Critical Mass (213)

[camulus13]

I liked the episode Critical Mass. we now know the full potential of the Trust. i bet we can be exited for the Trust's next move!

[Stricken]

What is the point of this thread?

[Metarock Sam]

Yeah uh im afraid Camulus you posted a new thread when there already was one. You should post in the Critical Mass thread in the Episodes section.
Hope that helped.

[Amanda Eros]

Does this episode take place inbetween the episode that Promethous blows up? (Ethon) And the episode that the Odyssey magically appears. (Off the Grid)?

[emotionallydisturbed]

Hey, I just posted this up on another thread, and thought it was relevent here too, so . . .

Regarding the issue of whether Elizabeth focused in on Kavanaugh as a suspect, based soley on her "emotions," I made the following argument:

But seriously, the evidence she had against Kavanaugh wasn’t exactly nothing. Let's go over what happened and refresh our memory a bit. First of all, Kavanaugh does himself no favors by acting like a complete jackass from the get-go, therefore drawing attention to himself. Sorry, but if you’re looking for a person who’s looking to blow up Atlantis, perhaps it’s best to start with the individuals who have a grudge against Atlantis - and through the course of the episode, it’s quite obvious that Kavanaugh has an axe to grind with Atlantis and Weir. Now, that in and off itself is *not* a valid reason to torture him as their sole suspect, but it’s enough to keep him on the suspect list. But Elizabeth doesn’t exactly hone in on him, even then. She continues with her interrogation of the rest of the personnel, including Novak. She didn’t start off with a narrow list, say “oh, Kavanaugh’s on the list, we’ll pick on him!” She went through the “passenger manifest,” as stated in the episode.

She comes back to Kavanagh because the pile starts adding up against him. First, Novak claims that Kavanaugh has been acting strange, displaying an odd behavior when on deck. Now, that’s not much, but unfortunately I doubt they’d ever stumble across clear-cut strange behavior like “Kavanagh fell asleep on the deck, and then talked in his sleep about blowing up Atlantis! I heard him! He’s the one!” Strange behavior is all they have to go on, and since the situation is so critical and time sensitive, Elizabeth can’t dismiss the fact that one crew member has suspicion against another. The fact that’s it’s Kavanaugh is serendipitous, but if it had been anyone else - say, Joe Smoe, she would have followed through on that too and interrogated good ol’ Joe as well.

But it’s Kavanagh, so she goes back to him.

Guess what? Two more strikes against Kavanaugh happen here: One - his communication logs from the Daedalus show that he sent three unauthorized encoded messages back to Atlantis shortly after the dial-in was halted. That, right there, *smacks* of suspicion! Considering their situation, it would be a gross misguidement to overlook that sensitive piece of information. Short of a smoking gun, this type of action is probably about as good as you’re going to get for suspicious behavior.

Then, another strike - he ends up getting caught in a lie (when he backtracks and claims he sent those messages to Atlantis for friends, which he already admitted to having none). This proves he’s not trustworthy, and that those three unauthorized encoded messages were (and still are, in fact) unaccounted for and probably have suspicious content. What is Elizabeth suppose to do? Turn a blind eye to all of this, and continue with interrogating every other random guy when time is an issue? Or should she focus in on the guy with all the ding marks against him - even with all the personal feelings of animosity aside? Even without her dislike for the guy factoring in at this point, Kavanaugh still manages to look dirty.

Now, if you’re against the method of torture at all, then what ends up happening in the rest of the episode is going to suck for you no matter what and there’s no other argument around that. I, personally, felt that torture was not out of the question considering the time-sensitive and *explosive* nature of the situation. Drastic times calls for drastic measures. Elizabeth didn’t come to the call of torture lightly, but she did agree to it eventually. She didn’t, however, base that solely on her emotions. There was a string of suspicious behavior that pointed to Kavanaugh, but if it had been pointed to some other fool, I believe that Elizabeth would have summoned up the will power to have them tortured as well, although with the standard issue personal turmoil. If you don’t like what this says about Elizabeth, that’s another argument. The point I’m trying to make is that she didn’t single out Kavanagh for this treatment simply because she didn’t like him. Other factors played into the situation, and while it's nice and easy to say - "oh, she picked on Kavanagh because she didn't like him," it's actually overlooking lots of points in the episode. She would have, unfortunately, been forced to do this to anyone considering the circumstances.

And guess what? She did!

This is where Cadwell came in, and Elizabeth gave the same order to torture him as she had initially given for Kavanagh. Now, I do believe that there was some contention between Cadwell and Weir in season two, but there both generally respect each other still. She didn’t order Cadwell tortured because she didn’t like him, and the same goes for Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh was proven a red herring, but the point was, the clues were still there. She wasn't blindly pulling stuff out of her ass.

And honestly, if she went with her emotions on this, she would have never ordered anyone beaten up in the first place! Her gut instinct to that would be “NO! IT’S WRONG!” Which is clearly evidenced in the last scene. She went against her “emotional side” and did what needed to be done.

Point? Elizabeth didn't act "emotional" in this episode. On the contrary, she did everything in her power to act in a logical way, forcefully rational at times (especially in the ending, when she went against her gut instinct and permitted the action that saved Atlantis). She did her job.

[OutThere]

I'm a new fan. Saw Critical Mass a few months ago while waiting for some other show to come on, and as usual wasn't paying much attention. Then they got to that Twilight Bark/Lord of the Rings bit, and I laughed my head off! And began to think that maybe I should be paying attention after all. The writers certainly have there moments, and some of the actors are great at delivery.

So now I'm trying to catch some more episodes. I've seen about half of season 2 now, but sadly missed most of season 1.

[L.A. Doyle]

This is the episode that got me hooked on Stargate Atlantis. I'd been watching SG-1 for a few months, and only seen bits and pieces of SGA. But wow, this episode was amazing, especially the last 10 or so mintues.

[McClance]

2) Hermiod - Im really thinking we could / should have an asgard centric spin off. Stargate: Asgard. As an added bonus Hermiod dislikes Kavangh even more than the rest of us! And he told him to shut up!!!! I love Hermiod!!!

I must say, that was the best moment I've seen in the whole series so far. And the look on Kavangh's face when he realizes that the Asgard had just told him to shut up was the best!

[OutThere]

This is the episode that got me hooked on Stargate Atlantis. I'd been watching SG-1 for a few months, and only seen bits and pieces of SGA. But wow, this episode was amazing, especially the last 10 or so mintues.

Funny what the little things that finally capture our attention can be. I've now watched several other complete episodes that I saw bits of before, and they are both better and funnier than Critical Mass. But for some reason they didn't capture my attention at the time. Very glad Critical Mass got me to pay attention.

I wonder if Kavanaugh's unathorized coded messages will be a plot thread that will be picked up later? I'm curious to know what the deal with those were.

[John W]

I've just watched this episode for the first time on DVD and loved it. As both a fan of SG-1 and Atlantis, I'm all for crossover episodes like this one (even if SG-1 themselves weren't in it). I knew Landry and Dr Lee were going to be in it, but I wasn't expecting Agent Barrett or Walter as well.

I was also glad of the way that Ronon became the voice of the "Atlantis-Only" fans out there and saved me having to explain to a friend of mine what the Goa'uld or the Trust are. LOL!

I'll be honest and say that a major plot point was blown for me several months in advance (I saw a pic of Caldwell's eyes glowing), but that still didn't stop me from loving this episode. I do have a few questions though, which I'm sure other people have probably asked already:

1. When was Caldwell taken as a host? Has he been one ever since he was first introduced? That would certainly explain his hostility towards Weir and the others.

2. Was Kavanaugh in league with the Trust or not? He certainly seemed very uncooperative (although obviously that's nothing new with him! LOL!).

3. Considering the urgency of the SGC communicating with Atlantis, why did they have to rely on the Daedalus? Couldn't they have called the Asgard, Jaffa or any of their other space-faring allies? I did also wonder why they didn't just use the Prometheus, but then guessed that this episode was set after "Ethon" (which I also have yet to see!).

Anyway, as I said, it was a great episode and I was also pleased to see both Novak and Hermiod back again. I also loved Teyla's singing at the end. I had heard a lot of praise about this before now and had been eagerly anticipating hearing it. I was not disappointed and hope that it one day gets released on a soundtrack CD. It was also a neat touch that they kept both the song and the instrumental bits going through the other scenes like when Caldwell's unmasked as a Goa'uld and Ronon fights him.

[PG15]

They used the Deady since it was the closest to the "middle point" where they can use it as a relay station.

[Serenity228]

I know many people did not like the integration of the song into the episode, but I thought it was very tastefully done and added so much feeling and flavor to the episode. I am not a fan of musicals. Having said that, I think there is a big difference between Teyla singing at Charin's what would be roughly the equivalent to our funeral or memorial service, compared to her having returned through the Stargate singing while the rest of the cast joins her in song while they dance up and down the main stairs. It seems the is no end to Rachel's talents.

As the old saying goes, desperate times call for desperate measures. I cannot fault Weir for her choice with Kavanaugh, however I was disappointed with her execution of the order. Yes, it was a hard and distasteful, choice that she was forced to make, but she did not follow through on her own order. I did not respect her for taking the easy wasy out and letting Ronon and Sheppard handle the situation that she ordered. I did not expect her to be the one wielding the knife or whatever, but I felt that if she had the strength to give the order she should not be spared the outcome.

Sheppard was questioned time and time again for his mercy killing of Sumner. He mentioned how he thinks of it everyday. If things had turned out differently, how would Weir's orders have affected Sheppard? She was basically ordering him to relive a very similar situation (he might have been forced to wound or kill a superior officer), but rather than lending him her "moral" support, she walked out.

IMHO

[Catsitter]

I really enjoyed watching this episode, particularly all the recurring characters, and it was good to see the return of Novak's hiccups (though when Weir offered her a glass of water, I was shouting, "No!"). Shame Rodney and Novak have still not been in a scene together.
It was lovely to see Cadman back, but she really didn't fit into her role in this episode, unless a bit of Rodney's brain got accidentally transferred to hers at the end of "Duet" (come to think of it, that might explain a few things...) Was there really no scientist left on Atlantis, apart from Rodney, that knew anything about the systems?
This is the most DS9-ish episode they have done on SGA, with all the recurring characters and the B-plot. (And I am a big fan of DS9!)
Shame Sgt. Bates wasn't still around to handle the interrogations, though. And that whole Kavanagh fainting thing was something of a cop-out. Are we sure he wasn't faking it, by the way? Just because Caldwell was a Goauld doesn't mean that Kavanagh couldn't work for the Trust (mind you, that Trust stuff mostly went over my head, perhaps because I haven't seen any of Season 9 of SG1.)
I wonder what Teyla said when they told her about putting Ronon in a room alone with Kavanagh? "But he can kill a man just like that... er, oh, I never mentioned that, did I?"
Anyway, much much better than "Epiphany".

[Pharaoh Atem]

can't wait till i get to see this again loved the beginning when there are dialing and the guy stops half a inch from dialing the last chevron

[mgbland]

Watched this again on my tivo. Two thoughts came to mind.

Spoiler:

Why couldn't they break a eight digit code? Can't Rodney write a program? Or is it one bad password, and the system blows?

Loved Teyla's singing! Would love to see more of her, but I guess they can't do a repeat of that season 6 of buffy, though it would be fun to watch. I can't think of a way they could work that into a feasible plot thread.

Spoiler:

Why did Sheppard run into the room with Cavenaugh to stop Ronan before the codes were extracted from the Goa'uld? He should have been going after Caldwell, and the most logical person to stop Ronan's interrogation would be Weir.