So I saw Stargate Atlantis the other night. It’s OK. Pretty much the same stuff, different Galaxy. Should be good for some mindlessly entertaining TV watching this Fall. But I wish the writers of the show would get a grip on big numbers.
The city of Atlantis supposedly left earth “several million years ago”, as seen in a caption at the beginning of the episode, and was flown to a distant galaxy. After which the Ancients got their butts kicked by some badass aliens and deserted the city, returning to Earth where they lived out their days.
I’ve got some real problems with that “several million years”.
a. If all this happened several million years ago, there wouldn't be a legend of a lost city of Atlantis. It's hard to pass down oral history when the people you're passing it to haven't developed a language yet.
b. Atlantis looked pretty damned good for a city that had been deserted for a million years. Granted, the Ancients built stuff to last, but when our Heroes show up, they start stripping plastic sheeting off all the consoles. Plastic sheeting? Still flexible after a million years? And all the machinery still works. I'm pretty sure that in a million years, the random movement of molecules in a semiconductor would have reduced it to sand. (And all the consoles to rust, given that the city has an oxygen environment.) If you leave even a lowtech automobile in the garage for 20 years, it's not going to run without replacing the tires and fluids, so I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have hopped into a million year old spaceship and gone playing tourist.
c. In the space of a 1000 years on Earth, cities rise, fall, and spread. The Ancients were in the new galaxy long enough to build a new Stargate system. Near as I can tell, they didn’t build add so much as a suburb to the city we saw fly off. Wouldn’t they have built other cities?
None of this would irritate me so much if the time scale were condensed. Make it 15, or even 30,000 years, and I’d at least buy it, sort of. So as far as I’m concerned, the city of Atlantis took a couple of million years to fly to the new galaxy undergoing time dilation in the process; then when the survivors trickled back to Earth, it was only 10,000 years ago. Still a long time for a legend to be carried orally, but at least it’s not a * stupidly * long time.
I don’t think the idea was that they returned several million years ago, but that they left several million years ago. I don’t think it was made clear exactly when they returned. They talked about the ancient Greeks encountering them, so they could have returned less than 10,000 years ago.
I think you’re assuming that because a prop was built of plastic that it’s meant to BE plastic. It could just as easily be some sort of flexible alloy for all we know. And with a civilization that advanced, they could build semiconductors out of exotic materials that would last practically forever.
The other cities could have been destroyed by the Wraiths.
I was going to counter the quibbles, but I see that Rik has already done so. I would just add, concerning their date of their return, that Latin is derived from their language. That argues for a very recent return, relatively speaking. We can assume that they returned no later than 347 B.C. (Plato wrote of Atlantis, so they had to return, and their story had to spread, before his death), but we can’t say for sure how long they were around before his time–they could have returned as little as 2500 years ago.
On the whole, I liked the show. In fact, I consider it outstanding for a first episode–they’re often awkward. They set up an interesting situation, and they dealt with most of the things that were worrying me from the ads.
[spoiler]Notably, they have a plausible reason for Punk Pilot Boy (the Major) being there and in charge, and they ditched the hardass military man (whom I disliked) in a respectable fashion.
Favorite bits: Thinking about a nice turkey sandwich, and “We’re in another galaxy. How much more out can you get?” I think I like the doctor. :D[/spoiler]
I still don’t much like Dr. Weir, but maybe I’ll get used to her once she settles into the role. The main thing is that they continued to do what they do best–weave total whackjob ideas about history and aliens into a plausible backdrop for the story.
I also enjoyed it. I really like the concept and the setup. And the native woman is smoking hot!
However, I think I will be quickly annoyed by Merry and Pippin. Err… I mean Flox and Marshall. Oops, I mean the doctor and the science guy, whatever their names are. (Actually, I do really like them, but they seem a bit copied, if you know what I mean.)
You mean other than the massive database of stargate addresses they discovered, all with a corresponding ancient city (or so we can assume from the fact that the one planet they went to also had a big shiny city)?
The Wraith annoy me. Eeeevil space vampires that look like Marilyn Manson? They could have done better. And considering the ease with which the Wraith fighters were shot down with shoulder fired SAMs, the easiest way to defeat them is to find enough power modules to make it back to earth for a nuke, and plant it in their mothership. That would bring to an end the series that is aimed at telling the story of the rebirth of the Ancients and the first permanent off-world settlement by earthlings, however.
Were the Stargate people thumbing their noses at Star Trek by making the Scottsman an anti-engineer? Of course I like the fact that a Canadian is the chief tech dude.
Ya, the ‘Zed-P-M’ line was pretty funny. Overall, I greatly enjoyed the show. It has the potential to be a worthy successor to SG1, though I still don’t understand the fetish with FN P90s. Also, the tired ‘I may be a Major in the Army but I am a rebel and do things MY way’ caricature is a bit tired.
What’s not to understand? They look cool, exotic and futuristic. Never mind the fact that the SG teams would be better off with something along the lines of an M4 firing the new 6.8mm SPC round, it LOOKS cool…
I thought it was interesting, but it really wasn’t anything terribly new. The characters are pretty good and likeable, though, and the opening ten minutes was pretty entertaining (after that whole Atlantis taking off bit).
I don’t know, I always have problems with stories of Atlantis being some insanely advanced civilization. I mean, what happened to all that knowledge? Why was there only one super advanced city on the face of the planet with fusion reactors and flying cars when the rest of the world was still rubbing two sticks together to get fire? And if the people left and came back (possibly millions of years later), why didn’t they bring any of that knowledge with them? And why haven’t the colonies of said super civilization advaneced? Admitadely, we didn’t see much of that one planet, but it didn’t look like they were very advanced. Again, their ancestors had the ability to create a portal to other worlds, yet they seemingly had nothing nearly as powerful as our militaries machine guns.
And how is it the Wraith were able to conquer the Ancients when they’re able to be taken out by gunfire? I was impressed to see the severed hand still moving and suspected that the SG crew were going to be sadly dissappointed when pumping an entire clip into one of the bastards did nothing, but it seems one good shot to the chest is enough to take one down assuming they’re not feeding.
Still, it had some good moments and a nice dash of comedy, so I’ll most likely watch it in the future. I’m waiting to see how bad ass the Wraiths truly are.
Maybe I am jaded, but I have been seeing the P90s in so many places for so long, that I just don’t find them snazzy anymore. Of course, if you wanted to give me one, I’d take it, but the new hotness would be the HK MP7 PDW or better yet, the FN F2000..
Amen. M4s for all except for the occasional MG. Ah well, I won’t complain too much. At least nobody is whipping out the Desert Eagles…
Elvis: “Again, their ancestors had the ability to create a portal to other worlds, yet they seemingly had nothing nearly as powerful as our militaries machine guns.”
But they did show them using some tech. The lady lit a torch once with what looked like a Star Trek issue phaser, as the Airforce guy was breaking out his Zippo. She said “we mastered fire long ago”. She also mentioned that they believe going to the Ancients’ city would bring the wraiths. Perhaps they had the same fear of the old technology. Over generations they basically went back to hunting/gathering, gradually losing the advanced stuff their kind had once learned.
And when the Marilyn Manson alien came out I almost had to change the channel. It’s 2004, with all the crazy sci-fi thats been done … and the best they could get for a villain race was that get-up? c’mon?!
This makes sense to some extent, at least for the new colonies. Big cities signal that “Hey, there are a lot of people here!” But if they returned to Earth, in an entirely different GALAXY than the wraith, and there were already large cities, by not keep advancing technology so that in case the Wraith ever did find their way to Earth, they’d have some chance of defeating them?
Or at least invent steam power much earlier.
Eh, it’s the same conflict I have with any story that has super advanced technology hidden away in “ancient” cities and the like.
Still, it’s hard to think that even if they kept the cities and civilizations small, they wouldn’t have invented some sort of surface to air personal defence weapon. I mean, rocket launchers worked pretty well, and I’m sure the Ancients had something that could work better. Like those wierd little squid drones. After witnessing the attack the little base on Earth let lose, I’m still very curious how the Wraith were able to kick the Ancient’s asses.
The rest of the world wasn’t rubbing sticks together. In the beginning of the show they mentioned that our current race of humans is the second separate evolution of man on Earth. Meaning the ancients were the first, they leave, millions of years go by, humans evolve on Earth a second time, Ancients get their asses kicked in the Pegasus Galaxy, Ancients come back and while their time away gossiping with Homer and digging holes in Antarctica.
They did! Remember the mind-controlled missile? The chair of death?
Because they got bombed to the Stone Age by the Wraiths.
In the original series, the Asgards have a terrible time fighting the replicants, and come to Earth for help. They say that our projectile weapons are surprisingly effective, and they’ve advanced far past that technology - so we were their only hope. (It’s a stretch, but it’s precedent).
I thought the chair and drones were left overs. When Atlantis took off, it looked like they left a little spire back, and that’s what was still on Antarctica. Maybe I just wasn’t paying close enough attention. Still, that technology is much more effective than shoulder mounted rocket launchers, so I still don’t see how a society that created the “chair of death” as you put it got it’s ass kicked so easily when a handful of marines seems to be able to handle themselves rather well.
I never saw that episode, but it seems rather silly that they couldn’t back track their weapony to basic projectiles.
I hate to ask this, but could somebody give me a summery on the Mythos of this show?
I saw the movie, maybe a single episode of SG-1 and the Premiere of Atlantis. I understand the concept of the stargate, but what’s the deal with the ancients? How do they fit in with the Aliens from the movie?
