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

[Ouroboros]

I doubt she was going to murder him anyway. We saw later on from that episode with Ronon's friends that that's how they addict people to their enzyme. By feeding on them till they're almost dead then returning their life so they can repeat the process until they've hooked them.

Since the Keeper there wanted to know anything and everything about Earth and Sumner was being uncooperative it would make sense that that was what she was doing. Once he was hooked on the Wraith enzyme he'd willingly tell her everything she wanted to know about Earth.

I'll get to the too big posts later, work today.

[Infinite-Possibilities]

I always got the sense that the practice of forcibly making thralls out of people was a rare practice. The wraith in the Defiant One simply killed humans he wanted information out of. Plus, seeing as the writers didn't seem to come up with the idea of restoring life to a victim of wraith feeding until later I rather doubt she was going to ever restore him.

Todd mentions that "the gift of life is reserved only for our most devout thralls and our brothers."

[The Urban Spaceman]

The wraith in the Defiant One simply killed humans he wanted information out of.

That was an entirely different situation. The Defiant One Wraith had been stranded on that planety moon for like 10,000 years, and had already exhausted his supply of edible Wraith warriors. All he wanted was a way off the planet, so as soon as he got what he needed, of course he would have fed on the humans, because he needed their delicious life-force.

Todd mentions that "the gift of life is reserved only for our most devout thralls and our brothers."

Perhaps that's how Todd and some of the Wraith use it (though he uses the term 'worshippers', not thralls), but we've also seen Wraith use it to purposely turn humans into thralls, so I'd say it's a combination of reward for those worshippers who willingly worship, and control for those worshippers who are turned through addiction (I'd make an analogy to ketracel white, which DS9 fans would understand).

We've also seen Wraith use the 'gift' to turn Ronan, just for ****s and giggles.

[Ouroboros]

I always got the sense that the practice of forcibly making thralls out of people was a rare practice. The wraith in the Defiant One simply killed humans he wanted information out of. Plus, seeing as the writers didn't seem to come up with the idea of restoring life to a victim of wraith feeding until later I rather doubt she was going to ever restore him.

It puts a new spin on the entire rising situation now that we know they do that though. Not as big of a spin as us learning that they can bring back the recently dead the same way, but a pretty big spin.:

Todd mentions that "the gift of life is reserved only for our most devout thralls and our brothers."

The gift of life would be them restoring the youth of a human or healing them or another Wraith by giving life force. This would be torture aimed at breaking the subjects will and making them serve the Wraith, not really something reserved for friends.

[Ouroboros]

Except as I said, the expedition DID NOT go "picking a fight with the wraith". The wraith attacked them first. You still seem to be blaming them for not trying something that would only worked in different circumstances. How is that relevant? You admit that diplomacy or hiding wouldn't have worked AND chide the expedition for not trying it? If they had tried to negotiate with the wraith it would have ended disastrously and most everyone would think the team were idiots for trying it.

They picked a fight when they encroached on the Wraith's territory, admittedly unknowingly, with an armed military type group. So the Wraith scoop them up and try to find out what they're doing there, which is what pretty much anyone would do, and then the next thing the expedition does is attack them. That's where the problem comes in. There needs to be steps that go in between here. Steps that would prevent the outbreak of unnecessary wars against otherwise reasonable aliens who would probably abduct any stray humans they found on their turf the same way.

It's a question of standing policy, or the need to establish one. They essentially got lucky with the Wraith in the sense that they actually would have remained hostile even if they had attempted diplomacy, so their unwillingness to do so was ultimately meaningless, instead of the disastrous blunder that started an unnecessary war it easily could have been. The point is though, that they did not know this about the Wraith ahead of time. They did not know that the Wraith would be hostile regardless, yet they chose the course they did anyway, hence my Klingon example. The Klingons probably would have reacted much the same way the Wraith did initially to an armed group invading their territory, but ultimately wouldn't have gone to a humanity wide declaration of war just because a couple dozen idiots bumbled onto one of their planets uninvited and started snooping around. They would however go to war over the same group of idiots then choosing to attack them, kill their leader and blow up their ship. It basically confirms that the intentions of the intruders they caught were obviously hostile toward them, and makes it very hard to look at anything they did as accidental as opposed to them just getting caught and interrupted trying to pull off whatever malicious plan they were up to.

The SGC attacking them would been seen as a vindication for them abducting their party. "See, they were here to harm us, just look at how they reacted when we caught them".

The situation in the Pegasus Galaxy is the way it is because of the wraith. What it might have been like if the wraith were a completely different species and the Expedition acted the same is totally irrelevant. If the there had been some other species in the Pegasus galaxy the whole situation may have played out differently altogether anyway.

This is the point I keep trying tog et across to you. Based on how the SGC acted the situation would not have actually played out much differently at all with different aliens. That's the point I'm trying to make. If you replace the Wraith with many other alien species a typical sci-fi hero group would encounter, the whole thing would have ended in a similar kind of intergalactic war disaster if the team had been successful in carrying out the same kind of attack against those aliens as they were against the Wraith.

Virtually no species I can think of would tolerate armed outsiders willfully violating their territory, then responding with a violent military raid that kills several of their own people when the initial offenders are captured for interrogation.

Well ok, maybe the Federation would.

The Atlantis Expedition had more than enough reason to think the Wraith were hostile beyond diplomacy AND they were right to think so. The natives had more than "ghost stories." Wraith cullings were a common occurrence even before the rest of the fleet awoke. The Athosians most definitely did have contact with the wraith and it was exclusively hostile throughout the entirely of their history. The team also had the records of the Ancients regarding the ruthless nature of the wraith. Add in the fact that first contact with the wraith involved wraith darts appearing out of the gate abducting people and they had a fairly clear indication that their civilization that was aggressive without provocation.

Sure signs were not exactly pointing to the idea of the Wraith being all smiles and sunshine, but that doesn't exactly make provoking them further a better idea. You need better information than the say so of a few people you met in the woods and the records of their enemies from a war 10,000 years ago. I mean it's really not that hard to just make contact with them first somehow to confirm that they're dicks before you start shooting them. Hilarious as it sounds Sheppard and company embarked on that mission without even knowing what a Wraith looked like. They didn't even know what they'd be shooting at, let alone what it would be shooting back at them.

Guess it's a good thing their troops didn't turn out to be Kull warrior type super soldiers that just laugh at any and all bullets huh.

So I don't think the SGC was out of line using force to recuse friends kidnapped by a clearly already hostile alien species. But, say I did think you're right that the SGC using the same first contact policy would have been disastrous with other advanced aliens. So what?

So what if next time it's the Q they piss off, or the Timelords, or some other godlike civilization that would crush Earth like a bug? They have no idea what's waiting out there. Therefore a more cautious and less gung-ho policy toward alien first contacts is necessary to protect Earth from the rash actions of a few people potentially dooming the whole planet.

I'm not saying that there's never going to be a time to fight hostile aliens, there is, but you need to exhaust other options first. You also need to make sure you're even realistically capable of fighting the aliens in question before you decide to commit to doing it, and that you're not picking a fight with a galaxy spanning empire with technology a million years ahead of yours. If you don't identify that situation for what it is when you encounter it you end up with your whole civilization squashed flatter than the last bug that bit you.

Moreover, even if I were to concede that the Atlantis Expedition did provoke an advanced hostile alien race, why are you so surprised that this happened? It's been like that in this franchise since DAY 1. It's not the fault of the Asgard or their advanced weapons they gave the SGC, this behavior is not new. In Children of the Gods, SG-1 attacked Chulak to rescue people and drew the attention of the System Lords.

Totally different situation. Apophis actually led a group of Jaffa through the Stargate to abduct people from Cheyenne mountain. He raided their territory and killed/harmed/abducted some of their people, and surprise of surprises, the SGC retaliated.

The only difference is that back then Earth were completely defenseless and logically the Goa'uld should have annihilated the Tau'ri shortly afterward. In fact that incident fits the "poking the bear" metaphor MUCH better than in Rising because the Goa'uld were a much greater threat to Earth than the Wraith.

The Goa'uld already knew where Earth was and could go there easily if they wanted to. Apophis' raid proved that they were going to start doing that again, so the only option at that point was to find some way to resist them. This is a different situation from going to another galaxy to start trouble with the natives there, then refusing to leave no matter how more and more screwed up the situation keeps getting for everyone involved.

And unlike the situation with the wraith, the Goa'uld still had no interest in Earth before the recuse mission was launched. Earth also had no useful knowledge of advanced technology and no allies to help them. In Rising, the Wraith Queen was already interrogating Sumner about Earth by the time Sheppard even showed up, so there was nothing he could have done about that. With the wraith, the team had a fighting chance with alien tech and the wraith's initial inability to reach Earth.

Your ascribing them precognition again. They knew nothing of Wraith inability to reach Earth, or even basic Wraith military capabilities when they decided to attack them. For all they knew they were all going to pile into that 10,000 year old puddle jumper and get blown out of the sky the minute they left the Stargate for thinking that 10,000 year old cloaking tech from a defeated enemy would still fool modern Wraith sensors.

[Ouroboros]

It might have been a fun story to do, but not very likely given that the majority of Wraith would sooner attempt to wipe out a more advanced foe than try to reason with them and trade. It would also have been difficult because of the restrictive Wraith technology -- they can't leave their galaxy to get even to the Milky Way, much less to the Asgard home galaxy.

There's a lot of technical issues with the idea that you can nitpick through for sure, I'm not trying to say there isn't, but you could easily write explanations around them for the sake of telling an interesting story. The idea that the Asgard download minds for example might lead to an even more interesting situation where the Wraith offer them cloned Wraith bodies to download into as a sort of a stop gap measure until their new collaboration can get the Asgard clones stabilized.

Then the Asgard would be physically Wraith and would have these huge powerful immortal bodies to walk around in that I'm betting not all of them would be so eager to give up or turn down in the first place.

Another problem is that the Asgard do actually care for humans; if they don't even like to see the goa'uld use them as hosts and enslave them, what makes you think they're likely to prefer the Wraith modus operandi of feeding on them? If there was even a chance of a Wraith harming the people of Cimmeria for example, the Asgard would never go for it.

It's important to remember that the Asgard and Wraith are not huge monolithic hive minds but societies of individuals. The Asgard government might reject the idea of their people using Wraith bodies for example, but some other minority group of renegades might be all aboard with the same idea and willing to trade just about anything they could get their hands on in exchange for biological immortality. There have been renegade Asgard before. One of them even experimented on humans.

On the same note most Wraith might be disgusted by the idea of making deals with aliens, but one more pragmatic queen might decide to do it because she realizes Asgard power reactors would make one of her hives worth a dozen of her enemies'.

[Infinite-Possibilities]

They picked a fight when they encroached on the Wraith's territory, admittedly unknowingly, with an armed military type group. So the Wraith scoop them up and try to find out what they're doing there, which is what pretty much anyone would do, and then the next thing the expedition does is attack them. That's where the problem comes in. There needs to be steps that go in between here. Steps that would prevent the outbreak of unnecessary wars against otherwise reasonable aliens who would probably abduct any stray humans they found on their turf the same way.

It's a question of standing policy, or the need to establish one. They essentially got lucky with the Wraith in the sense that they actually would have remained hostile even if they had attempted diplomacy, so their unwillingness to do so was ultimately meaningless, instead of the disastrous blunder that started an unnecessary war it easily could have been. The point is though, that they did not know this about the Wraith ahead of time. They did not know that the Wraith would be hostile regardless, yet they chose the course they did anyway, hence my Klingon example. The Klingons probably would have reacted much the same way the Wraith did initially to an armed group invading their territory, but ultimately wouldn't have gone to a humanity wide declaration of war just because a couple dozen idiots bumbled onto one of their planets uninvited and started snooping around. They would however go to war over the same group of idiots then choosing to attack them, kill their leader and blow up their ship. It basically confirms that the intentions of the intruders they caught were obviously hostile toward them, and makes it very hard to look at anything they did as accidental as opposed to them just getting caught and interrupted trying to pull off whatever malicious plan they were up to.

So... you do think the SGC should have avoided all exploration and tried to avoid any new contact with any unknown alien species? Because otherwise anything could be interpreted as them "picking a fight."

The point I was trying to make was that your earlier posts in the thread talked about how the best ending for the show would have been a disastrous retreat for the SGC and that the messed up situation in the Pegasus was the fault of the Expedition's arrogance, despite the fact that, even if they had been arrogant, it wasn't their fault in these circumstances.

The SGC attacking them would been seen as a vindication for them abducting their party. "See, they were here to harm us, just look at how they reacted when we caught them".

Seeing as the wraith went in their to harm them first, I don't think so.

This is the point I keep trying tog et across to you. Based on how the SGC acted the situation would not have actually played out much differently at all with different aliens. That's the point I'm trying to make. If you replace the Wraith with many other alien species a typical sci-fi hero group would encounter, the whole thing would have ended in a similar kind of intergalactic war disaster if the team had been successful in carrying out the same kind of attack against those aliens as they were against the Wraith.

Virtually no species I can think of would tolerate armed outsiders willfully violating their territory, then responding with a violent military raid that kills several of their own people when the initial offenders are captured for interrogation.

Well ok, maybe the Federation would.

If it had been any other race than the wraith, it likely would have played out differently.

Sure signs were not exactly pointing to the idea of the Wraith being all smiles and sunshine, but that doesn't exactly make provoking them further a better idea. You need better information than the say so of a few people you met in the woods and the records of their enemies from a war 10,000 years ago. I mean it's really not that hard to just make contact with them first somehow to confirm that they're dicks before you start shooting them. Hilarious as it sounds Sheppard and company embarked on that mission without even knowing what a Wraith looked like. They didn't even know what they'd be shooting at, let alone what it would be shooting back at them.

Guess it's a good thing their troops didn't turn out to be Kull warrior type super soldiers that just laugh at any and all bullets huh.

So the alternative is leaving people in the hands of aliens that were already known to be hostile? That could have just as easily backfire given what they knew about the wraith at the time. Also Sheppard starting shooting at an alien that was torturing and/or killing his CO. By then it was pretty clear that there was no hope for a peaceful resolution. Before that he and Ford were trying to infiltrate the base quietly.

Totally different situation. Apophis actually led a group of Jaffa through the Stargate to abduct people from Cheyenne mountain. He raided their territory and killed/harmed/abducted some of their people, and surprise of surprises, the SGC retaliated.

Just like how the wraith did killed, harmed and abducted some of the Atlantis Expedition's people? If Apophis abducting and executing SGC personnel was grounds for the SGC to retaliate, why wasn't the wraith doing exactly the same thing also grounds for it? Apophis could just as easily have crushed them for doing so.

The Goa'uld already knew where Earth was and could go there easily if they wanted to. Apophis' raid proved that they were going to start doing that again, so the only option at that point was to find some way to resist them. This is a different situation from going to another galaxy to start trouble with the natives there, then refusing to leave no matter how more and more screwed up the situation keeps getting for everyone involved.

They still had little knowledge of the world and certainly never saw it as a threat before the SGC sent people to Chulak and before that Abydos. Teal'c says the world had been lost to the rest of the galaxy for millenia.

Your ascribing them precognition again. They knew nothing of Wraith inability to reach Earth, or even basic Wraith military capabilities when they decided to attack them. For all they knew they were all going to pile into that 10,000 year old puddle jumper and get blown out of the sky the minute they left the Stargate for thinking that 10,000 year old cloaking tech from a defeated enemy would still fool modern Wraith sensors.

My point here was not about what they knew, but about what threat the wraith did pose to Earth compared to the goa'uld. SG-1 attracted the attention of a much greater threat to Earth than the Atlantis Expedition did. The SGC certainly didn't have the knowledge that they could effectively fight the goa'uld either. Because they could not, not at first at least. Yet they retaliated against them anyway. SG-1 brought Earth much closer to being "squashed like a bug" than the Atlantis Expedition ever did.

[The Urban Spaceman]

It's important to remember that the Asgard and Wraith are not huge monolithic hive minds but societies of individuals. The Asgard government might reject the idea of their people using Wraith bodies for example, but some other minority group of renegades might be all aboard with the same idea and willing to trade just about anything they could get their hands on in exchange for biological immortality. There have been renegade Asgard before. One of them even experimented on humans.

Whilst I do think it unlikely that any of the Ida Asgard would have collaborated with the Wraith (if they were all, with the exception of Loki, willing to die rather than perform dangerous experiments on humans, it stands to reason that they'd also rather die than help the Wraith to feed on countless humans), I do think it's something the Pegasus Vanir might have considered, as they've shown themselves quite ruthless with the belief that the ends justify the means.

To that extent it would have been interesting to see a more progressive/liberal Wraith trying to collaborate with the Vanir, as it would have given the Vanir a chance to explore other planets and gather more resources to once more build intergalactic ships. It could have been an interesting power shift in galaxy, as I think the Vanir, with powerful ships, would be just as dangerous to the Wraith in general as the Asurans were.

[Infinite-Possibilities]

the thing is the wraith defeated the Vanir in short order after the war with the Ancients, so I'm not sure what they would have to gain by collaborating with them.

[The Urban Spaceman]

the thing is the wraith defeated the Vanir in short order after the war with the Ancients, so I'm not sure what they would have to gain by collaborating with them.

Better PSUs, and potential drives capable of intergalactic travel. If they were able to overcome their limited power problems, they might even be able to install shields on their ships, thus negating the need to make hyperspace jumps to repair hull damage taken by exposure to subspace radiation. Also, the Vanir ships were capable of passing through Lantean shields. A useful feat for darts, yes?

[Peterking72]

Well, well, well. It seems we pretty much can't agree on any kind of justifiable ending without poking holes on the beginning of the Atlantis expedition and other already established canon, like: Why other more advanced aliens help us? Why we are exploring rather than sitting on our big fat asses thinking we are kings of the universe? What is killing and not killing? Why not the Asgard clone themselves with Wraith tech? I mean come on? Where is common sense? Looks like we have to estabilish one before some godlike magical immortal alien race squashes it alongside with ye ol' earthman and co.

[Peterking72]

Let me start then with the first question then. Why oh why the mighty Asgard want to help us measly humans, little arrogant planet among a gazillion more interesting species to pick from? Well if you were from an intelligent species which I am assuming you are from, then you most likely would like to have other similarly intelligent species live in your neighbouring galaxy, starsystem etc. Then those species you lifted up to your level will most likely be eternally grateful to you and help you defeat life threatening space-robot-bugs like we did for the Asgard.

[Peterking72]

Why we are exploring instead of...? Well, to quote Claudia Black from the 9th season of SG-1: Only an idiot would assume that his backwater of a planet will be safe because he has a few ships with decent shield technology. Somewhat modified the qoute to fit my comment, but it holds it's integrity and have the original meaning. Guess we also not idiots or don't want to became one in the foreseeable future. I for one don't intend to and all in for new exploration. Would you rather stuck in the dark ages being burnt on the stake because you dream of a machine that makes you hot coffee every morning?
Concerning the actual exploration of the Pegasus galaxy what did you really expected? Hostess girls handing out fruit baskets with a dozen of diplomats in suits, tie and blacks shoes, leather handbags, welcoming commitee and party all night long. They were about to go to a new galaxy, not to a friendly neighbouring country which they had a friendly, centuries long past. The Wraith were hostile from the beginning. Sure it would have been nice to imagine more reasonable Klingon's but that wasn't merely the case here.

[Peterking72]

Killing is killing. Killing for food is also killing, regardless of method and the neither Wraith or anybody can justify killing another sentient being. Just for fun or in the Wraith's case food is the worst kind and completely unforgivable either by God or any other sentient being.
Todd's analogy to us eating animals for sustinance is outright abolishable and utterly ridicolous.
We are not animals. We are sentient, have self-consciousness and most importantly a soul.

[Peterking72]

This whole we are not animals thing reminds me of Reese and Replicarter and the Pegasus galaxy replicators defining us as machines, just of weaker construction. They were unable to understand why they were not able to ascend or understand beings like us. The answer is the same: we have souls, they don't. Animals don't have souls either and they were created by God to sustain us, so their killing is justified.