Allo.
We are gathered here today to find out what’s happened in the latest book.
But first, the ‘episode before’ recap!
Stargate Atlantis Season 3, Episode 19, Vengeance.
Michael is back again!
But we don’t actually know that until halfway through so don’t tell.
The team sets out to check on the Taranin’s (the people whose city was blown up by a super volcano and who gave Atlantis the Alteran ship they’d had) who they haven’t heard form in a while.
The village is completely deserted, but tunnels below suggest they may have gone underground to keep from being detected by the Wraith.
Of course they have to investigate!
Below they find the Taranin’s. Or at least, their bodies.
With suspiciously familiar looking marks on their necks, the Taranin people have been killed by Iratus bugs.
Or have they?
Further investigations show that there is something else down there with them and when they’re attacked and Teyla goes missing, things seem pretty grim.
With the former Wraith, Michael, around, you know things are going to be interesting and he doesn’t disappoint.
Using some of Atlantis’ ideas and information, he’s been working on creating new creatures to do his bidding. And obviously succeeded to a point.
Teyla is rescued, some of the creatures are killed, and they go home to fight another day.
But it doesn’t end there because there’s such a fantastic book after this episode it’s amazing!
Stargate Atlantis: Blood Ties
SGA #8
ISBN: 9781905586080
Oh, my word!
Wraith on Earth!!
This book was fantastic (I know I say that about all of them, but when it’s true, it’s true!) and I adored the entire idea of it because it makes so much sense.
Okay, Blood Ties mostly takes place on Earth though we do follow a team to another planet in Pegasus a couple of times to find more answers. Why are we doing this? And why has Sheppard been ordered to stay on Earth instead of going home?
Turns out there was an Alteran scientist (yeah, things always go back to them don’t they?) named Lilith who was experimenting with Wraith and dinosaur DNA (don’t get ahead of me here). The assumption is that she was trying to find a way to make the Wraith ‘feel’ the terror and pain they inflicted when feeding.
So dinosaurs in the Pegasus galaxy were being experimented on (though an Atlantis peep is pretty adamant they evolved naturally, but with what we know of the Alteran’s that’s a pretty hard ‘no’) to give the prey ones the ability to send out empathetic psychic blasts. This would make the predator dinosaurs feel too bad to eat them, at least that was the idea, but that would have created severe issues for the predator type as they would starve to death.
Thankfully for the dinosaurs (who are much bigger than ours because of the planets gravity) they each adapted to the changes and both prey and predator types have their own empathetic psychic abilities.
Rodney, Ronon and Teyla get a close look at some raptors that are far more advanced in some ways than they are. Teyla is able to communicate with them the same way she can with the Wraith, so they don’t get eaten, but they are told to leave the planet and not to come back.
Good thing Rodney was able to download what he needed before they showed up.
Lilith continued her work on Earth, but with Wraith DNA instead and the results are pretty cool!
Two different Wraith groups live on Earth and have for thousands of years. One group believes they have a divine duty (given to them by Lilith of course because the Alteran’s can never just leave the whole god complex behind) to protect all of humanity from the Ori.
The other group believes their duty is to bring the Wraith to the Milky Way so they can combat the Ori and erase them from existence and the humans are merely food for them.
Thing is, Lilith pretty much lost her mind after awhile so both thoughts are probably true depending on how her mind was at the time.
Fast forward to our time and we have the Awakening, where all of the Wraith variants on Earth are being woken up because of ‘signs’ they’ve seen in the last years that foretold when they were to move.
Now, turns out there are a ton of humans who have the Wraith DNA in them, and a solution made from a ginkgo plant can activate the DNA. Good thing there isn’t much on Earth, but there is a ton on the dinosaur planet (we’ll get to that problem in a second).
Interestingly, after so long and after so much careful breeding, there is a third Earth Wraith type that’s appeared. One that can feed off animals and survive just fine.
There is only one such person and both groups want her.
Either dead, or to help them.
The day is saved as it almost always is, but we’re left with some interesting questions, not the least one being where the Earth Wraith disappeared too.
I loved this book because the entire idea of it is fantastic!
There is no way, even after most ascended to escape the Ori, that the Alteran’s would stop their experiments and the fact that one of them thought to use the Wraith to defeat the Ori makes me wonder if that was why they created the Wraith to begin with.
My creationist beliefs aside, the entire idea that the Wraith evolved over millennia because humans were infected with Iratus bug DNA seems just a little too sketchy once you consider what the Alteran’s were like.
They have such a deep disregard for human life that I can completely believe that they are the ones who introduced the Iratus DNA into humans and it didn’t take millennia at all for the Wraith to come into being as a force to be reckoned with.
Now, this book suggests that the Alteran’s have been to Pegasus long before they settled there after the plague that the Ori infected them with on Earth forced them out of the Milky Way.
It would stand to reason that after the first time they left Pegasus (thus leaving their initial experiments to do whatever) that the Wraith become what they are now and that when the Alteran’s returned they went about doing what they do before ever stumbling onto the Wraith and starting the war.
This would explain the hologram in the first episode that tells the expedition about coming to Pegasus, seeding new life (yeah right), and accidentally finding a dark part of the galaxy where the Wraith lived.
I’m curious to know if this will be visited in later books. I certainly would love to know more about the history of the Wraith and not just the Alteran rhetoric.
Guess I’ll just have to keep reading, now won’t I?
With that in mind, next week we shall see how Colonel Carter fairs in our lovely Atlantis and what happens in book 11, ‘Angelus’.
See you then!
The Dark Library 