So...where's Franklin?

[Senzune]

Indeed, he most likely ascended.

Which brings me to the hopes of him coming back later in season 2, as the Destiny is billions of lightyears from home and thus from the spacezones where the ascended Ancients are. Thus, there are no rules for ascended beings and as soon as Franklin got to learn ascended powers, he should be able to return to the destiny. Or, if he doesn't travel within the FTL field of Destiny, he's stuck as the only ascended being in the fast distances between two unknown galaxies.

[beafly]

He clearly ascended.

Clearly. There is no other plausible explanation like the half dozen or so presented here.

Wait, huh?

[meo3000]

Hes in cold storage for the anniversary BBQ, next to the senator.

[Kaiphantom]

Hes in cold storage for the anniversary BBQ, next to the senator.

The next episode has a memorial service, scheduled right after the BBQ.

Young: "I'd like to take this time for a moment of silence to remember our dear departed friend, who gave us such a valuable gift... meat. But not only that, as we'll remember that he touched all of our lives in subtle but important ways; but he's not gone, as he's left a piece of himself behind. Many pieces in fact, covered in BBQ sauce. And so we will always remember our dear friend, because we all carry a part of him within us... at least now..."

[ancientaction]

(QR)

I see two plausible posiblities. and one less than plausible.

1) Aliens boarded and took him just after giving the nessisary command to FTL away. (Possible, but they didn't exactly show much of the room at the end, never really paned and zoomed to see if there was a whole in the roof or not.) Personaly, I don't like this posibility.

2) He ascended. He had WEEKS traped in his own mind with very little to do other than marinate in the knowledged that was forced into his head. and then, at the last moments of despair, he speaks, He knows he's the one that has to make the sacrafice. was the chair an ascension machine, I doubt it, But i think the chair may have activated parts of his brain nessiary to do so, in that situation, i think it could be highly plausible that he did in fact ascend.


3), the less than likely situation, The ship Ate him. Or whatever Ive seen from some of the replies already, the ship could have used his body to become one with the ship or whatever, I mean, the fracking ship flys trough a star to fill up its tank... what else can it do?

[blackluster]

Personally I'm hoping that he simply got out of the room some other way and is on the ship somewhere. The only issue with that is that as I look at that scene again, it looks like the clamps and the head piece on the chair are still engaged. Perhaps he is in the chair and Young and James just can't see him for some reason.

[AVFan]

I think the ship absorbed him somehow... For what purpose, I have no idea. Could be to control the ship? Maybe the ship required some sort of sacrifice? I dunno.

I would compare his experience to Daniel's in Crystal Skull. The skull started the process of transferring Daniel to another dimension to talk to the aliens, but Teal'c stopped the process, leaving Daniel in limbo. I wouldn't say that the purposes of the devices are the same, but I think what we saw happen to Franklin in Justice (?) was part of the normal process of the chair.

[droid327]

Ascension is really out of the question. The Destiny, if I remember my Ancients timeline correctly, predates the MW Plague, and definitely predates Atlantis. The Destiny's SGs and all the other Ancient tech predates anything we've seen in SG up to this point. To think that the Ancients had understood and refined the process of ascension so well, that early, that someone as "unprepared" as Franklin can master it in 3 weeks, defies the logic of the canon up to this point.

I think whats more probable is that his body was damaged by the first time he sat in the chair, and so he put himself in cold storage to halt the degradation, moved his consciousness into Destiny, and then had Destiny stick his body in stasis somewhere until he could repair it. We saw that the chair doesnt physically bore into your brain, it just touched at the temples, so its arguable that Franklin had remained "connected" to Destiny the entire time he was in catatonia, even when he was no longer physically in the chair, and remained so once the link was properly re-established, even if his body was moved to stasis.

He's just in a closet somewhere, Reginald Barclay-ing it up in the Destiny's CPU.

[meo3000]

Like AVfan said, he could also be out of phase and still in the chair.

[garhkal]

Well said droid. There is just too much time from when the ship was launched to when the ancients started to ascend, to even think that this ship had the capacity to give HIM the capability to ascend.

[harakiri]

After reading here a bit (not all yet,but will.) I also have to say I am wondering about this. Excuse me if this has been brought up earlier:But another question related to this is: "will we ever see him again?" Its a strange thing that happened in this episode,and now The Destiny leaves that galaxy. Many questions remains for this season and the next. The writers have done an excellent job when it comes to leaving things unanswered. Maybe Franklin needed the chair to "survive" from the "damage" it did first.

If he ascended he would probably now be a part of the ship. I guess we all like me feels the ship as an almost living entity.

[pipi]

Well said droid. There is just too much time from when the ship was launched to when the ancients started to ascend, to even think that this ship had the capacity to give HIM the capability to ascend.

Yaa. Destiny tech is pre-ascention. There's no way the chair could double as an ascention machine. And for Franklin to ascend on his own right.. er. what makes him so special? It's not like he's been meditating for decades or has an ascended tour guide.

[HaMm3r]

I watch this episode for about the 4th or 5th time yesterday, and one new thing I noticed was how profusely Franklin was sweating thoughout the entire episode, until he was placed in the chair. I think the writers were trying to give the impression that his mind was burning up or overheating from all the knowledge dumped into it, and that the freezing sequence was a way to stabilize his brain function. I now have the impression that Franklin initiated his own freezing intentionally, instead of the ship doing it to him as I first thought. He likely knew that was the only way to control Destiny and possibly "save" himself.

[Astrofighter]

Another thing about it instantly ascending him...lets not forget the Atlantis machine that got Mckay there...it took several days for his body to get ready to ascend. Are you telling me the ancients made the tech to pretty much instantly ascend an average joe human millions of years ago and then forgot and made a new machine that takes days and kills half the people that use it....and plus as others have said, when a person ascends in the Stargate realm their clothes are left in a pile where they stood, as they don't ascend their clothes just their body! No clothes in the chair...

[HaMm3r]

I agree, there's no way he ascended. That theory just makes no sense whatsoever, and it would be highly unimaginative writing if that's the explanation we get. Assuming, of course, that we ever get an explanation at all.

I'm far more inclined to believe that Franklin either burned-up or was vaporized by interfacing with the chair, and that the freezing we saw was a way to slow down his inevitable death. Some form of suspended animation would be reasonable too, but either way, I'd like to see his presence lingering on Destiny in some manner.

I am hopeful that the writers will come up with a brilliant and surprising resolution to the Franklin story. They've certainly shown they're capable of it several times this season.