SGA 5x01 "Search & Rescue" Talkback

[Timotheus]

I had another thought relating back to the fight with Michaels Cruiser. The ship lasts pretty long considering how quickly a 304 is shown able to take down a Hive Ship.

Now we know they were trying to cripple not destroy the ship.

But there might be something else to consider. We never see Wraith living in cities on planets. They all live on their hive ships.

So maybe Hive ships are combination floating cities, super carriers, and overall command ships for the Wraith. They carry massive numbers of Darts and thus would be perfect for culling planets of their human food. In addition the Hive ships have the capability of storing in cryo sleep large numbers of Wraiths.

On the other hand the Wraith Cruisers are smaller, more maneuverable, and may be more pure dedicate warships than the larger bulkier Hive Ships.

I'd have to mostly disagree; the vast awe inspiring gulf of horror between the combat capabilities of a Wraith Cruiser and a Tau'ri Battlecruiser were put clearly on display this episode.

Fact One: In the relatively short combat window between Daedalus jumping in and Michael trying to jump out, the Daedalus was able to take out the Hyperdrive of the Cruiser with a well placed shot that did no additional damage.

Fact Two: For a long period of time, probably at least half an hour if not more like a full hour, the Daedalus just SAT there, with only its shields functional after the Shepard & Ronin beam-up debacle, and the Wraith Cruiser fired on it the entire time, with a 100% hit rate, and it still did not break the shields down.

Fact Three: Once Shepard was off the ship and the Daedalus was functional again, the engagement was such a joke that the weapons officer was told to "make it go away" or something of the sort, and a beam shot or two later the Wraith Cruiser was flattened like a bug on a windshield.

From the evidence we've seen so far, I'd say the Daedalus or any other of the upgraded 304s is an even match for at least three Hive Ships in a fair fight (the Phoenix alt-history). I would guess that any other ships in the Milky Way can't hope to do anything better than either get VERY lucky with a 304 coming out of Hyperspace or just run away. That trade federation from the last Season or two of SG1 is screwed, Ha'taks are definitely second class Warships now, perhaps on par with the laughable Wraith Cruisers.

Now compare the sizes of the two ships. How many Wraith Cruisers could you build in place of a single Hive Ship? While they are not top of the line ships they are very dangerous for their size.

I had also completely forgotten that during the entire scene the Wraith Cruiser was pounding away to little effect. Though one has to wonder with how much power since their drive section had just taken a pretty heavy hit.

You do bring up an interesting battle though. Wraith Cruiser versus a standard Ha'tak. Both carry fighters that earth fighters eat for breakfast. The Ha'tak has shields while the Wraith Cruiser carries hull armor that regenerates (regrows really) as long as it is fed power and regrows faster with more power.

[NecronLord]

You know, they could probably just restore some parity by introducing a war-converted hive ship. Assuming they're flying cities as is, they could throw in a hive that's largely died off, and its survivors have converted it to be, say, 60% dedicated warship. All that volume would go a long way...

[PREDATOR490]

In which case, ammo becomes a big issue for using drone weapons and once they are gone the Ancient ships are left without weapons. The Asgard weapons wouldnt run out of ammo as easily and seem to be equally as effective at causing damage as drones. The beam weapons do appear to be unwieldy to aim and fire though.

The Ancients did have beam, or at least energy based, non-drone weapons.
When the Wraith hive ships are advancing toward Atlantis a team is sent out to find and repair one of the Ancient defensive systems, they managed to jury-rig repairs before the Wraith ships reached their location.
The weapon was able to take out a hiveship with a single shot before the kludged together power conduits burnt out and the Wraith destroyed the weapons platform.

I mentioned this earlier and yet we have only seen the Ancients use Drones. McKay believed the OWP could take out all three hives with ease and it only adds to the question of how the Ancients could possibly lose a war when they have shit like that on call.

Unless they were cloning darts,crusers and hive ships in that facility then the Wraith must have gotten those resources and ships somewhere which would be traceable. Atlantis can apparantly detect fleets ages away with relative ease so how the Wraith could build, maintain and hide a fleet long enough for it to rival the Ancients is really dodgey.
Speaking of which, have we ever actually been told how the Wraith construct their vessels or if they even build new ones ?

The saddest part of the entire Wraith storyline has been watching Atlantis chew out Hive ships like they are Ha'taks and yet there were only 70 in the galaxy. I would be extremely surprised if the Wraith losses wasnt at least in the double digits which begins to beg the question of why Atlantis hasnt identified shipyards and how the Wraith can possibly manage to present a credible threat even if Atlantis was discovered.

[Lancer]

Since Wraith technology in general isn't so much built as it is grown, it's entirely possible that the warrior-factory also churned out ships and weapons to match.

[Anarchist Bunny]

I really hope they just cut their losses with the Wraith and make them a secondary power in the galaxy. Not enough of a threat to warrant combing the Pegasus Galaxy for a total genocide, but can still be a problem should a BC-304 not be around to blow them to shit. And introduce someone that could be a more equal threat(please, please not another OMG how can we ever win![also please drop the hybrids like you dropped Repliwier]). Or go full out. Let the Wraith get another Clone facility or two up and running and starts cranking out large large numbers of ships and soldiers(using the Beckett virus to convert a certain ammount for feeding stock, so that their numbers are not as great as when they took down the ancients) Leave the Hiveships as vulnerable to Asgard Beam Weaponry, but make it so that any place of importance has fifty+ that can just overwhelm a 304 or two.

[Strider]

I agree that as it stands now, the Wraith are not a threat. However, if they worked as a whole, the combined might of their fleet could certainly (Err, probably? one can hope...) beat all three BC 304s plus whatever else the Tau'ri could scrap up. However, I would be much less confident that this will still be the case 2 years from now, after infighting and attrition have wrecked another dozen or two Hive Ships and there are six BC 304s instead of three. From a Wraith perspective, the tides are turning in a really scary way, and I think its possible that they might realize this and get their act together this Season. They managed to do it for the Ancients, apparently.

Of course, they still need to find Atlantis, but you can always count on Todd for subtlety like that.

[Timotheus]

I have never liked the whole story that that Wraith naturally evolved from humans getting bitten my the Aratus bug.

Might be interesting to bring someone else in who opposed the Ancients and saw the Aratus bug and created the Wraith.

Just do not make them related to the Ori in any way.

[Themightytom]

I mentioned this earlier and yet we have only seen the Ancients use Drones. McKay believed the OWP could take out all three hives with ease and it only adds to the question of how the Ancients could possibly lose a war when they have shit like that on call.

it wouldn't be taht bad for the underdog wraiths to beat the ancients with superior tactics, thats the whole premise of SG-1. All they would ahve to do is spoof attacks on border planets in multiple lcoations, and when the ancients send their fleets in different directions, swoop in and wipe out shipyards and repair stations. Then its a matter of isolating ships one by one and killing them off as they cannot be replaced.

They could even have done this while the ancients were futzing around with the replicators.

Wasn't there discussion of a major tactical blunder where some Auroras went into wraith territory and never came back?

Either way the ancients were serious pansies. Whats wrong with them in the first place that they would abandon atlantis and fallback to earth with no technology and just assume that the wraith wouldn't get to atlantis when it submerged.

[Atavarius]

I just watched it. Ugh, this show is quickly turning into Stargate: Voyager for me. It really feels like the writers just finished a seminar at the Braga School for Writing.

Ship combat is total ST (though has been for awhile).

Wraith/Michael just a total joke.

TV birth scenes, not really an SG gripe.

"LOL where did we park doodz." Contrived.

I really hope Picardo can breathe some life into for me, but I doubt it.

In the end I give it a 2 out of 5. Some of the dialogue was good.

[FuncoWilkerbean]

This is kinda offtopic but, did anybody else think the whole hyperdrive gets knocked out scene looked badass?

[Revy]

Interestingly enough, if you recall this bit of dialog from the first episode:

Then one day our people stepped foot on a dark world where a terrible enemy slept. Never before had we encountered beings with powers that rivaled our own. In our over confidence, we were unprepared and outnumbered. The enemy fed upon defenseless human worlds like a great scourge until finally only Atlantis remained. This city's great shield was powerful enough to withstand their terrible weapons, but here we were besieged for many years. In an effort to save the last of our kind we submerged our great city into the ocean.

Notice they say slept. As in hibernating? I get the impression from this that the Wraith were perhaps scouring the Pegasus galaxy before the Ancients packed up on Earth and came to Pegasus, and when Atlantis arrived in the Pegasus galaxy the Wraith were in one of their hibernation periods. Whilst this could explain how the Wraith could build fleets of ships unnoticed (they did it before the Ancients showed up) it contradicts established info that the Ancients were responsible for creating the Wraith (which itself makes no sense, because it would require as has been pointed out, for the Wraith to be out and about harvesting resources and building fleets, which would have been noticed by the Ancients, and when the Ancients did encounter them it wouldnt have been on one 'dark world').

So I'm not sure, but for common sense sake, and for the possibility of making a more interesting and sinister backstory for the Wraith, I'd rather the interpretation of the holograms words to be that the Wraith were formed/created prior to the Ancients arriving in Pegasus (perhaps by someone else for nefarious reasons) and that they were hibernating on one planet when the Ancients showed up and woke them up (much as Sheppard did in episode 2, although that was only one hive).

And what might make for a cool episode would be if the Atlantis team found that world where the Ancients first encountered the Wraith, and discovered more detailed info about how the Wraith came to be. Perhaps that they were deliberately created by someone else, and that someone could be the new alien race?

[PREDATOR490]

I am really skeptical about the shape this new race is going to take on. Stargate has unfortunatly made a horrible trend of introducing enemies that have expendable fodder.
SG-1 had the Jaffa, Replicators, Ori followers
SG-A had the Asurans and Wraith.

If this new player is going to be another 'uber' technology bad guy then any notion of hope for this series goes down the drain. Either they are going to mimic the Asuran's / Ancients by being pacifist fuckheads or they will be like the Genii who are only good for a few episodes.
Unless these guys turn out to be the Furlings, the writers dont have much chance to introduce a new 'god' race to the mix and this is especially true in the Pegasus galaxy.
The Wraith have reigned for 10,000 years and the Asurans were put into slumber but what will be the justification for this new race doing nothing or never even being mentioned before now ?

At best, I could probably see this new race being a mimic of Earth in it's development to the point they have ships that can potentially match the X304s but a multi-planet empire would be pushing it. The only alternative is for this 'new race' to be from another galaxy which would be quite interesting I think. The least of all is the potential for some decent space battles and a pull away from Stargates when they can use conventional hyperdrives to cross the galaxies.

[NecronLord]

Either they are going to mimic the Asuran's / Ancients by being pacifist fuckheads or they will be like the Genii who are only good for a few episodes.

The Asurans? Pacifist fuckheads? What? Aside from a really obnoxious DeM, there's no reason the Asurans aren't ruling Pegasus right now.

[Stargate Nerd]

Either they are going to mimic the Asuran's / Ancients by being pacifist fuckheads or they will be like the Genii who are only good for a few episodes.

The Asurans? Pacifist fuckheads? What? Aside from a really obnoxious DeM, there's no reason the Asurans aren't ruling Pegasus right now.

Well to be fair, the Asurans were pretty dormant until Rodney messed around with their programming.

[Timotheus]

Either they are going to mimic the Asuran's / Ancients by being pacifist fuckheads or they will be like the Genii who are only good for a few episodes.

The Asurans? Pacifist fuckheads? What? Aside from a really obnoxious DeM, there's no reason the Asurans aren't ruling Pegasus right now.

Well to be fair, the Asurans were pretty dormant until Rodney messed around with their programming.

That is like saying a person is not aggressive even though he is being forced to take prozac every day.

The Wraith reprogrammed the Asurans to not want to attack the Wraith.

The programming doesnt make a whole lot of sense. If Rodney turned on the kill Wraith subprogram then how were some Replicators able to ignore it. The ones that created clones of Shep and company were ignoring that programming and instead going for ascension. They went further against that programming when they gave out the Aurora navigation array which could and did hurt the war against the Wraith.

[Stargate Nerd]

The Asurans? Pacifist fuckheads? What? Aside from a really obnoxious DeM, there's no reason the Asurans aren't ruling Pegasus right now.

Well to be fair, the Asurans were pretty dormant until Rodney messed around with their programming.

That is like saying a person is not aggressive even though he is being forced to take prozac every day.

The Wraith reprogrammed the Asurans to not want to attack the Wraith.

The programming doesnt make a whole lot of sense. If Rodney turned on the kill Wraith subprogram then how were some Replicators able to ignore it. The ones that created clones of Shep and company were ignoring that programming and instead going for ascension. They went further against that programming when they gave out the Aurora navigation array which could and did hurt the war against the Wraith.

It's not important whether it makes sense or not because Predator was complaining about the writers and the races they introduce rather than in-universe reason for certain behaviors. Thanks to the writers the Asurans were Prozac taking pacifists, when they should be ultra-aggressive buggers like the other Replicators.

[NecronLord]

I really don't think 'not being at war' makes you a pacifist. The Asurans weren't at war. They were, however, quite equipped for it, and quite willing to shoot dead any fucker that annoyed them. This doesn't strike me as 'pacifist.'

[Themightytom]

The Asurans were an advanced effective enemy of Altantis the problem was everyone ELSE in the galaxy was a sheep. Even thought the 34's with Asgard beams could own the Asuran ships, the Asurans got pretty close to annihalating Atlantis with their little one shot gate weapon. it demosntrates that the city of Atlantis with itts advanced technology is really problematic, because the Ancients had almost no rivals. now our intrepid underdog team isn't so interesting because they can go back to Atlantis whenever they want. The Wraith were only ever a threat because their numbers and tactics were superior to the ancients.

(Reeeaaaallly must have been a tactical deficit because there were at least TWO Atlantis class cities, so not even counting the various warships they had to screw up pretty darn bad to lose all of that especially when Atlantis alone can withstand bombardment by the whole wraith fleet for years.)

i think Atlantis needs a new direction. The enemy of doom is pretty mucch not working, if they developed characters a little more and stopped cycling through cast members like a bored teenager playing smash brothers, they could develop stories that didn't have to rely on galqaxy changing events and thus wouldn't require the ultimate Enemy. hell you could even do a political uniting eve4ryone theme like b5 did.

[PREDATOR490]

Moving to Atlantis was decent in the first two seasons but they have quickly went downhill from there. The original premise was passed off as them being completely alone in a foreign galaxy that had suffered an immense conflict and defeat of the Ancients.
Unfortunately, the shitheads writing this stuff decided to continue the mantra of Ancients being technological gods so far advanced of everyone else. This might have sounded good in theory but it has the downside of forcing the writers to explain why the Ancients lost.

As it stands now, the Ancients sat around doing nothing while the Wraith evolved which means they either ignored people dying or somehow remained oblivious. The only way they could remain oblivious is if they were sitting in complete isolation. These are the same people who apparantly placed those satalites to manipulate people for their own research and had various facilities spread throughout the galaxy.
The idea that they could completely miss the existance of a gradually increasing Wraith presence is extremely doubtful.

The Hologram said the Ancients stumbled into the Wraith and woke them up kicking off the war which suggests the Wraith had already assembled a considerable force, otherwise the Ancients shouldnt have had any problems wiping them out. The alternative is the Ancients let the Wraith escape and roam free.
I really dont see any viable explanation for the Ancients being able to miss a large force of hostile aliens after all the demonstrated technology. Checking up on planets with populations would be a logical thing to do as well.

I cant remember if SGA has stated an actual timescale for the war with the Wraith and more specifically, the time the Clone facility was created. From what I understand, either the Wraith escaped the Ancients first encounter and immediatly built the cloning facility or the Wraith engaged the Ancients untill the facility was created. In either case the Wraith must have had a force assembled at the first encounter, specifically a large fleet.

The overall point remains the same, the original concept was a massive 'war' but as the series has progressed we have seen Atlantian technology compared to the Wraith and it has gradually turned the image of this war from being Babylon 5's Earth/Minbari War to Ancients sitting on their high throne watching populations die around them, doing nothing except study Ascension so THEY could escape or build explosive tumour generators. In short, the Alterans were spineless fuckers with a mentality disturbingly close to that of the Goa'Uld.

Bringing in a new 'super' enemy is simply impossible at this point. The only way I could actually see an escalation in Stargate is if they kicked off a DS9 style Dominion War.
A.K.A Large scale warfare rather than fighting with Horizon bombs and viruses.
Naturally, that is out because it dosent work with Stargate and Earth dosent have anywhere the fleets to fight such a war so it all comes down to a simple conclusion.
This new race is going to be like the Genii with potentially more technology but I REALLY doubt we are going to see anything major in a galaxy that is supposed to be dead and technologically repressed by the Wraith. Pulling out the Asurans worked once but trying it again with another race that isnt machines strikes me as unworkable from any perspective. Even more so due to the fact they brought in an IOA pussy who will likely force Atlantis into an isolationist policy.

[NecronLord]

Like I said, all they need to do to make the Wraith threatening is say 'war converted ship' and kill a couple of 304s. It'd probably work a treat given how most fans are now used to seeing 304s as invincible doom ships.

[PREDATOR490]

The Wraith stopped becoming a threat very quickly after Season 2's finale. Over the course of the series the Wraith have lost multiple hives to Atlantis and we have seen nothing of their ability to produce new vessels.
They have consistently been shown to be dying out for lack of resources and we have had three years of faction fighting between them.
They have been fucked up by Michael's virus and the Asurans gave them a good ass kicking to boot.

Realistically, one has to wonder why they have any Wraith Hive Ships at all. The idea that Michael was able to openly engage the Wraith and bring them to their knees in Shepard's future jaunt only further indicates the Wraith are in a poor condition to launch any sort of coordinated assualt. They have not demonstrated much technological advancement over the course of Atlantis or even the last 10,000 years since the Ancients left so it seems unlikely they would be able to 'magically' summon up a new ability that brings them back into play.

In-universe stuff aside, the writers mentality considering Atlantis is becoming extremely predictable. They are creating timewaster episodes more often with the only real developments happening at the cliff-hangers which magically resolve themselves. I would specifically look at 'The Return' for that stunt they pulled with the Ancients. Granted, not every episode has to be epic or have insane shit happening every minute like 24 but the way it's going now they are wandering into Star Trek predictable forumale.

[Themightytom]

Actually all they would ahve to do is kill off like TWO 304's and then they are twice as badass as the ori and Earth probably won't be able to spare the one theyd ahve left, but that is like handing an alcaholic another bottle.

Ikind of like the idea of a series reboot, akin to what we saw in last man. Teleport the city into the future have the m pick up a few relics of an apocalyptic future and F around with that for a few seasons. Then they can create a race of robots that will doom Earth and chase them around while they search for that shining planet, Dakara...

eh screw it I'll start following scrubs again

[PREDATOR490]

Meh, killing off their ships is unlikely to happen. The ships allow the writers more latitude in their stories even if it just means we see the ship beaming people out at the last minute. Cutting them off from Earth is no longer possible with the galactic bridge.
The hub might have been destroyed but all stargate corridor should not have been affected, they just need to build a new hub and that reconnects them to Earth.

Regardless, the writers have written themselves into a wall with the Wraith. Even if they destroyed the ships the Wraith couldnt do much to threaten Atlantis unless they discovered their location which leads to another siege. I dont see how a siege would work against Atlantis anyway. They have a ZPM to keep the shields raised and the intergalactic bridge would allow Earth to deploy reinforcements easily.
As for keeping the shields up... the Asgard shields on the Daed was able to withstand an assualt for hours without much trouble so keeping the shields up for Atlantis should be trivial in comparrison.
If they cant run the Ancient shields then why not simply install Asgard shield emitters ?
The Asgard technology should have at least contained designs for better power generators so I remain highly skeptical of any future attempts to play the 'not enough power' card.

[Zac Naloen]

Regardless, the writers have written themselves into a wall with the Wraith. Even if they destroyed the ships the Wraith couldnt do much to threaten Atlantis unless they discovered their location which leads to another siege. I dont see how a siege would work against Atlantis anyway. They have a ZPM to keep the shields raised and the intergalactic bridge would allow Earth to deploy reinforcements easily.

That bridge was destroyed last season...

[NecronLord]

it seems unlikely they would be able to 'magically' summon up a new ability that brings them back into play.

A hive ship is seven miles long; it barely preforms much better than a couple of the sub-KM cruisers. All they have to do is say "they put more reactors in, oh shit it's killing us," and have Colonel Ellis burning to death in his badly named space ship, and it's a threat again. That's pretty much the opposite of magic, let alone the regular miraculous (human) technological breakthroughs we're accustomed to in SG.