The Defiant One (112)

[Lugal]

I thought this ep was only a so-so ep. Last week we saw Sheppard outwit and defeat Kolya, one of the Genii's apparently top commando, yet this week he was very uncautious when dealing with the wraith. It may have worked better if it had aired earlier in the season.

The other guys were obviously redshirts, although Gaul's plight was interesting. I thought it would have been better if he survived, and they had an Atlantis team member who had been through a Wraith feeding.

The best part about this one was McKay, and we got to see a lot more development of his character.

[Athenaktt]

Sorry Atlantis fans, but this was an unforgivablely bad episode. Wake up, the coffee's done. Have a cup.

<snippy>

Now I'm going to watch a well-done Stargate SG-1 episode that has characters behaving and reacting as the intelligent people I've come to love, cheer for, and respect.

I would argue you point by point, but I see no point since you don't plan on returning to this thread.

But Believe you are in the minority in this opion, which is your right.

As for "Well-done" Sg-1 episodes...lately...I'd beg to differ, but that is my opinion.

[Athenaktt]

Some questions:

1) What happened to the Ancient weapons platform? Will they revisit it?

As for the ancient weapons platform

Spoiler:

It comes into play in first part of "The Siege" So for once we get to see the the awesome power of this weapon action.

[Daniel's Sister]

I think that this ep was good because it had the right amount of funny in it, like with the little bugs, and, personally the part where Sheppard said: 'you've got to be kidding me!' I kinda think that was funny. (i have a weird sence of humer).
So that ep was really,really good. Not as good as 'The Eye' but still very good.

[GatetheWay]

I really think you guys should give Shep and McKay a brake. That ship did crash there 10,000 years ago. The Egyptian pryamids are only three or four thousand years old. Like McKay said it was roughly the dawn of human civilization. By comprehending how much time that is it is surprising there was anything left of the ship let alone a live wrath. True they are in an alien enviroment and maybe should of expected the unexpected but it is understandable why they made the mistakes they did.

As for me I liked this ep. alot. I'm a big McKay fan so it was great to see some more growth of his character.

[Zelazny]

Sorry Atlantis fans, but this was an unforgivablely bad episode. Wake up, the coffee's done. Have a cup.

...

My reply to the "What would Jack O'Neill do?" query was "He'd shoot Sheppard as a liability to the whole project, then kill the alien and get his people OUT of there."

But no such luck.

Shep blunders on, shooting the Big Bad. (Yo, dude! Ever hear of head shots?)

(Basic strategy hint--wait until the enemy is clear from valuable stuff, THEN shoot him!)

I--who have NO military training, no combat abilities whatever--even *I* know better than to shoot an enemy while he's so close to the freakin puddle-jumper that stray bullets will certainly hit the fragile innards, preventing me from leaving the planet.

But Shep did exactly that.

What he did NOT do as follow-through had us all groaning.

While the wraith was down did Shep rush up--a short jaunt while he's still unwounded--and put a few bullets in the critter's head??? I don't care how fast these things recover from wounds, if his brain is turned to mush by a few P-90 rounds bouncing inside his skull the chances are that he's dead, Jim.

But our hero didn't do this sensible action.

Noooooo-ooooo! He lets it recover to get UP again. For Round Two.

Reality check: When your people are in danger and being killed by a butt-ugly alien elf vampire, your job is to *not* play fair, but kill the dang thing and leave.

We hoped it would not get worse, but it did.

Shep made the SAME FREAKIN' mistake a SECOND time. When the alien grenade stuns the wraith, Shep had several MINUTES to get over there and cut his head off with his K-Bar if necessary.

And this didn't happen, either. We were screaming at him, at the writer, at a production staff that made characters we really want to like into COMPLETE MORONS.

...

More groaning came from our unhappy watch party when, in the middle of a stand-off with the e-vul space elf, Shep has a snack. You'd think after all that combat and getting shot and bleeding and lying around in the sand and sun for hours on end that he'd want a nice drink of water but nope--he treats himself to a power bar!

...

Glowy space bugs....that look too much like the other ones from that SG-1 episode, Prodigy. By then I wanted a whole horde of them to eat the idiot to the bone like teeny little glowy piranhas. It would have put the audience out of its misery. (By then some of us were begging for sporks so we could gouge our eyes out.)

But nope--Shep does his shtick with the snack bar and the glowy things do their predictable bit of (too-easily) distracting the e-vul alien elf until he's blown up by someone other than the hero himself.

All right, once and for all, the ONLY guy who can save the day with a candy bar is McGyver. The *only* guy----not that idiot Sheppard!

I'm sure I've offended many who are content to go giddy over all the pretty (and except for McKay & the Scottish doc, utterly brainless) characters. (Our discussions in my group are along the lines of "Dear gawd--WHAT will Shep DO when he runs out of hair gel? *gasp*)

I've wanted to like this show, and I've seen each episode, and thus far the series just doesn't live up to its promise. I am angry that it could be better, yet it is not. I would regulate it to the level of a Saturday morning kid show except the kids would be insulted by this product. I wish to heaven that the money wasted in the production of this loser episode alone was in my bank account, so I could retire and put it to better use than the producers of "Atlanta-prise."

As it is, I am p.o.'d that there goes an hour of my life I will never get back again.

Honestly, if it didn't have "Stargate" in the title I would have given up watching it after the pilot. As it is, I've yet to see an episode I'd be willing to give a second viewing. Most of them--like this week's offering--offend my intelligence. My group has referred to it as "Stargate-Lite-- half the plot and none of the character."

Don't bother to write and tell me how wrong I am. All messages will be deleted, unread.

Don't dismiss me as a mere troll. I know what I'm talking about, having made my living for the last 15 years as a print-published writer. I only came to vent so I could sleep tonight. I won't be back to this thread. This episode has wasted enough of my time.

Now I'm going to watch a well-done Stargate SG-1 episode that has characters behaving and reacting as the intelligent people I've come to love, cheer for, and respect.

You post comments like that and refuse to return or acknowledge the response it generates. How utterly closed minded and ignorant. But then, we all know you are going to read the responses to your diatribe. It is human nature to be curious.

What I gathered is that you have a supreme hatred of Sheppard. Well, those are your feelings. Fine, but your reasons are stupid. By pointing out how he should just shoot it in the head to kill it and then praise SG-1 on it's superior storylines is contradictive. How many head shots do you even see on a TV series? You know, if SG-1 did a bunch of head shots, a lot of their problems would have been sovled also. The symbiote is in the head/neck region afterall. It's a poor comparison, I admit, since Goa'ulds are easier to kill than Wraiths, but it's still an argument to your "obvious" head shot Wraith solver.

About Sheppard approaching the Wraith slowly after shooting it, I see nothing wrong with it. I can't think of any instance in which a character in either SG-1 or Atlantis, or other series, rushed up to a downed enemy. Are you stupid? You proceed with caution. O'Neill does it. Teal'c does it. Carter does it. Hell, even Daniel does it. If Sheppard had rushed up to that Wraith after he shot it that first time, he probably would have gotten a bullet in the face instead of a grazed arm.

As for Sheppard having a snack in his battle with the Wraith, it took them 15 hrs to get to that satelite. Sheppard probably didn't eat much, if anything, in that time. He WAS schooling a driver's ed class. And those ARE energy bars. He probably needed a boost. Maybe it helped him think. Maybe it helped the shock of being shot and losing blood. Maybe he was just starving.

Now about the glowy bugs. I liked them. I believe they are the same kind of bugs as in Prodigy, or maybe a distant relative. At any rate, I liked the glowy bugs. It showed some strange kind of continuity.

And as others have said in response to your comments, this IS the first season. Not everything is going to work right away. It's when the second season doesn't accomplish much more than the first that you start worrying.

I liked The Defiant One. It's one of my favorite episodes. I look forward to the next episode.

[Hyperspace]

I think so far there has been quite nice a variety of eps in Atlantis' first season, and this one is included!

[Buzz Lightyear]

As it is, I am p.o.'d that there goes an hour of my life I will never get back again.

Gee, I was gonna say there goes a couple minutes of my life from reading this post that I will never get back.

Don't bother to write and tell me how wrong I am. All messages will be deleted, unread.

Don't dismiss me as a mere troll. I know what I'm talking about, having made my living for the last 15 years as a print-published writer. I only came to vent so I could sleep tonight. I won't be back to this thread. This episode has wasted enough of my time.

Of course you're always right. I'm sure your mommy has told you so all your life.

Now I'm going to watch a well-done Stargate SG-1 episode that has characters behaving and reacting as the intelligent people I've come to love, cheer for, and respect.

Oh, you mean like Gemini (SG-1 8x11) and Prometheus Unbound (SG-1 8x12)?

[Athenaktt]

Gee, I was gonna say there goes a couple minutes of my life from reading this post that I will never get back.

I was thinking the exactly same thing!

Of course you're always right. I'm sure your mommy has told you so all your life.

ROTFLMAO

Oh, you mean like Gemini (SG-1 8x11) and Prometheus Unbound (SG-1 8x12)?

You were brave enough to named the episodes...while I could not. >_<

[Blue Banrigh]

Was the fourth guy in Ford's team Chris Judge's stand-in aka. Grell the Robot?

[impulsivelad]

I know this has been talked about to death but I also heard "Lantean" which I like a lot and makes perfect sense too. Their language is a proto-Latin, right, and Lantean and Latin seem to have the same root word which denotes a point of origin. So it'd be cool if Atlantian is a corruption (over time) of the name Lantean.

[Buzz Lightyear]

I know this has been talked about to death but I also heard "Lantean" which I like a lot and makes perfect sense too. Their language is a proto-Latin, right, and Lantean and Latin seem to have the same root word which denotes a point of origin. So it'd be cool if Atlantian is a corruption (over time) of the name Lantean.

Seems more likely to be the other way around. "Atlantean" --> "Lantean"

[derrickh]

If you step back a couple of steps and take a look, Sheppard is a villian.

The latest case in point is that he killed off a bunch of those glowing beings while killing the Wraith. Those were intelligent life forms. Maybe they weren't as evolved as humans maybe they were, we don't know. Let's say they were on the intelligence level of something like dogs. What Sheppard did was the same as sticking a milkbone in the pants of a bad guy, sending a few dozen puppies after it to 'distract' the bad guy and then blew them all up. They just wanted something to eat and he killed them. That's not the actions of a nice guy, no matter what the situation.

That brings Shep's kill count up to what...over 100 dead in 2 episodes?

D

[ShadowMaat]

Prove the intelligence level of the bugs.

It doesn't take intelligence to follow a food source. Yes, Bug 1 went back and got all his little bug friends. So what? Bees do something very similar, I think. Or possibly ants. Definitely creatures less intelligent than dogs, though. And lets face it, dogs would eat all the food themselves and screw any doggy pals that might be nearby.

You seem to be rather determined to paint Shep as a bad guy, though, and I doubt that anything ANYONE says will convince you otherwise, so hey, attack Shep all you want. I'll just politely disagree.

[impulsivelad]

I think calling Sheppard a bad guy isn't fair. He's a soldier and he kills (a lot), but that's his job. If he didn't kill anyone (or got shot himself every once in a while) it wouldn't be believable. What I want to know is why we’re so intent (and I do it myself) on keeping count of all the people Sheppard has killed? Is it just that we like the character so much that we’re taken aback by his killing?