User Reviews

This episode is one of my favourites. A combination mystery / action plot, the story kept me on the edge of my seat throughout and had a nice twist at the end. In terms of plot, the danger that Atlantis faces escalates smoothly from a contained threat to a wholly uncontained and terribly threatening one. The ending has a beautifully unexpected twist, the implications of which are unfortunately not fleshed out in later episodes.

In spite of the tension, the writers also work in some good humour (using Zelenka and Lee). A few episodic characters are brought back, including Kavanaugh (who turns in a consistently realistic performance as the annoying, self-absorbed civilian with authority issues). The characters, especially Weir, are willing to own up to and consider the ethical dilemmas raised by their actions, a refreshing step in light of some of the episodes at the beginning of Season 3. And there's a lot of McKay in this episode (Confession time: McKay is my favourite character. Probably I'm one of the few people who is happy to see a lot of him in any given episode.)

Weak points: Teyla's emotional, poorly-considered decision will annoy some viewers who should see a much more obvious solution to the problem.

Still, good episode: Nice plot, nice characters, better-than-average treatment of ethical problems. Enjoy!

Although everyone knows the crew will figure out how to save Atlantis, the plot had good logic and suspense. I can do without McKay's speed talking, however. I was pleased to learn that Teyla actually sang the song at the funeral ceremony (ring ceremony) and felt it was well done.

Overall this was a good episode, but I felt that it was a bit far fetched for a couple of reasons.

I didn't like the way the Trust operative had successfully sabotaged the Atlantis systems multiple times, seemingly out-smarting Rodney at each and every turn. That was too difficult to believe for me.

Secondly, I didn't really know what to make of Kavanagh's character. In a professional environment, you can't speak to your immediate superior like that, never mind the person in charge of the whole organisation. In this epsiode, he is either guilty of sabotage, or he is guilty of wasting everyone's time by behaving in the way that he does. His behaviour in previous episodes was already enough to have had him thrown off the project, IMO.

The episode had some big pluses though. One aspect that caught my eye was how the men treated Lt. Cadman. She consistently demonstrated that she was doing her job, and doing it well, and yet the men either didn't see that, or they didn't want to acknowlege it. Perhaps it was just Rodney, because he still hadn't got over having her in his head, but it did make me wonder how often women have to face that kind of treatment in real life.

The other really big plus was that the episode successfully kept you guessing about who the "bad guy" was. That aspect worked really well.

She is one of the worst actresses I've seen. She acts like somebody is holding a sign board with written instructions of what to do while base line being try keep the smile on while saying dialogues. I'm anyways quite disappointed with most of casting decisions on this show as compared to SG 1 but her character portrayal is the worst. Another issue I have is we are almost 40 episodes down and still nothing super interesting happens. World exploration is at the worst.. stargate franchise baseline is explorations and that's the mission of stargate command but this shows focuses more budget on cg and set pieces instead of writers to devlop good storylines.

To close, even pretending to sing a lament or eulogy was acted quite cheesily.