TVSquad

Absolutely agree that this was a fantastic episode. The only thing that would have been kinda nice is if Rodney's girlfriend didn't regain all her memories right away, and they could have showed Rodney helping her remember over the next couple of episodes. (Meanwhile, growing ever closer to her over the course of her rehabilitation). Not a big deal, but whatever.

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Best episode of the season, one of the better in the show's history.

Why? It finally felt like there was a team, it was the same thing the week before when the team ate together. Atlantis is good with the team feel, not so good without it. I think Last season was a mess, and season one had it's up and downs but finally Atlantis is reaching it's high standards of SG-1.

I also liked the different time periods worked. BSG did it way too many times in a row and BSG suffered, Atlantis did it well.

The CGI of the city is amazing, very nicely done.

My one downfall for the episode, and the series, what the hell are these people wearing?!?! Honestly, Sam looked like she was working in the gym this week, past weeks she looked terrible too. She is a military commanding officer, I didn't see General Hammond wear gym clothing. Some soldiers wear Enterprise outfits and other military outfits, I don't get it.

Great episode overall, turned out much better than the preview made it look.

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Another terrific episode to a fantastic season!

Really enjoyed this one.

Fascinating change in Rodney's behavior when he's around Katie. You can see that Rodney has been hiding behind his sarcastic attitude for a long time -- who has he been hurt by and why? But his love for Katie is...affirmative and healing. VERY glad that Katie survived this disease, looking forward to seeing more of Rodney and Katie.

Lovely way to show character growth.

Having all the characters retain their core identity was excellent. The same occurred with the exquisite SG1 episode, "Beneath the Surface" -- Daniel was still the diplomat, Teal'c the protector, Jack the instigator, and Sam the wonderer. In this episode, Sam relied on her "gut" feelings about the people around her and the situation.

LOVED Zelenka! Wow, Zelenka is getting a work out this season. He is so enjoyable. Interesting though, how he remembered both English and Czech.

Interesting on the use of the lighting to highlight the flashbacks, and according to Alex Levine's blog, this was all done while filming, and not in post-production.

Looking forward to "Missing," the remainder of the season, and of course, season five.

Woo-hoo!

Morjana

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Morjana kind of brings up a good point.

How long do you think Katie will live for? I say maybe the mid break finale. The writers have a way of killing of charters for no reason right when you start to like them. I see no way she will live past the season finale. They need to have McCay and Sam hitting on each other.

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@Oreo

My issue has always been the flags on their shoulders. I get why soldiers in military operations here "at home" take them off when in battle, but it seems like a detail that gets silly when you extend it out to space. Somehow I doubt the Wraith are going after the Canadians in particular ...

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In response to Oreo's inquiry: "My one downfall for the episode, and the series, what the hell are these people wearing?!?! Honestly, Sam looked like she was working in the gym this week, past weeks she looked terrible too. She is a military commanding officer, I didn't see General Hammond wear gym clothing. Some soldiers wear Enterprise outfits and other military outfits, I don't get it."

For starters, on SG1 when General Hammond was offduty and went home, he was able to leave the SGC and GO home.

For Sam, Atlantis is both the base and HER home. Perhaps when this emergency began, Sam was "off duty." And rather than waste time by changing her attire, she responded first.

Secondly, after watching SG1, you should know by now that Sam is NOT all that fashion savvy. She dresses off-duty like a normal US working woman when they're not working.

In regards to the soldiers uniforms, some of the "soldiers" are airman and some are Marines. If they're wearing "Enterprise" uniforms, they're airmen. If they're wearing military uniforms, they're Marines.

Morjana

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I haven't seen this (being in the UK), but it sounds an awful lot like the Buffy episode Tabula Rasa, where they all lost their memories... though in that case the episode was played mostly for laughs, with a sad ending when they got their memories back.

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Morjana

My point about Sam, even if she is off duty, she wears terrible outfits on Atlantis and looked 1000000 tiems better on SG-1. Weir wear fine clothing, why can't Sam wear something better. She has to wear an Enterprise's janitors outfit, they need to fix that.

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I think my favorite moment was when Ronon shot Sheppard and said "that never gets old."

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Oreo, Sam is not a fashion model. She's posted to an off-world scientific/military outpost, in another galaxy.

Who the heck cares what she's wearing? She's not there to be on the cover of the Pegasus Vogue.

Morjana

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I believe the lack of one-shot episodes hurt SG-1 in the later seasons.

The first five seasons of SG-1 were full of stories that could easily stand on their own, even though they were a part of the over-arching story. This allowed new or casual viewers to watch, and if an episode was missed, it really wasn't a big deal. Starting in season six but more prominent in seasons eight through ten, most episodes became a continuance of the episode before. This was evidenced by Teal'c saying, "Previously on Stargate SG-1." This was bad for two reasons: First, because they are showing scenes from previous episodes that are relevant to the current episode, you can get an idea of what this episode is going to be about. Personally, I don't like spoilers. Second, if you haven't seen the previous episodes, you probably won't understand the story line thus far. It was episodes like those that hurt the casual viewer. If you missed an episode or two, you were lost. (And you can't download it off of bit torrent becuase that's illegal! Don't movie studios understand that they're hurting themselves by preventing this?) If you get lost, you stop watching the show, the viewer numbers drop, the shows ratings drop, and the series gets cancelled.

Stargate Atlantis needs to have more shows like this.

I also like the character-centric shows that have been played the past few weeks. Two of them were mostly about Shepherd (the one where he is in everyone's dreams and the one where he is taken hostage on the Atlantian vessel by the space hobos), and of course this one about McKay. It's a casual-viewer show, but it is still a part of the overall story because of character development.

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Another take on the "arc vs standalone" debate: use your standalones to set up arc. If Zelenka starts going all renegade three eps down the line, this show suddenly becomes arc. ;)

Babylon 5 was IMO a master for this - little B plots would set up points that paid off entire seasons down the line. "Quality of Mercy" in season one has a standard SF "gadget of the week" plot that screams throwaway ep. Three years later, someone else researches and finds the device (complete with episode flashback) to hit one of the major plot points for the season.

That's what I like to see - give us some easier fare, and move the pieces behinds the scenes for the next big boom.

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I agree that this was a fantastic episode. Pair it with "Doppleganger" for two terrific shows this season, and things are looking good for this show.

I can't say enough about how glad I am to see Major Lorne having some real storylines this year, not just being relegated to protecting the base CO, and saying 'yes, sir' to Sheppard or Caldwell or whoever. Kavan Smith is highly underused on this show. His wit and his toughness shine through in the character whenever he is onscreen, and the chemistry between Lorne and the series regulars just jumps off the screen. I hear he's in fewer episodes this year, but with more depth to the ones he's in, so that's always a positive.

And having the cause of all of this be a childhood illness common in the Pegasus Galaxy - what a great basis for the story! In a way, reminiscent of the introduction of chicken pox and such to the Native Americans in our own time and galaxy, and ultimately completely believable. Kudos all around for the writers, producers, and director. This show MORE than deserves its recent next season pickup.

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I haven't seen this (being in the UK), but it sounds an awful lot like the Buffy episode Tabula Rasa, where they all lost their memories... though in that case the episode was played mostly for laughs, with a sad ending when they got their memories back.

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I don't agree with you Civisi, my problem with the later SG-1 shows were the fact they were too stand alone and forgot things from before. I thought season 7 should have been more about looking for Atlantis, it was too weak. Then season 10 was stand alone after stand alone for SG-1. It had been a big arc for season 9 and part of season 10, then they just shoved all these stand alone episodes in, that was bad.

Luckily that is the past and Atlantis is the future, and it looks to be a very good future.

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The Memento thing with Rodney writing on himself would have been enough, but Sheppard taking Polaroids and putting notes on them? Please. Too much homage.

Plus, anybody get a Gordon Freeman vibe with Zelenka busting heads? Maybe that's just me.

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"Too many stand-alones?" I agree with the poster above who said that stand-alone episodes are what made SG-1 seasons 1-5 so awesome. I watched Atlantis, but didn't enjoy it that much because it was too "arc-y" for me. Until this season, I thought they'd painted themselves into a very boring and repetitive corner by setting the show in the Pegasus galaxy. The Wraith are OK as an adversary. But I think it's really bad for show growth that the main bad guys have kept all other societies from developing past a certain technological point (with a few minor exceptions). I loved that SG-1 ran into more advanced societies (good, bad and indifferent) on a regular basis.

But this season is shaping up nicely. They have a plausible reason not to worry about being overrun by Wraith or Replicators. They still have a decently formidable enemy in the Genii. They have a new "can we trust them" ally in the ... people of the "hot alien chick." And we've gotten some really strong stand-alone episodes. I'm very happy so far.

My one problem with this show was Jewel's performance. I like her as an actress, so don't misinterpret this as just bashing. But I thought she was flat and sluggish in all of her scenes - even before her character was infected. It had to be deliberate because I don't think she's performed this way on earlier episodes. I just can't figure out why she would be told (or make the choice) to read her lines that way. Did anyone else notice this? I get it if she chose do this after the tension started to mount, but she played the entire episode this way.

Side note, shouldn't Rodney at least have given one longing look to Carter while they both had amnesia? I know he is "over" her now. But it seems like his attraction to her was always based on the fact that he both liked the way her mind worked and thought she was attractive.

As for Zelenka being able to speak English - the parts of your brain that relate to speech do not have anything to do with the parts that store memory. It is entirely possible for someone to forget almost every memory and still be able to speak in a foreign language. If not, none of them should have been able to speak any language.

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[horsenbuggy said: 'As for Zelenka being able to speak English - the parts of your brain that relate to speech do not have anything to do with the parts that store memory. It is entirely possible for someone to forget almost every memory and still be able to speak in a foreign language. If not, none of them should have been able to speak any language.']

Exactly!
Zelenka being able to talk English as well as Czech is normal for the reason you've said.

But there's a thing that doesn't make sense in that scene regarding Zelenka and the languages: when McKay and Zelenka first met, Radek is the first one to speak... and he does it in English. That doesn't make sense, because losing his memory (and not knowing who and where he is, who is that guy in front of him,...) the natural thing to do would be speaking in his mother language (Czech), not in any other.

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[ dana_carter_sgx said: But there's a thing that doesn't make sense in that scene regarding Zelenka and the languages: when McKay and Zelenka first met, Radek is the first one to speak... and he does it in English. That doesn't make sense, because losing his memory (and not knowing who and where he is, who is that guy in front of him,...) the natural thing to do would be speaking in his mother language (Czech), not in any other.]

True enough. But sometimes you gotta let stuff go. For example, there is no reason for all other races to be able to speak English, but they do. Some details just have to be sacraficed so that the show can go on.

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