I still don't understand

[Aesop]

Why Zelenka couldn't have immediately raised the Orion's shields after firing the drones at the hive ship in "No Mans Land". I mean, did the ship use the majority of it's power to fire the drones and so there either wasn't enough left to power the shields, or there was a "charging" period required before diverting power to shields and the hive just managed to fire on the Orion before the shields could be raised?

It just doesn't completely add up for me, since it seems like in many cases shields can be raised instantaneously. Unless it was all just a device by TPTB to keep such a powerful asset such as the Orion from being of permanent use by the Atlantis Expedition.

[escyos]

Maybe the power lines to the shield generators were damaged in some sort of surge when they fired the weapons.

[hedwig]

Why Zelenka couldn't have immediately raised the Orion's shields after firing the drones at the hive ship in "No Mans Land". I mean, did the ship use the majority of it's power to fire the drones and so there either wasn't enough left to power the shields, or there was a "charging" period required before diverting power to shields and the hive just managed to fire on the Orion before the shields could be raised?

It just doesn't completely add up for me, since it seems like in many cases shields can be raised instantaneously. Unless it was all just a device by TPTB to keep such a powerful asset such as the Orion from being of permanent use by the Atlantis Expedition.

They did that on SG1 every time they got a mothership and were going to take it back to earth. I think they "lost" two motherships that way - one in "Exodus" and one in "Descent".

[Lt.UrsulaKenmore]

I do think some episode somewhere (can't remember off the top of my head right now) that there is a charging time. Not to mention that it was admitted I think all throughout that episode that they were still getting familiar with the ship, so Radek and his science team may not have figured that part out yet, relying on perhaps Lorne's ATA to cover that part for them. And when it couldn't, they were screwed.

Also, I think the writer's wanted to keep the ship around, but in the end found it was kind of like the MidWay Station and Gatebridge. They just didn't have the stories to justify keeping the sets around because they didn't actually end up using them as much as they thought/hoped they would, again the stories that would/should have utilized them just didn't materlize. Big bleeping bummer!!!!

[jeremyadamson]

Why Zelenka couldn't have immediately raised the Orion's shields after firing the drones at the hive ship in "No Mans Land". I mean, did the ship use the majority of it's power to fire the drones and so there either wasn't enough left to power the shields, or there was a "charging" period required before diverting power to shields and the hive just managed to fire on the Orion before the shields could be raised?

It just doesn't completely add up for me, since it seems like in many cases shields can be raised instantaneously. Unless it was all just a device by TPTB to keep such a powerful asset such as the Orion from being of permanent use by the Atlantis Expedition.

Zilenka said that they had "sacrificed most of the ships power generating capabilities," I think that they were using secondary conduits to power the shields and weapons and the drones firing overloaded many of them, making its available power too low to raise the shields.