Childhood's End (106)

[shockwave]

They also said similar things like that on SG-1, it will happen off-screen. Most likely Keras will never be mentionned again.

[chiefchucky]

This was a very good episode although I liked last weeks episode better. I also had no suspicion whats so ever that the Tree Houses were CGI. Brilliant work!

[DarkQuee1]

I assumed that it was the ancestors of those people that built the shield, most likely with scavanged Ancient tech (at least for power). The whole deal about die peacfully or you wont get into heaven was probably a part of their religion from the get go and the reason for the shield was to give as large a part of the population as possible a chance to live and die peacfully. That's what their belivies led them to.

And things haven't been solved now. The sheild WILL fail, it's just a matter of time.

See, this makes no sense to me. The planet appears to be low-tech; we don't see anything, including ruins, to suggest that there was once a thriving high-tech society here (and you don't need to regress to primitive levels to have a die-at-25 set-up. Look at "Logan's Run."). So, how could they come up with the shield?

And if they cadged it from Ancient technology, then why couldn't the Ancients, who were much more advanced, come up with the same thing?

I'm still not getting much sense from this.

J.

[Ugly Pig]

See, this makes no sense to me. The planet appears to be low-tech; we don't see anything, including ruins, to suggest that there was once a thriving high-tech society here (and you don't need to regress to primitive levels to have a die-at-25 set-up. Look at "Logan's Run.").

That's how it works in the Pegasus galaxy. A culture thrives for hundreds of years, then the wraith come and take most of the population for food, only leaving a few people so that the population can start from scratch and grow again - only for the wraith to come back a few hundred years later and start over.

That's what happened here. And they'd been doing the suicide thing only for 500 years, so it couldn't have been the Ancients who started it.

[w1cket01]

See, this makes no sense to me. The planet appears to be low-tech; we don't see anything, including ruins, to suggest that there was once a thriving high-tech society here (and you don't need to regress to primitive levels to have a die-at-25 set-up. Look at "Logan's Run."). So, how could they come up with the shield?

And if they cadged it from Ancient technology, then why couldn't the Ancients, who were much more advanced, come up with the same thing?

I'm still not getting much sense from this.

J.

I think if the Ancients used the same shield, all their fancy technology wouldn't work either.

[ComicDiva]

Well Childhood's end was interesting, and I even got the shivers when Keras was first explaining the sacrifices. As usual, Mckay was great and his interaction with the kids -> bordering on hilarious, being surpassed only by Ford's line "Do you kids know about chocolate? No!? This is gonna be huge!". Yes, chocolate is indeed a miracle of nature.

[Mio]

I don't know. I just don't find Ford to be that funny. I mean, he's funny, but not funny funny....

Now McKay. That whole 'Why?' 'Because I said so.' argument was hillarious.

[aaobuttons]

One thing that especially annoyed me: they had the potential for a thorny moral issue and they blew it. We(meaning Earth expatriates) need a ZPM to power the city and/or get home. They (meaning inhabitants of the planet) need it to power the shield. It could have been a real *choice* for the Earthers: their needs vs. the inhabitants, and what we have the right to do to survive.

Instead, they make the ZPM useless for us--moral dilemma now goes away. We can't use it, so we no longer have to make the choice.

The ZPM wasn't useless to us. McKay told Weir that there wasn't enough power for long term use, but there was enough for short term like 10 min. of shielding during a Wraith attack (which could be very useful).

[DarkQuee1]

The ZPM wasn't useless to us. McKay told Weir that there wasn't enough power for long term use, but there was enough for short term like 10 min. of shielding during a Wraith attack (which could be very useful).

First, they'd have to figure the shield out and build one. Second, they didn't deal with it that way: they never raised the issue of, maybe we could use it briefly another time, but no, we can't do that to these people. It was just: see, we can't use it anyway, bring it back.

That's sidestepping the issue to me.


J.

[DarkQuee1]

I think if the Ancients used the same shield, all their fancy technology wouldn't work either.

Maybe, but we don't know that for sure. We only know that anything attempting to fly through the shield gets damaged and brought down. We don't know that something already inside the shield won't work (the ZPM itself was functioning, and it was inside the shield).


J.

[DarkQuee1]

That's how it works in the Pegasus galaxy. A culture thrives for hundreds of years, then the wraith come and take most of the population for food, only leaving a few people so that the population can start from scratch and grow again - only for the wraith to come back a few hundred years later and start over.

That's what happened here. And they'd been doing the suicide thing only for 500 years, so it couldn't have been the Ancients who started it.

But I'm not talking about the people. There's no indication that the Wraith take technology, the way the Goa'uld do. If there had been a civilization high-tech enough to devise and build that shield, then were are talking about a peoples who would not be building with mud or daub-and-wattle; they would be using durable materials, at the least stone and most likely metal. Yet, we see nothing to indicate that any such civilization existed. On Teyla's world, the ruins of a higher civilization remained. We have ruins on Earth that are thousands of years old because they were built with durable materials.

There's no way that is such a civilization had existed, there would not be remains. Which brings us back to the question of who built the shield.


J.

[Mio]

First, they'd have to figure the shield out and build one. Second, they didn't deal with it that way: they never raised the issue of, maybe we could use it briefly another time, but no, we can't do that to these people. It was just: see, we can't use it anyway, bring it back.

That's sidestepping the issue to me.


J.

Actually, McKay said it could power the City's shield at full strength for something like an hour.

The City's shield is COMPLETELY different from the EM shield that protected the suicidal kiddy's villages. The City's shield is an actual shield. Blue glow and everything. There is no 'building' involved. It worked when we got there in Rising, but it ran out of power, It just needs new batteries.

The city's shields can probably be turned on by a few buttons in the control room. They were easily able to control nearly all city functions from there. So it stands to reason that 'Shield Control' would be in the control tower.

[DarkQuee1]

Actually, McKay said it could power the City's shield at full strength for something like an hour.

The City's shield is COMPLETELY different from the EM shield that protected the suicidal kiddy's villages. The City's shield is an actual shield. Blue glow and everything. There is no 'building' involved. It worked when we got there in Rising, but it ran out of power, It just needs new batteries.

The city's shields can probably be turned on by a few buttons in the control room. They were easily able to control nearly all city functions from there. So it stands to reason that 'Shield Control' would be in the control tower.

Yes, but that shield won't keep out the Wraith--and the post to which I was responding suggested that the ZPM had value to Atlantis because it could have briefly powered the shield that would stop the Wraith. My only point was that by removing the value of the ZPM to Atlantis, they removed the need to wrestle with a moral issue, which was the easy way out (why didn't they, for example, refer to the fact that the ZPM could have powered the gate to get them back to Earth?).

J.

[Tok'Ra Hostess]

Not a bad ep but completely predictable, down to the minutest detail. Good thing they brought Mackay along so he could brag about how hot he and Carter are together and show that he cares equally little for kids and adults(and yet, loves them dearly in his own self-absorbed way... )

Doubtless nobody minds how calloused Rodney's attitude was, probably because he's had a few eps for character growth. If Dr. Ponytail or Sgt Security had taken that zpm and blithely said that the natives could simply be uprooted,... OI!

I don't know, maybe when I actually read what everyone else thought I'll be surprised(and my faith in humanity will be restored.... riiight

[Major Fischer]

Doubtless nobody minds how calloused Rodney's attitude was, probably because he's had a few eps for character growth. If Dr. Ponytail or Sgt Security had taken that zpm and blithely said that the natives could simply be uprooted,... OI!

I don't know, maybe when I actually read what everyone else thought I'll be surprised(and my faith in humanity will be restored.... riiight

Nope, sorry to disappoint you.