Enemy At The Gate

 DVD, Stargate Atlantis S5 (Enemy At The Gate)

I wanted nostalgia - I got it. I wanted an epic finale - I got it. The only thing missing (because there were very few faces not to appear!), was a feature-length running time to match the dramatic scale of the story. And a sense of closure. For this was the finale of the 'Atlantis' and somewhat of a finale for 'traditional' 'Stargate' itself since the sequel, 'Universe,' would be very different in style and tone. But it leaves the characters in a very open-ended manner - not to say it doesn't leave them in a good place, and certainly not to say any one of them could have been killed, and that they weren't I am grateful, even though I've already seen 'Universe' and know who appears and who doesn't. But there was no end to the Wraith threat as there was for the Goa'uld, no certainty about Atlantis' mission in Pegasus from this point on: will they be permitted to return? Will they have enough power to return? I wanted some of these questions, not to be resolved as such, but at least to be set in motion so that we know Rodney's working towards getting the old city back on its home patch. Of course the real question is where would they go since they ended the series on a different planet to that which they began on (and I don't mean Earth!), so they'd already shown they didn't have a set place to exist in that galaxy. There's a certain kind of sadness inherent in the idea of this permanent city that has no permanent resting place, and perhaps that contributed to a bittersweet ending, as all endings should be.

I was concerned from the direction of the season, the uneven storytelling and the limp to the end, that they'd bungle this finale, have no time for sentiment amid action, or fail to have big action due to limited budget of a series going down. It's a real shame they 'only' made it to five seasons, an achievement in itself since this was in the days of twenty-odd episode seasons (who'd have thought that time would pass?), but it could easily have continued for five more, just as its predecessor did, and I don't know what precipitated its cancellation, perhaps people were just becoming tired of its brand of sci-fi by then. They certainly chose to shake the formula up with the sequel series that came after. For me, 'Atlantis' could have been the 'DS9' to 'SG-1's position as 'TNG,' the mother show that birthed something more ambitious in scale and intent, but it didn't quite work out that way. I respect the series and think it may have had a better like-for-like quality than 'SG-1,' but in the end nothing can replace those beloved characters, though John Sheppard, Teyla, Ronon, Jennifer Keller and especially Rodney McKay were certainly up there and it was lovely to see some of them interact with the older characters at times. We get Amanda Tapping back once more as Samantha Carter, fitting since she played such an important role taking over last season when Weir was lost, and she spearheaded the nostalgia I was looking for: we did get the SGC (for the last time in its original guise?), we saw the old Wormhole in that same old place under the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, and mention of renaming the latest ship from Phoenix to General Hammond as he's apparently died from a heart attack - don't know if the actor had died, too, or just a way to remember the character, and although it's sad, I appreciated the reference.

There were so many cameos of characters from either 'SG-1' or this series it made a suitable memorial to the 'Stargate' franchise. Let me see, who was there? Colonel Caldwell and Marks on the Daedalus; Colonel Ellis of the Apollo; Carter, Walter and Major Davis at the SGC; Kavanagh, and obviously Zelenka and Lorne, and Dr. Beckett. And of course Christopher Heyerdahl back in the guise of semi-ally 'Todd,' a more fitting role for him than the minor part he had at the opening of the series as Halling, leader of Teyla's people, the Athosians. The only people really missing were the half-expected cameos of Elizabeth Weir somehow, and Ford, somehow (and maybe General O'Neill, who does get mentioned), but I can see why they couldn't squeeze them in as I'd thought they might: it was a bit of a rushed story with only the standard length of time and other than a brief mention of the message sent from the alternate universe of the previous episode (the less said about the better), nothing to do with that, except for the motivation to get this Super-Hive to Earth. The story can be pulled apart a little bit in terms of how this Super-Hive suddenly comes into existence out of nowhere, how Todd's people have been working on it for so long, how it can just zip to Earth in another galaxy, how Todd just happens to have a stash of ZPMs hidden away, and how Atlantis can, using these things and an idea Rodney left behind (Zelenka must be cleverer than he gets credit for!), get to Earth just in time.... But... It was all done stylishly, it slotted neatly together, and it gave me exactly what I wanted to see: one more heroic mission for our characters, doing what they do best.

The way Sheppard is so intent on committing to a suicide run as the only way to save Earth is inspirational, as is the demeanour of the others when they realise their time is up, they don't have time to escape to the 'gate before the Super-Hive must be destroyed, and although Rodney whines a bit, as is his wont, and is expected of him, it's telling that he's the one holding the switch when the time comes and however unwillingly, gives it up to Sheppard as they're all resigned to their deaths. It's a terrific moment, even Sheppard looks lost by the look in his eyes, these are relatively young people, they don't want to die, but if it's necessary they will. For Ronon, it is, he actually gets stabbed to death, a great feint by the writers as I really thought they'd killed him off - despite it being such a puny knife and an ignominious way to go out I could see Jason Momoa asking for it as a surprising to his character. You get that hit of horror and sadness as he dies protecting McKay, and the aftermath of telling Sheppard, but then the Wraith's own smug sense of the power they have over life and death, to give and take away, is used to great effect to bring Ronon back to life and it was a relief because it wouldn't have been a worthy way for him to die. I did think Sheppard was going to die when he explained his plan to blow the ship from the inside, but it just shows how much drama and stakes you can build without executing characters as TV loves to do so much nowadays.

There are some great moments as the city looms into view, protecting Earth and Wolsey does well in command of it. Maybe Keller could have been used better, but someone is always going to suffer when you have so little screen time and I can imagine there being more personal character scenes inserted if the episode had been a double as it deserved. But then again, did it deserve that? It ended, it had a definite sense of success in saving Earth and the team are all together looking out on the Golden Gate Bridge from a balcony of Atlantis, but nothing further than that in closure terms, and it did seem to be of relatively lower quality this season. At least it had that final moment, though, unlike 'Universe' which wasn't even granted an ending, leaving 'Stargate' to slip quietly away as if it had never existed, almost. Five seasons and a rip-roaring finale is good going by anyone's reckoning, and though I've been judgemental and occasionally unappreciative of its choices and simplistic stance, it has been a good, solid series that I will look forward to viewing in whole again sometime, and I can't say any fairer than that - it has put the subsequent Trek revival to shame as being closer to old Trek's quality of character and story, had semi-serialised tales, and showed that a successful sci-fi series can spin off an equally successful idea. I salute 'Atlantis' and all who sailed in her, perhaps the last truly good series of the genre.

***

Think Tank

DVD, Voyager S5 (Think Tank)

When I think 'tank' I think aquarium. I think military vehicle. I think cistern. But is there more 'think' than 'tank' in this episode, or more 'tank' than 'think'? I'm beginning to sound like Kurros and his whimsical attitude to existence - he reminded me of the Vorta; sneaky, cunning, sly and manipulative, while still taking a certain delight in the 'game,' whatever that might mean, which fits in perfectly with the view I developed of this think tank as being a miniature Dominion, an anti-Federation on a small scale, a mirror of what our noble Federation could have (and could still, if current Trek doesn't pull itself together), become. It may be mini, but it's also reminiscent of the Borg: a search for perfection through knowledge, but knowledge at all cost, removed from compassion. They still have their lines they won't cross, specifically genocide or the production of weapons of mass destruction, but even in that worthy code their definition appears to be merely semantics since they admit they're happy to destroy a planet, and if that isn't mass destruction I don't know what is! Indeed, I thought at first the Hazari boobytrap was the blue-faced guy's planet, revenge for holding back payment at first for services they'd rendered. But as Janeway observes when they're considering if the Malon might be responsible for setting bounty hunters on Voyager, revenge isn't profitable. I wonder if genocide or WMDs were suitably profitable, whether the tank would cross that line, though most of the time it doesn't pay to wipe out potential customers, and I'm sure they'd have absolutely no compunction in playing both sides, untrustworthy as they are!

It'd been a long time since I'd seen this episode, and once only, since it was one of a few I missed on transmission, catching up years later in the DVD age, so I didn't remember all the details, but right from Kurros' slimy and dangerous demeanour I guessed they were going to have been responsible for hiring the bounty hunters, they were too manipulative not to have been behind it, and too knowledgeable not to know exactly what they wanted and how to get it. What did surprise me was the problem to be solved being relatively small fry in comparison to Voyager's real jeopardy, so I didn't feel the story got to the heart of the series' predicament - it would have been more dramatic if the stakes were Voyager's chance at getting home (though perhaps that was considered overdone), at the cost of Seven. I have no doubt the think tank could have found a way to achieve that, albeit much like the later Equinox crew to come at the end of the season, through unethical means. I found it interesting that despite Janeway having her qualms about their morality it didn't preclude the possibility of working together. Perhaps that's a lesson for today when social and political views are so wide apart as not to allow even the possibility of cooperation. Of course they ultimately ask for one tiny thing more than Janeway can agree to: the life of Seven of Nine. It wasn't quite as simple as that, however, Kurros is offering her the chance to go for perfection above remaining within the limited confines of her life on Voyager, and to a former Borg that's a tempting offer. But it's a failure on Kurros' part to understand how much she's grown in the past year and a half by learning from her Voyager family - he hasn't known her as a person, only a commodity.

That would seem to be this group's flaw: not having compassion or interest on a personal level, only in what they can gain. They set themselves up as kindred spirits with Voyager's crew, explorers just like them, except their goal is pure knowledge. They don't wish to assimilate people (other than very select minds), but they do wish to exercise their particular skills of problem-solving and could have been a great source of aid in making the Delta Quadrant a better place - in some ways they already have, listing various accomplishments to have benefited many races, including such a dramatic reveal as their success in curing the dreaded, debilitating Phage suffered by the Vidiians (nice to hear there was a happy ending for that species, or new beginning), sometimes for seemingly small remuneration such as a secret recipe. Yet even in this goodness you see them enjoying the pleasure of power in playing God with other races. They want what they want on a whim, motivated by greed, much like the collector Kivas Fajo, who wanted Data for his priceless collection. These people are more abstract in their desires, perhaps reflecting the fact they're quite an abstract collection of beings. They have a vague goal of acquiring more and greater knowledge, but I never discerned an ultimate purpose other than seeking what they don't have in order to possess it. In that way they're a little Ferengi, and a little V'Ger, but their motivation isn't a positive one as evidenced by how they go about it, willing to deceive and manipulate.

Fear was at the core of Dominion philosophy, greed is central here, but we don't know enough about the individuals concerned to be able to judge why this should be. Tellingly, Kurros was the price for his world's saving, forced to join as a child, which can explain some of why he is the way he is. I wonder why they'd want a child, presumably they could tell he was some kind of genius and with their assistance could grow up to be quite useful as another brain in their group, though it can't be ignored he was effectively sold into slavery, not having a choice, being a child. In theme and visual terms I can see a preparation for the Xindi of 'Enterprise' as this was written by Berman and Braga who would go on to create that Dominion-like threat to Earth, almost a transition point from the 'DS9' anti-Federation to the later series' imitation: partly it's the variety of alien life that makes up this group, but specifically, Bebox, the aquatic life form in a tank we only see glimpses of as we peer through the little viewing window, as well as the non-human (for want of a better word), speech of some members. In fact, the Universal Translator can't even understand some of the creatures' dialogue, which makes you wonder how 'universal' it really is! The teaser was appropriate for setting up so much alienness as it's one of those few that has nothing to do with Voyager, either ship or characters, all aliens on the stage, and they look good, especially the blue guy that tries to rip them off, although spikey-head (Fennim), looked a little too similar to the attackers of 'Latent Image,' as good as the design was.

Unlike the last couple of episodes I can't say this was much of a character piece, which is usually more affecting or moving, though Janeway was certainly front and centre as she dynamically takes risks (with that potentially crippling manoeuvre to blast their way out of the gas cloud), forces her people to think, forges alliance with their enemies, and tricks the tricksters. 'Who Tricks The Tricksters?' could have been the title! But she's not up to her standard of 'Counterpoint' where she was against a similarly deceiving foe and played him like a piano. It's one of those episodes where the Captain and Seven are crucial and it all revolves around them, a template for perhaps too many stories of the series, though it hadn't been attempted as much this season. It's not that it's bad to focus on a couple of characters, or specifically them, but it can upset the balance at the expense of the others. I don't feel B'Elanna got a fair shake in this one, for example: as Chief Engineer she should have been at the forefront of coming up with ideas to deal with Kurros and co., yet although they mention she had an idea she's very much a background presence in the story, her natural role failing to bring her forward as it once would. Less so, but still apparent, was Tuvok's role - you'd think as Chief of Security he would naturally go on an away mission to a suspicious alien vessel, but then they couldn't have had the reveal that Seven was attending an 'interview.' Also, he mentions a mind meld attempt on the Hazari they capture, but it was unsuccessful and spoken of in a throwaway line, reiterating the focus is not on him.

I prefer when people's individual abilities are allowed to shine as it cements that impression of inspirational teamwork so important to Trek's mindset and style. Some of the characters aren't the only thing missing - they preferred not to show the battle with the Hazari when they're on the attack, perhaps due to budget constraints, since there are a lot of ship shots in the episode generally. I'm not usually one to advocate more screen time given over to action shots, but in this case I felt the episode could have done with a bit more of a jolt of energy than it had, perhaps leaning towards the cerebral with all the 'thinks' going on. Not showing what's happening externally can work very well (as evidenced in 'DS9' and plenty of other episodes of Trek), but there wasn't quite enough tension in this one. Lots of interest, but not so much tension. I enjoy references to other races and they covered that with the Malon (was Jason Alexander under all that or was it just a stand-in?), Devore and the Phage. And it made sense for Paris to be responsible for ship-wide crazes, but would they all have spare Replicator rations to be able to make copies of this electronic game, 'Sheer Lunacy' - is it a real game, it sounds like it? Perhaps mention of the previous craze being yo-yos was an attempt by the series to comment on the zeitgeist as I certainly remember in the Nineties there was always 'the next craze,' yo-yos being one of them! The Replicator rations question can be filed directly under the series' faults when it came to shuttlecraft, as we have to assume Voyager lost yet another one aboard the think tank's ship since Seven 'stole' a shuttle to get aboard, then was beamed back to safety - apparently through alien shields, no less, as we see shields up as the Hazari are attacking the vessel! They could easily have explained that due to Kurros' regular appearances in isomorphic projection form, there was a trail of particles between the ships that enabled a signal to be forced through - and that only took me seconds to think up! But the series was never one of the higher on the list of papering over inconsistencies, perhaps setting the course for later Treks to come, to its detriment.

Regarding the isomorphic projection, reminiscent of the misguided holo-comms of 'DSC,' I wanted to understand that better - okay, so he can drink Janeway's coffee, taste it, and it doesn't splatter on the deck, so is it like it's being beamed to his real body? Also, he appears with the list of demands with one of Voyager's own PADDs and hands it to Janeway. So... did he beam that in with the projection, and if so, why go to the trouble of projecting at all and just beam yourself in? All very fancy to make him look technologically superior, I suppose. I have yet to see 'Star Trek: Prodigy,' one of the current animated spinoffs, but from publicity I've seen it looks like their characters are a mix of non-humanoid creatures and I wondered if this think tank menagerie, shall we say, was an inspiration for that? Especially since it's supposed to be the most connected to 'Voyager' of any other series... As long as they didn't take inspiration from Seven's moral lesson of the episode: cheating is more efficient! I don't think that was the real message of the story, it was more about 'blue-sky thinking': thinking outside the box: being abstract, maybe? In that regard Starfleet officers can usually be relied upon to come up with unconventional solutions, as long as they're not unethical: using knowledge, but unlike Kurros and his cronies, not at all costs. Seven was very pragmatic and practical in her approach to the offer to go with them: it was logical she should be given up so the ship could be saved, not an emotional response, an acceptance of what needed to be done, though not recognising compassion for herself - as positive a message as self-sacrifice is, it needn't be jumped to as a default response, after all she's only got one life. Janeway could see that and would never give up her crew - would even Kirk have let Spock sacrifice himself in the warp core in 'Star Trek II'? It's hard to believe. What do you think of my solution, Admiral [to the no-win scenario]?

They weren't at the stage of a no-win scenario, even if the Hazari had so many ships they were more like an entire fleet than the traditional image of the bounty hunter as a lone individual. As Neelix said in his great moment, they'd been through worse before and he had faith in his Captain, which was warming to see and probably the most heartfelt moment in a cerebral-focused episode. I wish they'd use him as a sounding board more often, as he used to be in the first three seasons. Just because Voyager passed beyond the regions of space he knew, doesn't mean he isn't full of his own kind of wisdom from lived experience, and failing that, the constant reassurance of dedicated friendship (the same can be said for Tuvok). The only downer of the episode is Kurros' eerily prescient words that if Seven chooses to remain with Voyager she'll never be satisfied within those limitations, something that has proved true if you can accept the horrible things they did to her in 'Picard' - with Season 2 we know Starfleet kicked her out for Borg-ness (sure, sure, exactly what you'd expect from their modern view of the organisation), and that somehow caused her to go so far from her Voyager family, and I couldn't help noting the warning in this episode, even though it came from someone trying to manipulate, or hitting back at her rejection. The blue guy, Saowin, was played by Christopher Shea, who'd previously been the Vorta, Keevan, and would go on to play an Andorian and a Suliban, and another Christopher, Darga, played Klingons in 'DS9' and 'Enterprise,' here as the main Hazari. Steve Dennis (Fennim), had already been an alien in 'Warhead' and would return in 'Equinox,' plus in 'Enterprise' as an Andorian. I would say of this episode, it doesn't tank, but could definitely have done with a little more think.

**

Vegas

 DVD, Stargate Atlantis S5 (Vegas)

Cutting loose and having fun, that seemed to be about the size of it - both written and directed by Robert C. Cooper and he appeared to throw everything into this. By that I mean every cliché and familiar trope that could be squeezed in: a dishevelled detective, heavy rock soundtrack, black vehicles, secret government organisations in secret government bases. Gamblers, gangsters, chases... I was waiting for the penny to drop, or the other shoe, whatever the expression is - first I'm thinking it's Sheppard, he's back on Earth and pretending to be a detective, but when he meets Keller doing the autopsy on the Wraith victim you quickly realise it's not that. So it's got to be some coma after an accident or an adventure happening in someone's mind, probably Sheppard's. When it comes, the answer's a rather disappointing revelation that puts the whole episode into perspective as something of a waste of time: it's a parallel universe, which means in the penultimate episode of the entire series we don't get a single appearance by any of the main characters! Instead, we see Sheppard, Keller, McKay and Wolsey, as well as Walter from 'SG-1' again, and Zelenka, but they're all alternates in their own alternate world. I wasn't fond of the over-blown, and I'm sure deliberately so, directing choices, where it's all super-stylised and out of kilter for the series. It's like watching a dull police procedural and Cooper appears to be playing out all his Vegas fantasies and revelling in the medium rather than telling a good story. It looks and feels like a film, or at least a section of a film, because you can't do a lot in forty-five minutes, and has the depth that that implies, too...

If I wasn't fond of the unappealing stylisation, which I almost took to be the guy in charge accepting the series' demise by doing whatever he felt like and only loosely connecting it to itself, then I was even less fond of the revelation that it was all, basically, using up an episode! I was expecting it to tie in somehow right at the end, and of course it did, but so much for my hopes for a great two-part finale to lead out the series to pasture. Maybe part two will justify this episode, but it could just as easily have been a teaser, explaining what happened rather than running around anarchically, filling up time. This is where, once again, I would love to know how far in advance the series' end was known, and whether the approach to this episode was to simply throw all caution to the wind and do whatever they felt like. It may well have pleased Cooper, but to me it really squandered the little time we had left to enjoy these characters, and in a season that has been rather uneven, especially towards the end. Was this a reaction to cancellation or am I reading too much into the madcap approach of doing a detective drama in a parallel universe? Waste is what I felt - I'm not even sure whether or not it was meant to be seen as one long episode like the pilot, as on the DVD it says 'Extended Episode' over each part, yet this was the usual forty-five minutes, and there was no option to watch both parts as one. I'm not saying this was the worst episode of the season, that dishonour still goes to the pointless clips episode, but it was hard not to be disappointed! It made me think of the 'Enterprise' two-parter, 'In A Mirror, Darkly' (funnily enough, the guy who played the gangster in that series' final season, Steven R. Schirripa, also had a small role in this, and it was also fun to note Composer Joel Goldsmith was part of the poker game, from the credits, now sadly long dead), which similarly used precious time to tell an alternate universe story right near the end of that series' run (and ironically was when they found out they wouldn't get a Season 5), but that was a very different situation, setting up the famous Mirror Universe and playing with nostalgia and continuity in a much more pleasing way.

Unlike this episode, which despite connecting to a parallel universe we'd seen before, didn't achieve much - if it'd been set around the halls of the SGC (instead of what looked like the base out of 'Seven Days'), they might have been able to leverage some nostalgia points at least, but the trouble was, and something the franchise as a whole had been guilty of, is that the audience are ahead of the characters - we're waiting for John to track down this serial killer and discover he's not human, or for the secrets of the galaxy to be revealed to him. But we know all that! I really wanted to see the team doing what they do: Ronon, Teyla, Keller, McKay, Sheppard on a mission. I know they want to go out with a bang, but it's always hard to care about other universes, as Wolsey said, right now he only cares about 'us.' It was too much of other influences (vampires; 'Highlander' was the thing that came to mind most, with this secret battle being fought, guys that 'die,' but then get up again, jump off a building to escape, then recover, etc), and not enough of itself. You even get the bit where science fiction's mentioned and the hero says he's not into it. One joke I did like was mention of Star Trek: The Experience and it's Robert Picardo's character (who was involved in the real thing!), who sadly says it's closed. It's like a last little dig at their Trek rivals and it seemed about right for this anarchic penultimate episode, and a franchise that has always failed to live up to Trek's highest standards (though it's much closer to Trek's past series' than the current crop, so I give them praise for that!). Can our universe be saved? Tune in next week to find out.

**