Rewatch: First Strike

[twinsarein]

Tickets to a play, tonight, so I wanted to be sure not to miss the 10PM start time for everyone else. I hope you all enjoy.

Col. Abe Ellis arrives at Atlantis with a new ship, the Apollo, and important news: a new Replicator base has been detected and it appears they have been building a new fleet of ships. He is under orders to destroy the

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Comment 1A

[helenkacan]

This is an amazing episode on so many levels, even though it also ends the season on an uncertain note. I know, it's a cliffhanger. Oy. Of course, in retrospect, I believe S4 and S5 were far less than they could and should have been.

Written by Martin Gero, directed by Martin Wood. Audio commentary is with them and Mark Savela, Visual Effects Supervisor. I watched it three times, the last was the audio commentary.

Uh-oh. From the Previously on, we can get a very good idea that this is going to be an episode that makes our people be very vulnerable. I still love that horrified inflection in Rodney's voice when he says "They're not people, they're machines" as we see Oberoth's figure reforming. And then we see the hugely expanded Asuran homeworld plus John after he's been probed (uh, that does sound dirty) as well as all sorts of other fun experiences. Until we see our people in their best badass mode get the upper hand.

Then, we're back to the present with someone new (yes, it's a young woman with long blonde hair, 'cuz TPTB just have to be predictable 12-year old boys) who approaches Elizabeth. It's Dr. Barbie ... uh ... Keller who has inexplicably been named Acting Head of Medicine after Carson's death and who feels she's not qualified to be in that position, especially as she's just a regular doctor. Um ... as an intro, that's not going to put the audience at ease, is it? Mind you, I interpret her line, "You need someone better," to mean "You need someone OLDER". Because, realistically, did we need to have the female version of Dougie Howser on Atlantis? Okay, okay, I'll stop the rant, at least out loud. [The talking heads say they put those words in her mouth because they wanted to endear her to us. Yeah, sure. At least they did do one thing right. As she was going to be on S4, they thought they'd better introduce her in the last episode of S3.]

Oh, poor Elizabeth. Now she has Rodney who wants to get out of doing performance evaluations. Whoa, Rodney. You'd put your people into two categories: those who annoy you more than the others.

Then he has to be shown up by John who's submitting his, already completed. He looks like a kid who's trying to impress teacher. Uh, except he's rated everyone "Excellent" and "Above average". Rodney wishes he'd thought of that first. Aw, Liz. Did you have to remind the boys that responsibility comes along with leadership? John's still trying to justify his ratings with a bit of sneaky talk.

Woo-hoo. Technician has a name. It's Chuck. TPTB have NO imagination. Poor Charles C, having his character named after his real name. So why the interruption? Well, Col. Ellis has just arrived via the Apollo. And he beams over IMMEDIATELY.

[Talking heads mention just why they created both the Apollo and the position of Col. Abe Ellis. Because Mitch Pileggi who plays Col. Steven Caldwell, the commander of the Daedalus, was busy shooting other things, he wasn't available as much.]

This guy doesn't waste any time. When he arrives, he sends his peeps into the infamous conference room where our command heads are invited to join him. John and Rodney give each other a look. This can't be good. Uh-oh. It's not. After doing several flybyes of the Asuran homeworld, they've found evidence that the Asurans are building ships, lots of them.