Broken Ties

DVD, Stargate Atlantis S5 (Broken Ties)

Not too sure about this one. I was a little confused about certain things, like why Ronon went mad and cut off the Wraith's hand, then fought Tyre, his ex-Satedan, ex-buddy. And was Tyre always part of the plan, that he'd try and get into this Wraith's good graces? I missed how Lorne and the others were set free and I assumed Ronon had actually been too strong to succumb to the Wraith's brainwashing and drug addiction, and yet he did fight Tyre and he did have to be brought back stunned, and he did have to be held in restraints until the cold turkey process had succeeded. I felt the episode was quite easy to guess in its progression, specifically with Tyre. I really didn't like all that Satedan matey stuff, a follow-on to the episode in the previous season where Ronon met up with his old friends and they turned out to be Wraith worshippers, so I wasn't thrilled to meet up with Tyre again. It was a bit too easy for him to capture Ronon, though he did know him well and was desperate, making him more cunning I suppose. But the fact he was going to die somehow, and probably ultimately sacrificing himself for all that he'd done wrong, wasn't hard to speculate. And obviously when he's there telling them where to lay charges on the Wraith's base and then he ends up holding the detonator, of course he was going to go out in a blaze of glory - for one thing he probably didn't fancy facing a recovered Ronon in the near future!

The episode didn't surprise in other ways, either, with my belief they're mellowing Wolsey so that he can surprise the team by being adamant on some point at some time and making them all shocked at his reversion to the old Wolsey. At the moment they're going out of their way to portray him as much more sensitive, open to suggestion, with a sympathetic side (he misses his dog; he relaxes by wearing a suit and tie!), and the comedy (he doesn't know how to open the briefing room door; he gets left holding the baby - literally), so I can only assume they're priming him to stab his team in the back by not backing them up or coming down like a ton of bricks when they least expect it - that is, after all, how to do something dramatic. I just felt they were laying it on a bit strong. The other plot is about Teyla and whether she's ready to commit to being back on Sheppard's team despite having a baby to contend with and look after. She has the advantage of a stay-at-home Dad for the child, at least, but she feels the maternal instinct strongly. She can't have it both ways and just show up for duty when it suits, Sheppard was very right, but she eventually realises her professionalism and Kanaan reassures her that it'll be okay. It was something that needed to be addressed, and it was somewhat interesting, but the sum of the episode didn't really match expectations.

There were other problems in the episode aside from the confused direction in how the story was told - like redundant scenes where characters talk about how they're going to find Ronon, they don't know, and then Lorne arrives to tell them they know where he is. And The Wraith look really weak now when Tyre can just show up and take a couple of the grunts out with a few sword swipes, or Sheppard can hold them off with a couple of hand guns (where did he get those - wouldn't they have removed all the equipment before putting them in the cells?). It's not that it wasn't stylishly put together, the fights and battles were fine, and it wasn't that the characters were ill-used, there was simply some undefined something that was missing in a small way and I don't feel I've yet settled into this season, even though I went almost straight from Season 4 to this without my usual annual break to review something else. So I don't know, I'm glad Teyla will be back properly and that Ronon will, too. I'm glad Wolsey hasn't proven to be the prize turkey everyone thought he would be (yet). But I'm yet to like the stories they've done so far to any great extent (even if the season opener was pretty good, it was more about settling the previous season's story). I expect a big part of it is that my favourite character Rodney is far from essential for this particular plot and there wasn't a great sense of travel, they just appear in various places and then they're back on Atlantis, and sometimes you need an impression of different places being far away. I'm not even quite sure what the motivation of that Wraith was to capture Ronon and torture him into servitude - to attack Atlantis? In which case wouldn't he have pulled all the information out of Ronon as soon as he could to test his loyalty? And Ronon didn't want his captured friends killed, which made me think he was only playing along...

**