Childhood's End

DVD, Stargate Atlantis S1 (Childhood's End)

The first episode I would consider a genuinely good one, perhaps because it's in the classic formula of an 'SG-1' story, or it might just be because I haven't watched it for a few weeks and it's nice to be back in that world. I felt that concentrating on a team of four worked well, and the episode didn't follow a set path that I was ticking off on my fingers as I watched: is this going to be a story where Teyla's natural native survival abilities put her more technologically dependent colleagues to shame, and they learn to survive without guns, compasses and their usual devices? No. Is it going to be a story about escaping from captives who don't trust these outsiders? Not exactly. Will we get a moral dilemma when they realise they've actually rained down The Wraith upon a peaceful, unsuspecting people? Again, not exactly. With a name like 'Childhood's End' you immediately suspect (certainly by the time the team is greeted by a mix of Robin Hood's band and the Lost Boys from 'Hook'), that they're going to be dealing with minors - but are they really children, or are they unusually long-lived (like the ones in 'Miri' on 'Star Trek'), or will there be some other kind of gimmick?

It turns out to be quite an interesting moral problem, but these people aren't bound by any Prime Directive as the members of Starfleet are, only their moral compass, which seems to be flickering as much as the actual compass Ford brought with him! At least, McKay has absolutely no qualms about taking a ZPM (I like that he says 'Zed,' like us English viewers - he must be Canadian), despite its integral role in preventing the Wraith from attacking the villages on this world. He happily snaps it up and whisks it off back to Atlantis, with Sheppard's blessing, and though Dr. Weir shows great concern at what he's done, there's no imperative to get it back at top speed. Actually, I felt Weir wasn't being entirely realistic, because for all she knows, their whole survival on Atlantis might rest on this ZPM, so she was a little too quick to discount it. Obviously it's despicable for humans to be running around to other planets and stealing the natives' integral defence tech, and I'm surprised this hasn't come up before: something as powerful as a ZPM is never likely to be lying around without any important use that others are depending on, so I suppose they must be banking on taking one from a dead civilisation, or enemies. But that whole moral conundrum isn't the most immediate problem. That is: getting it back before The Wraith find out it's missing and their tech will work.

The ticking clock is most effective, because we have the likeable, friendly, and open 'elder' (all of twenty-four, just a year younger than Lieutenant Ford), Keras, who's time has come, and that very night he must perform 'the sacrifice,' a ritual suicide (shades of 'Logan's Run'), because these people believe that only by keeping their age down will The Wraith think them an unworthy harvest of which to reap their diabolical gathering. And they think it's been effective, since the evil ones haven't shown up since this was put into practice. Naturally, there's a polar opposite elder, Aries, who will take on the mantle of leader once Keras is out of the picture, and he's aggressively suspicious of the 'full-growns' as they're called, so there's a war on both fronts - how to convince them their apparently barbaric culture is unnecessary, and also how to prevent The Wraith from returning to take their harvest once again. McKay has to do a lot of running - I liked that they show the two younger men getting back to the group long before him, as they rush to tell Aries that the shield device is real, and they've seen it work, but not before poor Keras gets an arrow to the chest in defence of Sheppard.

Okay, so it's not really doing anything particularly new that hasn't been seen in other sci-fi for decades, but, like 'SG-1' could sometimes do, it looks good, the characters are enjoyable to watch, and we get plenty to enjoy in the span of the story, from McKay having two young children befriend him, much to his annoyance, to Keras surviving, and the episode ending on a high as he's given a gift of chocolate, and shares it out to all the children as the team leave, the ZPM back in place, safely to guard the villages once more, so it's a pretty positive conclusion. There's the immediate threat of a Wraith drone scouring the planet before heading back to the Stargate to report, there's the threat from Aries, whose overzealous comrades are ready to fire arrows, in typically hotheaded youthful reaction, and as I said, the need to convince Keras to forgo suicide because it's not that that's making the difference. It's not as simple as challenging their belief system, they have to understand it, though it comes merely from a leap of speculation from McKay that the suicide system wasn't purely to give them a peaceful death and keep Wraith away, but in fact was the method of keeping the population minimal so they would stay within the shield's protection instead of necessitating expansion beyond its sphere.

There is a slight tang of bitterness for the future, because the ZPM will eventually fail, and with the drone visiting, activated by the transponder of a dead Wraith, left in reverence as a reminder of the old days, it could become a planet once again on their radar. But the moral minefield is successfully traversed, and they can go in peace. I'd love to see a follow-up where the Wraith have indeed returned, but it's unlikely since it would take many years for the power to degrade. Unless… perhaps some of the youngsters played with it and it got turned off again. 'SG-1' occasionally revisited planets or had their occupants return for one reason or another, and though I wouldn't want this young population to be threatened, it would make for an interesting continuation. As McKay said so unthinkingly, they could all come and live at Atlantis if it came to it - they've got an empty city, why not have it filled? Weir puts the kibosh on that idea, saying they can't go off to alien worlds and bring back all the inhabitants every time, and as it is, they're only just able to keep the station functioning with their minimal presence. That could be an interesting development, as, like 'DS9' or 'Babylon 5,' it would be fun to see a thriving community living in the city, using it the way it was meant to be. Maybe that will be the direction they eventually explore, though so far they've shown more willingness to get rid of people, with the Athosians moving to the mainland.

There's a fun reference to Colonel Carter by McKay, who clearly misses his time spent helping SG-1, though really he misses time spent with Samantha Carter! But he's really coming into his own as a series regular, and though Sheppard's decisions were a little questionable (would O'Neill have sanctioned pulling out the pin of the defence system so quickly? - they need a Dr. Jackson to counteract such behaviour), he's able to keep everyone calm so a shooting match doesn't take out half the bow and arrow posse. The question of whether they should be interfering in this alternative culture isn't so much a question as a definite necessity, since people were meekly accepting early death when they didn't need to, and in that respect they did the right thing persuading them of the error of their ways - they did it by action, not words: if they'd just said 'you're wrong,' they wouldn't have been listened to, but when they saw the result of the shield being turned on, it was all the persuasion needed, even if the team were initially acting from self-interest rather than any attempt to assist this race. The beautiful, grassy forest and environs make it good for the mental health, as such natural sights always are, and they even begin to discuss the fact that all the planets they visit are so alike, but McKay's cut off before he can make the observation about the sky being that colour because that's the best environmental result. It gets them off the hook for not doing enough 'alien' worlds, but it's true that if there was life like us, it would probably be on worlds created in the same image as ours, so I buy their explanation rather than budgetary reasons!

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