Lifeline

DVD, Stargate Atlantis S4 (Lifeline)

I did fear for Weir. And my worst fear was realised. Or was it? It was clear she was going to sacrifice herself in some way to save the team, but they made it more uncomfortable with the fact that we don't actually see her die, they leave her dangling (not literally), as an unresolved plot thread. While that does give me hope that she's not out of the game yet, and it's almost certain from this that she'll make some kind of comeback, I don't want to get my hopes up only for some episode where they mount a rescue only to see her actual death. In some ways it might have been better to go the whole hog and do her in rather than keep us in suspense. But maybe they still had plans for her, and we know that characters from 'Stargate' generally reappear, whether they're main cast or recurring. For all I know this season could be a blip where the actress was ill or wanted to go off and do something else for a year and then come back for the final season. It's unlikely, I'll admit, but I'm not sure I can see Carter (now promoted to a full colonel, whatever that means), being part of the cast across two seasons after she'd just come off ten seasons of 'SG-1.' But that's the fun of not knowing what's going to happen, you can speculate and wonder until you do know.

What I know about this episode is that it didn't quite engage me as the season opener did. A large part of that was the sense of inevitability over Weir being taken out of the game, whether that be permanent or temporary, and so I didn't really enjoy it. It was also a little bit of a letdown when it came to the big heist to steal a ZPM from the Replicator homeworld, which amounted to little more than Sheppard and Ronon running down a few Atlantis stock corridors and doing computer stuff at a terminal. The word 'heist' conjures up all kinds of clever twists and turns (and I don't mean turning left or right in a corridor!), perhaps my expectations were set too high? And then when it's all gone smoothly and they get greedy and decide to risk uploading a command to the Replicators to go to war with The Wraith, I just felt that was poor decision-making. They should have rejoiced the plan went as well as it did, they'd got the ZPM and they hadn't had to activate the 'kill switch' on Weir to stop her from being taken over (why didn't they try to do it once they were on their way out, or did Rodney say it wasn't working?), quit while you're ahead! Instead, like gamblers they took success as an opportunity to go for an even bigger stake, and in doing so they sacrificed Weir. I didn't feel like there was even that much concern about it, as if this was what they'd been expecting all along!

I don't like over-emotive acting, the kind you see so much in TV now (especially the modern Treks), but I do like to feel some kind of loss or sadness emanating from a character's portrayal of keeping it just below the surface. I wouldn't criticise the acting, but I didn't get much from the characters. Maybe that was because they're mostly military, or it could be that the nature of Weir being taken from them meant there was ambiguity as to her fate, but there was some essential connection missing. The closest we come was Teyla packing Weir's belongings away, which in itself seemed a bit soon, as if they'd given up, no plan for a rescue mission, just 'she's lost and now we're going to need a new boss for Atlantis' (whoever could that be…?). The whole episode came across as a means to an end, rather than a tense, exciting series of developments in themselves, and that's a real shame after all the good work last season and in the opener. Not that there was no good character stuff: I felt Sheppard explaining his reason for leaving Teyla to guard and guide the city was very true to both characters, especially her - she would make an excellent leader if all went pear-shaped, and it was a privilege to be entrusted with it. At the same time it does come across once again as she's the one who gets least to do now, mainly thanks to Ronon taking her role in operations. You don't really need two alien warriors in these things, and that's sad.

I was a bit uncertain about certain parts of the episode, mainly the Replicators themselves. They come across as this franchise's Borg: unstoppable, uncompromising, deadly and completely alien (well served by David Ogden Stiers' return as Oberoth, with his understated, almost blank way of playing the leader). The idea of the shield that stops them in their tracks, but that they gradually adapt to (although that may have only happened in the simulation in Oberoth's mind), was very Borg, even the way Weir confronts them and sacrifices herself to save her 'ship' smacked of Janeway in the 'Voyager' finale. The word 'assimilation' even came up at one point! And when we see Weir finally overcome by the Borg, sorry, the Replicators, and they close in as the camera pulls back, it had the same feel of being pulled into a pit. But why do they exist in humanoid form, I'm used to seeing them as the impersonal Meccano sets clunking and rattling around that was used so much on 'SG-1'? Perhaps I forgot a line of dialogue which explained their penchant for human form in a previous episode. And the homeworld of the Replicators - I thought that meant THE Homeworld, but with Oberoth there it seemed as if it was just the Replicator planet they'd been to before.

Like the last episode, it was fun to have Carter and Dr. Lee doing stuff together again, and I was really hoping he would end up working with McKay and Zelenka, and he does sort of, at the end, but he just makes some clever remark about terminology and doesn't actually contribute anything. But then that's always been the joke about Lee - he's actually a bit incompetent and isn't one of these amazing brain-boxes like McKay or Carter that can solve all kinds of science riddles, he's just a useful assistant. Looking at all the pieces laid out side by side as I've gone through them in this review, it doesn't add up to much, but I'm not saying it was a bad episode, far from it, more that the season opener set the bar at a goodly level and they've already dipped a touch. The real quandary was whether it was worth risking one woman's life to force Replicators into confrontation with Wraith, but this series doesn't generally explore issues, it tends to focus on the action and razzmatazz. It may prove fortuitous that they had this opportunity and took it, but I'd prefer to think it was better to have got out of there with Weir fully intact. Sure, it was a good motivation narratively speaking, that she's only going to have this level of access to the Replicators this one time because if they tried it again they'd know about the previous attempt, and it was a big, juicy carrot, but at the same time it wasn't the be-all and end-all. Rodney could have found a way to do it in future, I have faith in him. So now I'm mixed - I didn't want Weir to leave, but do I want her to come back as recurring? But they're settled on a new planet now, soon to have a new boss, so I'll see where the story takes me.

**