'Remnants' (515) General Discussion

[Night Marshal]

Once again We see Zelenka getting picked on for no good reason by Rodney. Even if it wasn't the Real Zelenka that banter is still getting kinda old. Personally Kolya coming back what fun but it didn't really do much for the story for me. We have seen these two go back and forth before. I think the heart of the story was Woolsey and the AI. Their is something about Robert Picardo that seems to work on the Show more than Carter. Don't get me wrong I'm a long time fan of SG-1 but Carter always seems more of the Square peg in the round hole of Atlantis. Woolsey might not be perfect but he does fit the Current Stargate Universe much Better with the Role of the IOA in the stargate program and the political sensitiveness that brings.

But it seems the the Writers really don't have any plans for the IOA other than to be the generic political villain that we have seen over and over again since Senator Kinsey in Politics from the first season of SG-1. Sadly since Kinsey left us the only person to come close to that was Woolsey and since he is in command of Atlantis now that leave a void your random guest star of the week IOA villan just doesn't seem to fill. I mean how many times can the IOA try to remove the commander of Atlantis? I honestly wonder if part of why Atlantis is going away in favor of Universe is to get rid of things like the IOA so they can spend more time of stargates and exploring.

[Skydiver]

the IOA are just a plot device...a relatively faceless entity to pop up and complicate the work our brave little band of heros are trying to do

they're trotted out whenever the story needs the 'mindless buerocrat' to complicate things and then forgotten.

[Night Marshal]

the IOA are just a plot device...a relatively faceless entity to pop up and complicate the work our brave little band of heros are trying to do

they're trotted out whenever the story needs the 'mindless buerocrat' to complicate things and then forgotten.

Its so true.

I remember watching The Ties that Bind(also written by Joseph Mallozzi & Paul Mullie) from season 9 of SG-1 and thinking what was the point of that other than a not at all funny scene. The Writers could have flushed out the IOA there or in any of the dozen or so shows than have come since then that the IOA played a part in. That was one of the great strengths of Sg-1 to bring back important guest stars and villains. There is no reason why over the course of Atlantis who from the start of season 2 the IOA was going to play a longer role and could have had a number of bureaucrats good and bad which played some role in the show to help define this group and come back when IOA issues came up. Woosley played this role for a while but in my mind he was defined before the IOA in Heroes part 2. And he always seemed more of the hand of the IOA than a key part of it(something Woosley more of less says in the episode). What we needed were the key players getting involved not more grunt bureaucrats. This is a level of Stargate Universe that is there and while I don't think it should be explored in great detail I think it has just been used like so many things as a lame plot devises, and if it were given some thought it could a interesting and important part of the show.

For the time being I can only assume the writers are trying to make us be thankful for the Generic and faceless wrath with a even more generic and faceless IOA.

[TragicComedy]

SGA - MGM Stargate: NEW Behind the Scenes Photos - 'Remnants':

http://forum.gateworld.net/showpost....&postcount=922

Thanks for showing the pics! Joe's face in that scene when his hand gets chopped off is so heart wrenching.

[Integrabyte]

Great episode. I loved it. Why?

1. I love the Asian chick from the IOA. She reminds me when she was taking the mickey out of Cam with Daniel . I cracked up back then.
2. The aussie chick and Kolya were very well thought out.
3. Zelenka was perfect. His chipper self but very flattering to show the audience that something is wrong. I knew he was an illusion . 5 points for me .
4. Woolsey grew on me and , eventhough I like Shen, I did not want her to take over.
5. Rodney was very funny and the AI knew how to push his buttons .


10/10

I wasn't spoiled and I did not expect much. No high hopes and I wasn't disappointed.

[Jill_Ion]

SGA - MGM Stargate: NEW Behind the Scenes Photos - 'Remnants':

http://forum.gateworld.net/showpost....&postcount=922

Robert Davi! Stop picking on Joe! LOL!

[Crichiel]

you mean if we got 20 more eps we MIGHT get something more than the shep and rodney hour x 20?

I'm sorry? The shep and rodney hour? THIS season. I wish. Let's break it down:

1) Search and Rescue-show split between 3 groups (Carter/Keller/McKay, Sheppard/Ronon, and Michael/Teyla)
2) Seed-Keller and Carson with a little group work from the others
3) Broken Ties-Ronon
4) Daedalus Variations-FINALLY a team episode!
5) Ghost in the Machine-Weir with everyone else as back up
6) The Shrine-McKay and Keller
7) Whispers-Sheppard and Carson
8) The Queen-Teyla
9) Tracker-Ronon, McKay, and Keller
10) First Contact-Daniel and McKay, with some Sheppard and Keller/Ronon
11) Lost Tribe-See previous entry
12) Outsiders-Carson and not sure, McKay? I actually missed this one
13) Inquisition-Sheppard had the speaking parts, but it wasn't really anyone's show, it was a clip show.
14) Prodigal-Teyla, with some little moments for Ronon, McKay, and Sheppard
15) Remnants-Plot split between Woolsey, Sheppard, and McKay
16) Brain Storm-McKay and Keller
17) Infection-can't tell from the photos or description on this one
18) Identity-What a shock, Keller again
19) Vegas-Sheppard
20) I would assume everyone, but I am sick of seeing the pictures of McKay and Keller together.

Aside from Vegas, I see no episodes that would be considered a strictly "Sheppard" show this season at all (And Vegas could change once we see it, I thought Remnants would be a Sheppard show). He had some good plotlines, but it was always in episodes where there were multiple plotlines, with none of the individual ones getting into any depth. Remnants was the closest so far, but still very little actual time spent with any one person since the three stories were happening at once. As for the team of four? That is SO passe!

No, I would NOT call this season the Sheppard-McKay Hour, more like the "Split Everyone Into Small Groups, Give Keller The Most Prominent Storylines, McKay Gets Either Part Of Her "A" Story Or Put In Charge Of The "B" Story, While Sheppard Shares Any Of His "A" Stories With Two Or Three Others Or Else Gets A "B" Story, Ronon And Teyla Play Backup To Everyone Once They Have Had 'Their' Episode, Forget Having All The Team (Sheppard, McKay, Ronon, Teyla) Together Hour"....But I suppose that is too long a title?

[lhawk]

Remnants was a good episode but it left me wanting more...I felt the majority of it should have been about Sheppard and Koyla instead of all the going back & forth only giving short scenes with Shepp. As always, I enjoy watching McKay but felt this episode should have been all about Shepp & his weaknesses. Remnants had the potential to be much better - digging deep into Shepp fears and revealing a side of him we haven't seen, and in my opinion, it fell short.

I was disappointed Koyla was not back for real but I must say the whole hallucination thing and how it all tied in together at the end was pretty cool. In that case, I felt Koyla should have been even more brutal w/Shepp, more mind games, maybe even killing him, then afterward Shepp would come to, revealing it was just a hallucination! that would have been a real eye opener...

Loved the whole cutting off the hand thing - great shock value which is just what the episode needed.

As many others have said - it annoyed me the beating Shepp took wasn't made to look more real! Yes there should have been some blood oozing from Shepp's arm, his face should been more bruised/bloody from the punches, and even though I liked the idea of Shepp taking out the Genjii, it was a bit unrealistic he could have done so so easily in his condition.

Shepp's character should experience a few nightmares after going thru all that I would say? But probably too much to hope for or see in any of the remaining episodes...

Of course it saddens me this is the last season of SGA. It definitely could have gone another 2 seasons at least...I do hope they have the opportunity to reveal more on Shepp in the SGA movies to come. And yes we need to see more Teyla and Ronon with the team as well!

I hope all deleted scenes from Remnants are included in the DVD. I read at least 9 mins were cut so I'm looking forward to seeing that extra footage!

[nx01a]

Enjoyable episode.

The Good:
>IOA evil!
>Picard has his intelligent Aussie hottie from Snowy River in TNG's 'Lessons', Wendy Hughes. Picardo gets his own intelligent Aussie hottie in this episode.
>Woolsey... Love him better with every episode. Him and his 'private spot'.
>Shep... Poor woman-chasing, self-hating Shep.
>Rodney... Brilliant!
>The shots of Atlantis were some of the most beautiful we've ever seen. You can almost smell the salt air.
>That revolving shot of Shep vs Koyla... very 'Alice in Wonderland down the rabbit hole' or 'Wizard of Oz'. Or 60s 'Batman'. It's a classic technique for the whole 'dream world' motif, the whole world's topsy turvy. By that point, most people got that John and Koyla was a hallucination and they were about to reveal it anyway, so the placement of the shot was nice.
>The maths Rodney was using certainly sounded complex... kinda. If you notice there're spaces, why are there spaces? Sigh. Not so brill, Rod.
>The nudges ZelenkAI used to get Rodney to do what it wanted. Brilliant! The scene in the control room with Rodney, Chuck and Amelia was very much like 'The Sixth Sense'. On the first watch, you'd never realize ZelenkAI wasn't really there.
>The dialogue was brilliant! Woolsey was hilarious when necessary and strong when needed. That "Oh God..." was perfect! Rodney's "Am I sick? What have you heard?!"
>John threw himself off a cliff... WTF?!
>I was trying not to look at the list of guest stars lest I see some name to spoiler the whole episode, but I never was really that interested in Koyla so I didn't recognize the actor's name. It was quite the surprise to see him again... despite a few seconds of groaning.
>LUCIUS! They mentioned Lucius!
>I was hoping this episode would address the seemingly forgotten plot of the Genii experimenting with inserting the ATA genes into themselves to use Ancient tech. Still, the whole blood thing works just as fine.
>Woolsey's pro-life! Woolsey made the right choice letting the aliens have a chance to revitalize their civilization. First off, it's life, whether potential or otherwise. Helping it along would take nothing off us and it's not like we desperately need their technology. We have the full knowledge of the Asgard and the Ancients. We don't NEED the knowledge of a silicon-based species. Their medical sciences would be completely useless to us and technologies that would be safe for them might kill us, etc. We have enough knowledge at the moment, thank you. Besides, for all their 'advanced' society and technology, they couldn't even bring about a second generation of their species, like the Ancients did. 50+ failed attempts... that knowledge seems a bit flimsy to me.
>I wonder if the aliens interacted with the Ancients? We've heard nothing about it in the Ancient database, but that's vast. If the probe landed 2000 years ago... Their race should have been contemporary with the Ancients for millions of years. Then again, maybe they kept to themselves and never perfected time travel, hence the obviously flawed probes... or maybe they aren't from Pegasus at all and just sent probes across the, ahem, Universe.
>Killing Genii easily, great. Killing Wraith easily, stupid. I prefer to see these humans killing humans easily, not humans killing 'near immortal' beings easily.

The Bad:
>How stupid ARE these people?! Their last planet had mind-altering whales and serious solar flare problems, not to mention a Wraith cruiser right under them! THIS planet has upper atmosphere EM fluctuations and rare Pegasus germs! Don't they scan places?! On every available spectrum? Stupid.
>Rehash of SG-1's 'Scorched Earth'?
>How did the AI activate the transporter in the beginning? And the writers did such a good job with keeping Zelenka's non-existence consistently in the shadows.
>These silicon aliens are interesting, though their probe looks alot like the Asuran probe... and it looks really... backwards for a millions of years old race. AND the race themselves were far too human to be believable. A race based on a different element and they're visualized as the absolute creative baseline you can think of for a silicon-based lifeform: humanoid but, since silicon makes glass, let's make the humanoid shiny and semi-transparent. Showing the true form was unnecessary unless the visual would truly 'wow' us. I, for one, was underwhelmed by it. No creativity or imagination whatsoever went into creating that alien or its probe.
>Keller's stupid! Ok, I honestly thought she was but then it became obvious that Woolsey didn't tell her about the hallucinations, and she was just reacting to what he was saying at face value. But seriously, why was she in this episode, and why wasn't she eating breakfast/lunch/dinner with everyone else? A 2 minute not terribly important scene whose actions could easily be glossed over in 5 seconds of dialogue is really a waste.
>Daniel lost his foot, but he got it back. Shep lost his hand, but he got it back. Sigh.
>John went to the mainland just to flirt with a scientist chick in hot pants? You go, John. Be consistent.
>As for what drives John... He's constantly willing to kill himself to save others. What drives him? Will we ever find out? Does it matter? We've found out as much about Woolsey in 5 episodes this season as we have about John in 5 seasons.

The Verdict:
Atlantis should have been consistently like this episode and 'The Prodigal'... and not 'Tracker' and 'Outsiders'. The better episodes don't feature Wraith, apparently. Sure, it had problems, but it was enjoyable and intelligent despite the obligatory 'shoot people in the forest' sequences.

[prion]

Enjoyable episode.


The Bad:
>How stupid ARE these people?! Their last planet had mind-altering whales and serious solar flare problems, not to mention a Wraith cruiser right under them! THIS planet has upper atmosphere EM fluctuations and rare Pegasus germs! Don't they scan places?! On every available spectrum? Stupid.
>Rehash of SG-1's 'Scorched Earth'?

Mallozzi loves to dust off his old scripts and rewrite them. Expect this one to be redone in SGU as well *cough*

[Briangate78]

The Verdict:
Atlantis should have been consistently like this episode and 'The Prodigal'... and not 'Tracker' and 'Outsiders'. The better episodes don't feature Wraith, apparently. Sure, it had problems, but it was enjoyable and intelligent despite the obligatory 'shoot people in the forest' sequences.

Huh? Outsiders, The Queen, The lost Tribe, and First Contact all had Wraith and were great!

[Jill_Ion]

Enjoyable episode.

The Bad:
>How stupid ARE these people?! Their last planet had mind-altering whales and serious solar flare problems, not to mention a Wraith cruiser right under them! THIS planet has upper atmosphere EM fluctuations and rare Pegasus germs! Don't they scan places?! On every available spectrum? Stupid.
>Rehash of SG-1's 'Scorched Earth'?

The whales only were a threat to the Lanteans when they all congregated, which apparently hadn't happened for tens of thousands of years. There wasn't a problem with the whales' subsonic communication until they amassed.

The solar flare couldn't have been predicted or discovered before it was found. McKay says so in the ep.

The Wraith cruiser was all but dead and at the bottom of the ocean, near a vent in the ocean bottom which would be generating heat and possibly other waves or fields which would keep it from being detected. Also, there was only one Wraith who was hibernating, and as we know from S1, hibernating Wraith don't show up on life signs detectors.

The EM fluctuations might not always be present. They could be intermittent or seasonal or depending upon whether the sun is flaring up or the moons are in phase.

It wasn't a rare Pegasus germ. It was actually very similar to a very common Pegasus germ, akin to chicken pox or mumps here on Earth. So common the city didn't view it as a threat.

My assessment? Not very stupid at all.

[syncretic]

im just happy there was a aussie flag...woot!!!!

AGREED! It was a happy little patriotic moment, first seeing that patch.

I find it incredibly amusing that Woolsey's romantic and sexual ideal is an Aussie, but it only serves to further my opinion that he is AWESOME I would so set him up with my property law tutor If anyone had told me at the start of this season that I would like Woolsey this much, I would have laughed. But Robert Picardo is simply fantastic. He has an on-screen presence and a force of character that I would say is comparable with the great Don S. Davis. Just having him THERE makes a scene.

I loved this episode to bits. It's quite possibly my favourite all season, and whilst yes, there are lots of good Wraith episodes, generally speaking I think the so-called "filler", non-Wraith ones tend to be better.

And again, I did see parallels with Scorched Earth, but I actually think this ep was better than that one - so shoot me. Although I suppose you can't directly compare them, SE was focused more on the moral dilemma and this one was slightly more character-based. You can hardly blame them for re-borrowing storylines, they're 15 seasons into the frachise and it's not as though the episode was a complete re-hash. They did put a fresh new spin on it, and a pretty good one, I reckon.

I CANNOT believe they're cancelling the show when it's getting so effing good

Also: maybe I'm just stupid but I didn't think this episode was (in effect) predictable at all. Maybe the plot points were sort of obvious, especially the Zelenka thing, but they were so good at the whole suspension of disbelief business that you bought it all and laughed delightedly when all was revealed at the end. LOVE THIS EP TO BITS. *flail*

[thedrumm3rguy]

"oh god...lorne warned me about this"

- brilliant!!

[Integrabyte]

Spoiler:

Enjoyable episode.

The Good:
>IOA evil!
>Picard has his intelligent Aussie hottie from Snowy River in TNG's 'Lessons', Wendy Hughes. Picardo gets his own intelligent Aussie hottie in this episode.
>Woolsey... Love him better with every episode. Him and his 'private spot'.
>Shep... Poor woman-chasing, self-hating Shep.
>Rodney... Brilliant!
>The shots of Atlantis were some of the most beautiful we've ever seen. You can almost smell the salt air.
>That revolving shot of Shep vs Koyla... very 'Alice in Wonderland down the rabbit hole' or 'Wizard of Oz'. Or 60s 'Batman'. It's a classic technique for the whole 'dream world' motif, the whole world's topsy turvy. By that point, most people got that John and Koyla was a hallucination and they were about to reveal it anyway, so the placement of the shot was nice.
>The maths Rodney was using certainly sounded complex... kinda. If you notice there're spaces, why are there spaces? Sigh. Not so brill, Rod.
>The nudges ZelenkAI used to get Rodney to do what it wanted. Brilliant! The scene in the control room with Rodney, Chuck and Amelia was very much like 'The Sixth Sense'. On the first watch, you'd never realize ZelenkAI wasn't really there.
>The dialogue was brilliant! Woolsey was hilarious when necessary and strong when needed. That "Oh God..." was perfect! Rodney's "Am I sick? What have you heard?!"
>John threw himself off a cliff... WTF?!
>I was trying not to look at the list of guest stars lest I see some name to spoiler the whole episode, but I never was really that interested in Koyla so I didn't recognize the actor's name. It was quite the surprise to see him again... despite a few seconds of groaning.
>LUCIUS! They mentioned Lucius!
>I was hoping this episode would address the seemingly forgotten plot of the Genii experimenting with inserting the ATA genes into themselves to use Ancient tech. Still, the whole blood thing works just as fine.
>Woolsey's pro-life! Woolsey made the right choice letting the aliens have a chance to revitalize their civilization. First off, it's life, whether potential or otherwise. Helping it along would take nothing off us and it's not like we desperately need their technology. We have the full knowledge of the Asgard and the Ancients. We don't NEED the knowledge of a silicon-based species. Their medical sciences would be completely useless to us and technologies that would be safe for them might kill us, etc. We have enough knowledge at the moment, thank you. Besides, for all their 'advanced' society and technology, they couldn't even bring about a second generation of their species, like the Ancients did. 50+ failed attempts... that knowledge seems a bit flimsy to me.
>I wonder if the aliens interacted with the Ancients? We've heard nothing about it in the Ancient database, but that's vast. If the probe landed 2000 years ago... Their race should have been contemporary with the Ancients for millions of years. Then again, maybe they kept to themselves and never perfected time travel, hence the obviously flawed probes... or maybe they aren't from Pegasus at all and just sent probes across the, ahem, Universe.
>Killing Genii easily, great. Killing Wraith easily, stupid. I prefer to see these humans killing humans easily, not humans killing 'near immortal' beings easily.

The Bad:
>How stupid ARE these people?! Their last planet had mind-altering whales and serious solar flare problems, not to mention a Wraith cruiser right under them! THIS planet has upper atmosphere EM fluctuations and rare Pegasus germs! Don't they scan places?! On every available spectrum? Stupid.
>Rehash of SG-1's 'Scorched Earth'?
>How did the AI activate the transporter in the beginning? And the writers did such a good job with keeping Zelenka's non-existence consistently in the shadows.
>These silicon aliens are interesting, though their probe looks alot like the Asuran probe... and it looks really... backwards for a millions of years old race. AND the race themselves were far too human to be believable. A race based on a different element and they're visualized as the absolute creative baseline you can think of for a silicon-based lifeform: humanoid but, since silicon makes glass, let's make the humanoid shiny and semi-transparent. Showing the true form was unnecessary unless the visual would truly 'wow' us. I, for one, was underwhelmed by it. No creativity or imagination whatsoever went into creating that alien or its probe.
>Keller's stupid! Ok, I honestly thought she was but then it became obvious that Woolsey didn't tell her about the hallucinations, and she was just reacting to what he was saying at face value. But seriously, why was she in this episode, and why wasn't she eating breakfast/lunch/dinner with everyone else? A 2 minute not terribly important scene whose actions could easily be glossed over in 5 seconds of dialogue is really a waste.
>Daniel lost his foot, but he got it back. Shep lost his hand, but he got it back. Sigh.
>John went to the mainland just to flirt with a scientist chick in hot pants? You go, John. Be consistent.
>As for what drives John... He's constantly willing to kill himself to save others. What drives him? Will we ever find out? Does it matter? We've found out as much about Woolsey in 5 episodes this season as we have about John in 5 seasons.

The Verdict:
Atlantis should have been consistently like this episode and 'The Prodigal'... and not 'Tracker' and 'Outsiders'. The better episodes don't feature Wraith, apparently. Sure, it had problems, but it was enjoyable and intelligent despite the obligatory 'shoot people in the forest' sequences.

There there ,pats nx01a on the back. Be mean, feisty, don't let them push you around .


***HEE HEEE HEEE HEEE***

: "Son of a ..."