The Tower (215)

[NakedJehutyV2]

wraith beat alterrans humans still don't stand a chance with a few more pj's and drones. more will just come. they need something to go after them

[ShadowMaat]

First of all, YAAAAAAYYYYY, Brendan Beiser FINALLY appears on Stargate!! I think he's possibly one of the last actors left in the city who hasn't appeared on the show at some point. Gotta say, though, Agent Pendrell has REALLY gone to seed. *sigh* Still, it was fun to see him as Tavius, even if Tavius was a complete one-dimensional fop.

As for the rest of it... sheer, unmitigated CRAP. Wow, to fit much crap into so little plot, the writers REALLY outdid themselves this time.

Someone pointed out that the only purpose of this ep was to restock Atlantis. Very true. But dear gods above, did the surrounding material have to be so pathetic??

We have Shep Bigalow, Intergalactic Gigolo- something which is appallingly wretched and says nothing but HORRIBLE things about the commander of Atlantis's military.

We have the painfully obvious Court Intrigue. Did anyone REALLY think Tavius was responsible? That was even more blatant than Kavanagh.

We have the Generic Terrified Villagers. Please, someone spare us the GTVs. They get worse every time we see them. Must be something in the recycling process that causes the character profiles to degrade with each copy made.

Here is this great, BRILLIANT discovery: a sister city to Atlantis full of who knows what new and interesting secrets and we get stuck with some Frankenstein's monster of discarded plot pieces (and discarded for damn good reasons) stitched haphazardly together?

Jay Brazeau was wasted in this ep. Hell, EVERYONE was wasted in this ep. Including the kid who played McKay's Token Bumpkin. How much more interesting would it have been if Mr. Give McKay an Excuse to Exposit had wound up being one of the spies and had used McKay's ramblings against him and the rest of the team? *sigh*

And those Oafish Guards. Oy. Can't there ever be bad guys who behave decently? Do they always have to be torturers and rapists? And what the hell, did they steal their uniforms from some passing Genii? No wonder the IMDB entry was confused! I know I was. I fully expected the Genii to be playing an active part in whatever was going on, but no, that would have been far too interesting (and a sight more original) for this ep.

This ep was awful, awful, awful. What few bits of random funny dialogue (and Shep's look of utter shock at being goosed) were scattered in here definitely do NOT make up for the stink of raw sewage that permeated everything else.

And to think I wasted 40-something minutes out of my life to watch this. Yeesh.

[NowIWillDestroyAbydos]

But we hav a fairly equal amount of people saying its pretty good to the people saying it was crap.

It pretty but was, and wow, the first crappy episode written by Joe and Paul

[macktheknife]

BTW, I think it was mentioned before (asked about), shep was looking through his equipment, what he had in his hand before mara came in (I think someone said condoms ;p), was actually his headset (or a spare one).

[eccscape]

The acting was poor all-around (David Hewlett not withstanding!

I thought DH was the only good thing about the episode. I have grown tired of him in recent weeks. he has been over the top and annoying, but he was great in this. The only scenes worth watching were the ones with McKay.

the episode itself was a SHOCKER!!. I wanted to shoot most of the people on screen (which i'm sure was the directors intention in portraying them that way, but they were all just annoying that i didn't care) Sheppard included. if the point was to make them seem horrible in comparison to thelovely villagers and our main cast, then don't make the hero an absolute wally!!!

you know, it wasn't written brilliantly, but i think it was actually the direction that really stank! shame andy mikita, shame!

but seriously come on writers, let's pick it up a little. the first half of the season was so promising!

[Dax]

This was an atrocious of an episode. Shame! Shame! Shame!

The people in the tower all deserved to died of the worst fate imagine, taking Sheppard along isn't bad if they keep writing bad episodes with him as focus: see Sanctuary, Ephinany...

Sheppard character has lost much, much respect from me.

[xfkirsten]

First of all, YAAAAAAYYYYY, Brendan Beiser FINALLY appears on Stargate!! I think he's possibly one of the last actors left in the city who hasn't appeared on the show at some point. Gotta say, though, Agent Pendrell has REALLY gone to seed. *sigh* Still, it was fun to see him as Tavius, even if Tavius was a complete one-dimensional fop.

Hooray! Glad to see I'm not the only one who started cheering for Pendrell! At least he didn't get shot this time...

As for the rest of it... sheer, unmitigated CRAP. Wow, to fit much crap into so little plot, the writers REALLY outdid themselves this time.

Oh. Yes. I couldn't agree more!

We have Shep Bigalow, Intergalactic Gigolo

You win at life for using that term! That will have to enter my vocabulary, along with Sheph0r.

[PG15]

Umm, no, then why did they say that they had to have a self-distruct to destroy the engines? If they only cared about the gate then they would plant c4 around the crystal allowing travel to earth through the gate and would only care as long as the city was at the bottom of the ocean and the computers dead and empty.My opinion, but if we can power the dart, then coulden't a race dirived from ancients power a city? (especially since we can with a naquadah generator)?

I don't remember that.

Oh well, I'm watching The Siege a few days from now, so I guess I'll find it sooner or later.

[Franklyn Blaze]

Can sum it up in one word: unbelievable.


And in alot more words:

I mean really, do the writers think of as passable plots these days. Shallow, rushed, and all around just blah. I felt like I was watching a bad tragedy act at a renaissance fair, yuck.

[Dorka]

I'm really not saying this often, bc SGA is my favourite tv-show...but this episde was sooo lame! Really, that was a cheap trying for this genre.... and they even don't needed a new set... Atlantis with velvet nooooooooo!

Chamberlan was more than too transparent... Mara too... And yeah it wasn't that extremely a Kirking-around what I feared...but it was enough to bring one more negative point into the episode!

The only reason why this episode is still before Childhoods end and Sanctuary in my list of worse episodes is the last scene. Not only because I'm a shipper, but that was the only scene that was actually unexpected, and loosened the ridiculousness of the remaining storyline somehow...

So Paul Mullie and Joe Malozzi, I really loved your teamwork in Intruder, Siege2 and Home...but this wan't the same quality, sorry!

[Hatcheter]

Here is this great, BRILLIANT discovery: a sister city to Atlantis full of who knows what new and interesting secrets and we get stuck with some Frankenstein's monster of discarded plot pieces (and discarded for damn good reasons) stitched haphazardly together?

Yeah, there is a lot of possibilities to return to this "sister city" in future seasons. Too bad its been established with such morons inhabiting it. Maybe the Wraith or Genii will come along and clean it out, so we can have some real action going on next time it's seen.

[Ouroboros]

GALEN!

I had no idea he was going to be in this episode and when he appeared it made me smile.

The episode was ok, not quite as good as the last few though and deifnately filleresque. I liked how McKay's sidekick made him look like a shmuck over the catacombs thing and just in general seemed a bit too clever for the typical cliched "peasent" chracter slot he was filling. This episode is ok if you don't look at it too closely. Just watch it, then turn off your TV and leave it at that.

When you start to think about it a bit...

-Sheppard adds another hot chick to his score card. "Why do I never see this coming" was kinda funny though. Still, lets nock this off ok.

-Why did the guards look like Nazis? It threw off the whole medieval thing. They had plastic and stuff in their hats/uniforms that no one else wore and just looked out of place holding knives instead of lugers. They looked so wrong there that their beat downs of the various medieval peasents came off as unintentionally hilarious.

-Renaissance fair background music, bit of overkill there guys ok.

-No one at the end mentions that these people are now screwed if the Wraith show up while in the begining of the episode the tower and it's protection was made out as such a big deal. They even looted drones and jumpers from them to screw them again. Oh well, I hope the Wraith eat those nobles first, then after that they can enjoy their free Atlantis copy to practice attacks on and to steal a stardrive from! Yes that's right, those *vile explatives deleted* left the Wraith a fully functional atlantean intergalactic stardrive that is now completely unprotected. McKay even fired it up in the plot so we know it's thee and we know it works! WHAT THE H-E-double toothpicks were the chracters and writers thinking here?!?

-Stupid cliched "I'ma gunna rape me a wumin" scene complete with equally cliched heroic rescue. If she'd screwed Dex as reward afterward it would have been perfect.

-They're going to rise up but rather than march to the tower with pitchforks and torches and go in how McKay got in or someway similar they stand around waiting to die via airstrike like morons. If they didn't want to attack the tower but knew they were going to be attacked why weren't they running for the stargate instead of waiting to die? Yeah, oops.

[Callie]

Rodney refers to his “faithful guide Baldrick”. I can’t work out whether that’s really the character’s name (perhaps with a slightly different spelling like Baldrik) or whether Rodney is being sarcastic and comparing him to Blackadder’s scruffy sidekick! As the character never gets a name during the episode or in the closing credits, I’m inclined to think that it’s Rodney being ... well, Rodney, especially when we know how bad he is with names, but I just don’t know what to put in the transcript and don’t want to make an idiot of myself. Does anyone have an opinion, or information on his name?

[gooner_diva]

I felt like I was watching a bad tragedy act at a renaissance fair, yuck.

LOL, my thoughts exactly.

One word: tragic. How did McKay and the guy get out? What are the reprecussions of finding an identical city to Atlantis with a bunch of corrupt cretins inhabiting it? Did Sheppard really have to Kirk again? (Join S.T.A.K.S. and just say no to Kirking, people). Do the producers know anything about the concept of pacing? The story was rubbish, the editing was poor... Paul Mullie, this was a pathetic excuse for an episode.

Bring on The Long Goodbye so I can wash away the bitter taste left in my mouth.

[Estragora]

Worst. Episode. Ever.

Seriously, this was the bigest piece of crap I've ever seen.
The costumes were just sad; I've seen high school plays with better costuming than this ep (did anyone see the pants on the chick standing next to the lord protector on the throne? Funny s***)
And WTF was with Shep kissing that chick? I just wanted to scream when that happened. Who the hell keeps on kissing ramdom ppl? Hell, she could have chlamydia or anything. That scene made me want to break my computer, and I love my computer.

There were so many bloody things wrong with this ep, most of which have already been posted in this thread. Gah, I think someone alkready said it, but I was looking foward to seeing Liz off world, something different; instead we get this stinking pile of poo.

"Michael" better be good next week; this ep was just ridiculous.