SGA 4x12: Spoils of War

[CaptainChewbacca]

Another excellent episode this week, I say.

Turns out Todd had a plan after all, and beating the replicators was only a part of it. I really liked learning about the wraith cloning lab, and how it was their key to beating Atlantis.

5/5, I say.

[NecronLord]

Watching it now. I'd always wondered if those masks were just IR things or some kind of implant put on the lower orders.

EDIT: One improvement I'd have made; more Darts, being chased by drones. It'd explain where all the drones from the planet were during the battle.

[Vympel]

Well, it's nice to know someone thought to steal some ZPMs before the planet blew up.

[CaptJodan]

I enjoyed seeing Tayla getting some screen time and some actual development as a character. The kid arc is giving her some time to actually develop some kind of personality, and the struggle between her desire to help the team and sacrifice her life and the needs of her child are a good touch. That, and her "where are my people?" subplot gives her some screen time.

Ramming the hive ship down their throats was also a good tactic, though you knew very early on they weren't going to keep the ship when it was mentioned that that system had a space gate. The moment they said that, you knew they were going back in the jumper.

[fuzzymillipede]

Am I the only one who thinks they should've fled in the hiveship and just waited for the Daedalus to arrive and take out the wraith facility/hiveship?

[CaptJodan]

Am I the only one who thinks they should've fled in the hiveship and just waited for the Daedalus to arrive and take out the wraith facility/hiveship?

This is actually something I got to thinking about later today (I tend to think of things much later than the night they're shown, sadly).

It seems to me as if the humans are morons. Instead of keeping one ship on station, one ship in transit in between galaxies, and one ship defending the Milky Way (from potentially non-existent or low priority threats), they only get a ship or two on loan for a fairly brief period of time before running back home. It could have been weeks before the ships came back, at which point there would be many more Wraith about.

The fact that no one considered calling in a Daedalus space-strike makes me think both ships are on their way back to the Milky Way.

From a story standpoint, it makes some sense. This is supposed to be "Stargate" not "Daedalus" or "Apollo". Those ships are so powerful, that a great majority of the time the team has the potential to get into trouble, one of those ships would/could be in the area to assist as needed. But if that happened, the team would either be rescued often, or they'd have to come up with a host of reasons of why the transporters don't work or why the weapons are useless. There's also the extra pay for guest stars.

Still, I find it annoying that no one comes up with the idea that maybe one ship should stay behind and help to guard Atlantis as needed on a regular basis.

[Bounty]

IIRC Sheppard mentioned calling in the Daedalus, but Teyla didn't want to give the other Hive an even bigger head start.

If anyone in the episode was a moron, it was that Wraith Queen. No guards at all? Killing the one Wraith who knows how to operate the power source that's making your cloning lab tick? Seriously? And what was up with that Wraith cell - the holes in it sure looked big enough to squeeze through.

At least Todd acted semi-competent. He would probably have been better off hitching a ride back to Atlantis, but that's his decision.

I did like that they finally tried to explain how the Wraith won the war. I'd have preferred some sort of super-duper Hive factory, but this is close enough.

[NecronLord]

If anyone in the episode was a moron, it was that Wraith Queen. No guards at all? Killing the one Wraith who knows how to operate the power source that's making your cloning lab tick? Seriously?

Let's be fair, they'd done it before. Her underling was probably overstating Todd's worth.

And what was up with that Wraith cell - the holes in it sure looked big enough to squeeze through.

I expect the bars would be electrified or something

At least Todd acted semi-competent. He would probably have been better off hitching a ride back to Atlantis, but that's his decision.

I don't think he necesserily likes being locked up if he doesn't have to be.

I did like that they finally tried to explain how the Wraith won the war. I'd have preferred some sort of super-duper Hive factory, but this is close enough.

Presumably there's something similar to mass manufacture, say, cruisers, for these guys to go in.

[Bounty]

Let's be fair, they'd done it before. Her underling was probably overstating Todd's worth.

It just came across as something straight off the Evil Overlord list. Todd knows how to operate ZPM's, is familiar with the Atlantis expedition and has about as close to a working relationship with them as a a Wraith could get, but all that goes out the window because mommy is hungry!

I expect the bars would be electrified or something

I'd hope so. Not that that would do much good thanks to the rubber uniforms the Wraith use

I don't think he necessarily likes being locked up if he doesn't have to be.

True, but where else is he going to go? His Hive is dead and I doubt the other Wraith are going to be very happy to take him back.

Presumably there's something similar to mass manufacture, say, cruisers, for these guys to go in.

You'd hope so. It wouldn't have hurt to have it as a throwaway line - if they can spare 30 seconds for Todd to go all Captain Exposition about how they got the ZPM's in the first place, they can at least throw in a line about ship production.

[DesertFly]

Seeing this, I can't help but wonder if there are more of these facilities out there. Sure, they're super-top-secret and all that, but it would represent a significant threat from the Wraith again. I won't be surprised if more of them pop up later on this season.

[NecronLord]

It just came across as something straight off the Evil Overlord list. Todd knows how to operate ZPM's, is familiar with the Atlantis expedition and has about as close to a working relationship with them as a a Wraith could get, but all that goes out the window because mommy is hungry!

Let's also remember, they're also capable of not killing people when they feed.

I'd hope so. Not that that would do much good thanks to the rubber uniforms the Wraith use

Quiet! Don't denigrate their national fetish.

True, but where else is he going to go? His Hive is dead and I doubt the other Wraith are going to be very happy to take him back.

There were five other Hives he had relations with that weren't convinced to join the attack.

You'd hope so. It wouldn't have hurt to have it as a throwaway line - if they can spare 30 seconds for Todd to go all Captain Exposition about how they got the ZPM's in the first place, they can at least throw in a line about ship production.

Maybe they have some other idea for that. A dramatic reveal that a fleet of thousands of cruisers has been ticking over somewhere since the war...

[Stargate Nerd]

I'm sure there's plenty of "allied" Hives he could join, we only saw one of the Hives that were used to attack Asuras, I believe that since one got destroyed during the battle and one crashed into the cloning facility five more could harbor Todd. And McKay is right Todd is a horrible name, Bob and Michael were much cooler.

[Murazor]

A bit of a weird thing with the power sources here. It seems that the Wraith were completely unable to operate the facility until they stole ZPMs from the Ancients back in the days of the war and now they had to grab some from the Asurans to reactivate it.

They were pretty serious about putting it back to work ASAP, so I think that if they could have powered it by, for example, landing the Hiveship and pumping energy into the cloning tanks through a landline, the Wraith would have done so.

Does this mean that ZPMs are actually more powerful than the low-end incidents suggested previously and that the need of three of them to lift Atlantis is some kind of safety protocol?

[Themightytom]

I really can't believe they forgot to beam some ppl onto the many many Aurora class ships the replicators left, they could have stolen the freaking city itself, they could have taken the ZPMs, I half expected to see Ronon and Rodney beaming back to the daedalous with a TV and a microwave they looted.
Cloningd?? That is so weak, but at least it explains how a retrovirus might work on the wraith. Cloning is turning into the Instant Army builder9Tm) for Scifi these days, ever since marvin the martian started with his bag of martians.
Did they clone ships and equipment too? i see the writers trying to retroactively explain how the rediculously powerful Ancient civilization couldn't beat the Wraith and it keeps getting sillier and sillier. if they wanted a ZPM so bad, why didnt they go after the wrecked city from season 2? Todd was definitely smart enough to think of that.
Crashing the hiveship into the cloning facilities was telegraphed from the minute they mentioned how damaged it was, thats what they did with the last one. As soon as we saw the space gate it was clinched all though I was anticipating a last minute save by the Daedolous.
Todd is a clever bastard, a lot of this could have been staged so that the atlantis team would vape another hive and queen, Todds probably got an empire stashed away somewhere.
From the previews I was kind of hoping to see a wraith necropolis, their version of an atlantis, like a dark City That Fell or something.
I AM glad to see carter is waiting back at Atlantis, I'm always waiting for atlantis to turn into babylon 5 or star trek where the ENTIRE senior staff is off on an away mission leaving Corwin the redshirt in charge.

[NecronLord]

A bit of a weird thing with the power sources here. It seems that the Wraith were completely unable to operate the facility until they stole ZPMs from the Ancients back in the days of the war and now they had to grab some from the Asurans to reactivate it.

They were pretty serious about putting it back to work ASAP, so I think that if they could have powered it by, for example, landing the Hiveship and pumping energy into the cloning tanks through a landline, the Wraith would have done so.

Does this mean that ZPMs are actually more powerful than the low-end incidents suggested previously and that the need of three of them to lift Atlantis is some kind of safety protocol?

While it's obvious that the writers randomly decide what a ZPM can or can't do according to plot, and this is a logical problem, we must first...

1. Assume that bringing more than one ZPM together gives us linear multiplication of output. This need not necesserily be so - the Eyes of the Goa'uld, another compact generator technology that just happened to look like crystals - were exponentially more powerful together than they were apart.
2. Know that the use of the ZPMs is necesserily a fuelling problem; perhaps they need constancy of supply to generate so much organic matter. Perhaps their supply logistics are such that bringing in the meat for a hundred thousand warriors to be made per week, plus the fuel for a hive ship continuously running at full blast, is a bit much. Perhaps some part of the facility is a device - like Anubis' device for the kull warriors - that they can't make function on such a scale using their own power supplies.

Perhaps, of course, a hive ship - especially given that it seems to use a large array of proper engines, unlike say, a ha'tak - is designed so that its power supply and its fuel are different things; it could be that the power supply behind the ship's systems and weapons is not the same as the power output of its engines.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Perhaps running ZPMs in series, rather than individually, prevents them from depleting in charge more quickly, sort of like it saves wear and tear?

I still think there would/should be a ZPM factory somewhere in Atlantis that they havn't found yet.

[NecronLord]

I still think there would/should be a ZPM factory somewhere in Atlantis that they havn't found yet.

I'm actually doubting it, now.

Why would you put such a high energy facility near your major population centre? It'd be off on some other planet somewhere.

[CaptJodan]

Why would you put such a high energy facility near your major population centre? It'd be off on some other planet somewhere.

What, like how we have our power plants buried in mountains or in some backwater bog instead of near the population centers they power?

The Asurans clearly didn't build their ZPMs off-world. Why would the Ancients need to?

[Zac Naloen]

Why would you put such a high energy facility near your major population centre? It'd be off on some other planet somewhere.

What, like how we have our power plants buried in mountains or in some backwater bog instead of near the population centers they power?

The Asurans clearly didn't build their ZPMs off-world. Why would the Ancients need to?

Surely it depends upon how the ZPM'S get made...

Which is something we don't know.

Do they make the crystalline structure to a specific specification and then tap into subspace to get it's charget? Or is it something more complicated.

I would expect it to, the impression I always got was that Atlantis was self sufficient and... They only took the one city with them. But then ZPM's take millenia to run down when on Idle so they would have had plenty of time to build a facility at a later date.

[Themightytom]

Here's an excerpt from Rising, (www.gateworld.net, awesome site)
McKAY: We need the ZedP.M. to power the Gate.

O'NEILL: What?

JACKSON: ZeeP.M. He's, uh, he's Canadian.

O'NEILL (sympathetically to McKay): I'm sorry.

McKAY: The Zero Point Module, General. The, uh, Ancient power source you recovered from Proclarush Taonas and that's now powering the outpost's defences. I have since determined that it generates its enormous power from vacuum energy derived from a self-contained region of subspace time.

O'NEILL: That was a waste of a perfectly good explanation. (He turns to the other two.) The answer's no.


Mckay says that energy is "Generated", he did not say "Drawn" or "Extracted". Admittedly Rodney's character is frequently wrong, but we have seen inert used up ZPMs that are not dangerous. if the ZPMs are a device taht can be manufactured without being activated theyd be safe enough to handle, even when they are activated, they haven't been shown to be particualrly explosive.
Seriously though why were they hunting through the stargate the entire first season if they hadnt finished searching the city for a ZPM factory, wouldn't that be something on a sign somewhere?

[JME2]

I liked the episode. It was good to see more development into the Wraith and several questions about their war with the Ancients finally answered.
I also liked how Teyla's finally getting character development that we haven't seen since the first season. Now if only the same could happen for Ronon. Overall, a nice end to the mid-season trilogy.

4.5/5

[CaptainChewbacca]

I also liked how Teyla's finally getting character development that we haven't seen since the first season. Now if only the same could happen for Ronon. Overall, a nice end to the mid-season trilogy.

4.5/5

From the spoilers I've seen about Ronan, [size=0]He and doctor Kaylee are going to start having some sort of relationship[/size].

[NecronLord]

What, like how we have our power plants buried in mountains or in some backwater bog instead of near the population centers they power?

Our power plants are not as volatile as ZPMs. If something goes wrong with them, they shut down. If something goes wrong with a ZPM, the entire solar system explodes. Similarly, our power plans are not easily transportable; it's difficult to move one arond. A ZPM fits in a handbag. Why would you not do its creation, calibration and testing on some expendable rock somewhere? With the stargate network and the transporter booths, it's literally easier for them to take one across the galaxy and install it than it is for me to get to my nearest city.

The Asurans clearly didn't build their ZPMs off-world. Why would the Ancients need to?

What gives you that idea? We saw them in use. Not being made. It's not like Asuras had buried its stargate or anything; it was clearly in a non-restricted access civillian area.

[CaptainChewbacca]

A ZPM can't blow up a solar system, that was Arcturus, which was an order of magnitude more than a ZPM.

[NecronLord]

A ZPM can't blow up a solar system,

Wrong.

CARTER: Uh, sir, quickly, I wanted to talk to you about something else. I was reading Doctor Lee's report about the tainted Z.P.M. I think he may have underestimated the explosive potential. It could have actually destroyed the entire solar system.