We are here once more to catch-up on the awesomeness!
Buckle up ya’ll, cause these are doozies!
Season 3, Episode 12- Echoes
Teyla begins to see what she believes to be the ghosts of the recently killed Alterans and is particularly distressed by the image of an Alteran man who is badly burned.
Since she hasn’t been getting much sleep lately, Atlantis’ psychologist, Dr. Heightmeyer thinks that it could be the reason for the hallucinations and tells Teyla to take it easy.
Remember quite some time ago when Rodney was stuck under water and an alien whale led Sheppard to him?
He’s back!
And so is his mother.
And father.
And aunt.
And… a whole heck ton of other alien whales are heading straight for Atlantis.
Sheppard and Rodney go to get a closer look and find out quite painfully that the whales are emitting a frequency that is dangerous to humans. Though it’s not malicious as it’s simply the whales talking to each other. (someone dies from an aneurism later on)
Quickly heading back to Atlantis (they’re both pretty much deaf and keep yelling at people because they can’t hear how loud they really are which is hilarious!) they spend some time in the infirmary with Dr. Beckett before convincing Dr. Weir to let them investigate a lab where the Alteran’s were running experiments concerning the whales.
Dr. Weir agrees because she and several other people have started to see the ghosts.
Unable to understand what they’re trying to communicate but agreed it must be something bad and could be a warning about the whales being deadly, the team goes about doing what they do best.
With Daedalus in orbit waiting to give assistance, the mystery begins to unravel.
It isn’t until almost the end of the episode that we find out the whales aren’t the problem. In fact, the hallucinations/ghosts are the whales trying to warn them of the coming danger, but they’re several generations out from the whales the Alteran’s were teaching to ‘speak’ their language and so the translation and ability is a little…wonky.
The danger they’re warning about is the massive solar flare their star is about to burp out.
Every fifteen thousand years, give or take, this occurs, and it was never a problem for the Alteran’s because they always had three ZPM’s to power their shield. In addition, they were able to extend the shield to cover a significant portion of the planet so it wouldn’t be destroyed.
Unfortunately, despite having three ZPM’s to being with after kicking the replicator/Asuran’s butts, two of them have already been sent back to the Milky Way to help defend Earth from attack and to power a new battleship in the fight against the Ori.
One ZPM is not going to do it.
However, Sheppard has a plan and takes both the remaining ZPM and Rodney to Daedalus to save the day.
By situating the ship in front of where the flare is going to be so that the energy is dispersed around the ship and sent off into the system away from Atlantis.
It works and almost immediately the whales start to leave and people get better.
With the exception of Sam who waits to say goodbye to Rodney in his own alien whale way.
It’s a really cute, terrifying and funny episode!
Season 3, Episode 13- Irresponsible
Also an episode where I can say ‘remember such and such?’, this episode we again run into Lucius Lavin, who is the hero of yet another village.
Lucius unknowingly had an Alteran personal shield device in his possession and only knew what it was after his stay on Atlantis.
Now, he is using it to gain fame once more in the form of heroism and feats no human could possibly accomplish.
To keep himself in the villagers favor however, he has hired some Genii mercenaries to play the bad guys he must defeat to keep everyone safe.
All is going well for him and our favorite team still thinks he’s a slime-bucket, but generally harmless, when real trouble shows up in the form of one Acastus Kolya.
He wants the shield for his own purposes but when he finds out Sheppard is there, well, his plans change a little. He takes everyone but Sheppard hostage and threatens to kill them one at a time until Sheppard shows himself.
Sheppard has to rely on Lucius for help and, surprisingly enough, it works. Lucius is able to rally the villagers into taking a stand for themselves against the Genii. The small coup works spectacularly, and the Genii soldiers lay down their weapons.
Leaving Sheppard and Kolya in a face off.
The stakes are pretty high considering every other interaction they’ve ever had with each other, but this time Kolya has no way to slink off to safety.
With barely a second of a difference, Sheppard is able to end Kolya once and for all.
Season 3, Episode 14- Tao of Rodney
Rodney gets superpowers.
Seriously!
Telekinesis, telepathy, and he even gets smarter (yeah, he didn’t think it was possible either).
What happens is yet another mystery lab is discovered on Atlantis and while trying to find a way to shut it off so it would stop using power, it activates and hits Rodney.
Tests show nothing different so everyone thinks he’s okay despite his insistence that there has to be something wrong with him because nothing ever ‘doesn’t’ work when it comes to the Alterans.
A little while later on a mission, he’s proved right when he saves the day by making enemy guns stop working and then, because he couldn’t prove that one, he levitates Carson.
The machine was supposed to help the Alterans ascend by advancing their bodies to the energy state. It doesn’t work of course because there are other things involved with ascending, but it takes awhile for Weir to translate the data.
Meanwhile, Rodney is having a field day working on improvements for the city (which are brilliant), creating a new math, and a whole ton of other things that don’t get brought up in the episode but get mentioned later.
When he finds out the machine is broken and he is dying, he changes.
He doesn’t believe he can ascend for various reasons and so sets out to right wrongs and make amends.
Everything he says and does he means here. The fact he’s dying just pushed him into action.
It’s a really great episode with some very heartfelt moments that you wouldn’t expect Rodney to be the instigator of, but there you have it. Yet another facet of Rodney McKay!
Season 3, Episode 15- The Game
What would you do if a video game you played ended up being real?
Well, Rodney and Sheppard find out in this episode!
Turns out the Alterans were playing god (no surprise) with several different planets by influencing the inhabitants via technology they put in place.
Our boys thought it was a game and have been playing for a year at this point when Major Lorne (on an unrelated mission) finds the planet and sees banners with Rodney’s face on them.
Going to the planet they find that, sure enough, they’ve been influencing two groups of people who live across a river from each other.
Rodney by giving them scientific knowledge to further themselves in that area to make their lives better, and Sheppard in a more militaristic way that’s never the less what he believes to be the best choice for the group.
The problem is that Rodney and Sheppard have been at odds over several issues and trade agreements in the ‘game’ and it’s effected the people who are now on the brink of war.
During the episode, the two have to try and convince the people that they aren’t gods and they should live their own lives without interference from them. Instead, when the people do in fact go to war, they end up simulating a total defeat for both sides.
Rodney’s people think several villages have been completely destroyed and they are being overrun by Sheppard’s group and Sheppard’s people think the same only in reverse.
It’s a brilliant plan and works. They offer aid if they needed but stay away from that room after that.
Season 3, Episode 16- The Ark
Sheppard gets to fly a space shuttle!
Okay, so he doesn’t so much ‘fly’ it as guides it through the atmosphere as it falls from space in a fiery blaze.
When the team finds a base carved into a low orbit moon, they are mostly unimpressed. Rodney being the exception, and forging ahead to power the base up, unintentionally initiates a machine that uses adapted Wraith beaming technology and wakes the occupant.
A scientist from the planets now long dead civilization, the man requests that he be allowed to check the machine he was being stored in as it should also contain several thousand of his people.
Instead, he wakes an official who had sworn that his wife and son would be amongst those chosen to survive in the machine until the Wraith had left for good.
Problem is, the second shuttle that had been carrying the storage device had never left the planet. His family had been dead for thousands of years.
Having spent his entire life working on the project that was supposed to be his people’s salvation, he loses it (understandably, let’s be honest) and attempts to destroy the base by opening it to space.
His death is quick, but Sheppard, Teyla, Ronon and Rodney are now cutoff from each other on a moon that’s getting ever closer to the atmosphere.
Finally being able to get backup should have been the end of it. It should have been easy enough to get to the Jumper and go back to Atlantis.
Except that the official refused to let them leave the storage device.
Apparently, as he tells poor Teyla who is stuck with him in the same compartment, his people had created weapons of mass destruction intentionally so that the Wraith would come in force and wipe them out completely. Or think they did anyways, when in actuality many would have been perfectly safe in the devices on the moon.
Unfortunately, other officials and governing people hadn’t been able to make it to the shuttle before the scheduled take-off and it had been delayed too long.
The selfishness of it cost them thousands of lives otherwise saved.
The Wraith never came back, but that was because the weapons were used and the planet was left uninhabitable for so long.
With the decaying orbit of the moon, the official traps Teyla inside the machine, leaving Sheppard no choice but to pilot the antiquated shuttle to the surface as it’s the only power supply compatible with the storage device.
(don’t worry, the official doesn’t survive because of injuries, so justice is served in the end)
Season 3, Episode 17- Sunday
Another episode you’ll need a few boxes of tissue for.
When everyone is ordered to take a day off simultaneously, our peeps have plans.
Carson and Rodney are supposed to go fishing.
Sheppard and Ronon are going to golf.
Weir had planned on catching up on paperwork and eating lunch with Teyla.
And Teyla had plans with several people.
We follow them individually throughout the episode as they relive the day and how and what they actually did.
Rodney doesn’t want to spend his off-day fishing so begs off when he gets a date set up with botanist Katie. An alarm disturbs his date.
Sheppard shows Ronon how to golf, Ronon finds it incredibly boring and challenges Sheppard to a Sateedan game that Sheppard isn’t too fond of. The same alarm Rodney hears interrupts them.
Weir is asked out by one of the scientist’s and so asks to postpone the lunch with Teyla and has a great time until the alarm sounds.
Teyla is able to get out of learning how to golf because she already has plans and is the only one who actually seems to be able to carry through with some of them until the explosion happens.
A piece of shrapnel hits her and she is very badly injured.
Trying to find out what happened takes time and in the end it takes it all for one of our team.
Two scientists had accidentally turned on a machine that was supposed to create explosive tumors in the Wraith. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t work right and creates tumors in any person within proximity.
One of the scientist’s literally explodes in the cafeteria, which is when things get worse because the second scientist is injured and in the infirmary now.
Carson is ordered to clear the infirmary so that a bomb squad can get in and neutralize the scientist.
He refuses and operates to get the tumor out.
He succeeds, but can’t wait for the bomb squad to come to him when his assistant and patient are right there so takes the case holding the bomb and makes to meet halfway.
Right when we think it’ll be okay, the bomb explodes.
Killing Carson and a bomb squad technician.
One of the final scenes is of our team carrying Carson’s coffin through the Stargate.
And the absolute final scene is of Rodney saying goodbye to his friend.
Season 3, Episode 18- Submersion
You just can’t keep a bad Wraith down these days.
This time we find our team on an underground drilling platform that was supposed to get below the crust of the planet on the ocean floor to produce geothermal energy for Atlantis to use in addition to the ZPM.
Easy enough except for the Wraith Queen that shows up and takes Teyla over.
After sabotaging the platform to trap them all inside, the Queen tries to escape via a Jumper but can’t of course because she doesn’t have the gene.
After killing several people, she is apprehended and restrained.
Which is when it’s decided that letting Teyla get into the Queen’s mind is a good idea.
Apparently during the last battle over Atlantis way back when, the Queen’s ship was badly damaged and fell into the ocean. She survived by feeding on the human stores before turning on her own.
Now she wants one of two things.
Off the planet, or everyone to die with her.
The Wraith Hive is sitting not too far from the platform and right above a weak part of the planets crust. The Queen set a self-destruct that will destroy Atlantis along with them because of the added thermal energy that would be added when the ship explodes the crust.
Fooling the Queen into turning the self-destruct off isn’t easy but they’re able to do it in the nick of time!
That was a ton of episodes and all of them SO GOOD!
Next week we shall be back with a book review and the episode that directly preceded it and then another few episodes and another book before several more episodes with no book between.
We are so close to the Legacy series and I am so excited for more Todd!
The Dark Library 