it seeming totally dishonest and out of the blue.

Okay that's....horrific but does raise an interesting logical question. If the wraith could clone humans (and apparently they could - see Beckett - why didn't they just do that all along?

[Ouroboros]

Okay that's....horrific but does raise an interesting logical question. If the wraith could clone humans (and apparently they could - see Beckett - why didn't they just do that all along?

It's one of the great mysteries of the series. There's been lots of theories as to why but if the basic essence of the reason boils down to some version of "they never really needed/wanted to before" that goes out the window with them all fighting each other now and looking for any advantage they can get as the supply of normal humans gets smaller and smaller.

Before the SGA expedition's arrival, the Pegasus galaxy had a sort of twisted balance in the sense that the Wraith limited their numbers and culling cycles to levels that the human prey populations there could support. They could do that because they thought they were safe, and that they'd eradicated all their potential enemies. The Atlantis expedition showed them that they're not safe. That civilizations from other galaxies exist and potentially will seek to harm them.

Being confronted with this new reality I can't see them returning to their old status quo, especially not without destroying Earth first. They can't go back to sleep again because Earth has already shown it would like nothing better than to wipe them all out of existence, and when they're all asleep and helpless would be the perfect time to attempt that.

They're going to need a new status quo, and their past historical behavior has already shown that they won't tolerate the threat posed by enemies who can strike at them on anything like equal terms. They don't feel safe unless they're the only ones left standing. Once they're done fighting with each other I'd expect nothing less than a massive military buildup and likely eventually a campaign to find Earth and bring it under their control, or if they've secured alternate food sources, simply destroy it. As the worst threat to their existence since the ancients they won't feel safe again until the threat of Earth is gone.

[Lt.UrsulaKenmore]

Okay that's....horrific but does raise an interesting logical question. If the wraith could clone humans (and apparently they could - see Beckett - why didn't they just do that all along?

Oooh, that's a good one. I've never thought of that before, it's an obvious conclusion, but I'd never thought of it before. Maybe the Wraith ran into what Michael ran into, that the humans couldn't really be controlled or that they started showing signs of being like Teyla and Kanaan?

[Peterking72]

Way too horrific ending. Considering that the Stargate series, not just Atlantis but SG-1 before that always took themselves half serious and add a considerable amount of humour to the show. Sure there were heart moving drama episodes and lost friends, broken friendships and all, but if you take that away with an ending like you would have in plan Ouroboros, then you would broke that fine balance between good and bad that defined the series. Besides it would be kind of an unending. I don't like unfinished businnesses.
As to the cloning of the humans. That could go along a while, but considering the degradation of each clone there would be and end to the cycle. When the cloned humans would degrade to a level, where consuming them would have the effect that of eating rotten flesh and even pose dangerous unseen problems. Ieoisoning, botulism, viruses so on. Note the Asgards for comparison. They diminished to dwarfs due to the process of cloning themselves for over 10000 years. I certainly would not eat cooked asgard flesh (not just because they are our allies and bla-bla-bla...), would you?
As a final word I would continue the series with twist until a final victory could be achieved either by eliminating all wraith or somehow diminish their number to a level when they pose no further threat to any human population.

[Arica15]

Way too horrific ending. Considering that the Stargate series, not just Atlantis but SG-1 before that always took themselves half serious and add a considerable amount of humour to the show. Sure there were heart moving drama episodes and lost friends, broken friendships and all, but if you take that away with an ending like you would have in plan Ouroboros, then you would broke that fine balance between good and bad that defined the series. Besides it would be kind of an unending. I don't like unfinished businnesses.
As to the cloning of the humans. That could go along a while, but considering the degradation of each clone there would be and end to the cycle. When the cloned humans would degrade to a level, where consuming them would have the effect that of eating rotten flesh and even pose dangerous unseen problems. Ieoisoning, botulism, viruses so on. Note the Asgards for comparison. They diminished to dwarfs due to the process of cloning themselves for over 10000 years. I certainly would not eat cooked asgard flesh (not just because they are our allies and bla-bla-bla...), would you?
As a final word I would continue the series with twist until a final victory could be achieved either by eliminating all wraith or somehow diminish their number to a level when they pose no further threat to any human population.

Hmm, that could be the reason for not using cloning; but do we know that the wraith had the same problem with cloning that the asgard did? Besides cloning the clones over and over isn't necessarily how they would use the cloning technology or even how the technology would work; the wraith wouldn't be looking to recreate the same people over and over; just people. For example could they clone one person multiple times in the same generation? If not, why not? From the evidence of Beckett's clone it appears that all they need is genetic samples, heck for food purposes they wouldn't even need to recreate personality etc.

[Ouroboros]

Way too horrific ending. Considering that the Stargate series, not just Atlantis but SG-1 before that always took themselves half serious and add a considerable amount of humour to the show. Sure there were heart moving drama episodes and lost friends, broken friendships and all, but if you take that away with an ending like you would have in plan Ouroboros, then you would broke that fine balance between good and bad that defined the series. Besides it would be kind of an unending. I don't like unfinished businnesses.
As to the cloning of the humans. That could go along a while, but considering the degradation of each clone there would be and end to the cycle. When the cloned humans would degrade to a level, where consuming them would have the effect that of eating rotten flesh and even pose dangerous unseen problems. Ieoisoning, botulism, viruses so on. Note the Asgards for comparison. They diminished to dwarfs due to the process of cloning themselves for over 10000 years. I certainly would not eat cooked asgard flesh (not just because they are our allies and bla-bla-bla...), would you?
As a final word I would continue the series with twist until a final victory could be achieved either by eliminating all wraith or somehow diminish their number to a level when they pose no further threat to any human population.

So your proposed ending involves a "final victory" by eliminating an entire species and mine is the horrific one.

I will give you credit though. Yours is certainly the more likely one given how the series was ended. Given the writing team's demonstrated inability to resolve their story wars with anything other than "and so then we killed all of them and won, go Earth"

Some sort of turn in the writing needs to happen to show that the SGC can't just fly around sparking off wars all over the place and then resolve those wars by "eliminating all of X" with X being whatever species they happened to piss off that time. That's not the way heroes are supposed to be acting. Heroes are supposed to have qualities you can actually admire, not act like arrogant, wisecracking, bloodthirsty teenagers with way too much power at their disposal.

That was the difference between the early good SG1 and the deathbed years of SG1 and Atlantis. Early SG1 had characters like Jackson and O'neill who still made the right moral decisions most of the time or at least struggled to do so. It was a very real part of the story. It wasn't all just hollow wisecracks and pew pew beams and go Earth we kick all alien ass and are always right because we are the "good guys".

[dr.chrismckay]

The wraith discover the replicators next to a space gate, harvest them, power them up, strike a deal to get back at the Atlantis expedition by upgrading their hyperdrives, coordinates to earth, and upgrade their weapons. Watch out Milky Way, wraith and pissed off replicators are coming.

[The Dude]

So your proposed ending involves a "final victory" by eliminating an entire species and mine is the horrific one.

I will give you credit though. Yours is certainly the more likely one given how the series was ended. Given the writing team's demonstrated inability to resolve their story wars with anything other than "and so then we killed all of them and won, go Earth"

Some sort of turn in the writing needs to happen to show that the SGC can't just fly around sparking off wars all over the place and then resolve those wars by "eliminating all of X" with X being whatever species they happened to piss off that time. That's not the way heroes are supposed to be acting. Heroes are supposed to have qualities you can actually admire, not act like arrogant, wisecracking, bloodthirsty teenagers with way too much power at their disposal.

That was the difference between the early good SG1 and the deathbed years of SG1 and Atlantis. Early SG1 had characters like Jackson and O'neill who still made the right moral decisions most of the time or at least struggled to do so. It was a very real part of the story. It wasn't all just hollow wisecracks and pew pew beams and go Earth we kick all alien ass and are always right because we are the "good guys".

I don't know, though; I like your idea concerning an ending that isn't just "Wraith all dead now; game over"; but I don't recall it ever really being like, "We pissed off aliens now let's kill them YEEEE HAW! WINNARS!" The only time aliens were "eliminated" was when they were trying to eliminate the humans. It's not like the Atlantis team just showed up in Pegasus, started provoking innocent Wraiths and were like "Let's do some killin!" The Wraith were actively trying to kill them and, like the Goa'uld or Ori, etc. they forced an "either us or you" scenario. It seems to me the same as if we're walking through the woods, get attacked by a bear bent on mauling us, I shoot the bear and you cry "You killed a bear! oh the horror!" when I'd just be like, "What else was I going to do- did you see the teeth? The fangs? Those flailing paws of fury?"

Moreso, in Atlantis they seemed to be going out of their way to avoid that scenario with Beckett's anti-wraith serum- wasn't that the point of the episode Michael? Testing the bounds of morality in an attempt to win the war without actually having to exterminate the Wraith into oblivion? Sure, we could argue - like Michael- that it was still destruction of the Wraith- but given the alternative they were at least considering better options than "pew pew beams go Earth"

But again, I do vastly like your idea of something, more in depth than just "Wraith all dead now WINNARS!"

[Ouroboros]

I don't know, though; I like your idea concerning an ending that isn't just "Wraith all dead now; game over"; but I don't recall it ever really being like, "We pissed off aliens now let's kill them YEEEE HAW! WINNARS!" The only time aliens were "eliminated" was when they were trying to eliminate the humans. It's not like the Atlantis team just showed up in Pegasus, started provoking innocent Wraiths and were like "Let's do some killin!" The Wraith were actively trying to kill them and, like the Goa'uld or Ori, etc. they forced an "either us or you" scenario. It seems to me the same as if we're walking through the woods, get attacked by a bear bent on mauling us, I shoot the bear and you cry "You killed a bear! oh the horror!" when I'd just be like, "What else was I going to do- did you see the teeth? The fangs? Those flailing paws of fury?"

Initially this was partially true. While they did provoke the Wraith by basically invading their territory across an intergalactic void, and then attacking them again and offing one of their leaders when their team was caught, once that was done with it was a survival thing. At that point they basically did have to keep fighting them off regardless of who was the instigator because no one's just going to lie down and die, even if they only have themselves to blame for kicking a hornet's nest over. When it stopped being about pure survival was later when they manage to convince the Wraith the city is gone/destroyed and the Wraith are all so busy fighting each other they've more or less forgotten all about looking for Earth. They still stick around after that though, acting like they're still fighting for survival when all they're fighting for at that point is to keep their hands on the shiny ancient tech they think they're entitled to. They could have been covertly sneaking natives out of Pegasus on those intergalactic 304 flights and working on how to get the city back to Earth or hidden from the Wraith forever but instead they were using the time to resupply the base so they could stay longer and planning new ways to generally piss the Wraith off even more.

That's where I start having a problem with it. Because by staying there they're literally poking the bear not just once, which they've already done, but again and again. It's like watching some bratty kid pulling on a mean dog's tail or something. He gets lucky a few times and the dog doesn't really do anything but maybe growl and snap at him, but the stupid little dufus keeps doing it over and over again when he could just walk away, seemingly not going to be happy until he gets bit good.

Moreso, in Atlantis they seemed to be going out of their way to avoid that scenario with Beckett's anti-wraith serum- wasn't that the point of the episode Michael? Testing the bounds of morality in an attempt to win the war without actually having to exterminate the Wraith into oblivion? Sure, we could argue - like Michael- that it was still destruction of the Wraith- but given the alternative they were at least considering better options than "pew pew beams go Earth"

The whole Michael thing was the probably the stupidest plan they came up with. Not only is it morally reprehensible, requiring that they actually forcibly abduct Wraith at random for the purposes of experimenting on them like some kind of sinister war criminal cliches, but it wouldn't even work. The whole race lives on ships and they think a gas weapon is the key to ultimate victory? Yeah until they put hepa filters in their vents at least right. I mean these are the same aliens that adapted their defenses to teleporter tech they'd never even seen before, but now they're going to hit them with a bioweapon. They're going to hit the race that grows fully biological starships with a bioweapon... a bioweapon created by a 21st century doctor more or less working by himself on a rush schedule. Why they ever thought that was going to work is beyond me. They're just lucky the whole thing didn't give the Wraith any bright ideas about say, building a virus of their own that kills people with that special little ancient gene they were all so fond of injecting themselves with, then seeding all their planets with it.

But again, I do vastly like your idea of something, more in depth than just "Wraith all dead now WINNARS!"

If I had to bet on how they'd really have ended it though that would be where I'd place all my chips.

[Arica15]

Well I suppose you could say that if SGA hadn't been cancelled it's eventual end would have been.....cancellation