Allies

DVD, Stargate Atlantis S2 (Allies)

Alliances can be deceiving, and going into one with The Wraith seems to be obvious cause for concern. But things go smoothly enough to begin with and seemed to lull them into a sense of comfort with what was happening. The big, scary threat of 'at least one' Wraith ship on the way since 'Michael,' turns out to be Michael, and a gang of other Wraith intent on making a deal: either our people give them Dr. Beckett's virus so they can attack their own kind, to turn them into humans ripe for feeding on, or they let every Wraith ship out there in on the location of Atlantis. For one thing, wouldn't they know where Atlantis was - I didn't get that it actually changed location when it pretended to be destroyed, but maybe it did? Either way, Wraith will know Atlantis is still there. I have the feeling Michael might not be in on the treachery that the Queen of this Hive exhibits. Not that he's a nice guy all of a sudden, but he was at least honest about trying to feed on Teyla, and that when it comes to survival he'll do what's necessary, pointing out the similarity with the humans in that regard. There was room to explore this avenue much more, but they prefer to go into military plans of action and that sort of thing rather than philosophical questions or sci-fi speculation. But we don't see Michael again and the reason for bringing in a new face for the alliance suggests she's a baddie that can be killed without thought, where Michael is more complicated.

For an end of season cliffhanger I felt this was relatively small fry. There were some indisputably accomplished space scenes, that I must to point out, but the Daedalus only comes up against a couple of Hive ships when the alliance is ended on the side of The Wraith. I don't know what possessed Sheppard to go out in a fighter to try and take out the enemy's drive system, but they were trying to buy time for McKay and Ronon (as his bodyguard), to activate their emergency beam-outs on one of the Hives. It ends with them captive and Sheppard missing, but the most important thing is these Wraith now know the location of Earth. I was thinking Earth being in another galaxy was so far away it couldn't be under threat from these aliens, but then I remembered the Daedalus is constantly zipping between galaxies all the time, making it seem like little more than a short hop. This makes Wraith claims that they might run out of humans in this galaxy a little suspect, which was the supposed rationale of why they were wanting to turn their own brethren, albeit members on the opposite side of a civil war, into a source of food. But how much can we take of anything they said as truth? I suppose Earth being at threat was an inevitability as you can't up the stakes more than the Atlantis base in this galaxy, so Earth would be the ideal target for that. It's just that Earth is already under threat from The Ori at this time - maybe Ori and Wraith will meet up and turn on each other, wiping each other out? It would be fun to have a proper crossover event.

There were other issues with the plans, too, such as Wraith not being able to build a suitable transmission system for the aerosolised virus so it could deploy quickly enough that the other Hive ship wouldn't be aware. Surely they would have the ability to come up with better stuff than mere humans. But there's the position they're in, only being awake for a couple of years and mainly going round doing their vampirism stuff, so maybe they don't bother learning, creating or engineering things until they've been up and about for a few decades? McKay did all the hard work for them, with assistance from Asgard Hermiod, the only being in his vicinity to be genuinely more intelligent than him, and makes him remember it, which is fun to see - McKay so rarely gets a taste of his own medicine. But most of the episode is about this uneasy cooperation, which is novel, but isn't the smash ending you might expect. Not that I was expecting all out war, and I was wondering how they were going to do something more dramatic than Atlantis under attack, so at least it was different. I felt Michael was largely unimportant, and since Connor Trinneer went to all that trouble to wear such makeup you'd think they'd have given him something more substantial to do!

You can never truly trust a Wraith, and once again Ronon's instincts prove correct, except even he had his guard down when he and McKay are 'caught napping' and easily made prisoners. The part of the story that had most potential was in the moral quandary of allowing Wraith to turn other Wraith into human-like versions so they can be food, even though it was only a stopgap measure for a few decades (the Queen says they won't run out till after Sheppard's lifetime), until they have to go back to real human populations. Teyla voices concerns, and Beckett, too, but as usual it's the military-minded that conquer all and there's very little soul-searching. Survival is the most important thing, after all, but it's still unpalatable to see a Wraith turned into a human in Atlantis, then the Queen feeding on him to test if this idea will work. Our people don't like it either, but it's part of the deal. I wonder if the guy was a volunteer or had been selected with no choice of his own? The real goal should have been to defeat the instinct and need of Wraith for flesh, but then if that were done we'd have less drama. Unless they were made weak and became victims of other Wraith. Either way, the crack to be aiming at is that between Wraith of different persuasions in this civil war which we've seen evidence of throughout the season, and that will no doubt be Season 3's story, I would imagine.

It's been nice to return to Atlantis and get back into that world, and I think the season was fairly successful in what it did with the shifting around of the cast, losing bland Lieutenant Ford, gaining aggressive Ronon, and continuing to feature the recurring characters. Daedalus' presence has ended an impression of isolation, there's always a helping hand not far away, but I wouldn't say it's been overplayed and that ship and crew (what we see of them), has worked reasonably well. I'm still not as attached to the series as I should be, they still haven't really got going. The Wraith aren't quite as unsubtle and simplistic as the Goa'uld at their worst, but there's still little to latch onto and they remain largely monsters to be afeared of and needing to be taken down. But there have been patches of consistently good storytelling which suggests hope for the future, and I do hope that each season will learn from itself and go up a notch. At the moment I'm still much more intent on getting back to 'SG-1' than another season of this, but with only one more of that venerable series, it's understandable, since I have three more of this one.

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