Any Good Out of Michael Arc? [Spoilers for Michael through Misbegotten--and beyond}

[OutThere]

I must say that I did like both No Man's Land and Misbegotten, but there's no denying that what the team is doing is damage control from letting Michael know about Atlantis in the first place. The problem just keeps snowballing, and the price Team Atlantis has to pay gets higher and higher. We're taking a lot of loses-- people, the Orion, the Hive ship. And I'll give you dollars to donuts that it's not over, and Michael will end up having miraculously survived the carpet bombing of that planet to show up in some future episode to exact even more payment.

I'm feeling a little grumpy about the prospect of this lose and disaster going on and on.

Did anything good for Atlantis come out of the Michael story arc? Or is there a prospect of something good coming out of it?

The only thing I can think of is that Atlantis finally did get to examine a working Hive ship, and that knowledge might prove vital sometime in the near future (of course, the price of getting the Hive was steep, and it went KABOOM!, but still it was a gain of vital knowledge).

Anything else good, or is that it so far?

[ladysarah]

IDid anything good for Atlantis come out of the Michael story arc? Or is there a prospect of something good coming out of it?

The outcomes.

- Atlantis was revealed to the wraith and with it access to Earth
- The retrovirus was shown to be a failure
- The Orion was destroyed.
- A number of personnel (I don't know numbers) have been killed.
- The reputation of Weir, Sheppard, Beckett primarily have been damaged in the eyes of many fans.

Maybe there is some good there. I can't think of any.

My modest prediction, with 'Misbegotten' the entire storyline, what the Atlantis folk did, will be conveniently forgotten about, to make way for the new shiny storyline. At this point, I'm almost at a point where I want that to happen, because I'm really tired of the retrovirus story. Am I the only one?

[FallenAngelII]

The retrovirus is not a failure. It's doing what it's supposed to be doing. The problem is that people aren't stupid and neither are the Wraith. The team didn't really try that hard to cover the things up, leaving a bunch of them to suspect something was amiss.

[Major_Griff]

They should have dropped them on the planet and set off the nuke immeadiatly instead of pussyfooting around.

[ladysarah]

The retrovirus is not a failure. It's doing what it's supposed to be doing. The problem is that people aren't stupid and neither are the Wraith. The team didn't really try that hard to cover the things up, leaving a bunch of them to suspect something was amiss.

It didn't work with Michael. How can you say it's a success?

[Hatcheter]

It didn't work with Michael. How can you say it's a success?

The retrovirus worked perfectly. It's everything that went on after it had done its job that was the problem.

[Dutch_Razor]

They should have dropped them on the planet and set off the nuke immeadiatly instead of pussyfooting around.

Shame to waste a nuke that way, there are other ways...

They could've just left them in stasis or dropped them out of the airlock

[ultness]

I agree with OP, Atlantis has gotten little gain from this Retro-virus arc. It seems like they have the goal of doing the right thing.. They want to remove the threat of the wraith without killing them... but like michael said.. by transforming them into humans... its as good as death if they lose their memories.

Then theres the whole dilemma of ... are they human? are they wraith? will they ever fit in? I think the retro-virus should be used as a weapon to neutralize the wraith.. since it is probably easier to make than a nuke. They should stop trying to treat these human wraith because its too much of a burden.

This is comparable to the Gao'uld situation in SG1:

Sure they would like to free all of the Gao'uld hosts and Jaffa without killing them... but at what price? I'm sure Michael's situation could have been handled better, and maybe the retro-virus can be improved.. but at this point they need to put it down I think.

[OutThere]

Okay, I guess we can add knowledge gained about the effectiveness of the retovirus and the behavior of changed wraith to the short list of good (I'm working hard to keep this sentence neutral! ).

Atlantis also learns that wraith working together can communicate across lightyears of space, not just short distances. That's a disturbing and important bit of information-- so I guess that's good to know.

So far, the good is all knowledge rather than hardware.

[GateMan2000]

I think they ended it the way they did is because Michael will be be back...and so will his 200 Wraith he had with them. Instead of having a queen, he will be the leader. 200 Wraith now having felt the side of humanity...they are considered damaged goods. So renegade wraith...here we come!

[Kanten]

I think the Atlantis expedition has made some pretty stupid decisions, many concentrated over the retrovirus. I think the team, Beckett especially, needs to realize despite outside appearance, they are STILL Wraith. Until the retrovirus is able to work on a permanent basis, they need to watch their backs a lot more.

[Demonique]

Michael doesn't have 200 Wraith with him, more like 20. Ronon said in Misbegotten that most of the still human wraith had been fed on. Michael and the other reverted wraith were planning on presenting the still-human wraith to the Queen of the approaching hive

[PG15]

We added 2 more hives to our kill-count!

[MarshAngel]

The outcomes.

- Atlantis was revealed to the wraith and with it access to Earth
- The retrovirus was shown to be a failure
- The Orion was destroyed.
- A number of personnel (I don't know numbers) have been killed.
- The reputation of Weir, Sheppard, Beckett primarily have been damaged in the eyes of many fans.

Maybe there is some good there. I can't think of any.

My modest prediction, with 'Misbegotten' the entire storyline, what the Atlantis folk did, will be conveniently forgotten about, to make way for the new shiny storyline. At this point, I'm almost at a point where I want that to happen, because I'm really tired of the retrovirus story. Am I the only one?

No. They need to bury it completely. As an idea, it was terrible from inception. I could come up with better ways they could have approached it but there's no point because it's done and now it needs to go.

They had a real opportunity to recover from the mess of season 2 but they continued with a faulty arc and here we are. I don't see much good coming out of it either but I'll try.

We've learned that the Wraith have issues altering their tech due to its organic nature... although the speedy alteration of the hyperdrives (what really matters) seems to discount that. And anyway, that's a deduction genius virus-man Beckett and smarter than the Ancients McKay could have arrived at on his own.

We know the Wraith don't have an empathetic bone in their green bodies, given their treatment of each other in Allies and Misbegotten... but we already knew that from The Defiant One.

If the virus works, they'll have made a dent in the Wraith that the 50 million year old gate builders were unable to. End of that implausible plot. If it doesn't work, as in, it not being permanent, it's mostly a waste of time since it only delays our willingness to kill them thereby making them a security risk and a resource drain. So the best solution is to get rid of it altogether.

The best thing that could come out of this is that it shows the "heroes" as being tarnished. But the writers don't seem to be in any rush to take this tack and make it a real point. If they would let the ethical issues we fans have with this plot become an issue in the show it could be really good for the series as a whole.

On the plus side, there are a few more dead wraith.... only several million more to go.

[hyzmarca]

It did show that it may be possible to work with some wraith. Michael didn't betray them. They betrayed him. Had they not transformed him again he may have never betrayed him.

It also gave is more insight into the feudal nature of wraith society and wraith politics in general. There may be some advantage in that. Several groups competing for the right to eat you is preferable to several groups working together to eat you.