The Ark

DVD, Stargate Atlantis S3 (The Ark)

They really like the last remnants of a dead civilisation on this series - we'd already had the last of the Ancients during the season, and now we get another race from a planet who had variable technology (it's like 1970s NASA in comparison, but with the ability to store people in those Wraith devices, oh, and artificial gravity due to budgetary reasons, obviously), and used all their ingenuity and the sacrifice of almost the entire population in order to build a secret base in a hollowed-out moon, then let the remaining people be killed by Wraith so that they think there's no one left alive. It was a bold plan, perhaps an immoral one, we're not really sure how many people actually agreed to this genocidal choice, but for whatever it was worth, it did work. Sort of. I have to say I wasn't sold on the episode at first, or, really, at most: I feel the use of the device where a scene kicks off the episode that is actually from the end to build tension is very over-used and rarely worthwhile. It also seemed like it might be one of those stories about a crew trapped in the bowels of a set the production people are very proud of, with a monster or a murderer on the loose. Then it took a different turn and we meet a couple of the people who built the thing, and then again it changes to become one of those episodes where various characters are trapped together and running out of air. So none of it was particularly promising.

However, like Sheppard riding the shuttle ship to safety at the end, they managed to secure the landing, narratively speaking, and it became an uplifting story of heroism, Sheppard doing all he can to rescue Teyla whom the old man took hostage in order to force the team to save the device which holds the last thousand people who had been squirrelled away from the Wraith in order to preserve their society and rebuild it. I was somewhat on the old guy's side most of the time because he was dealing with the end point of five generations of preparation and sacrifice - it was imperative that a way be found, even if they were hurtling towards the planet, the moon about to burn up and Sheppard was stubbornly, and perhaps selfishly concerned only with getting those who were alive out of there. When the old guy agreed to open the hatch and let him in I was expecting to find a chamber full of the people who would have all been beamed back into existence, but instead he'd taken Teyla with him and stored her pattern on the machine so they had no choice if they wanted to get her back. It was a desperate gamble, but it paid off, and Sheppard does a ridiculous thing that shouldn't have worked (other than for the fact he's the series lead, so, you know…), but I did wonder for a short moment if they might be writing Teyla out since she hasn't been one of the better developed characters either this season or the previous two.

I was glad to find that there was a madcap plan to save her and it worked, and I forget that although this looks nice and is all widescreen and shiny it can no longer be considered 'modern' since it was made over a decade ago. Therefore it doesn't have to follow the current dramatic contrivance of 'needing' to kill off regular characters for shock value rather than finding an ingenious way to have it all: save the good guys and do it in a believable way. The story of the people's sacrifice was strong, even though we never saw it, it had that ring of truth and desperation, and was a tale of horror. But it was the team's usual fault of meddling in things that didn't concern them and so it really was their duty to do all they could for this civilisation, even if the troubles were caused by one of that people's own, distraught at the loss of his family who'd been promised sanctuary on this ark but had to be left to die to avoid the Wraith tracking the moon base. It was a hard decision that was made but that guy just messed up the entire remnant of his people, uncaring because of what he lost. If not for him there would have been no desperate need to hold hostages or pilot a rickety old shuttle, and so I suppose no story - while he did his own people no favours he did create the drama.

It's strange to have an episode where McKay can't save the day, but then he was trapped and only had access to antiquated tech that couldn't do anything so this time it had to rely on old-fashioned guts and derring-do for the win. Yet again it's the fondness and dedication between the characters that made it worth the time. I would have liked to see the beaming out of all the people (or some, at least), especially Teyla, but the end scene with her in a hospital bed was really all that was needed to convey the result of Sheppard's actions and sometimes, often in fact, less is more.

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