Condemned (205)

[sparklegem]

I, too, really enjoyed this Wraith. It's good that we're getting new aspects on them. I was getting kind of tired of the dumb firepower with the face masks.

The Gatreium view of when the team was coming through at the end would have shown an interesting pile up. McKay jumped from so far away that he went through the event horizon horizontally only a few feet from the ground. The belly flop exit would have been amusing.

And I really liked the character of the scientist prisoner they took with them, a little on the unique side and great interaction with McKay. I hope we see him again.

P.S. McKay's a bad liar? I think Sheppard needs to work on his 'I'm depressed because Atlantis got blown up' thing.

[Blue007]

What a great show...it had all the eliments..
Welcome back Teyla...girl ya kicked butt.
Shep was really funny in some areas....trying to break the stick...ouch.and McKay was great...loved to see this team come together..Ronon..LOL saw that stuffin' the pockets...

I missed the "Chewie" line...need to watch the tape later...the commercials were really LOUD..and the show seemed soft when they spoke..

The Wraith guy freaked me out...got chills...the guy that hung out with McKay...sorry can't remember his name but glad they let him come to Atlantis with them...he likes to create explosive..I'm sure that will be a big help..

It's good to see Ronon blend in with these guys, but still have his quirks. LOL

[A Whiter Shade]

While I thought all the acting was top notch...

I thought this episode's concept was terrible, mainly for believability issues. I'm going to skip right over the ridiculous idea that the prisoners were able to aim those canons accurately enough to get a flying puddle jumper and the fact that a jumper which can travel through space gets taken down by some random flak...

And get to my real gripe. The Atlantis team wants the wraith to think they are gone- So what do they do in this episode?

1- Fire a Ancient drone at a cruiser.
2- Dial Atlantis' address in full view of the cruiser.
3- Leave an Atlantean puddle jumper in plain view. Admittedly it was broken but they could have at least blown it up.

[lethalfang]

The Wraiths saw the earthlings left with the Daedalus. Clearly they know we are still around, and the Daedalus is large enough to carry a few Jumpers. Of course we can also run away with the Jumpers thru the gate before it was destroyed.

While I thought all the acting was top notch...

I thought this episode's concept was terrible, mainly for believability issues. I'm going to skip right over the ridiculous idea that the prisoners were able to aim those canons accurately enough to get a flying puddle jumper and the fact that a jumper which can travel through space gets taken down by some random flak...

And get to my real gripe. The Atlantis team wants the wraith to think they are gone- So what do they do in this episode?

1- Fire a Ancient drone at a cruiser.
2- Dial Atlantis' address in full view of the cruiser.
3- Leave an Atlantean puddle jumper in plain view. Admittedly it was broken but they could have at least blown it up.

[Crichton]

I loved seeing Weir threaten, made the whole episode. I loved all of it really but two small complaints.
-a firefight between P-90's and Ronan's Gun (the one that says bad-motha-******) Vs. Bows and Arrows??? They should've ATLEAST killed three to four people before being overrun. Plus no grenades??
-secondly why not always use stealth mode?? does it use up power that they're saving for something else?? why not just fly straight up into the atmosphere when things get rough?? it almost seemed like bad piloting from Shep-especially when Weir's group made it through so easily.

[Buzz Lightyear]

Well I sure hope Major Lorne had the foresight to blow up Jumper One before leaving.

I'm sure they can repair the damaged jumper quite easily now that McKay is back in Atlantis where he can get spare parts. Jumper Two can stay undetected while cloaked and watch over Jumper One until McKay returns with the necessary materials to fix it. One hopes they wouldn't destroy jumpers unnecessarily.

This was an episode with a generally good storyline that was marred for me by the atrocious lack of any standard scouting precautions exhibited by Sheppard's team. And not just once, but repeatedly.

They first waltz into some strange camp without properly scanning the area. Once they know the island's inhabitants are hostile and are armed with some sort of unknown explosive devices, they later fly the jumper back into the same hostile territory UNCLOAKED and again without scanning/scouting the region first. During their escape from captivity, when they should have let Ronon Dex do his thing and take out the enemies one by one, instead, they all stay together, unarmed, in one large group, going for the most obvious destination - the downed jumper. Their token attempt to "distract" enemies while McKay did his thing basically consisted of rushing at armed combatants with sticks, again with no real scouting of surrounding terrain.

Is this how a military operation should proceed?

[derrickh]

This episode suffered from 'wtf' disease. Stuff happened that really didn't make sense except to move the plot forward. Plus, I liked this episode better the first time I saw it, when it was called No Escape and had Ray Liotta in it.

When Shep and crew are flying back to the gate, Why are they going low enough to get hit with what amounts to cannon balls? They dont have to cruise at 35,000 feet all the time but why skim the treetops when flying over land you know is hostile?

Why would the Wraith guy need to come up with a 'deal' to eat people on the island? Why doesnt he just fly into the city and pull up lunch and dinner whenever he wants? It's like a farmer making deals with chickens. Doesn't make sense.

Wier must still be upset over getting dumped because she was in hostile mode from the get go. She barely got through her first paragraph before the threats started flowing. And this is before there was any reason to suspect any wrongdoing.

Shepard just let loose a bunch of murderers on another planet. Murderers. A lot of them. Plus a few white collar criminals. That seems like a really bad call.

Ronon has yet to do anything that couldn't be done by a trained soldier. A few hundred of which got to Atlantis weeks before he did. Why is he on a team? What did he do except eat some stew and make fun of Shepard? He shouldn't even be in the city, much less on a team. Give Ronon's spot to the new SG guy that looks like Ted McGinley. He's cool.

D

[Easter Lily]

It is probably not so surprising that a episode invoking the Faustian myth could possibly have something of a western feel to it... In a way, both deal with corruption, anti-heroes and the awful price of immediate gain.
So is Condemned... Unforgiven without the horses?... but have Stargate or puddlejumper will travel? Too much of a leap perhaps...

So in the Pegasus galaxy, Faust is an oily magistrate of an advanced civilization and Mephistopheles, a wine sipping, delicacy chomping Wraith. Caught in between this bargain is our third villian... a convict and a desperado, better versed, in human psychology than Dr Heightmeyer. Stranger bedfellows we have yet to see. It would appear that Faust is the most recent in a long line of Faustian magistrates who for "the good of the Alesian people" have made it a practice to condemn criminals to a fate worse than death and that is to sell their souls (or their life force as is the case)... to the demons of the galaxy. But the demons are very hungry and there isn't much to go around so they turn up at almost the right moment to put more pressure. So who is the greater villian: the criminal condemned to die for killing 11, our resident Dr Faustus or the life-sucking Wraiths.
In between sippings and chompings, our heroes tumble into the picture... and do they tumble... As usual, they tumble and blows the deal skyhigh. Down in the dumps... our heroes are engaged in struggle for survival... which is the stuff of more strange alliances. After more wheeling and dealing and the usual Rodney specials... the team, I gather, returns home.
An occupational hazard of exploration (one with which we're accustomed to) one which begs the question: Are they heroes or villians also? Or were they merely hastening the inevitable? There are no easy answers.

The moral of the story: Better the devil you know than the devil you don't. But who is the devil?

Dang... I wanted those sandwiches... too

[macktheknife]

This ep was okay, but more meh than anything, I rated it a 3\5 on the main page, probably the worst ep of the 2nd season so far (that's not that bad a deal, the other eps are BETTER than this, not this ep is WORSE than those, a small yet subtle distinction). In the same vein as "Hot Zone" and "Suspicion".

I thought "I don't like the sound of these people", after he said "Wraith eat prisoners on Island", then "We have a near zero crime rate".

McKay just sorta annoyed me in this ep (First time he's annoyed me in an ep), with his "It'll take 2 and a half weeks" then 5 seconds later "I've done it, I AM WEASEL, ahem, I mean genius" about 5 times in the episode was grating to say the least.

I wonder when they will add some development to Ronon (apart from "I ran from the wraith"), I once read something "It's easy to write mind-blowingly cool", when will they write something "harder" for him.

[Nessva]

Overall, a pretty good episode ... I'm curious what will happen now that it looks like the Wraith know Atlantis survived. They'd be pretty dumb if they left Atlantis alone right now.

Was nice to see the Wraith might have some sort of societial structure to them, although with their level of technology compared to everyone we've seen so far in the Pegasus galaxy, I'm not sure why they'd need to have little deals with other worlds.

At times it made me think of SG1's Beneath the surface though, with the 'prisoners' doing the dirty work (getting eaten) and the leader keeping quiet about it, to the point of lying to the exploring team.

Loved the team interaction, with the Chewie comment too ... best part is that Ronon and Teyla wouldn't even understand the line!

[girlgater]

I liked this episode, even if there were a few plot holes.

Loved the Chewie comment and Shep trying to break the stick over his knee.

Loved Weir taking charge--off world!

Loved the Ronan and Teyla interaction.

Loved the prisoner who helped them escape.

Wonder what happened to Marin?

[Auralis]

hrmm, hard to say, but overall, not impressed.
To much make people acting stupid to make the plot work.

[The_Gate_Builder]

lol at john trying to break the stick and failing.

[ShadowMaat]

I thought the exposition of McKay's character was kinda funny, but it was also extremely odd.

Am I wrong, or did the leader guy come in and immediately single out McKay for fixing the ship? How would HE know that McKay's a scientist? And how would he know all that stuff about his personality? And that he was lying about not being able to fix the ship? McKay's "I can't do this" seemed a lot more believeable that Shep's "Yeah, whatever" attitude relating the destruction of Atlantis. The mad scientist seemed to do a bit of it, too. So was it all just a way to waste time, or is there something more that we're going to learn later when the release of the prisoners comes back to bite them in the ass?

[P90]

I thought it was brilliant, especially after the now sub-par SG-1. Ronon continued to impress, and it looks like he's going to continue meshing really well with the rest of the Atlantis team. The only bone of contention I have is not with the episode itself, but with the assumption that everyone was culled. This wraith seems a bit more prudent than his fellows. What's to say he didn't get rid of the magistrate, then explain the set up to his replacement? Seems like having a captive food source a stones throw from the gate beats flying all the way across the planet to pick up some fast food.