The Tower (215)

[gateship15]

interesting and makes seance if the tower did what Atlantis did to maintain critical systems by turning of systems

[escyos]

this was a tingly moment when i saw the tower

[Candy88]

I've never understood how hated this episode has become overall when compared to much of the rest of the series. It was by no means the high point of SGA's run thusfar, but there are definitely several episodes I thought were a lot worse. A few somewhat cringe-worthy moments didn't make this a terrible hour of my life, and I've rewatched it a few times, since. It wasn't all that bad to me.

I agree in some respects the execution of the episode isn't all that bad, just a little cringeworthingly stereotypical, but still quite watchable.

What I think annoys so many people about the episode is the massive wasted oppurtunity it presents, and the resultant utter contempt for the ongoing storyline displayed by the writers who turned an amazing opppurtunity into a cheap "standalone filler episode" and plot device.

What really disheartens me though is that by the logic of this episode, the entire show of "Stargate Atlantis" could have just been a "standalone filler episode" for Stargate SG-1 too.

[Ancient Lantean]

Did anyone else notice that the native population was using the word Earthquake?
How does a group of people in another galaxy with no knowledge of Earth know a term that was clearly created by the people living on good ole' Terra?
It just seems odd to me.

[gateship15]

it is strange. u would think they had another work for earthquake or would learn the word of the team when they were there not already know the word.

[sgfan]

As someone said the real cringe-worthy parts of the episodes have been discussed at depth already - most agree this episode is largely a crappy filler.

After watching all Atlantis, this episode is by far the worst - not because of the Kirk-ing, but the creation of Atlantis sister cities.

Having a second Atlantis-class city ship (presumably Ancient-built, not Asuran) is idiotic. It would have been fair (maybe even imagination capturing) to create a good story, but they never mentioned it again.

(Hell, even though the Asurans/Atlantis replicators were written into the story much later, they could have said that this Sister City was built by them - just like the replicator home world.)

IMO this single episode ruined the premise of Stargate Atlantis. If it were executed better, this could have created an epic arc, but no.

While Stargate Atlantis aired, this episode was half-decent. Seeing the complete story (barring possible movies) this episode has become crap. If TPTB just wanted to get more Puddle Jumpers and Drones, there are much more creative ways to do it.

The writers took the most powerful defense outpost/weapons platform in the history of the Stargate universe. COME ON! It is a CITY capable of INTERGALACTIC travel - the crowning jewel of the people we would come to know as the Ancients, and the writers decided to create a carbon-copy. To make matters worse - the writers fill it with noobs! There are no Ancients in stasis, No cool technology. No imagination-capturing weapons, new shield technology or experimental time-travel. Hell, even opportunity for ideas never before seen in Stargate/SciFi! There was NOTHING! All they got were Puddle Jumpers and Drones - the number of which the viewer was never allowed to keep track of anyway.

This episode annoys the hell out of me. The sister ship idea had so much potential, yet it was squandered :-(

/rant

[ktebid]

I enjoyed this episode. I can actually imagine the Ancients building a number of sister cities, I don't think it's that far of a stretch of the imagination. I imagine once the Ancients abandoned Pegasus for earth there were some interbred humans with the ATA gene that took over the sister city once it had been abandoned, but without the knowledge or ability to read ancient they only discovered a few things that probably activated by accident.

Personally I felt the storyline was strong and quite believable.

[latvian_stargatefan]

This episode was one of the low points of the franchise. Firstly, Shep Kirkin'... man, that scene would fit in softcore porn movie, not in Stargate...
I don't think it really matter that we didn't see Ancients in stasis etc. but the idea itself was badly executed, i.e. freedom is better than opression. Firstly, it's such a generic sci-fi idea that you need to do exceptionally well for people to care. Secondly, at least try to make the episode about that idea... All we got was Shep killing the bad guy at the end and putting simple people in charge...

I mean it was meant to be about how people came to conclusion that they need to stand up and confront Lord Protector and injustice. But it was about Ronon killing some soldiers and people realizing "we're screwed anyway so why not stand up for ourselves"... And then comes the retarded and cringeworthy decision of military tactician Ronon to stand in the line with bows and axes against drones...

I mean... it's just LOL funny. In real life, they could've no idea that McKay will be able to save them. They knew that the Lord Protector can't really see everything (as Shep saw that it's just Ancient tech, not some divine wisdom as peope in the village might think ) that happens, so why not go to the ''catacombs'', through them to the city and start uprising. Or why not go to the woods, in the direction of tower to actually do something not stand on the spot and wait for drones to kill em' all.

But we all know why Ronon made that decision- for the suspense in the ep. Even if that's RETARDED. That's called lazy writing...

4/10

[mrscopterdoc]

Not in my top five episodes, but I still like this one.

[EdenSG]

The Tower in on Syfy this afternoon at 5pm EST

Not one of my favorites either but things I did like about it were that we got a sister city to Atlantis and we got to see how a society developed and how the use of the Ancient gene led to power and corruption.

I really liked the first 30 minutes of this ep, the second 30 minutes not so much.

[maneth]

Not one of my faves. I would have liked it better if they had been able to get rid of the oppressors by giving everyone ATA gene therapy instead. (Obviously depending on how big the population on the planet was.) The high point of the ep for me was definitely Peter Woodward as Otho. IMO he made the Babylon 5 spinoff Crusade watchable, and he was just as wonderful now.

[Skie]

After watching all Atlantis, this episode is by far the worst - not because of the Kirk-ing, but the creation of Atlantis sister cities. Having a second Atlantis-class city ship (presumably Ancient-built, not Asuran) is idiotic. It would have been fair (maybe even imagination capturing) to create a good story, but they never mentioned it again.
IMO this single episode ruined the premise of Stargate Atlantis. If it were executed better, this could have created an epic arc, but no.
While Stargate Atlantis aired, this episode was half-decent. Seeing the complete story (barring possible movies) this episode has become crap. If TPTB just wanted to get more Puddle Jumpers and Drones, there are much more creative ways to do it.
The writers took the most powerful defense outpost/weapons platform in the history of the Stargate universe. COME ON! It is a CITY capable of INTERGALACTIC travel - the crowning jewel of the people we would come to know as the Ancients, and the writers decided to create a carbon-copy. To make matters worse - the writers fill it with noobs! There are no Ancients in stasis, No cool technology. No imagination-capturing weapons, new shield technology or experimental time-travel. Hell, even opportunity for ideas never before seen in Stargate/SciFi! There was NOTHING! All they got were Puddle Jumpers and Drones - the number of which the viewer was never allowed to keep track of anyway.

Not to mention why they didn't try to fix the city again, so the people there could defend themselves. But no, they take everything in exchange for medical supplies and help. Yeah, doing them a hell of a good against the wraith. Um BTW, didn't get the wraith queen in Rising very pissed about seeing ancient technology. So the wraith just leave this city alone?! A wraith hive ship is more than enough to get rid of this city with no shields. Sadeta would put up much more of a fight and it still got completely destroyed.

[sgfan]

(^ Yep, there are some occasionally plot holes in stargate )

Now, there was a episode of SGU recently with a very similar premise, but was executed differently - in a way that addressed all my concerns I have with this particular episode. (I'm seriously loving it!)

I post as an illustration of how this episode could have been changed to stay within what I think are the rules of the stargate franchise, while still creating a very scifi-ey episode.

Now, spoilers below for a particular episode of SGU (Season 2 "Twin Destinies"):

Spoiler:

The writers took the whole sister ship idea, which was incidentally caused through a character-driven time travel event that effectively CLONED the ship. (An awesome, creative concept in itself - much better explanation in my opinion than "oh by the way, the Ancients build another one".)

They also had the imagination-capturing weapons idea, which "The Tower" was missing, in which they had only drones (and some illusions to the epic "star-drive"). The idea was a piece of equipment that doubles the weapons capabilities of Destiny with some hardware. DOUBLING! WEAPONS! Hooray! (incidentally it seems the idea of increased weapons was a hook to cause certain characters to have to meet for the sake of the story - they never actually got the weapon equipment - but I'm willing to ignore that since the concept BLOWS MINDS)

The writers made the cloned Destiny a dying ship and placed a difficult timelimit and had them PULLING PARTS OF THE SECOND DESTINY ship to increase THEIR OWN CAPABILITIES.

Those scenes were particularly well shot, with a nice sense that time is limited (and the imagination-capturing concept of LOOT WHAT YOU CAN, EVERYTHING IS FREE AND WILL GET DESTROYED IF YOU DON'T TAKE IT )

All the above (as imagination-capturing as I thought it is was) was just used as BACKGROUND STORY to put in place really WELL-ACTED scenes (especially by Rush) and to build up a great story with a thrilling climax. This is as it should be.

We have the concepts that blow your mind ALONG with good acting and story-telling. It's a killer combo, I'll tell you that.

It's kind of like the movie "Inception" in that way, the sci-fi was used as a tool for drama and great acting, not for it's own sake, but that said, the sci-fi concepts are still really cool to think about even if the acting was second rate (which it wasn't)

My problem with "The Tower" is that it (in effect) created a clone of the Atlantis, then just threw it away without much explanation. Stargate Atlantis had another similar story with replicator-based Atlantis sister ships - which, in my opinion was better executed (yet still not perfectly) of the sister/cloned space ship concept.

[Blizzah]

I have to agree with the criticism, this episode should have been a lot better. The general consensus that finding a sister city was in fact a big deal and should have been explored more is spot on. The village scenes did not anything to the story and the characters were 1-dimensonal. There were parts that I enjoyed (in general I just enjoy watching the show) but felt that more could have been done.

[mathpiglet]

Not bad but not great. Shepherd gets the girl, Rodney has a rant, Teyla and Ronon get to fight.