The Defiant One (112)

[donnie_darko]

What I liked about this ep. is that we have more info on the Wraith and the Puddle Jumper.
highlight to read
1) We know that the P.J. has shields.
Its just you can't activate it by thought, there must be some button combination that turns them on because the wraith had to rewire the ship to get them on. Although because he had to rewire things it might not be a regular function of the ship, the wraith might have rigged up some sort of energy field by using the engines or some other system.

2) The wraith can feed on Humans/Ancients/Wraith with different effects for each.
Have suspected but never had confirmation, and it seems that the older they are or depending on what and when they are feed the harder to kill them. Or they gain some of the power from the thing they ate. If they eat an Ancient then they might gain some extra healing power or something. It can’t just be from the time they last ate, the hive keeper that they killed ate at least two people and it was just killed by stabbing it with a wraith weapon.

[aschen]

That WAS a great episode!!

[Gothann]

What I liked about this ep. is that we have more info on the Wraith and the Puddle Jumper.
highlight to read
1) We know that the P.J. has shields.
Its just you can't activate it by thought, there must be some button combination that turns them on because the wraith had to rewire the ship to get them on. Although because he had to rewire things it might not be a regular function of the ship, the wraith might have rigged up some sort of energy field by using the engines or some other system.

2) The wraith can feed on Humans/Ancients/Wraith with different effects for each.
Have suspected but never had confirmation, and it seems that the older they are or depending on what and when they are feed the harder to kill them. Or they gain some of the power from the thing they ate. If they eat an Ancient then they might gain some extra healing power or something. It can’t just be from the time they last ate, the hive keeper that they killed ate at least two people and it was just killed by stabbing it with a wraith weapon.

Spoilers aren't needed in this thread.

Anywhoo, the Wraith keeper had fed on people, yes, but she was also dealt massive damage compared to smaller bullet holes. Being stabbed by such a large weapon, with it being stuck there, must have cause some of her internal organs to shut down, requiring much more regeneration in order to survive, thus killing her.

As for the PJ, while there was no doubt that the Ancients had put a shield on PJs, it was only a matter of time before the terrans found out that those things had shields. Looks like Sheppard found out the hard way.

[april_flower75]

Anyone else notice that McKay did NOT tell Sheppard that Brenden (that was his name), killed himself. He just basically said he didn't make it. Seeing as watching somebody kill themselves in front of you is a pretty tramatic experience, I think keeping this to himself is going to result in some serious emotion problems in the future for Rodney. Yay! more angsty acting from David Hewlett! I think this experience alone will change him, Rodney is growing every episode, and i loved how Brenden pointed that out to him earlier. Some attention needed to be brought to the fact that McKay is changing and developing (which is more than u can say about any of the other characters).

[MartoufMarty]

We've just seen Rodney change so much from when we first saw him in 48 Hours.

He was quite angsty out in the rain in The Eye, and he just keeps on getting so much more angsty...er...

[april_flower75]

Yes, but angsty with emotional trauma is something we havent seen yet, just physical trauma/danger.

[Gothann]

And yet now... McKay will become somewhat more human, less arrogant.

It almost seemed like he changed the instant Brenden died, like as though he became aware that the Wraith can take away everyone he knows and possibly care about, and that he NEEDS to do whatever he can to prevent that.

I liked the emotion. McKay's friendship toward Sheppard is clearly becoming easy to identify.

[ShadowMaat]

Still more wonderful McKay development and the first verifiable sign that he's "changed" since joining the Atlantis crew. Brendan seemed very surprised that McKay was gung-ho to go help Sheppard. Will love to see how the suicide affects McKay. The fact that he didn't mention to Shep HOW Brendan died is very tellling, IMO.

I'm not sure what I think about Brendan, himself, though. The whole "I'm younger and smarter and am gonna outshine you and you're jealous so if I wind up dead it will look suspicious" thing would have worked a lot better as a joke, IMO, but played seriously, it just didn't feel right to me. Maybe if we actually knew something about the character it would have made a difference. But some random twit claiming superiority with us having no proof of it kinda weakens the point for me.

I liked Greg. I'm interested to know how he was "different" than the wraith the Atlantis crew have come to know and love and I really wish they hadn't blown him to tiny tiny bits. Give us some time to actually come to know and understand the wraith a bit. Whatever happened to "know thy enemy"? They wasted Steve when they had him, now they've wasted Greg as well.

Re: Greg and the gun. Did he also learn how to switch off the safety, or are we to expect that a trained military crew flies around with a bucketful of LOADED GUNS that all have the safeties off?

I get the feeling they were trying to do something with Ford and Ford in Charge, but the character is still so anemic and so much screen-time was wasted on McKay and Shep/Greg that I don't really know what (if any) point the writers were trying to make with the Ford storyline, other than him dutifully trudging after Shep at Weir's command.

The Prodigy bugs. What the hell?? They were brought in why?? Either go the extra to pay for NEW CGI bugs (that look unique) or give us some sort of reason for the Prodigy pixies to be in the Pegasus galaxy. As for crushing... maybe Greg was sucking the lifeforce out of them, instead. He IS a different kind of wraith. And after 10,000 years he's probably had to learn some new tricks. Or maybe there's more to those bugs than we realize...

[kashi]

I thought that was a mediocre episode for a couple of reasons.

1. It seemed unrealistic to me that sheppard and mackay would allow two scientists to explore part of a wraith ship on their own.

2. Surely they would be aware that hibernating wraith give off no life signs, since in the first episode of atlantis they observed the life signs detector suddenly coming up with lots of signals as the hive ship was waking.

[Mr. Seven]

Loved this episode...but who was the Defiant one?

McKay? Shepperd? The Wraith?

Arguments could be made for all three.

I liked how they had the glow bugs from that SG1 episode (one of the few SG1 eps I have watch).

[kashi]

They were quite different from the bugs in the SG1 episode, as has already beed discussed in this thread.

[Major Fischer]

Re: Greg and the gun. Did he also learn how to switch off the safety, or are we to expect that a trained military crew flies around with a bucketful of LOADED GUNS that all have the safeties off?

Thank you! Was wondering that myself and was given "well, they don't want the safeties on if they need to pull them out in an emergency" or "it could have been knocked off when he dropped it."

It's a weak point to me, and just says that the writers don't handle weapons themselves very often.

[ShadowMaat]

They were quite different from the bugs in the SG1 episode, as has already beed discussed in this thread.

They were small glowy points that flitted around the characters. That's close enough for me.

I agree with you about Shep and McKay leaving the two geeks on their own. And they really should have gone in aware of the fact that hibernating wraith don't show up on the detector. While I get that it was a plot point, Shep should not have needed to tell/remind McKay of that fact.

[somme]

Maybe those bugs were just baby versions of the other ones?

I don't think the writers would create something so like the other bugs without them actually being the same ones. Especially seeing as they would know how quickly we lot would pick it apart.

Maybe they are baby furlings.

[aschen]

Did anyone else notice that this episode was like...the first one where a Wraith refered to the city as Atlantis?