Sci Fi
(Season 5, Episode 11)
Oh my. That was quite the reveal. The kind of reveal I’ll keep out of the screenshot and be sure to tuck away after the jump. And it was just one small part of what made for a very entertaining hour. Along with that reveal, we had more of the Rodney/Daniel show. Meanwhile, Zelenka managed to get out of the office and have a little fun. We also checked back in with the Travelers. And if that wasn’t enough, Todd and Woolsey shared, a moment. Good stuff.
Let’s start things off with Rodney and Daniel. The interactions between the two of them were easily the highlight of these last two episodes. Daniel is the perfect foil for Rodney, and the writers took full advantage of the fact that Shanks and Hewlett have great timing. The little bits like Rodney explaining how Daniel was expendable, or his freak out in front of the empty suits were very fun. The suits being one size fits all… it was a little odd, but it got us to the thrilling heroics.
And that brings us to the big reveal. I came into the episode completely spoiler free, so I had no idea what we were going to find inside the suits. One of the things I really liked about “First Contact” was that we were introduced to this amazing new foe. Now, still amazing, not exactly new. And that’s ok by me. These aren’t your father’s Asgard. I liked the explanation, with the split, and their matter of fact, ends justify the means, reasoning. They make an interesting new presence in the galaxy, even if it seems odd to have these new presences out there as the show is winding down. I know, movies.
 Sci Fi |
 Sci Fi |
 Sci Fi |
Meanwhile, back at the Daedulus, Todd was busy being the second best thing in the episode. Man, Todd has really made me a fan of the Wraith again. He is so menacing. My favorite moment there was his negotiation for the location of the Attero device. Especially Woolsey’s suggestion that, “I don’t think this should count toward the minute.” The fact that his plan ultimately came down to ramming the Daedulus into the base was a nice call back to “Spoils Of War”, where the hijacked hive ship was rammed into the cloning facility. It all calls into question where Todd and Atlantis stand, but I suspect that he now believes that they had nothing to do with starting the Attero device. It doesn’t make them BFFs, but it also doesn’t signal the call for an all out war.
On the Atlantis side of the negotiations, the fact that Sheppard gave in so quickly and transmitted the location came as a bit of a surprise. It looked like we would be getting another uncomfortable alliance with Sheppard and Todd working together, but then we didn’t know about the return of the Travelers yet. That was another welcome return. They weren’t just shoehorned in. It makes sense that if gates start exploding, Larrin is going to use her in with Atlantis to ask WTF?
 Sci Fi |
 Sci Fi |
 Sci Fi |
Initially, I was a little disappointed that Larrin had delegated the job to Katana (Daniella Alonso), but she quickly grew on me. There is still some fun to be had with the Travelers. I’m not sure if the story of Universe will allow for some kind of recurring Traveler presence, but I’d be for that. The highlight of the new ship was the cobbled together hyperdrive. Fun to look at, and the starting point for some very funny Zelenka moments. Watching him deal with Kaylee Mila was a treat.
The Traveler ship was also part of my least favorite bit of the episode, the big space battle. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by having Sci Fi in HD for a few months, but the battle seemed very hit and miss to me. At times it was like moving back and forth between playing an Xbox 360 and an original. The polish just wasn’t there. Some things, like Daedulus entering atmosphere looked fantastic, but others, not so much. It’s a minor gripe though. And it did get us to the “Fail Safe” like, hyperdrive through the planet, rescue.
A couple other quick thoughts: That puts a wrap on the Ronon/Keller courtship. Yay! Where did Caldwell disappear to? A post kidnapping siesta? I imagine Mitch Pileggi was off doing Sons Of Anarchy or Supernatural, but it seemed odd that he just vanished. Finally, the thing that kept this from being a great episode was that it was just too easy. The Travelers did lose 3000 people and an Ancient ship. A whole mess of the Asgard were blown up. And Todd watched one of his ships get destroyed by the Attero device. But really, Atlantis came out of the whole thing looking pretty good.
Given that this was planned as the mid-season break and return, I expected some bigger consequences or results. Nobody died, the device was destroyed, they managed to save the Daedulus, and the damage to the gate room was dismissed like it was flood damage to a basement. Whatever, we got a guy in to throw up some sheet rock and a new gate. Given the scope of the story, it could have used a bigger finish.
Clacked by Brett Love 
on Oct 11, 2008 @ 08:00 EST5EDT
Hi. I am a long time reader. I wanted to say that I like your blog and the layout.
Peter Quinn
Atlantis might have come out ok … but their old command center/gate room has a huge crater in it
Not only was it odd that Caldwell was never mentioned in the episode, but it was even more odd that Woolsey was giving orders on the ship…he’s not military, and the Daedalus is a US Air Force battle cruiser. What’s wrong with Maj. Marks assuming command?
It was an okay episode. Turning the Asgard, even an off-shoot cloned branch of the Asgard, into the new nemesis of the Pegasus Galaxy was an even lower blow that Rob Cooper’s blowing them all up in SG1’s ‘Unending.’
Maybe I just need to eat some chocolate and watch the episode again on a sugar high.
Do you guys know that when something gets posted to the RSS feed the entire thing shows up there, right? Not just the “pre-jump” stuff like every other site.
I’ve pointed this out before and no one seems to care.
I know you guys are still working out the kinks on this new site you’ve got here but I am thisclose to jumping ship.
Yes, we know we’re providing the full feed. I think you’ll find that the majority of people using an RSS reader prefer to see the entire posts.
I’ll run a poll next week and see if there’s enough interest for a abbreviated RSS feed I can create one or change the default.
Surprised something like that would cause anyone to give up and leave, though.
Well it’s not just that. I’ve seen several complaints and concerns go unnoticed or unanswered. Namely the pre-show placeholder posts that everyone seems to dislike. But other smaller stuff too.
I don’t know why you wouldn’t put just the pre-jump stuff in the RSS feed for several reasons.
#1, it appears that 90% of other sites do it that way. Probably for one or both of the following reasons.
#2, if you don’t think people want to be spoiled by things that happened during the show on the main page of your site, what makes you think they want to be potentially spoiled while reading their feeds, and
#3, if you put all the content into the feeds you’ll lose out on the all important clicks that keep this site going. Why would I click over to your site when I can read the articles in my reader?
also #4, RSS feeds are, at heart, supposed to be blurbs. Quick headlines with 1 or 2 sentences to give the reader an idea of what the story contains. If, as a reader I want to see more, I’ll click. If not, I don’t have this huge 4-5 paragraph post to scroll through. When you say “I think you’ll find that the majority of people using an RSS reader prefer to see the entire posts” what are you basing this off of? That goes against the entire point of having an RSS feed (or at least why they were started in the first place, times change and maybe it’s time I changed with them, but I don’t usually go out without at least putting my 2 cents in)
I couldn’t disagree more. Full feeds are so much better that I’m quite likely to unsubscribe from feeds that just have blurbs or teasers. Feeds aren’t “supposed to be” anything in particular, but I think you’ll find most heavy feed users much prefer full feeds. Of course, that’s a guess, but it’s based on my own feed reading experience plus comments I often see from other people.
“I couldn’t disagree more.”
And that’s certainly your prerogative.
“Full feeds are so much better”
You’d have to define “better” You didn’t address my #2 or #3 reasons why I think full posts in rss feeds aren’t a good thing. And you only gave your opinion as a counter to the other points I made. Stating your opinion without anything to back it up isn’t exactly gonna sway anyone to your side, now is it?
“I think you’ll find most heavy feed users much prefer full feeds.”
You have got to be kidding me. When I come into work in the morning I have 300-400 new items in my reader. Do you think I want to read through 300-400 full items? Or scroll through 300-400 times 4-5 paragraphs of text? No. I want to scroll through headlines and blurbs and pick and choose the 15-20 articles that are worth my time, click through and read them. Not scroll through full reviews of 20 shows that I don’t watch but this site happens to review. But maybe I’m not your typical “heavy feed reader”. I don’t have 3-4 hours a day to dedicate to scrolling through stuff I don’t want to read. That’s kinda why I set up my rss feed reader in the first place.
*POST AUTHOR*
Nacho, it seems to me that this may all be solvable with your feed reading software of choice. For example, I use newsgator. They make desktop, web based, and iPhone readers. There is an option in the settings that lets you choose what you want to see from the feeds. Headlines, a short blurb, or full article. If you set it to blurbs and then decide you want to read a certain article, you just click a plus icon by the headline and the full article is right there in your feed reader. It’s very handy.
Options like that are why I think full feeds are the best of both worlds. Those that would like to have full feeds get them. And those that wouldn’t, have the option to hide or shorten the given article. You didn’t say what you were using for reading feeds, but if it doesn’t have that option, it’s possible that you can export your feed list and import it into newsgator.
We are doing away with the teaser reviews — like much of this site, it’s an experiment and we’re listening to the *majority* of the readers. I know you find it shocking, but not wanting to see the entire feed in RSS makes you of the minority.
You think we don’t want to see more clicks because we force people to come back to the site to read more? Give me a break.
“I know you find it shocking, but not wanting to see the entire feed in RSS makes you of the minority.”
Do you have any proof to back this up, or are you just talking out of your ass.
I mean, clearly you’re talking LIKE an ass…
You started this post with the quote “Oh my. That was quite the reveal. The kind of reveal I’ll keep out of the screenshot and be sure to tuck away after the jump.”
Which means that you are choosing not to potentially spoil visitors to your site by giving them the option to look at the story or not. People that have this site in their RSS feed don’t get that choice. It’s that simple. I shouldn’t have to avoid my rss feeds to prevent being spoiled from shows that I haven’t had the time to watch. And until proven otherwise, yes, I do find it hard to believe that the majority of people want entire posts in their readers.
And try as I might, I can’t make heads or tails of any point you were trying to make with this :”You think we don’t want to see more clicks because we force people to come back to the site to read more? Give me a break.”.
If you had a point there, it was lost in translation. But I still can’t figure out why you wouldn’t want people clicking onto your site to read the posts.
Here’s how I get full feeds and no spoilers: I use Google Reader, and I don’t read the post for an episode I haven’t watched yet. It’s *that* simple. I either just leave the post unread and come back to it later, or star it and come back to it later. Done.
Did not see the show – behind on SGA. Like full RSS, other wise I would just bookmark the site and read the headlines.