what a sobering season finally (spoilers)

[ShadowMaat]

It would have been a lot more sobering if they'd showed us more than a CGI desert.

[PG15]

I'd say the rest of the episode fits "more than a CGI desert" pretty well.

[Pheonix Commander]

It was a great finale to a season in my opinion. I think that now SGA is really coming of age so too speak without it's big brother SG1 around now. It has become the flagship of the series and continues to rate as such.

It was great to see a calm, reflective side of McKay in this episode, even if it took him becoming a hologram for it to happen. On a side note, kudos to his make up artist. The age make up can be a tricky undertaking and his looked every bit authentic. McKay looked more realistic then SG1 did in unending. That might not be the popular opinion, but i'm sure with a quick recap of that episode and you'll all see what i mean if you're not in agreence.

I liked the Mckay/ keller thing too. It seemed sweet, two lost souls finding each other. I hope this is revisited in s5, as i think it could work. I'm a fan of keller, i think she brings something different to the team. She's not a replacement for Carson, she's always going to be different, but different isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Sadly it was only a short life so far for my ship. It'll be back in s5 I hope, bigger, better and hopefully armed to the teeth!

Woolsey. Hope that wasn't a sign of what's to come. Some conflict is a good thing but the IOA annoy me terribly. Power without insight.

Michael and his hybrids. Cool idea, and a much better enemy then a rehash of a replicator. I liked the asurans but felt a little cheated that the best enemy they had in s3 was something from s6 of SG1. Connor Trinnear does a great job of ruling with an iron fist, and a tongue in his cheek!

[ShadowMaat]

I'd say the rest of the episode fits "more than a CGI desert" pretty well.

The events McKay related didn't happen almost 50,000 years after Shep's disappearance, which is the time frame I'd like to know more about. Are we meant to believe that humanity is extinct because of Michael or what? Sure, events in McKay's lifetime turned out to be very tragic, but what about the fate of humanity as a whole? What happened in the long run? What's going on 50,000 years into the future? Who's to say things didn't get better later on? Maybe even far better than they'd ever been before?

Taking us 50,000 (give or take a few millennia) years into the future and giving us NOTHING but a flippin' sand box seems like a waste to me. Why take us that far when just a few hundred (or even thousand) years would do? Other than depriving us of the oh-so-dramatic desert scene.

[Killjoy_Zero]

I, personally, was disappointed with season 4. It just felt fake compared to season 3. The cliff hangers arent really cliff hangers, they're just regular ending episodes. They could have cut it with Sheppard 48K years in the future, that would have been a good cliff hanger but to have the team have a building dropped on them? What the hell was the point in that? You'd think that even after 48,000 years people would have figured out a way to fly Atlantis back to Earth. We all know thats how the series will end. Another thing, they never once touched on Carson even when they had ample opportunity to do so.
Sheppard and McKay outside of the stasis pod.
Shep: Where's Carson?

How bloody hard would that have been? I understand, they may have written and filmed "The Last Man" after "The Kindred" which is fair but a last minute change would have been nice. I understand not touching up on Weir at all, that would have been a bit spoiling for the season 5 arch.

If season 5 is like season 4, I may stop watching every week and just download the main story arch episodes.

[ShadowMaat]

They could have cut it with Sheppard 48K years in the future, that would have been a good cliff hanger...

Might have made a more interesting twist. Show Shep being sent off... and not arriving. There's a flurry of activity as McKay works to figure out what went wrong and tries to correct it, but eventually it has to be put aside for more pressing issues. Spend the rest of the ep giving us snippets of the next however many years, incorporating the various elements we were given as actual, in progress events rather than something coldly related by McKay. Then, if possible, go beyond what we were given, flash-flash-flash, getting faster until FLASH! Shep steps out of the gate and looks around, zooming out to show Atlantis mired in the desert. THEN pop up the "to be continued..."

[Killjoy_Zero]

I was more referring to the point where Shep went into the stasis pod. They should have ended it there or maybe shown some snippets of McKay working and THEN Sheppard going through the gate at the end of the episode. Instead we got shafted on all that because they felt like dropping a building on the characters. Season 4 has gone down hill a bit. A lot, actually. They've pretty much destroyed it for most fans while giving in to what the fans wanted. I want to know what happened to Ford, some kind of confirmation. I wont get it for quite sometime. I want them to go back to not being insanely over powered against the wraith. The good guys should NEVER be able to just squish the bad guys. The hope the big new baddies for season 5 are much much much better than the wraith or replicators while not being another SG-1 ripoff just like everyone else here. I dont think i'll get it. And the furlings, where the hell have they run off to? Its like they disappeared from space-time. Its not fair to the fans.

[PG15]

Another thing, they never once touched on Carson even when they had ample opportunity to do so.
Sheppard and McKay outside of the stasis pod.
Shep: Where's Carson?

How bloody hard would that have been?

Harder than what you've proposed? You think that'll just be it after Sheppard asks that? Obviously they'll have McKay explain what happens to him, which will take up more time. And, if they don't do it justice, the fans will whine, just like that mention of "Jonas" in Counterstrike. They'll go "everyone else got their own segment! Why not Carson?!" and so forth.

For major characters like Carson, they will have to devote some time to it, or just not mention him at all.

[Killjoy_Zero]

But its rather annoying when Sheppard uses, as far as we know, the exact same pod. You'd think that Carson would have been in it or something since he was in it before The Last Man took place. Besides, that would have eaten up their time and we would have a better cliff hanger then what we got. I'm more than aware that they would have had to explain it, I left that part out of my initial post since I didnt feel like typing anything aside from that up. I feel cheated by season 4. The had seriously pull something out of their collective asses or Atlantis will get canceled unless that was their plan after SG-1 got canceled at which case good job writers.

[nosaj]

not sure any food products left (even frozen) would survive the 48,000 yr span.

well in fairness if a human can survive 1000 years in there im pretty sure a twinky can survive 48000

[PG15]

You think a Twinky can survive for ~300 years?

Because it'll still "age", but just at a slower pace.

[Mitchell82]

Guess we'll never know, but one guess would be that Michael and his mutations managed to improve their warpdrive and was working their way trough the Milky Way.
Or maybe after all that happened in Pegasus they finally went public with the gate and the pegsaus project and things went downhill on earth.

Could be a million reasons.

I too was curious as to what happened in the MW but it wasn't relevant to the plot.

[MacTX]

well in fairness if a human can survive 1000 years in there im pretty sure a twinky can survive 48000

that's still a lot of decay... even in stasis it would still be decaying. normally human bodies are constantly being regenerated by the body. the statis pod probably slows down the decay process and probably the regeneration process as well. The Twinkie wouldn't last that long. dried goods might be a possibility but no one really knows how it would turn out after 48k years of stasis. remember how kind the process was to weir? that was only 10k yrs and she went into it as a relatively young woman and coming out nearly at the end of life.

a stasis pod contained within a time dilation field would have been the only way.

[JSPuddlejumper]

I found it all be quite funny, actually

[Jill_Ion]

I was more referring to the point where Shep went into the stasis pod. They should have ended it there or maybe shown some snippets of McKay working and THEN Sheppard going through the gate at the end of the episode. Instead we got shafted on all that because they felt like dropping a building on the characters. Season 4 has gone down hill a bit. A lot, actually. They've pretty much destroyed it for most fans while giving in to what the fans wanted. I want to know what happened to Ford, some kind of confirmation. I wont get it for quite sometime. I want them to go back to not being insanely over powered against the wraith. The good guys should NEVER be able to just squish the bad guys. The hope the big new baddies for season 5 are much much much better than the wraith or replicators while not being another SG-1 ripoff just like everyone else here. I dont think i'll get it. And the furlings, where the hell have they run off to? Its like they disappeared from space-time. Its not fair to the fans.

The emboldened sentences confuse me, and not in a good way.