Finally saw all of season 5 SG-1 Atlantis

[Crazedwraith]

In the end I think 'Search & Rescue' had to be my favourite and for the most part that because of Ford's couple of seconds cameo.

Erm, What?

When Sheppard's hallucinating at the beginning of Search & Rescue, the first thing he hallucinates is him being at a dinner with Teyla, celebrating her rescue. The he says 'I don;t remember rescuing you' and sudden Lt Ford's opposite and says 'That's because you didn't. Just like you didn't rescue me'

Whic I really liked because it was 1)totally unexpected 2)good continuity and 3)I always hated the way they wrote Ford out so they could put in the totally generic tough guy Ronan because the writers could be bother doing their job and actually writing for him.

Agreeing here. It's not like personality-less villians hadn't been played with before, and individual characters had to be created to make them more compelling *cough* Borg Queen *cough*

Oh very cute. The Borg are a nice counterexample. But the Wraith hardly qualify as a good rendition of a personality-less hive villain, were they? In fact most wraith we saw apart from the drones were all individuals to a certain extend. It was just they were all pretty generic bad guys that we only ever saw once.

[Zac Naloen]

There were lots of Wraith that were very much the same, but then there was the odd wraith that was very much an individual and seemingly slightly more cultured than the rest. These struck me as being older somehow, for no real reason.

[Oskuro]

Oh very cute. The Borg are a nice counterexample. But the Wraith hardly qualify as a good rendition of a personality-less hive villain, were they? In fact most wraith we saw apart from the drones were all individuals to a certain extend. It was just they were all pretty generic bad guys that we only ever saw once.

I know, I know, I'm just saying that they had previous material they could've studied to improve the wraith. The Borg Queen was created for First Contact to give the borg a bit of personality, if I recall correctly, and then incorporated in the remaining Borg appearances (sadly, all of them in VOY), so that might have been a clue that some recognizable face is neccessary. Darn, they could've loooked at SG-1 and its more memorable villians, or even Thor, who gave a face to the Asgard. Oh well.

I personally thought they were going to use the Wraith Queens more, instead of the underlings (The one from the pilot looked awesome, the rest, a bit mediocre).

[Chris OFarrell]

Didn't you know? 302s come with a custom asgard beam. They lock onto a missile in storage, and beam it up.

Seriously, though. I enjoyed Enemy at the Gates - it had a number of flaws, but it was nice to see the Wraith as a threat again, rather than helpless shmoes that get whupped by invincible Tau'ri ships.

Funny it had the exact opposite effect for me, saying 'we made the Wraith so pathetic that we had to pull all this crap out of our asses, literally, to make them a threat'. Combined with the stupidity on the side of Earth to make it even more absurdly 'plot device out of nowhere' BS.

And I think there is a very solid amount of evidence to suggest that the Stargate lugged under the F-302 simply wasn't compensated for by the F-302's inertial dampening system, the performance difference in Redemption I and Redemption II by the X-302 just speaks for itself; it frankly doesn't make sense unless you justify it by saying it was having to deal with the 'real' inertia of the Stargate underneath it the whole way up and down.

[NecronLord]

She's pretty explicit, it's pulling six times its intended cargo weight, or six times it's own intended weight with mass lightening - either one would imply a normal constant accelleration of around six gravities at most. She does not say 'in normal flight its actual mass is two milligrams, but we can't wrap the field around the stargate' or anything like that.

Bearing in mind that f-302s can move a small asteroid between them, it's possible they've got some kind of upgrade since then; but they also don't have to move against gravity, and presumably picked an asteroid already heading in the right direction. Either way their engines have never been particularly impressive by in-universe standards. Certainly there's no reason to believe their engines are anything like as good as say a glider, or a jumper in linear accelleration. (I don't think there's ever been anything to calculate dart speed on, so they might actually be quite slow).

[Alyeska]

The F302 must have had an upgrade. We don't see them using the rocket engine ever again.

[NecronLord]

The F302 must have had an upgrade. We don't see them using the rocket engine ever again.

Humm? We see them in use when they move the asteroid in 'First Strike.' Or at least, the central nozzles are lit up there.

[CaptJodan]

You know how to stop that? No intergalactic hyperdrive for the Tau'ri. There. Wraith are basically unbeatable.

There's a lot of "no, shouldn't have done that" moments in Stargate. The Prommie was basically where Earth should have stayed a while. A nice bus for carting people around, but a crap warship that struggles even to take on a few Alkesh, let alone a mothership.

It became stupid when a single 304 took on an entire Wraith fleet of twelve hives and their escorts, and didn't immediately succumb to a simultaneous barrage.

:: Improved Asgard shields vs a ship whose weapons seem little better than first generation Goa'uld firepower, and we know how well those did against Beliskners. I can easily accept that those improved Asgard shields are better than Wraith weapons. We even see a continuation of that through Search and Rescue, where they have a large amount of time to sit around and discuss things while under constant barrage by Micheal's cruiser. It's consistent with what we've seen.

What? Three or four ships and some ground teams? Is 'competant military organisation with the right tools'? Say what?

Given how scattered the Wraith are, and how it's often only one hive traveling by itself at a time, I see no reason that a limited campaign on thinning out the enemy can be accomplished. Use your SG teams to sow as much discord amongst the Wraith as possible, while picking off Wraith hives as each Queen tries to go it alone, or with few ships in support. Like it or not, 304s have shown with the Asgard beams to take out hives pretty quickly, so a campaign focusing on scattered units could be successful. Like you said, a 304 can last a good amount of time under the barrage of 12 hives. Going up against 1-3 at a time shouldn't be a big deal, if it's planned correctly.

Honestly, (and again, like it or not) the fact that such a campaign was launched against what was also shown to be a superior enemy to the Wraith (Asurans) indicates that it was possible with a small contingent of ships and troops. And even in that campaign, they ended up splitting their forces to cover more ground, and bagged at least 7 ships in a weeks time. Yes, I know, writers fiat, but that's what we have to work with.

If it weren't for Lantean hand-me-downs (Jumpers, ZPMs) the SGA guys would have got raped completely from day one. There would have been no killing Sumner, he would have broken, and the wraith would have simply stormed Atlantis. Then they would have gone to Earth, and harvested it.

Yes, hand-me-downs are immensely useful. But those hand-me-downs didn't help the Alterans resist the Wraith as effectively as it seems to have helped barely-space-walking-humans. Clearly there's greater military competence with Earth (most of the time), and that was my point.

Mostly due to author fiat - Asurans mysteriously forget hyperspace sensors, what?

Agreed. But there are multiple instances of the Wraith not seeing ships coming to ambush them, or not knowing of a ship lying in wait. Even 304s have this trouble, so the tactic could still be useful against Hives.

Saying Earth can mount a serious campaign based on that is like saying the borg are badass soldiers - sure, they kick ass, but that's because the opposition bends over and drops their trousers.

Look, I get it. You're pissed that the humans weren't getting their asses raped every week. The Wraith were a poorly conceived villain from many angles. Combined with Earth getting more goodies than it deserved, and writers fiat, it made for poor drama. I agree. My only point in this part of the conversation is that, with the Wraith we got (incompetence, competing/fractured society, low tech level relative to Asgard goodies), once Earth had decent warships, it could have taken the fight to the Wraith in as big a way as it did the Asurans. It was never considered, but it was considered, and used, against the Asurans. It was also used by only one (cobbled together) ship in hit and raid attacks against a much more powerful and organized Michael fleet, and even that was successful for a time.

Huh? The chair thing?

-Moving the chair initially.
-Choosing not to man the chair by anyone (Sheppard, O'Neill, or even a nameless ATAed person)
-Not sending some kind of bomb/jumper/something else besides a team to sabotage the Hive.
I question the 304s being sent away from Earth in defense, rather than holding above Earth to protect it with the chair's help, but that's debatable, I'm sure.
-Daedalus suddenly not moving with giant, slow moving pulses come to hit it, even though it's shown maneuverability many other times.

I'm sure I'm forgetting others.

That's pretty dumb, I assume they wanted it that way so they could potentially just bring another chair to Earth (say, from The Tower) for any future episodes involving the outpost.

I rather assumed that the writers finally realized that they'd overdone it, at least with the chair, and that as long as it was around, few threats were really that threatening conceptually, so they decided to get rid of it so Earth could be vulnerable to any passing Hatak again, and would be forced into being saved by the SG team of whatever series it is, rather than saved by a dedicated weapon system.

[Chris OFarrell]

She's pretty explicit, it's pulling six times its intended cargo weight, or six times it's own intended weight with mass lightening - either one would imply a normal constant accelleration of around six gravities at most.

I think its far more likely she was referring to the weight it was designed to carry *and* that the X-302's inertial field could compensate for. Given the ungainly 'bolted on' nature of the Gate under it, I'm sure the field was never designed to cover such an area or mass, so it was having to continually fight the Gates inertia all the way up.

I mean in Part 1, the X-302 gets from the ground to cruising height in about five seconds. Then when they do their orbital insertion, they get to orbit in a couple of seconds, again we're talking on the same order as the Death Glider in 'Tangent' here, all without any real problems or using any real fuel as far as I can see. In Part 2, it takes several minutes to get the X-302 to its high altitude cruising height and even then the thing is trying to shake itself apart from the strain. THEN when they fire the main engine, they run it -and presumably the aerospikes- out of fuel before they even clear the atmosphere! Thats the only time we've seen the main engine literally run itself out of fuel! Even the major burn in 'First Strike' by the flight of F-302's didn't run them out of fuel in the same way, though they were probably using a much longer burn and had a half dozen F-302's working together to alter the trajectory.

She does not say 'in normal flight its actual mass is two milligrams, but we can't wrap the field around the stargate' or anything like that.

She WAS trying to explain it to O'Neill you know....and her explanation is perfectly consistent with the above.

Bearing in mind that f-302s can move a small asteroid between them, it's possible they've got some kind of upgrade since then; but they also don't have to move against gravity, and presumably picked an asteroid already heading in the right direction. Either way their engines have never been particularly impressive by in-universe standards. Certainly there's no reason to believe their engines are anything like as good as say a glider, or a jumper in linear accelleration. (I don't think there's ever been anything to calculate dart speed on, so they might actually be quite slow).

In 'The Intruder' they got from the Daedalus to a VERY close position to that systems Star inside a minute or two. Its been a while since I've seen that episode, but I'm rather sure the Star got VERY big inside a very short time from their launching point.

[NecronLord]

There's a lot here, and it's late, so I'll have to come back to this thread, but right off the top of my head:

Yes, hand-me-downs are immensely useful. But those hand-me-downs didn't help the Alterans resist the Wraith as effectively as it seems to have helped barely-space-walking-humans. Clearly there's greater military competence with Earth (most of the time), and that was my point.

Greater military competance? The war against the Wraith is not yet over yet, and could potentially end with the Wraith devouring Earth. The Lanteans lost in the long run, supposedly they too had success at first.

People like to berate the Ancients for losing, but there's no garuntee that the humans will do nearly well enough to last a century - in the unaltered timeline, a wraith faction adapted, conquered the Pegasus galaxy and ran humans out, too. And that's in a fifth the time or some such. Given a hundred years, that timeline might see Michael reigning from on high in a massive palace built out of human bones on what was once Capitol Hill.

-Daedalus suddenly not moving with giant, slow moving pulses come to hit it, even though it's shown maneuverability many other times.

Y'know, I always figured that was dramatic slow motion. The same weapons seemed a lot faster later on.

[NecronLord]

In 'The Intruder' they got from the Daedalus to a VERY close position to that systems Star inside a minute or two. Its been a while since I've seen that episode, but I'm rather sure the Star got VERY big inside a very short time from their launching point.

Actually, I watched the second half of that earlier today, before my previous post, just to see if I was wrong. There's no way to reliably use that, as in every scene (even the one where Shep turns around after destroying the virus'd 304) the sun is growing larger; however, it's also growing larger from the Daedalus which has been accellerating, and as we don't know how fast Daedalus is going, there's no way to guess how much increase in velocity the 302s had.

[CaptJodan]

Greater military competance?

Yeah, I know. Maybe I should stop saying that. I keep expecting Earth to display even decent military-type competence we see with today's military, and while sometimes we do, we often do not.

The war against the Wraith is not yet over yet, and could potentially end with the Wraith devouring Earth. The Lanteans lost in the long run, supposedly they too had success at first.

Fair enough. And if Earth continues to take an only defensive approach to the Wraith, never choosing to go on the offensive, then it is likely that Earth will eventually be overrun.

Y'know, I always figured that was dramatic slow motion. The same weapons seemed a lot faster later on.

Maybe the pulses were faster later due to the fact that the ship had been further upgraded by that point.

[Bilbo]

Earth cannot go on the offensive against the Wraith. Unless the Wraith started building dozens of super Hiveships the war would be over in a matter of months. Now that Atlantis is on Earth there is no real way for the Wraith to directly threaten. So gather together a force of 3 Asgard weapon upgraded 304s and use hit and run tactics.

As for super Wraith cruisers those can be dealt with easily enough as well. It has always been a major plot hole. Nukes are no good because we cannot beam them in and Earth nukes are so slow flying that they Wraith Darts shoot them down with ease. Yet we never see them mount faster missiles or use larger nukes detonated early to wipe out large numbers of Darts to clear a path for nukes. Did this and even a super Wraith Hive would go down to nuke attack. Not that this really matters since there are no more of the ships and no more easy sources for ZPMs since the Asurans are gone.


As an aside do we even know how many Wraith Hiveships are left? I remember it being mentioned that there are something like 60 in the Pegasus galaxy. We see at least a quarter of those destroyed (if not a third) in various episodes. Then there is the admission of inter-Wraith fighting which writes off more of them. Finally the Arturo device likely took out a number of the Hiveships which once awake seem to need to travel fairly often for feeding purposes. Barring the construction of new Hiveships we could see the Wraith fleet as already down to half strength by the end of Season 5.

[NecronLord]

I guess this thread hits a few of my hot-buttons for SGA. The fan perception of Lantean military incompetance is in my opinion totally unfounded - the only time we ever see them in vaguely fair personal combat, their ship crewman does what any modern soldier would do when confronted with an intruder, he draws his sidearm and tells the intruder to remain still and calls security; every time we see Lanteans get beaten they're either up against equivtech enemies who're freaking T-1000s or defeated by matrix-esque reality hacks (Sheppard teleporting around). There's no reason to think modern soldiers would do any better.

The one cockup they made was to leave the shield down on Atlantis when the replicators showed up, and they might well have had reason (wanting the Asurans to detect Lantean, not human lifesigns so they'd be unable to attack) for that.

Yes, the Wraith defeated three Lantean ships; after unknown years of combat, and unknown numbers of Wraith lives lost. There's absolutely no reason to think they went down like suckers. Yes, they 'stuck around and waited' as Sheppard said; except they don't. He was wrong.

We know that Atlantis was launching reconissance missions even after the seige had begun - see Aurora

In comparison, every major threat Earth has defeated except the Asurans, they were saved by the intervention or powers of the Ancients - if Oma Desala hadn't fought Anubis, he would have destroyed the Earth. If Ganos Lal hadn't intervened against Adria, and Moros (who, guess what, was high chancellor in the war against the Wraith; yet he was pretty fucking competant when we actually saw him plan to destoy the Ori). And even the Replicators were taken out with Ancient knowledge and machiney. Let's say that again - Every opponent barring the Asurans the Tau'ri have overcome they have done so with divine intervention, even the Replicators were stopped by Daniel Jackson's ascended knowledge.

Certainly, the Ancients created the problem of Anubis - they also created the Stargates, and indeed, human life in many places. While they're indifferent and callous (now, as of the war against the wraith, they seem to have been noble at times, witness the Council's orders to the guys running Project Aurora) they're not really incompetant at all.

Yet fans get this hilarious idea that the Tau'ri are the Lanteans equals in military power and capability. Because the Lanteans lost a hundred year war we know none of the specifics of, they assume the Lanteans must have been absolute morons who spent their times slobbering on their crystal consoles while staring vacantly into space.

Another one is the tendancy of some fans to say the Lanteans were stagnant (because they used the same designs for a long time; even though those designs are pretty fucking awesome) and uninventive. Despite the vast quantity of half completed projects and labs we see from them. I can think of at least four total game-changers being worked on by the Lanteans during the war alone - Arcturus, Wormhole Drive, Aterro Device, Time Travel. Admittedly the last two seem to have been Janus alone, but he was still a Lantean.

</rant>

Earth cannot go on the offensive against the Wraith. Unless the Wraith started building dozens of super Hiveships the war would be over in a matter of months. Now that Atlantis is on Earth there is no real way for the Wraith to directly threaten. So gather together a force of 3 Asgard weapon upgraded 304s and use hit and run tactics.

What? Without Atlantis' sensors, how are you going to find the wraith to engage them? There's no reason to think their humint is worse than yours, and every reason to think it's better (they're fucking telepaths) - what makes you think that's not a recipie for the wraith ambushing your ships and potentially, crippling and boarding one, stealing the Asgard core, and conquering the entire local group?

That's exactly what the Lanteans did, and then the Wraith ambushed their ships, stole their technological shiny, and defeated them. And the Lanteans had far more ships and resources.

As for super Wraith cruisers those can be dealt with easily enough as well. It has always been a major plot hole. Nukes are no good because we cannot beam them in and Earth nukes are so slow flying that they Wraith Darts shoot them down with ease. Yet we never see them mount faster missiles or use larger nukes detonated early to wipe out large numbers of Darts to clear a path for nukes. Did this and even a super Wraith Hive would go down to nuke attack.

And while you're doing all this, what's the super hive going to be doing? Oh yes, eating your face.

It was able to rapidly take down a LANTEAN CITY SHIP'S shields - dozens of normal hives couldn't do that for 'many years'. And yet three normal hives can potentially take out a 304...

Not that this really matters since there are no more of the ships and no more easy sources for ZPMs since the Asurans are gone.

And you know how many he got how? There were a good five minutes where Todd's thousands of minions had impunity to go about Asuras as they pleased while the Asurans were all clumped into a big ball. Given that ZPMs are detectible to sensors, he could have got scores of them for all you know.

What fun; a military plan that relies on assuming your enemy will meet your minimum estimates.

[NecronLord]

As an aside do we even know how many Wraith Hiveships are left? I remember it being mentioned that there are something like 60 in the Pegasus galaxy. We see at least a quarter of those destroyed (if not a third) in various episodes. Then there is the admission of inter-Wraith fighting which writes off more of them. Finally the Arturo device likely took out a number of the Hiveships which once awake seem to need to travel fairly often for feeding purposes. Barring the construction of new Hiveships we could see the Wraith fleet as already down to half strength by the end of Season 5.

It could be thousands by now.

Wraith ship manufacture is 'take a human, wipe some goo on them, hook up to a power source, wait.' They don't need any heavy industry or anything like that.

The only thing we do know about it is that they had 60 for their day-to-day culling purpouses. However, it's logical to assume they laid down new ships as soon as the war with the Asurans began. We don't know what is used to power them under ideal conditions, but as the thing just grows toward power sources, it could be something abundant, like geothermal power. There's no way to tell how many ships they might have by now, but presumably they went on a war footing immediately when the Asurans went active, and as it only takes one wraith to fly a ship, maybe a few more to run its guns... yeah. They'd have no trouble running a very large number.

'Barring the construction of new hive ships' is pretty fucking dumb, given that they're pretty much geared to make a great many of them.

Of course, we also have no idea how many cruisers thre might be in peacetime, probably a hundred at least.

[Bilbo]

As an aside do we even know how many Wraith Hiveships are left? I remember it being mentioned that there are something like 60 in the Pegasus galaxy. We see at least a quarter of those destroyed (if not a third) in various episodes. Then there is the admission of inter-Wraith fighting which writes off more of them. Finally the Arturo device likely took out a number of the Hiveships which once awake seem to need to travel fairly often for feeding purposes. Barring the construction of new Hiveships we could see the Wraith fleet as already down to half strength by the end of Season 5.

It could be thousands by now.

Wraith ship manufacture is 'take a human, wipe some goo on them, hook up to a power source, wait.' They don't need any heavy industry or anything like that.

The only thing we do know about it is that they had 60 for their day-to-day culling purpouses. However, it's logical to assume they laid down new ships as soon as the war with the Asurans began. We don't know what is used to power them under ideal conditions, but as the thing just grows toward power sources, it could be something abundant, like geothermal power. There's no way to tell how many ships they might have by now, but presumably they went on a war footing immediately when the Asurans went active, and as it only takes one wraith to fly a ship, maybe a few more to run its guns... yeah. They'd have no trouble running a very large number.

'Barring the construction of new hive ships' is pretty fucking dumb, given that they're pretty much geared to make a great many of them.

Of course, we also have no idea how many cruisers thre might be in peacetime, probably a hundred at least.

Assuming that the Wraith have access to the powersupplies to build new ships. When the Wraith virus tried to build one of out Doctor Keller it did so in Atlantis with access to the ZPM.

[NecronLord]

Assuming that the Wraith have access to the powersupplies to build new ships. When the Wraith virus tried to build one of out Doctor Keller it did so in Atlantis with access to the ZPM.

It was already growing without direct access to the ZPM, off only the power systems in her room. The bru-ha-ha was about the danger of it getting a main ZPM conduit - it was growing just fine without.

What's more, I addressed that - it goes for any power source, which might mean it'll go for something as simple as geo-thermal. Even if it doesn't, the Wraith obviously have power sources of their own, as they built all those ships in the first place without ZPMs.

[Bilbo]

Assuming that the Wraith have access to the powersupplies to build new ships. When the Wraith virus tried to build one of out Doctor Keller it did so in Atlantis with access to the ZPM.

It was already growing without direct access to the ZPM, off only the power systems in her room. The bru-ha-ha was about the danger of it getting a main ZPM conduit - it was pootling along just fine without.

What's more, I addressed that - it goes for any power source, which might mean it'll go for something as simple as geo-thermal. Even if it doesn't, the Wraith obviously have power sources of their own, as they built all those ships in the first place without ZPMs.

But over what time period were those ships built and how long did they take? The Ancients ignored them as a threat for a very long time and then responded pretty stupidly when they finally did. The two taken together are how they lost the war.

It could take months or years to grow a hiveship, with the obvious shorter time to build a cruiser. With the Wraith "starving" for lack of food and the poisoning of an unknown percent of the remaining humans, factions have developed that are fighting back and forth rather viciously.

All in all its a relative unknown. One would think that ships were high priority, yet when the Wraith get their first ZPMs they use them to start up one of their cloning facilities. This makes no sense. The Wraith dont need more mouths to feed they need ships to fight their enemies and each other over feeding grounds.

[CaptJodan]

In comparison, every major threat Earth has defeated except the Asurans, they were saved by the intervention or powers of the Ancients - if Oma Desala hadn't fought Anubis, he would have destroyed the Earth. If Ganos Lal hadn't intervened against Adria, and Moros (who, guess what, was high chancellor in the war against the Wraith; yet he was pretty fucking competant when we actually saw him plan to destoy the Ori). And even the Replicators were taken out with Ancient knowledge and machiney. Let's say that again - Every opponent barring the Asurans the Tau'ri have overcome they have done so with divine intervention, even the Replicators were stopped by Daniel Jackson's ascended knowledge.

In *most* of the later years, perhaps. Not in the early years. Apophis was defeated without any handwavium help from the Ancients, and I hardly consider him not a threat, given how many times he came back. And I would call Baal's final defeat a wash, as far as Ancient tech goes. Both sides used an ancient device to manipulate history, and there was no intervention from powers on high there. Most other system lords were otherwise suitably defeated without Ancient support.

Yet fans get this hilarious idea that the Tau'ri are the Lanteans equals in military power and capability.

I hope not. Though you have to admit, the Battle of Asuras makes it hard for those fans who do not see it as one giant writer's fiat not to see it that way. Part of this perception is the fault of the writers.

Because the Lanteans lost a hundred year war we know none of the specifics of, they assume the Lanteans must have been absolute morons who spent their times slobbering on their crystal consoles while staring vacantly into space.

I also think this perception comes in from the fact that the human expedition has been able to hold off the Wraith for as long as they have with no real resupply. If the expedition could do that with rail guns and nukes (and some barely working ancient tech), as well as a very small number of people, why couldn't the Alterans win with their massive infrastructure already in place? It's almost a guarantee that they dicked around for the first few years of the war, when you look at how much space they initially controlled, when THEY outnumbered the Wraith. They didn't take the threat seriously.

The Alterans knew how to build new ships, new drones, new ZPMs, and various forms of new technology that dwarf what others have. As you noted, Janus created two big war changers himself. In our limited view of the war, how did we see the Alterans utilize these war changers? They didn't. They buried them away for some other shmo to uncover 10,000 years later. Same goes for the Ark (I happen to think their decision was right with the Ark, but all the same, it was a war changer).

Finally, we have the Asurans themselves. Clearly, they are an effective combat force, for they kicked the Wraith around hard when we saw them in action later. But the Ancients felt they weren't viable. Instead of fixing their basecode, which seems relatively easy, given how many times McKay has done it, they tried to destroy the whole project. Or, you know, they could have changed their base code like the Asurans begged them to do. Either way, they simply randomly decided that the Asurans weren't worth it, even though they were effective.

It's not just about the tech, but also about the will to use it, and we've seen many instances where the Ancients went to a great deal of trouble creating a technology, only to then decide not to use it.

[CaptJodan]

All in all its a relative unknown. One would think that ships were high priority, yet when the Wraith get their first ZPMs they use them to start up one of their cloning facilities. This makes no sense. The Wraith dont need more mouths to feed they need ships to fight their enemies and each other over feeding grounds.

I thought part of the reason ZPMs weren't used for Super Hives in the past was that there was technical reasons why they wouldn't interface. I thought Todd explained that they'd finally figured out how to interface them properly, for the first time. Thus, in the past, the only thing they could do with ZPMs was create more Wraith.

[NecronLord]

But over what time period were those ships built and how long did they take? The Ancients ignored them as a threat for a very long time and then responded pretty stupidly when they finally did. The two taken together are how they lost the war.

We assume. It could well be that by the time the Ancients had found them, they'd already become the potentially effective guerilla nomads that can build ships from a power supply and a human, and so on, that they are now.

It could take months or years to grow a hiveship, with the obvious shorter time to build a cruiser. With the Wraith "starving" for lack of food and the poisoning of an unknown percent of the remaining humans, factions have developed that are fighting back and forth rather viciously.

The wraiths' starvation shouldn't cut into their making new ships much.

All in all its a relative unknown. One would think that ships were high priority, yet when the Wraith get their first ZPMs they use them to start up one of their cloning facilities. This makes no sense.

You're assuming Todd didn't simultaneously send the other 4+ ZPMs he had to a ship-production facility. What's more, being able to decant that many adult clones would also possibly solve their starvation problem - just start putting human genetic material in to sustain the army. You only need four humans a year to feed a wraith.

[Bilbo]

All in all its a relative unknown. One would think that ships were high priority, yet when the Wraith get their first ZPMs they use them to start up one of their cloning facilities. This makes no sense. The Wraith dont need more mouths to feed they need ships to fight their enemies and each other over feeding grounds.

I thought part of the reason ZPMs weren't used for Super Hives in the past was that there was technical reasons why they wouldn't interface. I thought Todd explained that they'd finally figured out how to interface them properly, for the first time. Thus, in the past, the only thing they could do with ZPMs was create more Wraith.

My point was more along the lines of the silly logic of creating more soldiers when you are having a problem feeding your current soldiers. It would make sense for the Wraith to straight clone humans with their facility to use as food. Though this might not work because the facility can only clone Wraith or because the Wraith find no interest in feeding on a mindless human clone. With their sadist streak I can see the latter being a very likely reason.

[Bilbo]

You're assuming Todd didn't simultaneously send the other 4+ ZPMs he had to a ship-production facility. What's more, being able to decant that many adult clones would also possibly solve their starvation problem - just start putting human genetic material in to sustain the army. You only need four humans a year to feed a wraith.

I am not remembering that episode that well. Was the Cloning facility under the control of Todd or was it controlled by a different Wraith faction. If it is under Todd then it does make sense that he was going to build new ships and wanted new clone forces to man them. If controlled by a different faction then it makes much less sense.

[NecronLord]

My point was more along the lines of the silly logic of creating more soldiers when you are having a problem feeding your current soldiers. It would make sense for the Wraith to straight clone humans with their facility to use as food. Though this might not work because the facility can only clone Wraith or because the Wraith find no interest in feeding on a mindless human clone. With their sadist streak I can see the latter being a very likely reason.

While they obviously preffer wild caught (note their lack of agriculture) there's no reason to think they'd rather starve than feed on an uneducated (who said mindless?) clone.

[NecronLord]

I am not remembering that episode that well. Was the Cloning facility under the control of Todd or was it controlled by a different Wraith faction. If it is under Todd then it does make sense that he was going to build new ships and wanted new clone forces to man them. If controlled by a different faction then it makes much less sense.

He brought them the ZPMs. Their queen didn't much like him, as she betrayed him, had him imprisoned, and then planned to feed on him. It was implied they'd taken it off him, though, and that he had useful expert knowledge.

Either way, we know he only used some of his ZPMs in that facility, and at least one was given to a scientist to grow a new form of battleship.