This was a good episode, although they could have done so much more with it. First, I would have gotten rid of the flashbacks entirely. The characters didn't know anything, so the audience shouldn't either. So as McKay found out more and more about the situation, the audience discovers it with him. Why are the soldiers acting like the secret police and rounding everyone up? Why is Teyla so important? It would have been a true mystery if we weren't told it was a disease.
Instead of the flashbacks, I'd fill the time with McKay's quest to find Teyla. And what would have been really a great bit of storytelling is to make Atlantis like a dystopian society, where the soldiers are just mechanically rounding people up and enforcing order. It really would have fit in, since they're doing that because of their memory loss. You'd have McKay escape with thematic elements from THX 1138 and 1984 (soldiers as secret police, scientists / civilians as the general population, Big Brother being represented by the soldiers' standing orders or even that picture of Sheppard). I think it would have been a really intense episode. Once they find Teyla, all of the flashbacks could be explained in a few lines. But the build-up to that would have been phenomenal and we'd get a mystery / thriller / dystopian tale out of it.
I still really liked what we got but I think it could have been a lot more intense.
As a side note, the schematics of the ventilation system really do look like the piping layout for a real system. The graphics were very reminiscent of the plant operations monitor at a steam plant of a company where I worked as an engineering intern.
Instead of the flashbacks, I'd fill the time with McKay's quest to find Teyla. And what would have been really a great bit of storytelling is to make Atlantis like a dystopian society, where the soldiers are just mechanically rounding people up and enforcing order. It really would have fit in, since they're doing that because of their memory loss. You'd have McKay escape with thematic elements from THX 1138 and 1984 (soldiers as secret police, scientists / civilians as the general population, Big Brother being represented by the soldiers' standing orders or even that picture of Sheppard). I think it would have been a really intense episode. Once they find Teyla, all of the flashbacks could be explained in a few lines. But the build-up to that would have been phenomenal and we'd get a mystery / thriller / dystopian tale out of it.
I still really liked what we got but I think it could have been a lot more intense.
As a side note, the schematics of the ventilation system really do look like the piping layout for a real system. The graphics were very reminiscent of the plant operations monitor at a steam plant of a company where I worked as an engineering intern.
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