Stargate Atlantis Rewatch: The Siege Part 3
Beatiful destruction: The Wraith bombard the Atlantis shield (Photo from GateWorld.net)
The Siege Part 3
Written by Martin Gero
Directed by Martin Wood
Guest starring Ellie Harvie (Dr. Lindsey Novak), Clayton Landey (Colonel Dillon Everett), David Nykl (Dr. Radek Zelenka), Mitch Pileggi (Colonel Steven Caldwell)
WARNING: SPOILERS ABOUND!
Summary
The expedition races against time to fend off the attacking Hives. Meanwhile, Lt. Ford undergoes a dangerous transformation.
General Impressions
The siege of Atlantis deserved the three part story that it got, and the action ramped up rather than down in this, the final episode of the siege. There are all sorts of things going on in this one: The attacking Wraith leave only to be replaced by a dozen more Hives. Deadalus takes out two of the Hives only to have the Wraith figure out how to block Deadalus’ beaming technology, so they can no longer just beam bombs aboard. Deadalus is crippled, but Batman and Robin (McKay and Zalenka) come up with a miraculous solution…but it depends on whether the Wraith believe Tayla’s telepathic message of doom. Then Ford dials the gate, and everybody’s afraid the Wraith might detect it despite the cloak. They make the Wraith believe that they’ve been destroyed only to have Ford—who can reveal the fact that Atlantis still exists—escape through the gate where he could be captured on another planet by Wraith.
Just when Ford gets interesting, they write him off the show. Figures.
The Good
I got tingles when Deadalus showed up. And even though I knew Sheppard had been rescued already, I still shared the relief of Weir and the others when he hailed Atlantis from Deadalus. Oh, and nice ship tease with Sheppard and Weir’s reunion.
It was great seeing an Asgard again. The ones in our galaxy got killed off at the end of SG1’s run, and we meet some, shall we say…less ethical ones in the Atlantis season five two-parter. I always loved the Asgard and was pleased to see one. I also love Hermiod because he’s so cranky and snarky. He transports a warhead directly into a hive, but is not happy about it. He even curses (we assume) in Asgard.
Ellie Harvie (Dr. Novak) is really funny. She played the same character on SG1, in which she had terrible problems with hiccups. Thankfully the hiccup issue has been conquered, and she’s now a permanent fixture on Deadalus, working with the snarky Hermiod.
Seeing the half-fed on Colonel Everett was painful. After the previous two episodes, I came to like that character, so I’m sad to see him go. Joe Flanigan does a good job of restraining Sheppard’s emotions in that scene, which ties up the conflict of Sheppard mercy killing Colonel Sumner in the pilot.
Mitch Pileggi. I loved him on the X-Files, and I love him here, too.
The Bad
In the opening scene when Ford’s team is facing off against two teams of Wraith, why didn’t any of the Wraith shoot back? Even the ones that weren’t taking bullets?
Why didn’t they beam the ZPM directly into the room where the ZPM-holding thing was? Couldn’t Deadalus have beamed Rodney up to the ship then down to where the new ZPM was so he wouldn’t have to run a gauntlet of Wraith through the city from the gate room to get to the power room? True, not as much drama that way, but wouldn’t it have been safer and more efficient?
OK, so the Wraith enzyme makes humans stronger so the Wraith can take their time killing them, but how did it keep Ford from drowning if he was face down in the ocean for an hour? It keeps people alive during feeding, but how does it do that when they can’t breathe? I had trouble buying this plot device.
Why can’t cloak and shield work at the same time? This is never explained.
If the address of the planet Ford escaped to is in Atlantis’ buffer, why wouldn’t the address of the next planet he goes to be in the DHD buffer, when it’s been established in other episodes that Rodney can extract that information from DHDs?
While I admit that it looked cool and made him look really sinister, I don’t understand why all of Ford’s left eyeball turned black just because he OD’d on Wraith enzyme. And why just that one eye? And why does he have wrinkles around just the one eye now? If the Wraith fed on him a bit, shouldn’t he show age signs all over? (It’s explained a little in the commentary. Apparently, Rainbow wanted some sort of physical sign of the change in Ford, and they went with a black eye instead of a white eye because they were going to have the Priors in SG1 have white eyes.)
The Awesome
The effects and music in this episode are fantastic. I especially loved the giant Wraith fleet, though I might have liked to see the bombed ships blow up on screen rather than as blips on a sensor readout. Perhaps they ran out of money for the effects budget on this episode. The bombardment against Atlantis’ shields is, as McKay observes, beautiful.
Rodney’s line to Zalenka after they give their estimates of how long it will take to get the cloak working, with Zalenka’s being longer, cracked me up: “What are you, union?” No, Rodney, he just lacks an overblown sense of his own awesomeness.
Rating
7 out of 10. This episode looked great and had a lot of action and tension, but there were those sort of plot hole things I mentioned in The Bad that really bugged me.
