Brain Storm

 DVD, Stargate Atlantis S5 (Brain Storm)

Was it the previous episode that Keller didn't appear and Rodney barely featured? If so it would seem likely they made this episode at the same time. I don't know, but that would certainly save money I'd have thought, and the fact they didn't renew the series for a Season 6 would suggest they were cutting back on 'Stargate,' despite having another spinoff in the works. This felt like one of those science-y disaster films from the Nineties, where the hero scientist and his woman solve some catastrophe while dressed in evening wear. I'm not sure if it was genuinely a world problem as it seemed to only affect that particular secret base, but the important thing is that McKay and Keller are in trouble. None of the other cast are involved, which is a shame as we only have a handful of episodes left, and I expect at least the last couple to be about some big Wraith storyline. As much as I enjoy an episode that puts a couple of characters together and has them solving a problem, maybe this late in the final season isn't quite the place for it, but if, as I surmised, it was a budget-saving exercise, I can see why they'd do this.

I like Rodney, he's the best character, and I like Keller, too, so I don't mind them getting an episode to themselves, but I've always been less keen on the Earth-based stories than pure sci-fi, alien worlds, even Atlantis-bound episodes. It didn't really tell us anything new about the characters, other than getting the pair together properly before the end, and it was only tangentially connected to the series in the sense that the technological idea for how to solve global warming was clearly Stargate-type tech. Once they'd actually got there and things started to go wrong it did pick up and you wonder how this is going to play out, plus obviously McKay is going to have to be the star and everyone will know he's the genius he is, or at least his colleague would, and that was the important thing. And Keller gets to put her foot down and have an outsider perspective on this group of boffins. She also gets herself stuck and that sequence where we realise she's just down the corridor from where Rodney and his mate are working made things seem less impressive. Maybe it was supposed to be further away, but it didn't seem that far.

The story was a bit inevitable in terms of McKay was going to find a way round the problem, and while the external CGI effects of the extreme weather surrounding the complex were functional, they weren't the best. I thought I recognised the name Neil deGrasse Tyson, I think he must be a real scientist, so that was an interesting guest cameo there, though I was so busy trying to take in the name and recall where I knew it from that though I saw Gary Jones in the credits it seemed so natural I completely glossed over it in my mind as normal for 'Stargate,' but of course Walter is in 'SG-1' usually, not 'Atlantis,' so that very brief appearance was great fun and the more enjoyable cameo for me. Otherwise I felt it was a little too insubstantial as a story, the 'freeze lightning' being completely out of the blue and the bizarre choice of the Kramer representative not to make the call for help until it was too late and the communications were down, making the situation seem less dire than it became. It was one of those episodes where it's not bad, but neither is it all that memorable, and though I don't need every episode to be some big, meaningful adventure, I do feel they should be using the various pieces of the 'Stargate' world and our specific characters as much as possible as we come to the end. Instead there's no Teyla or Wolsey, and barely any Sheppard or Ronon.

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