Allies (220)

[NeoSaber]

Yeah I'm really struggling to see why the Wraith didn't just finish them off for good there. It certainly wouldn't have taken much more.

I was wondering about that too. Only thing I can think of is that the Wraith were worried the Daedalus would figure out how to beam a nuke through the jamming signal.

They appear to have wanted to destroy the Daedalus as fast as possible, since they fired on it before it had time to raise its shield. It might be possible that the Wraith can detect attempts to breach the jamming signal, and could tell Hermiod was moments away from cracking the code. Even if they couldn't keep track of the attempts, they may have just calculated the shortest possible time it would take someone to counter the jamming signal and left when it got too close to that deadline. They couldn't risk the instant, unstoppable destruction of their hives.

But that's just one lurker's speculation.

[jburrows]

Well was a good episode. We learned alot of about wraith ships regrettably most of lost specs however I imagine alot a people saw them and could remeber some stuff about it. We learned how they are blocking transporting nukes and may find a way to get do it again. Also we could potentially make our own transporter blocker for f302s so the wraith can not beam our pilots out our ship(Not sure if wraith can do it but may be able to.), also prevent wraith from beaming people from planets (when wraith are out culling planets) .It could slow down culling a planets if they can not beam them inside the darts.

[#1SomeGuy]

Anyone else find it weird how they could go to two wraith ships in what appeared to be days (even hours?), and yet it takes weeks for any hive to get to atlantis. Hell the ships they went to weren't even on atlantis's scanners...yet they jumped there in no time. Flawed? Daedalus could do it yes, but not michael's hive?

[someonerandom]

wow.. it's only a show ;-)

[someonerandom]

hopefully michael doesn't have gene therapy :-x

[DetriusXii]

Holding out hope that we see a similar plot line in the next season as we did in Coup d'Etat. Instead of misleading intentions of a Coup which actually was being staged, Micheal is actually going to release the Wraith retrovirus. I'm running on the assumption that just because Micheal has an instinctual desire to feed off humans, it isn't necessary for him and he can get past his instincts.

[Ouroboros]

Did anyone else also get the impression here that the Wraith also wanted to get their own detailed look at the Wraith to human drug for the purposes of developing a possible countermeasure to it?

It's obvious now that turning other enemy Wraith into humans was more of a bonus to the plan with Earth as the main objective. Might another bonus also have been engineering a counter to the virus for themselves?

Another thing I'm not quite clear on is just how much of the Hivequeens initial cover story was true. IE is she really one of the weaker factions or was she just saying that to make them trust her. What I'm getting at is, is she beaming Earth's location around to a lot of the Wraith now or just keeping it to herself and her 3 ships.

The fact she was so clever where as other Wraith have been so damned stupid leads me to believe that she's probably not one of the weaker ones. She's not a hive "keeper" (finally learned the point/difference of those) but the fact she had 3 Hiveships to command in her little scam and possibly more in wait doesn't make her forces appear so weak.

Another thing I've been wondering about is the truthfulness of what that male Wraith scientist said about them not being able to always repair their own technology without the help of one of their keepers. Was this actually true or were they just buttering them up for more sympathy and the added joke/insult of making the humans fix the same ship that was later going to be used to attack and betray them.
If that's the case then, I'm laughing, and I'm really liking that Wraith guy, or whichever one of them it was that thought up the "lets make them fix it for us" idea. Was it him that first mentioned it or was it the queen over the radio?

[PG15]

Awesome.

Not as much action as I thought it might have, but then again I was spoiled by The Siege's. For me, being a Volcano freak, Inferno is the best episode of season two, but this one wasn't bad either.

4.5/5

[Buzz Lightyear]

I think Inferno's visual effects were way better.

Anyway, I rather doubt we'll see an Ori/Wraith conflict because:

A) They haven't introduced and thoroughly explained what the Ori are in Atlantis, and TPTB wouldn't want to offend the 4% of people who watch Atlantis and not SG-1. We are Stargate fans! We must be spoon fed bite-sized pieces of plot so our feeble little minds can handle it!

B) There are certain logic problems with the arrangement.

It'd be cool to see though. I'm rooting for the Wraith. Imagine if they totally fried an Ori fleet.

Cross-over plotlines are problematic mostly because SG1 and Atlantis are syndicated internationally but not necessarily both current seasons to the same broadcasters. Case in point, SG1 and Atlantis are seen in Canada on different networks. Plus, S9 of SG1 and S2 of Atlantis are not even aired in the same timeframe.

[Buzz Lightyear]

OMG!!!!!

that was one EXCELLENT episode

thank god we still have atlantis now that SG1 turned to crap

Actually, I disagree. While S2 of SGA has had some good episodes, including this one (despite some well-discussed concerns), on the whole, I would have to rate S9 of SG1 just a bit higher. Unlike last year when S1 of SGA was clearly superior to S8 of SG1.

[Dromag67]

Yeah I'm really struggling to see why the Wraith didn't just finish them off for good there. It certainly wouldn't have taken much more.

Maybe they planted something in the Daedalus computer too somehow?

Probably because they didn't want to risk losing their hyperdrives?

[Dromag67]

Great episode four stars!

We didn't see any more of Michael after the first half of the episode, wonder what he is up too.


It would be badass to see the Free Jaffa, Ba'al, Earth, Asgard, and Tok'ra move to defend the galaxy from the Wraith.

Going to be a long hard wait until season 3.

[Cynicat]

DAMN that was good! Great team episode (Zalenka - yay!).

McKay: "Let me see that..." *shoves Chuck*
Chuck: *zoom* *wheee!*

Hive vs hive battle - stunning!
Atlantis at night - gorgeous!
The VFX on this show are astounding - cinema-quality effects work on a weekly TV show are extremely rare, and oh how we love them!

I have to say one thing, though - in general, the Asgard are pretty weak as far as an animatronic goes. I mean, Henson was doing better work than that on MOTW aliens in Farscape 6 years ago.. Don't get me wrong, I like the Asgard as characters, but they're weakened by the fact that they look so... plastic, and lack the ability to really emote (not that they're the universe's most expressive of folks, but you know what I mean).

Does anybody else think Sheppard looks darned uncomfortable in the Orion's command chair? Like it's too small and he's afraid he's going to get catapulted across the room?

LMAO - word. The Ancients must've been short in general, as most of their chairs don't seem to be made to accomodate someone of Sheppard's height (the Atlantis Control Chair of No Legroom, anyone?)

I don't get it, either. It's like saying the Atlantis writers are writing episodes for people who aren't fans yet but might someday be. They really underestimate their current fans' ability to follow character development, too, I think. Saying that they have to write episodes in this fashion seems more like an excuse for lazy, predictable writing than anything else. They don't have to. Why don't they shoot for the best possible stories they can tell, instead of settling for simple plots and virtually no character development/growth to keep viewers from supposedly becoming confused?

It's not so much viewer confusion (though that's likely part of it - catering to the lowest common denominator and all that) as syndication that's the issue. The networks like to know that they can play the episodes in any order they like, they hate being constrained by arcs and significant character development.

[Swiss]

Originally Posted by Heaven


OMG!!!!!

that was one EXCELLENT episode

thank god we still have atlantis now that SG1 turned to crap

Actually, I disagree. While S2 of SGA has had some good episodes, including this one (despite some well-discussed concerns), on the whole, I would have to rate S9 of SG1 just a bit higher. Unlike last year when S1 of SGA was clearly superior to S8 of SG1.

In my opinion S9 of SG-1 was way better than S2 of Atlantis. I'm not a big fan of S2 anyway.
But I have to say that I actually liked allies. One of the rare good episodes of S2.

[Grug]

The Atlantis IT crew should be shot.

Each of the following is an offence that should at minimum forfeit their jobs:
- Downloading content from an untrusted source
- When Weir instructed them to 'download the file to a non-networked, firewalled computer' they should have informed her that is not really possible to do as you cannot download to a non-networked computer, a firewall on a non-networked computer is redundant as it has no network to protect against and it can't be done anyway without moving the data physically to this non-networked computer... instead the tech pretended to do this and never left his terminal
- Developmental staff were allowed full access to the production systems for playing with this data
- No conversion to safe formats of backups were made of the valuable data at this point
- Later on another file was recieved without requesting it first. Mackay stated that the systems were 'completely firewalled'. If the systems were completely firewalled, then incoming data should only be from secure sources or initiated internally first. Either Mackay is wrong and there was no firewall - or the IT staff configured it so that sources such as the Wraith are 'trusted'
- Before performing any checks on the files, they are executed and browsed from the same terminal they use for gate dialing
- No conversion to safe formats of backups were made of the valuable data at this point
- Next scene, dozens of staff are browsing this data on different terminals. Clearly networked against orders provided earlier
- Developmental staff were again allowed full access to the production systems for playing with this data
- Note that all of this data is being played with in formats that can clearly have executable code in them, rather than plain documentation and/or images
- No conversion to safe formats of backups were made of the valuable data at this point
- The virus was probing only non-sensitive systems which was why it was not detected... this is 'non-sensitive' data including highly confidential and classified mission reports... and the enemies most sought after information, the world databases. Beyond this, the 'non-networked' computers with the virus on them has access to the communications arrays? It could also send without having someone approve the outgoing traffic?
- Next, data is lost in a method that is preventable and has occured repeatedly throughout the stargate program so they should have the benifit of hindsight
- Oops, there are no backups of this lost valuable data to revert to!

I know that some concessions need to be made for the plot to progress, but to a viewer it is blatently obvious that one of the following cases is true. Either there is no IT staff at all, and everyone is just lying to Weir and just providing lip-service to make her feel better when she insists that firewalls exist and that systems should be maintained, or... the IT staff is completely incompetent and Weir (as management) is too for not noticing this.

I just hate watching episodes where they insult the viewers intelligence and think they can get away with lousy plot because of awesome CG.

On a completely unrelated side note, HOW COOL WERE THE SHINY AND EXPLOSIVE SPACE FIGHT SCENES! =D