Before I Sleep (115)

[GatetheWay]

Hello! Elliot! Whats with your signiture! Is that a spoiler I see, I sure hope not!

Edit: SpoilerS

[puddlejumper747]

Janus didn't want the city to rise until the Atlantis team got there. Say the power ran out sooner than expected and it just rose, it could easily be accessible to the Wraith if they came by ship and there was no one to defend it.

OK...but Weir already knew that the shields had lasted just long enough for her team to arrive the first time around. So it kinda seems like all they would have needed was the failsafe set in place to raise the city as soon as the team from Earth arrived. Let me ask it this way: Did rotating the ZPMs really povide anymore than a few hours of power to the city's shield? It still started to collapse soon after they had arrived in Atlantis the second time around, except then they had the failsafe mechanism to save them. (Maybe I'm just thinking about this too much?)

[Lt. Elliot]

I think you are getting way into this. The team got there, the failsafe went off, and now its on the surface. The end.

[ecm101]

I have a question, why must the Ancients in Atlantis and the plague happen before or after each other? Why not at the same time, roughly.

Okay, so say s ome of the Ancients want to go exploring what they haven't discovered yet and catch a flying city and others decide to remain behind. A decade later or two, the Plague hits and the Ancients in the Milky Way galaxy are almost wiped out and they get message to the Atlantis Ancients not to come back.
They loose touch and paths diverge. The Milky Way Ancients eventually either ascend in order to escape the plague or somehow survive and evolve into us. (eer...maybe.)

The Atlantis Ancients populate the Pegasus galaxy and then get into an all out battle with the Wraith.

Back in Milky Way, us humans live primately because for some reason or another, we don't get to keep the really cool all-powerful weapons. Ra arrives in Egypt, and thus enslaves humanity.

The Atlantis Ancients find themselves loosing against the Wraith and decide to go back to the Milky Way, assuming since its been millions of years since the warning of the Plague, they assume it safe.

The come back to Earth to discover that the Gao'uld have enslaved their descendents. They're pissed. They fight back.

For the next thousands of years, they find themselves in another war against another enemy. However this time, they meet other advance races that have evolved technological and biological in the millions of years since they've been gone.

Oh, and then they ascend as well.

Okay, not actually the most well-thoughtout idea I've had, but I don't see the evidence that says that the Atlantis trip and the Plague happened linearly or whatever.

If yoou remeber in SG! season 6 frozen the Anciet they found had the plague. And if the Atlantains left Atlantis 10,000 years ago, RA had not been to earth yet...

[buckner]

If yoou remeber in SG! season 6 frozen the Anciet they found had the plague. And if the Atlantains left Atlantis 10,000 years ago, RA had not been to earth yet...

We do not know that she had the plague but just that she was sick.

[buckner]

Why did the ancients not power down atlantis, remember weir did it after the ancients went through the stargate. Or why the ancients evacuated the city?

[puddlejumper747]

Why did the ancients not power down atlantis, remember weir did it after the ancients went through the stargate.

I would expect that the city is probably just programmed to "deactivate" itself in order to conserve energy when no life signs have been detected inside for a long period of time. Weir told it to shut everything down the first time, before the automatic deactivation could have kicked in (because she wouldn't have known about it, and wanted to be sure). And then the city just automatically "wakes itself up" temporarily when Weir is revived to rotote the ZPMs.

[LordAnubis]

Nobody even attempted to answer my previous questions, so I'll post them again in hopes of making some sense of this:

1) The Ancient Council told Dr. Weir that they were going back to Earth. It was established that Dr. Weir went back into time 10,000 years. Ra discovered Earth around 10,000 to 11,000 years ago. The Ancients would not be going back to the Antarctic gate, would they? Or would they go to the Egypt gate that Ra brought? They wouldn't know about the Egypt Gate or the Goa'uld. Why wouldn't Dr. Weir tell them about the Goa'uld or the new gate?

2) Why did the Ancients head back to Earth without Puddlejumpers or other supplies? They went back with backpacks and little else. Isn't that foolish?

3) The old Dr. Weir reported to SGA that the Ancients told her of the Wraith, who possessed powers and "technology" that rivaled the Ancients. Here again is confirmation that Wraith are fairly close to the Ancients technologically.

What are your thoughts?

[WraithKing]

"1) The Ancient Council told Dr. Weir that they were going back to Earth. It was established that Dr. Weir went back into time 10,000 years. Ra discovered Earth around 10,000 to 11,000 years ago. The Ancients would not be going back to the Antarctic gate, would they? Or would they go to the Egypt gate that Ra brought? They wouldn't know about the Egypt Gate or the Goa'uld. Why wouldn't Dr. Weir tell them about the Goa'uld or the new gate?"

I had the same question. It's very possible that they walked right into a Goa'uld mining camp. Which would probably not end well. But this could also be an explaination for why the people of Earth rebel. Maybe the Ancients started the uprising aganst Ra. As fo Weir not telling them, maybe she doesn't remember/know everything about the Goa'uld and the history.

2) Why did the Ancients head back to Earth without Puddlejumpers or other supplies? They went back with backpacks and little else. Isn't that foolish?

I don't think they were planning a long stay on Earth. They probably left the city intact so that they could go back at a moments notice and resume the war with the wraith if necessary. Also, they could have sent puddle jumpers and supplies through the gate before the scenes we saw.

3) The old Dr. Weir reported to SGA that the Ancients told her of the Wraith, who possessed powers and "technology" that rivaled the Ancients. Here again is confirmation that Wraith are fairly close to the Ancients technologically.

That's more of a statement rather than a question. But yes, I agree.

[OhForCryinOutLoud]

Q1 & 2 - I think they were going to the Antarctic gate because that's where their (presumably well-supplied) outpost was. Remember, 10,000 years ago it wasn't really Antarctica.
But quest. 1 really brings up more questions - If the Atlanteans were the 1st evolution and 'we' are the 2nd evolution of the human form, which evolution are the ancient Egyptians who were taken by the Goa'uld to populate the universe if this was all happening at the same time - 10,000 years ago. Is our math off? How many years had the Atlanteans been on Earth before going back and forth to Pegasus?
And where does Ayana fit in? Wasn't that supposed to be her at the beginning of 'Rising'? Was her escape before this group? That doesn't make sense, but why would she be after? The supposed reason for her being there was that the Ancients were killed by a contagion. Ah well, no plot lines can be perfect, eh? Maybe she was part of this group, who all evacuated only to keel over soon after?

[greytop]

What I don't get is why didn't the Ancients, in the outposts in the Pegsus Galaxy, didn't use the stargate to return to Atlantis?

[Hyperspace]

^^^
Hopefully most of them did...my guess is the Wraith decimated the remaining outposts, destroying their Stargate. The starships were then deployed to pick up survivors after the Gate escape method was cut out....still I wonder why the starships couldn't have gone to other far-flung planets where there were still functional Stargates...it's possible that the Wraith had so completely infested the Pegasus Galaxy, but...in a starship on a direct straight-line course to Atlantis does seem rather desperate and suicidal...

[mathwizard]

Q1 & 2 - I think they were going to the Antarctic gate because that's where their (presumably well-supplied) outpost was. Remember, 10,000 years ago it wasn't really Antarctica.
But quest. 1 really brings up more questions - If the Atlanteans were the 1st evolution and 'we' are the 2nd evolution of the human form, which evolution are the ancient Egyptians who were taken by the Goa'uld to populate the universe if this was all happening at the same time - 10,000 years ago.

"We" and ancient Egyptians are both the 2nd evolution of the human form. Evolution is a long process - billions of years before human evolved, and 10,000 years is very short to allow for we and Egyptians being from the different evolutions.

[Draco_Astreus]

Well I'm guessing the reason the Ancients couldn't all escape to Atlantis is the same way the Goa'uld handle it, they dial into your gate so you can't escape, then come with ships and decimate you before you get a chance to dial out.

[Zelazny]

I loved this episode. Atlantis is doing such a good job in their very first season. Better than I expected!

We got to see some Ancients!! And they bicker just as much as we today do! LOL Cheers for Janus for defying the counsil!

Joking around aside, wouldn't Past Weir's life have sucked? 10,000 years of sleeping, waking up only to rotate the ZPMs... that would get old. It must have been hard, no matter what was at stake, to keep doing it. It is human nature to tire of a monotinous lifestyle. She had to have forced herself to keep doing it, no matter how noble or moral she is/was. Don't you think?

I loved the insulting banter between McKay and Sheppard, as always. I got a kick out of the Back to the Future reference. I love that movie too, Sheppard! Oh, and I LOVED Mckays line: "Hmm... Just what I was afraid of. Freezer burn." LOL. My dad had to ask me for sure that he really just said that.

Of course, my dad was also the first one to speak up when they brought the wheelchair in: "Just happened to have a wheelchair there, huh?" Well, personally, I see nothing out-of-story with it. I would think that a few wheelchairs would be a necessary item in the medical supplies they took to Atlantis. They are a priority at hospitals, after all. What do you guys think?

There is a sequence of events told by Past Weir that I want to make sure I understood. Please, let me know if I interpreted it correctly or not.

When Past Sheppard, Past Zelensky, and Past Weir are in the PJ, in the flooding PJ bay, there was a flash of light when Past Sheppard wanted them out of there, then they were in space. Is it to my understanding that when Past Sheppard thought that, it activated the Time Machine and sent them to the past? Is that what I saw? Then they crashed and only Past Weir survived? Am I right on that? Let me know.

And is it just me, or did Carson Beckett look positively delectible in this episode? Man, the color silver does him good. And Sheppard looked even more rugged than usual. Yum!

Overall, another favorite ep.