SGA 4x15: Outcast (Spoilers)

JME2 · Post by **JME2** » 2008-02-02 02:17am

Well, another Friday, another episode of SGA. So, here we go.

Nice to see Flanigan be involved in the idea of another episode (even though the plot for Epiphany had already been done with O'Neill) and flesh out Sheppard's backstory more from what little we knew. Also nice to see the return of Bates and resolve that dangling thread from Season 1. The death of the Archetype was hysterical. Ultimately, still filler like last week and I could have done without the Matrix kung-fu at the end, but still good.

4/5

neoolong · Post by **neoolong** » 2008-02-02 04:16am

The ending reminds me of that Star Trek Next Generation episode with Moriarity.

Decent though, for filler.

Themightytom · Post by **Themightytom** » 2008-02-02 02:33pm

I appreciated the amtrix kung Fu. We see all these special forces and alien tough guys and they never do anything cool. jack o'neill was supposed to be a highly trained Special Forces operative and all we ever see him do is trip Bra'Tec.

Someone noticed the odyssey was missing last week, I think they were right, the Apollo was the support ship again. too bad I liked the odyssey's Colonel. he reminded me of the guy from Early Edition

Mlenk · Post by **Mlenk** » 2008-02-02 04:28pm

So, what's this I read about on Gateworld that Amana Tapping will be making less and less appearances throughout the season? Anyone know what that's about?

Netko · Post by **Netko** » 2008-02-02 05:20pm

She's doing Sanctuary which is a Torchwood-like show that is sorta unique in that the first 2 hour pilot was chopped up into 8 webisodes and shown and sold online. The first four are free from a variety of online places. They did set it up rather good and planned to continue with the webisode model, unfortunately it seems piracy made that model untenable. However, Sci-Fi has shown an interest and has ordered 13 eps, the first two of which will be a modification of the webisode pilot (while they're still claiming to have lots of plans for the web experience including expanded episodes and the like, I'm sorta getting the vibe the whole web thing will be scaled back). The show's also unique in using pretty much exclusively greenscreen shots so it has that Sin City/B5 Lost Tales look.

Anyway, she dropped from regular to recurring on Atlantis so that she could do that - apparently, she's a bit sick of playing Carter (not that I blame her, what with her doing that for more then a decade). That said, what's with her being formally a regular anyway? We barely seen her this season and even when we did she seemed muted compared to her persona on SG1. Its a repeat of O'Neil's (Anderson's) last season...

They really should just give their main characters the recurring billing then that sort of rather pathetic send off.

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2008-02-02 06:41pm

neoolong wrote:The ending reminds me of that Star Trek Next Generation episode with Moriarity.

It reminded me of 3x02 "Seth" except with the Carters replaced with the Sheppards.

Themightytom wrote:I appreciated the amtrix kung Fu. We see all these special forces and alien tough guys and they never do anything cool. jack o'neill was supposed to be a highly trained Special Forces operative and all we ever see him do is trip Bra'Tec.

That's retarded. Why should being a highly trained special forces member have anything to do with Matrix-fu?

Meest · Post by **Meest** » 2008-02-02 08:41pm

Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:
Themightytom wrote:I appreciated the amtrix kung Fu. We see all these special forces and alien tough guys and they never do anything cool. jack o'neill was supposed to be a highly trained Special Forces operative and all we ever see him do is trip Bra'Tec.
That's retarded. Why should being a highly trained special forces member have anything to do with Matrix-fu?

Especially when it's supposed to be a non combat model that goes toe-to-toe with the other Terminator, err replicator.

Themightytom · Post by **Themightytom** » 2008-02-02 10:11pm

Meest wrote:
Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:
Themightytom wrote:I appreciated the amtrix kung Fu. We see all these special forces and alien tough guys and they never do anything cool. jack o'neill was supposed to be a highly trained Special Forces operative and all we ever see him do is trip Bra'Tec.
That's retarded. Why should being a highly trained special forces member have anything to do with Matrix-fu?
Especially when it's supposed to be a non combat model that goes toe-to-toe with the other Terminator, err replicator.

I was jsut asking for more eye candy.
Granted not in an implausible scenario, but they focus too much on special effects for laser beams and whatever and forget taht half the aliens they have running around have super human strength and should do mor ethan, oh I don't know, pick someone up and sort of choke them? Wave your glowy hand device and throw them backwards.

They just seem very minimalist with physical stunts in that area. i guess I don't want Atlantis turning into Crouching Shepherd hidden Ronan but would it kill them to do SOMETHING special every now and then?

PREDATOR490 · Post by **PREDATOR490** » 2008-02-02 10:36pm

Bleh, not really impressed with the way SGA has went with this season. Seems like they literally blew the entire budget on the 'Showdown' and decided to let the rest of the season development completely slide to the barest of crawls.

**Spoiler**

As for this episode...

They couldnt tell Eva was a Replicator in all the time she was helping them yet they can track the other one until he starts blocking them. I would have thought they would have records of her being in a car crash and do a background check on her to make sure she is on the level. Nevermind you would expect some element of security measures to scan people coming aboard the ship.

The other thing I find amusing is the consistant hardon every fucker who uses Replicators has for making them immune to the 'latest ARGs'. How did he manage to do this and more importantly how can the guy make them immune to ARGs yet dont have access to SG Alien technologies like the ship sensors etc ?
This act of plot way of extending the situation is getting beyond repetative just like the use of Replicators. The IOA guy is another thing I got annoyed at with him taking along the scientist alone then turning his back so he can get knocked out...

The ending felt completely pointless, why not just have her get killed or something if you were going to pull something like that. The whole 'security risk' cliche is another thing this episode pulled off to my annoyance. They will take Teal'c, Ronin or Wraith but they wont take a home made Replicator. This is not an Asuran and from SG perspective the Asurans are gone so their is no real reason to suspect she is anymore dangerous than letting a Wraith know the location of Atlantis go free.
If they are that worried about a security risk from replicators then they should learn to stop building the fucking things or supplying the parts to people who can build them.

CaptainChewbacca · Post by **CaptainChewbacca** » 2008-02-03 01:41am

A home-made replicator can be reprogrammed in an instant without their knowledge, and then you're screwed.

I half-suspected she was a replicator at the beginning, but they managed to fool me.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2008-02-03 10:13am

SGC has some fucking crazy computing tech compared to normal Earth tech. They brute forced a 4048 bit symmetric key encrypted datafile in less than a day.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2008-02-03 10:18am

Correction a 448 bit key (odd key length..), I'll need to check a transcript to see if it was. But that is still fucking insane.

Agent Fisher · Post by **Agent Fisher** » 2008-02-03 12:07pm

Maybe they lucked out and got it pretty quick. I mean, there's nothing that says if you brute force something, it will take the maximum amount of time.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2008-02-03 01:59pm

Xon wrote:SGC has some fucking crazy computing tech compared to normal Earth tech. They brute forced a 4048 bit symmetric key encrypted datafile in less than a day.

This is not terribly surprising. They have access to Asgard computing devices now, and the computers of an Ancient City Ship.

Braedley · Post by **Braedley** » 2008-02-03 05:38pm

I'm pretty sure it was 448. It makes more sense from a computing standpoint (448=512-64=2^9-2^6, 4096=2^12). In any case, I'm pretty sure that Asgard computers should be able to solve the key in hours, if not minutes, seeing as how a significantly large enough quantum computer should be able to do the math in days.

Starglider · Post by **Starglider** » 2008-02-03 06:29pm

Damn, they keep killing cute female AIs. That's at least four now, not counting assorted random semi-cute Asurans.

Well ok she's not technically dead, but how long until they cut funding for that project and scrap or reallocate the equipment?

This does seem to confirm that the Asgard use quantum computing, because by my rough estimate and assuming no major (>20 orders of magnitude) weaknesses in the algorithm brute forcing 448 bits symmetric would take a planet sized lump of implausibly advanced (non-quantum) femtocomputers several billion years.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2008-02-04 06:34am

Starglider wrote:That's at least four now, not counting assorted random semi-cute Asurans.

However many hundreds of millions that was.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2008-02-04 07:29am

Starglider, I just did some quick & dirty calcs on the amount of computing needed. I didnt take the time to figure out the physical requirments of all that computing power

The waste energy from that computium planetiod would be staggering.

NecronLord wrote:This is not terribly surprising. They have access to Asgard computing devices now, and the computers of an Ancient City Ship.

The Apollo doesn't have the Asgard Core which is on the Odyssey. Which means it must have a lesser version (simply from power requirements).

Starglider · Post by **Starglider** » 2008-02-04 09:23am

Xon wrote:Starglider, I just did some quick & dirty calcs on the amount of computing needed. I didnt take the time to figure out the physical requirments of all that computing power

There are so many uncertainties you can't really pin it down past plus/minus twenty or so order of magnitude, but that's enough to confirm that they have quantum computing. Basically if any kind of practical quantum computing exists in a sci-fi universe, you can no long rely on any degree of computational hardness to protect information (because even if your key length defeats known quantum computers, there might always be someone out there who's built a bigger one).

The waste energy from that computium planetiod would be staggering.

Not necessarily. Brute-forcing an encrypted file is almost perfectly efficient given perfect reversible computing technology; you decrypt with a candidate key, check for sense, then if it doesn't look like a plaintext reverse the computation (re-encrypt it) and proceed to the next key. The only operation that /must/ dissipate energy is overwriting data, and the only bits they get thrown away are the key bits that change between each attempt. Somewhat surprisingly, 100% efficient reversible computing may actually be physically possible; in theory some variants of rapid single flux quantum are and that's an (experimental, impractical) real-world supercomputing technology. Since I specified 'implausibly advanced non-quantum femtocomputers' (i.e. the kind of thing the Orion's Arm nitwits would consider a minimal baseline computronium) negligable waste heat is a definite possibility. But that has no bearing on the actual conclusion

Xon wrote:The Apollo doesn't have the Asgard Core which is on the Odyssey. Which means it must have a lesser version (simply from power requirements).

Quantum computing doesn't have the same power requirement characteristics as classical computing, even reversible computing, essentially because the energy cost to collapse a superposition into a result isn't linearly dependent on the number of virtual operations or discarded bits. Frankly I have no idea how to estimate quantum computing power requirements (for sci-fi QC technologies, existing real-world ones are horribly inefficient), but I do know that it doesn't work like that.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2008-02-04 11:58am

Xon wrote: The Apollo doesn't have the Asgard Core which is on the Odyssey. Which means it must have a lesser version (simply from power requirements).

The Asgard Core had its own power supply and powered itself, it was specifically said not to impinge on the ship's Zero Point Module.

Starglider: Edited your quote tags. You're quoting Xon not me.

In any case, I wouldn't get too tied talking about quantum physics, by the way. We've been outright told, as far back as season one, by (presumably honest) members of an advanced race that it's a fallacy, and the macroscale implications of uncertainty have been disproven in this universe, too. What we know about quantum (and particle) physics really doesn't apply too well in the stargate universe.

Starglider · Post by **Starglider** » 2008-02-04 02:58pm

NecronLord wrote:We've been outright told, as far back as season one, by (presumably honest) members of an advanced race that it's a fallacy, and the macroscale implications of uncertainty have been disproven in this universe, too.

Hah, the many-worlds interpretation does that just fine. It's descriptively and algorithmically simpler than any other interpretation, and the universe seems to favour parsimony over computational efficiency every time. Best of all the existence of the quantum mirror technology pretty much confirms that this is the mechanism behind (apparent) quantum uncertainty in the Stargate multiverse.