The Hive (211)

[the fifth man]

Man I can't wait to see this ep. Sounds pretty awesome from most accounts I've read. Come on, January 6.

[Major Tyler]

My Ford survival threory...

I think Aiden took the previously-modified dart and crash landed on the planet below. Since he's not much of a pilot (especially of alien darts) I doubt he could have flown it through the gate, but I'm sure he could have at least gotten close enough to the planet's surface to use the emergency ejection transporter (the one Bob uses in "The Brotherhood").

Since the Stargate is in orbit and his ship wrecked he wouldn't be able to leave and get more enzyme so he's forced to go cold-turkey. Some locals find him and give him drugs that help him survive the withdrawl symptoms. He becomes free of the enzyme and we have our old Aiden back (except now he has some much-needed character development).

Once he recovers, since he cannot leave and Altantis Base doesn't know to look for him, he becomes a productive member of society...at least until something happens that brings him back to Atlantis in Season Three.

[AutumnDream]

My Ford survival threory...

I think Aiden took the previously-modified dart and crash landed on the planet below. Since he's not much of a pilot (especially of alien darts) I doubt he could have flown it through the gate, but I'm sure he could have at least gotten close enough to the planet's surface to use the emergency ejection transporter (the one Bob uses in "The Brotherhood").

Since the Stargate is in orbit and his ship wrecked he wouldn't be able to leave and get more enzyme so he's forced to go cold-turkey. Some locals find him and give him drugs that help him survive the withdrawl symptoms. He becomes free of the enzyme and we have our old Aiden back (except now he has some much-needed character development).

Once he recovers, since he cannot leave and Altantis Base doesn't know to look for him, he becomes a productive member of society...at least until something happens that brings him back to Atlantis in Season Three.

Let's pray for that! As long as Ronan gets to stay too!

[Dorka]

O.k after nearly one week, I finally saw this episode

I liked it, but somehow it wasn't as captivationg as last seasons Mid-episode "The Eye"

But I liked that there were new things we found out. Liket there are other human-people, which have an allience with the wraith (the people in Condemned were the first ones I thinks). And that they can outdo them against themselves

Sheppard don't like clowns? Me neither so I can understand him

I was happy TPTB did make Sheppard recognize that this Girl was a trap and hadn't been too much of a Captain Kirk *puh*

The best play was definitely from DH in this episode. I really liked him arguing with Weir and Beckett...just great!

Is it just me, or did they change their Camera-work a bit...well...more agile? Maybe just my impression

[eccscape]

The best play was definitely from DH in this episode

I agree, although i though (althohugh a smallrole) PaulMc did very well. Especially when Mckay was in withdrawal and hurling insults at him. I'm a medico and have been in similar situations and i have to say watching Beckett felt very real. i.e like watching someone who actually does this,a testament to PMs acting really.

Plus i just have to ask ...in the scene when rodney was saying carson didn't understand his withdrawal and carson said to rodney "oh, i think i have an inkling". Did anyone else think, not from what he said, but from how he said it and the look on his face, that carson was insinuating his understanding was more than that of a doctor? Perhaps some personal experience there?

[prion]

Does anyone else get the feeling the inside of wraith ships look a little "set-ish"? It might just be because I've actually seen the sets outside of the actual episodes though.

Ah, the movie magic just goes poof when you visit a set. I visited the Kung FU; TLC set (which David Hewlett worked on, btw) and the huge temple set was incredibly fake. Nothing was real. Swords in background? Cardboard with foil over 'em, but damn, they looked good on screen. Candles were real though... Lots of things are just facades. Open a door. See the brick wall of the warehouse wehre the sets are housed

The Wraith sets remind me a bit of War of the Worlds season 2.

[prion]

Remember how freaked out he was just going to a normal ol' planet in Duet? Imagine how he'd feel about going on a ship to fight a bunch of hive ships. (A ship that keeps getting half-blown up by hive ships, I might add...)

I recall one of TPTB talking about how in Window of Opportunity they had to get permission to mention Fruit Loops, and they wanted them to make it Ego Waffles because sales for waffles were low, but they insisted on Fruit Loops because it was a time loop in the episode.

Yeah, studios have their legal departments clear the use of all names of copyrighted/trademarked names, etc. otherwise you're open for a lawsuit for unauthorized use, which is why in the old days before product placement became pretty rampant, you'd see VIA cards instead of VISA cards, stuff like that.

Plus now, many companies want the publicity. Remember in E.T. how the E.T. followed Reese's Pieces? Did wonders for their sales. M&M was kicking themselves for declining the offer!

[Yeade]

Jeez, I take a short vacation and come back to find you folks have completely run away on a dozen different tangents.

At any rate, even after reading the posts I missed, I'm not sure what everyone's talking about, so I'll just comment on the few things that really jumped out at me.

First off, thank you for the lovely transcript, Callie!

One of the guards puts its hand on John's shoulder to keep him still, then turns and looks at a control panel outside the cell. Lights flash on it and the cell door opens.

Oh, hey, I'd forgotten this little moment! Looks like the Wraith tech does work with some mental component. Though I think it's safe to assume the Wraith grunts don't have psychic powers as strong as the leather-wearing male commander types or the hive queens.

The guard fires its stunner at Aiden, hitting him in the chest but the blast has no effect. They go hand to hand and Aiden then rolls to the floor, taking the guard down with him. Ronon, who has produced a small blaster from nowhere, [I dread to think where he had that hidden!] aims it at the guard, yelling a warning to Aiden.

LOL! That's hilarious, but I'm afraid Ronon got the Wraith pistol stunner through more traditional means. Ford pries the stunner away from the Wraith he's fighting and tosses it back to Ronon in an astounding feat of coordination and fight choreography.

Okay, okay. I actually thought that was a nice touch. Despite their personal animosity, Ronon and Ford work pretty well together in combat. It's an extension of that moment in "The Lost Boys," right before their capture, when Ford and Ronon were fighting back to back, I think.

In regards to the planet at the end, I've only watched the episode twice, but I thought McKay called it "Edwin."

McKAY: Oh, no. There's two of them!
LORNE: You said there was only one.

I'm pretty sure it's Lorne that gets the "oh, no" moment here. Which then prompts McKay to look up at the jumper readouts and point out the obvious. Not that I've obsessively watched this exchange or anything. <coughcough>

TEYLA: Is that his signal?
DEX: It'd better be.

Bwahahaha. How much do I adore that Teyla and Ronon are apparently as confused about Sheppard's "signal" as the audience? Thi-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-is much.

And everybody made so many funny faces in the last, like, fifteen minutes! Squee! Oh, nooes! WTF?! I <3 SGA, a gazillion times over, I really do.

Now that I've had my fangirl moment, let's move on.

I'm noticing the wraith ships seem to lack consistancy, especially with regards to the wall textures - there are a lot of different shapes, but they don't feel like a contiguous whole, if you know what I mean? They're going for an organic "alien" look, but it's just coming off as a bit disjointed. They can't seem to decide whether the wraith ships are grown, carved, or built.

Some really interesting tidbits about set construction here, thanks. I've gotta admit I haven't noticed the lack of consistency on the Wraith sets. Much. The organic nature of their technology, I think, allows for a wide variety of forms and textures. I mean, within the human body, there's quite a difference between, say, bone and the soft tissue lining the organs, and that's sort of what I see on the hive ships. Bony structures that look like they've been carved, muscle-like walls, fiberoptic nerves, and all kinds of membranes.

Besides, these are the same people who built the Atlantis set, right? Which is, IMO, a thing of beauty. So I'm willing to trust that everybody knows what they're doing. For the most part.

Then there's the "giant surfboard" themed rave that was the Queen's chamber (I mean, really - what's with the green lasers? Advanced wraith WinAmp visualisations?).

See, I don't mind the surfboard thing so much, as it vaguely reminds me of the sucker mouth the Wraith have on their hands, or the strange, green-lit ceiling fixture that's visible as Sheppard approaches the surfboard. The lasers though and, even more than those, the apparently smooth, metal girders arching over the whole room--these bother me.

That this hive queen runs a different ship than the Keeper in "Rising" I think is pretty neat. Different space, different decor, different clothing, different attitude--the implication is that each hive is unique. However, the lasers and metal girders were too... cool? That is, they didn't give me the sense, in color or texture, that they were organic the way the rest of the Wraith set does. I'm fine with the green lighting (bioluminescence and all), but I think the organic feel of the set would've been better if the lighting were more irregular and those damn girders carved the same way the dart, hm, exoskeletons are.


edit: tags

[AutumnDream]

I'd like to see some wraith living quarters other than their weird sleeping pods. Or maybe some wraith civilians. Bankers, soccer moms, pianists, basketball players, authors.

[Oranos]

Or maybe some wraith civilians; authors.

Lol.

Wraith Literary Works Of Genius:

The Path to Earth
How to best Wraith your victim
Striking Fear into the enemy
Wraithing 101
Defending the enzyme sac at all costs

[watcher652]

Can anybody out there do a better job at translating high-pitched hysterical Canadian than me? I managed the whole scene in the Gateroom fine but could only make out a very little of Rodney's rambling to himself at the DHD. What I did get was:

Spoiler:

McKAY: Big dose! Big, big dose! But you needed it. You needed it to get the crystals – idiot! You wanted the crystals ... (He continues rambling to himself as he carries on dialing.) ... like butter, like a knife through butter ... (He finishes inputting the symbols and the Gate starts to dial.) Please work, please work. (He leans on the central button, his eyes bloodshot and his face contorted in an expression of desperation. The Gate kawhooshes.) OK, go home. (He heads towards the Gate.)

Here's what someone read with their closed captioning on:

Spoiler:

Big dose. Big big dose.
But you needed it. You needed it to lay out the guards. Idiots.
"You want the crystals? You're going to have to go through us."
Well, I went through you alright, didn't I?
Like a hot knife through Jello.
No, wait. Butter. Hot knife through butter.
Oh man, am I hungry.
Oh, shut up Rodney. Focus.
Must finish dialing.
Please work... please work... please please work.
(Gate activates)
Okay, go home.

Do we need the spoiler tags in this thread when we're quoting from the episode? I kept them in because Callie used them, but I didn't think we needed them here.

[Yeade]

Hm. The hive ships aren't exactly small, are they? (IIRC, that was a Wraith cruiser that tried to pull boarding maneuvers on the Deddy in "The Siege," and the two ships looked comparable in size. A size that's completely dwarfed by the hive ships.) And we haven't seen much of the interior. One holding cell after another, a command center of sorts, the dart bay, the hive queen's audience chamber, and many, many random hallways lined with cocooned humans.

With Ellia, we know the Wraith have children, even if we don't quite know how those children came about (do we want to know?). Where do the Wraith raise their young then? The hives seem to be entire traveling Wraith communities and are where the Wraith hibernate for thousands of years, so probably on the ships somewhere? Are all the Wraith, well, military? Figure with the insect social structure, there would be Wraith charged with taking care of the young. Where are they? (Running Wraith daycare, I guess.) There are scientist types in canon, so it's not that far a stretch to think there might be artists of sorts. Could explain why the higher ranked Wraith all sport such smashing facial tattoos. Besides, even if the Wraith tech is somehow grown by the hive ships, it's a bit harder to picture a similar process producing those gothic leather costumes. And, anyways, what do the Wraith do when not striking terror into the hearts of humans everywhere in the Pegasus galaxy? (Gossip about the higher castes? How so-and-so hive queen all but flipped off this-or-that other queen by cutting in her cull? Did you hear the two got into a catfight and ended up blowing each other to atoms?) The cullings seem to run on a regular schedule as the hives make the rounds around their respective feeding grounds, and I imagine after beaming off nearly the entire population of a planet, some amount of food processing has to be done. Do the grunts do this, too? (Nine to five, clock in, clock out? Guard duty tomorrow?) Special prisoners please wait to meet with the hive queen? Some portion of the cull has to be cocooned for later snacking and the rest distributed in an orderly fashion--an organizational nightmare that is no doubt helped by the fact that the Wraith are locally psychic. The Wraith seem awfully fixated on food and hunger, so maybe they spend all those long (inefficient) hyperspace trips playing with their food and eating? Do they even sleep? Just how many Wraith live on a hive? Thousands? Tens of thousands? (I wonder if the Wraith have trouble with overpopulation on the hives. At which point, many probably decided to move to suburbia, i.e. one of those nice cruisers.) Why don't we know more?!

Oh, yeah. Watch me take a silly comment waaay too seriously.


edit: minor rewording

[AutumnDream]

I'd like to know all that stuff too! We can at least be pretty sure there are wraith fashion designers and seamstresses.

Hilarious comments on the wraith gossip.

Caldwell must be pretty gutsy to go take on multiple ships that are ten times+ the size of his own. I can't recall the Daed ever taking a shot from those big side gun things though. I'd like to see how our wimpy shields hold up to that.

...so, who's hyped for Epiphany tonight? I am!

[Yeade]

According to Ouroboros, there were four or so hive ships firing upon the Deddy at any given time during the twelve-(quickly became ten)-hive fight in "The Siege." This was at close range and drained the shields down to 20% (or something) quickly. Under half an hour, I figure. Probably in the neighborhood of 15-25 minutes.

In short, not so good on the shield thing, really.

I'm not sure what Caldwell hoped to accomplish, actually, taking the Deddy on the rescue mission. The Wraith had already demonstrated they could somehow jam the Asgard transporter, and the Deddy would've been pretty much toast if that attack didn't pan out. Which it didn't. Maybe he was hoping otherwise...?

At any rate, Caldwell should be thanking whatever higher powers he believes in that Sheppard's got the luck of the devil himself, more lives than a cat, and a certain squirrely intelligence.

Finally, yay for "Epiphany"! I know I shouldn't set my expectations too high but... OMG! Sheppard backstory! Ancients (sort of)! Alien romance!

Okay, maybe not so much the last one.

[AutumnDream]

I wonder why they even expected the nuke-transport thing to work this time. I think one of these days the Deddy is gonna get fried. That'd make my day! No more bad earth men invading our personal space on Atlantis.

On Epiphany, I think if Brad Wright thought it was cool enough to get personally involved in, it's gotta be good. He tends to put a hand in anything that's going to deal with any important ancient stuff.