SGA 1x05 Suspicion: *Spoiled*/Retrospective Discussion

[michelel72]

This post opens *spoiled*/retrospective discussion of Stargate: Atlantis episode 1x05: "Suspicion".

This episode first aired in the US 6 August 2004. This episode is parallel to Stargate: SG-1 episode 8x05 "Icon", by original US airdate.

Comments

Random Thoughts about Suspicion

[sporangia]

I watched Hide and Seek, Thirty Eight Minutes, and Suspicion as a unit last night and I want to watch them again because these early episodes have huge amounts information about the characters but also about the history of the Pegasus Galaxy and especially the Wraith. Like margarks I am fascinated by the Athosians,(see episode challenge) and all the peoples of the Pegasus, and how their societies are warped by Wraith predation, and how the Wraith evolved their own society in response to their need to feed.

In Thirty Eight Minutes the scene where Sheppard and his team returned to the Wraith Hive (one of the great ships) where they were imprisoned and find only an excavated pit; the realization of the scope of the Wraith’s powers both in the size of the ship-hive and its advantage in ‘war-across-time’ is made visually explicit as the team stares down into the huge crater. It creeped me out, considering all the implications of stopping a predator who can take a thousand year siesta and wait out any societies that happen to have brief technological inflorescences and then fade away, again, into non-threats.

Sixty or Seventy Wraith hives can’t possibly control a whole galaxy, the numbers don’t crunch. But they can control specific sectors of it, mainly those places within the historic ‘interest web’ of the Ancients and their gate system. Which explains why so many Ancient tech baubles are still findable in the worlds of the old transport lanes.

In this episode we also meet the expedition’s anthropologist. (Does this guy have a name? and does he ever show-up again???) And in spite of Sheppard’s rather dismissive quip about ‘anthropology stuff’, the Major has probably by this time (three months in Pegasus) sat through some terrifying speculations (intelligence reports and staff meetings) led by this same anthropologist about Wraith culture and culling tactics. Teyla and other Athosians would have shared all the information they could about the Wraith too.

This is the only explanation as to why Sheppard would consider capturing a Wraith, a member of a known telepathic species and bring him to Atlantis. Taking home a telepathic enemy seemed, well, kinda stupid.

(I am going to post more of this in small bits, because otherwise I take too long and miss the posting windows-I’m still figuring out how to get my act together with Lj--sorry)