Michael

DVD, Stargate Atlantis S2 (Michael)

Not the greatest of the season, despite featuring a famous Trek face, and I'm not sure exactly why. Maybe it's because we're on the outside with 'Lieutenant Michael Kenmore,' a recently rescued member of Sheppard's team who had been captured by The Wraith, but lost his memory. Okay, they fooled me that he wasn't actually human, but a Wraith that was the first recipient of Dr. Beckett's wonder virus that can turn chickens into cows and all that sort of thing. Well, it's supposed to turn Wraith into humans, at least, removing the whatever-bug in its DNA to leave the human code behind. He should go into the snake oil business! It works well enough on a cosmetic level, which is how they fool the audience that this guy is human, but it doesn't entirely quell the nasty Wraith tendencies to violence and the desire to feed on live flesh. It was a good idea, but I can't see them using it as a biological weapon to transform all the Wraith into humans, and even if it did, they'd still be unsociable tyrants because it's not just your genetic makeup that determines your actions. Perhaps the failure of this experiment is part of the reason the episode falls flat, but it never helps to concentrate on a guest star, even one I have fondness for.

Connor Trinneer is best known for playing Charles 'Trip' Tucker III, the Chief Engineer of the Enterprise NX-01 on 'Enterprise,' and I knew he was going to show his face at some time, the next in a long line of Trek actors to appear in the franchise that took much of its inspiration from there. When Dr. Heightmeyer was interviewing 'Michael,' it was like a forgotten episode of Trek itself, since Claire Rankin had also guest-starred on 'Voyager'! But leaving aside the Trek connections the episode is pretty basic fare - inevitably we learn that something's amiss, and that something is Michael isn't Michael, and he's not happy about it. I don't entirely understand the team's reaction to him: on the one end of the scale Ronon is bursting with rage and wants to kill him, while at the other Teyla has compassion and wants him to be who they're saying he is. I wasn't sure why she was so kind and generous, it makes her seem a better person, while Ronon is just angry, but he turns out to be right, sadly. Teyla ends up being used by Michael's mental powers of suggestion to let him go and becomes his hostage until he can escape to a planet where there are more of his kind, her kindness in vain. The small crumb of comfort is that this Wraith, though he admits to wanting to feed on her, doesn't, and even when he's stretching out his hand I got the impression he didn't want to do it, which suggests some sort of positive feelings within.

In any case, he gets rescued by The Wraith, and back at base they discuss the ramifications of what happened: that they're probably already on the way, assuming Michael told them about the existence of Atlantis. But were they assuming too much? Could it be that he'll actually see sense and realise that being human was a far better life than being Wraith, chained to the need to feed on people? It would seem a stretch that they'd bring in someone as relatively high profile in sci-fi circles as Trinneer, only for one episode, and they pointedly have a Wraith remark that he's still alive, so why do that unless he's designed to become a recurring character, perhaps another weird renegade oddball like Ford, to spice up the galaxy. I can't say the character was that interesting beyond who played him, but if they could do something with him then it could work. And Beckett's virus is the only weapon they have so far, so it would seem tough for that to be completely abandoned. But the episode comes across as stopgap filler, setup for the future, presumably for the last two episodes, though it's not that great an idea to make a cliffhanger of The Wraith coming to attack Atlantis once again, and after a strong middle period the season has dropped back into mediocrity in its storytelling.

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