Stargate Atlantis 9/28/07 "Adrift"

I don't know, this one actually kind of bored me. It was so by-the-numbers--obstacle, solve, repeat until hour up--that there was even less of a sense of danger than usual.

I also rolled my eyes at the usual mis-representation of an asteroid belt. A ship as small as Atlantis could pass through an asteroid belt without ever seeing an asteroid, let alone being hit by one. If it were as dense as portrayed here, it would have the mass of, I don't know, thousands of Jupiters? Hundreds of thousands? Millions?

 

Where did they get all the jumpers? I thought they were running out.

It was weird that Tori Higginson wasn't in the new opening credit sequence (but Amanda Tapping was, of course). I thought that might have been a spoiler that Weir was going to die, but now I guess it was just to make us think that?

A raid on the replicator home world? Has McKay gone crazy(-er)?

 

Spoiler

She was just a guest star. The credits are union-mandated, which is why they so often "spoil" developments, especially in season premieres when the status quo sometimes changes in ways the credits make clear. Higginson is not in the regular cast this season, so she can't be in the opening credits.

 

Advertisements

I'm glad this show is back...can't wait for scifiHD...

did McKay's face heal magically by the end of the ep?

 

Spoiler

This seems usually the case but some shows like Buffy the Vampire slayer would change credits several times a season and always make sure the credits would not spoil the show. Do they do exceptions for some shows and not others?

 

It depends on the contracts. A famous case is when Claudia Christian wanted to get paid for a full season of Babylon 5, but only work a certain number of episodes (I think it was 18 or 20). The problem was, since she was contracted for the entire season, having the episodes off would have constituted a raise, and that would have triggered raises for the rest of the cast as well. Since she refused to budge, they had no choice but to fire her. Hollywood contracts can be very strange and detailed.

In the Buffy case, characters were written in and out of the show regardless of where in the season they were, so as actors entered or left the title cast, they HAD to be added to or removed from the titles. There was the joke entry (when Tara left the show), but who knows what went on behind the scenes--I suspect the actress got paid extra for that episode because she was in the titles.

Somebody should write a book on Hollywood union contract law--except the book would probably be so thick nobody would ever read it.

 

I saw the rough cut screeners of episodes 1 and 2, and I think this episode looks even better when you bookend it with "Lifeline," coming next week. There's a lot more action in that episode.

Re-edit to add some of my favorite moments from the ep - Rodney actually calls Sheppard my his first name for the first time in 4 seasons while debating whether or not to use the nanites, and the confrontation they have when Sheppard finds out McKay and Keller did reactivate them.

 

I enjoyed it, and it was good to have it back. SciFi must think very highly of Atlantis as a stand alone show to premiere it with all the other network shows. They had been running SG1/Atlantis on a counter schedule.

 

Don't the jumpers have shields? How come they didn't use one to protect the guys fixing the hyperdrive?

 

I enjoyed it. I also thought they were running out of Jumpers. But, apparently not!

I can't wait for the next episode!!

 

I somewhat agree. The only thing that made it amusing was how the obstacles were timed specifically to annoy Rodney. Hopefully, their plots will improve once they have something to interact with beyond themselves.

And if Amanda Tapping is going to stick around - they're going to have to do something about her hair...

-Ken

 

Well there was an underwater jumper bay in a previous episode, maybe they were able to recover some more jumpers from there when the Atlantians fixed the station. Or maybe the Atlantians replenished the Jumpers.

 

She only does her hair differently for alternate universe stories

 

Just a note for anyone who might be downloading "Adrift" from the iTunes store - unless it's been fixed in the last few hours, the episode listed as "Adrift" is actually the episode scheduled to air in three weeks, "Doppelganger."

The main page for SGA season 4 doesn't seem to be up yet unless you go through the listing for the mislabeled "Adrift," (which requires that you find it via a general store search) so it may be corrected by the time they put up the official storefront for season 4. If the preview clip starts with walking through a forested area, that's "Doppelganger."

 

Could the Apollo have had jumpers on it?

 

Rather like the endless supply of Eagles on Space: 1999.

 

By the way, Amanda Tapping had a shot in this show that made her look like she was pregnant again or had gained way. I thought it was curious. Maybe she never lost all the weight from having her baby and I never noticed.

 

DirecTV flies a new HD bird in time for the fx-laden premiere of Atlantis' fourth season. But do they light up SciFi? Uh, no.

I'm really glad Atlantis is back, though!

 

Only when McKay is in peril.