Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Episode of the Week Suggestion: Outcast (Atlantis S4E15)

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Episode of the Week Suggestion: Outcast (Atlantis S4E15)

    Howdy folks. I've been coming to GateWorld for many years, but this is my first time posting on the forum. If this is somehow in the wrong section, please feel free to correct it.

    I've been rewatching Stargate from beginning to end. I'd seen it all before (save a few SG-1 episodes here or there), but for most of it that was many years ago and I was very young. For the last few years I thought that if I ever rewatched from the beginning, I would appreciate the franchise so much more (SG-1 in particular; I was already quite the fanatic of Atlantis and SGU). Needless to say, I was right.

    Anyhow, an episode I watched today as part of my rewatch was the Atlantis episode from Season 4, "Outcast." It was the one I've remembered least in the entire Atlantis series so far, but I found that I really, really liked it for multiple reasons. I thought that with the new "Episode of the Week" series going on, I'd add in a pitch for this one.

    - - -

    One thing I love about Stargate is that there are specific episodes that focus on the personal stories of specific characters. You can point to an episode and say, "This is a Jackson story," or "This is a Weir story," or "This is a Vala story," or "This is a Ronan story;" but one thing that the franchise was somewhat lacking, and quite noticeably for me, was a John Sheppard story.

    Sure, John gets the limelight all the time. He's the main character, and scarcely an episode goes by where we don't get to see his heroic badassery, leaving bad guys sprawled in his wake. But, however, we don't get any personal stories about the man. We learn about him over time, but to my knowledge the closest thing we'd previously gotten to a John Sheppard story was a portion of the episode "Phantoms" (Atlantis S3E9), in which he has hallucinational flashbacks to his failed rescue mission in Afghanistan.

    Outcast breaks this streak. We learn about John's family; we get to meet his brother and learn why in the past he felt he had nobody left for him back on Earth. We meet his ex-wife, who was only mentioned once or twice previously. We get to see a side of Lt. Col. Sheppard that we never got to see before. It was refreshing and emotional. Overall it was just brilliantly written. The fact that Joe Flanigan came up with the concept for the episode might even imply that he himself wanted a more personal Sheppard story. I can't confirm this, however, as I've yet to research the matter.

    Another reason I love this episode is actually, surprisingly, the music. As if this whole human-replicator-loose-on-Earth thing weren't epic enough, Joel Goldsmith decided to intertwine the action/chase theme for the rogue machine with the original replicator theme from Nemesis and onward. It made for one freaking awesome track to be playing while the team tracked down the replicator. Yet another reason I wish there'd been more Stargate soundtrack releases.

    Overall, I felt that Outcast was incredibly well-made, and deserves to be selected as one of the Episodes of the Week. Thanks.

    #2
    Continued: (moderators, feel free to merge this post with the original)

    Another thing that happened in this episode was the return of Bates. Sheppard and Bates had a history together early in the series and they didn't really see eye to eye. Bates accused Teyla multiple of betraying Atlantis to the Wraith, and overall was portrayed as not a great guy. Yet, he was shown as having a respectable side to him, and he was always trying to do the right thing. I guess he's a little comparable to Woolsey in that matter, though I've never really thought about it that way. Anyhow, Bates left the series after Season 1 or so. It's revealed in Outcast that he'd had an honorable discharge from the military due to an injury from the Wraith siege of Atlantis, and he eventually joined the IOA.

    When Sheppard and Bates meet up in Outcast, it's not as allies holding a grudge, but rather as two buddies who haven't seen each other in ages. I love this. It shows that they put the past behind them and are willing to work together as a team to take down the replicator. The character of Bates hadn't previously been given any sort of conclusion to his involvement in the story; he'd just kind of been left with a loose end. This episode gives closure so that we know that they've put the past behind them and they're now friends. It's great.

    Comment


      #3
      I would recomend posting this in the outcast episode thread instead of creating a thread. Should encourage more feedback of your in depth analysis
      Originally posted by aretood2
      Jelgate is right

      Comment


        #4
        And I'm not sure a spoiler warning is really necessary for an episode that's six years old....
        "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in. Good people do things for other people. That's it, the end." -- Penelope Wilton in Ricky Gervais's After Life

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by jelgate View Post
          I would recomend posting this in the outcast episode thread instead of creating a thread. Should encourage more feedback of your in depth analysis
          Is there a specific thread in that subforum in which you recommend I post this?

          Originally posted by DigiFluid View Post
          And I'm not sure a spoiler warning is really necessary for an episode that's six years old....
          You could be right, but I can't edit the thread title, so it's stuck as such.

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by Arkatox View Post
            You could be right, but I can't edit the thread title, so it's stuck as such.
            You could try asking the mods to change it for you. Sometimes they will do that.

            Comment

            Working...
            X