Michael (218)

[Liam Kincaid]

Spoilers for Michael .....



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Now thanks to Michael the Wraith know about Atlantis. Or at least some Wraith do. But we have seen earlier this season that there is growing tension, competition,and distrust between different Hives, probably as a result of the shortage of food (humans). Will Michael's Hive necessarily inform other Wraith about the continued existance of Atlantis, or will they try to keep this secret to themselves?

[Ancient 1]

I hate to be wishy washy, but this could go either way: They might not tell other hives because of the food shortage and recent mistrusts, but then again I think it would take more than one hive ship to successfully invade Atlantis. With the point of invading Atlantis being to get to earth, it might well be worth sharing the knowledge.

[LORD MONK]

They'll just tell ther buddy Hive ships and that's all. We will just have to wait and find out.

[Chutzpah]

Perhaps they want earth all to themselves? As far as i know they haven't told and hive ships yet, and its hard to know if they can even communicate between galaxys.

[Traveler Enroute1]

This episode, IMO, has the same overtones as "Poisoning the Well," where

Spoiler:

tainting the "food supply" to deter the Wraith was warned it would bring annilhilation sure and swift, not salvation

. Hard to see what difference this experiment with Michael would have than the swift renewal of Wraith wrath on Atlantis. I agree with other posters that Michael’s presence on Atlantis and not at an alternate site was too deep a plot hole to ignore given their stealth existence.

And wonderful undertones of "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley. Esp in Carson's stark anguish at what he had created, what it meant, whether it was humane. I think his crucial succumbing to exhaustion (mentally and physically) was just his own subconscious way of letting this horrible burden go. McGillon did a wonderfully understated performance as the man who created the monster and then, let it loose. Whatever other shortcomings this ep had, I’ll take his performance as the best thing about it.

I saw this as the Atlantis expedition’s descent into techno-survival at all costs. What wouldn’t they do to their enemy to secure their own survival? Discard what they hold as sacred: their humanity? Compassion? Will they be any different from the Genii? One hopes their attachment to earth will keep that tendency at bay, in that they aren’t totally cut off and alone. But then, earth may see any means necessary to keep the Wraith scourge out of the Milky Way galaxy warranted.

Clearly the whole decision making group in Atlantis was torn up over their experiment, its failure and its possible consequences. Maybe we could predict shortcomings with their plan, but as in real life, ya gotta be in it to really know why whatever went down the way it did. (That's my way of saying I'll overlook the plot problems for now.) I expect something this momentous (a captured Wraith escapes with detailed intel on their situation) will need a follow up. Looking forward to it. JMHO.

Just sayin’, tough issues in this one; thumb’s up inspite of plot pot-holes; 5x5.

P.S. Oh, and apropos of this ep, check out this article in Chicago Sun-Times by Kevin Nance:

http://www.google.ca/url?sa=X&oi=new...dinello26.html

Chicago Sun-Times: 2-26-06: The Frankenstein Syndrome: When science goes awry; article by Kevin Nance: interesting article that caught my attention, and seemed to tie in with the episode and all it’s moral layers. The book mentioned here sounds worth a read as well. (Not the motivation for my own comparison to the Frankenstein story, however! TE1)

[Anubis69]

IMHO this is one of the gems of S2. It really was immense. The line at the end gave me goosebumps. It's really what i thought Atlantis was gonna be about. Darker issues, challenging what we thought we knew etc. And Connor Trinneer was great as Michael.

Plus, being spoiler free, it really had me guessing a lot of the way through. I just couldn't work out why the team were acting so weird and spooked at the beginning. I thought it was gonna be another crappy "out of mind" kind of episode. One of my favourite episodes of recent times. I really hope we see Michael again. What a hilarious situation that would be...

[Prior_of_the_Ori]

Watched the episode and loved it. I hope we get to see the actor again soon as he is perfect playing a Wraith with 'character'. I know if I was him in such a situation, I would want some revenge. I mean sure they tried to justify the whole thing that the Wraith would exterminate them but it was working the opposite way as well as humans arnt doing anything different or special. Sure they dont feed on life but thats it. Moral episode type thing was which was quite enjoyable.

[Matt G]

1. Don't have any problems with the genetic rewrite in theory. Pretty straightforward way of getting rid of their main enemy had it worked.

2. Connected to that...Ronan Dex you are an idiot. If he had dropped his grudges against the Wraith with Michael then Michael wouldn't have gone after the DVD footage and from there on in the Atlantis crew were fighting a losing battle.

3. The reason that Michael was on Atlantis was because he was supposed to be Earth military. To keep that story up they'd have needed to get him on to Atlantis at some point even if they'd have started him on the Alpha site.

4. OK...was spoiled on this one so some of the earlier moments didn't ring true.

Overall, definately one of the better eps of the season.

[cafine_us]

4. OK...was spoiled on this one so some of the earlier moments didn't ring true.

I was spoiled as well. While I don't know if it really diminished my appreciation of the episode, it certainly took away quite a bit of the suspense in the earlier portion of the show. I was reminded why I strive to avoid spoilers at all costs.

[Nel]

I really liked this episode. It was dark, and the end, when they realised the danger they had put themselves in, was not the usual "well we've sorted that all out" ending.

I thought their reactions to Michael were very interesting.

Ronon was honest to himself throughout. He doesn't disembled, he just says it as it is.

Both Sheppard and Weir were trying to look at the bigger picture. Trying to find ways to defeat the Wraith. Sheppard had echoes of Ronon's reaction in that he never completely trusted Michael, he was just better at hiding it.

McKay was hilarious when he was talking to Michael - he was so obviously uncomfortable with him. I think he probably was ambiguous about the project all along.

Teyla was the one who had to lie to Michael most, and she obviously didn't like doing it. I get the feeling that she probably originally thought the idea was okay, but once Michael became human, she felt uncomfortable with it, and hated the lying aspect.

Carson was perhaps the most interesting (but then he is my favourite character). When it started out, it was just a medical experiement for him. I suspect while Michael was a Wraith, he saw it as a means to help mankind. However, once Michael became human, the full implications of what he had done seemed to hit him. The others were concerned about him, and how he was coping. I think he actually grew to like Michael as a human, his natural compassion shone through. He actually rarely lied to Michael. When Michael questioned him at the beginning, he hesitated and Sheppard and Weir jumped in to set up the lie. By the end of the episode, he seemed completely weighed down by what he had done and the fact it lead to the death of a man.

I thought it was a very thought provoking episode.

[Stricken]

Michael dealt with the retro virus which has played a key role in several storylines this season, the Wraith (for who I will call Michael ) was whilst given the knowledge of Atlantis existence, he was given the emotions that humans have and when it came to it, he was forced to judge his actions by those merits when he had Teyla ready to be fed upon.

What made this a good episode was that you were living it out from the perspective of Michael, no knowledge of what has happened (unless you read the spoilers) this gave the experience of being able to experience his new found emotions about how he was a Lt. who was a great warrior who had been captured saving his team from the Wraith. But straight away you knew that something was up and that was the let down to this episode, with Weir, Beckett and Sheppard discussing with his limited details of what had happened to him, you could tell by their voices, the words that they used when talking to him that they were uneasy around him, unsure how to treat him. To top of this feeling was their looking down at him and their poise let on that we hadn’t got the full picture.
The clues were there, they made it easy for him to work out what he was, the armed guards escorting him everywhere that he went, the cameras in his quarters monitoring his every move. The Wraith knowledge was still there as shown by his observation of McKay's book and how he was able to translate the information and understand that it was the information for the Wraith transporting technology. The dreams of being on a Wraith ship seeing the other Wraith and then seeing the Wraith version of himself in the mirror.
As a result of all this and the fact that everyone was thinking about what hey were going to say next, stuttering, thinking on their feet. He goes to the infirmary for pills and ends up letting his curiosity getting the best of him by taking the CD's and discovering that he has awoken before and was violent, he then goes on to discover that he was a Wraith who vowed to kill Sheppard and co, but after several days of dosage of the retro virus he was more receptive to the idea that he was human.

Because of what they were doing to Michael the team were torn on how to act when he becams suspicious as to what was going on. Ronan wanting to kill him simple because he was a Wraith or at least use to be, McKay was also on Ronan’s side for once. Sheppard, Weir and Dr. Heightmire wanted to continue the experiment in the hope that it would remove the Wraith tendencies or increase the dosage and wipe his memory again. Teyla was undecided, she wanted for him to remain human but for them to reveal the truth to him. In the end this conflict between the members of the team led to Michael falling back into the hands of the Wraith, which in turn would lead to them discovering the existence of Atlantis.
This led to the discussion at the end, with McKay stating that the cloak trick won't work this time, and everyone looking sorry for themselves over this hole incident and Colonel Sheppard closing with "We need more firepower" which if you know about the end of the season, could the hive ships be coming next season??

The real highlight of this episode was the shots of external Atlantis, during the night time ( a shoot that has been used before) and the fog shot, which was a new shot. Michael wasn't a top episode, but it wasn’t the worst as there were parts that could have been better. Hopefully there will be an improvement in next weeks Inferno.

Michael receives a S.G.C rating of 6 out of 9 Chevrons!

[Hudson]

Hightlight for me was ronon falling through the closed gate. it was like a roadrunner cartoon

[Endeavour]

2. Connected to that...Ronan Dex you are an idiot. If he had dropped his grudges against the Wraith with Michael then Michael wouldn't have gone after the DVD footage and from there on in the Atlantis crew were fighting a losing battle.

You can't blame it on Ronan. Michael said a number of times that people were always acting as though they were hiding something from him. Ronan was the only one who *didn't* hide his hate from him.

IMO this episode was excellent, and the idea of turning him into a human was even better. As they said on the show, if he was still a wraith they wouldn't have hesitated to kill him. Therefore the same goes for if they'd turned him from a wrait into a full auratis bug - if it went wrong, they'd kill it. But because they turned him human they were left with moral choices to make.

As for keeping him on Atlantis, it was a "medical" decision. They wouldn't have gone into this without believing it had a good chance of working, and the psychologist would have recommended Michael was integrated with the rest of the Atlantis team to help convince him of the story they were giving him. So it's a toss up between the risk to Atlantis if it didn't work, and the benefit of keeping him at Atlantis to improve the chances of it working. It's a fair choice and not necessarily worthy of the huge plot hole everyone is complaining about. And yes, it's also a good leader for the season finale which I assume will be another wraith attack.

[Elinor]

Well, I thought this was a cracking episode...very well done. Yes, it was a controversial subject. Just how far do you go when you're at war? The main cast played this ever so well. You could see the doubt flitting across their faces...'Are we doing the right thing here...is this morally correct?'

Connor Trineer was excellent. He was always my fave in 'Enterprise', although I must admit that I got bored with that and gave up watching most of it...but he was great here.

This was just an excellent idea for an episode and I think the writers did a good...and brave job. Definitely a subject that seems to have created a good deal of chatter...and that's always a good thing!

[Liam Kincaid]

I don't think the moral problem here was Atlantis being too heartless, I think the problem was their not being ruthless enough. The Wraith are trying to get to Earth so that they can eat billions of human beings. Whatever you have to do to them to prevent that is fair game. The problem was that they tried to treat Michael like a human instead of like a Wraith. They do way too much agonizing over phony moral issues in Atlantis. I am not somebody who thinks that there is no such thing as a moral issue worth agonizing over,but preserving the "feelings" of a monster that wants to drain the life force out of thousands of people is not a good example of one.