Just a heads up, this episode deals with alternate timelines so i’ll be doing this summary in the style of matt robotham’s Forbidden to Interfere, a look at all of marvel’s “what if” comics.
hope ya don’t mind the homage and free advertising other matt.
Pre-Credits:
it is an ordinary day in our normal timeline (C-2, BIS-1, TM-0/2 ,2010-1 at the moment), but it is no ordinary day for it is Dr weir’s birthday… which she doesn’t celebrate apparently, we see why though as sheppard hears about it and gives her a funeral urn. dick.
“how thoughtful, you even inscribed ‘and we all move up in rank’ on the side”
then he finds and gifts her an old lady they found in sleep-stasis in the Atlantis suburbs. double dick.
at least it came in it’s original packaging
The Episode:
so Carson and Rodney show up to the party to tell them that this old lady is in fact hella old, thanks guys that was so helpful. only then old lady wakes up to reveal that she has suceeded in what she set out to do, well not really as she’s 10,000 but that’s the gist of it. then by calling everone by their names before she is told them she reveals she is Uatu the Weir-cher, alternate weir and traveller from an alternate timeline (C-2, 2010-1) where things were not as we saw them happen, also she’s really old so they have to pump her full of drugs to keep her awake. Rodney steals a 10,000 year post it note with gate addresses (inc. one for suicide pact planet from before) from her pocket while the Weir-cher is power-napping.
looks good for 10,000. the paper that is.
once she does wake up she tells us the tale of how the pilot episode happened in her timeline (quick recap in our timeline the expedition came to Atlantis, poked around a bit and discovered they had hardly any power left, rodney shut down all the secondary systems and eventually the city rose): the expedition came to Atlantis, poked around a bit and discovered the had hardly any power left, rodney tries to shut down all the secondary systems and ends up sacrificing himself to save the people who got to the gateships before him and then everyone dies with shep, zelenka and Uatu!Weir escaping in the time jumper, a time travelling gateship the second version of which ends up in use in the mobius… so not much different all things considered. then time displaced shep, zelenka and Uatu!Weir are shot down by the wraith of 10,000 years ago. rather than drop by on mister hooper they crash and everyone but our heroine, y’know the only one of the three that they could get an old person that vaguely looked like them for, is killed. Rodney and Sheppard decide that this is the time to have a dead dick measuring contest.
well at least we weren’t killed by armus, that would just be embarrassing.
Uatu!Weir is revived by janus, the one ancient who isn’t either an idiot, an aloof dick secretly undermining all the other aloof dicks or really really sad and has the presence of Julian Bashir minus the over the top posh British “i’m excited by everything” accent. janus tells his bosses merlin and O’Brien’s horrible wife (Obligatory Post Atomic Horror Reference for robotham homage: done) that this means that weir is a second (5th technically) generation ancient from the future, leaving Atlantis here was a great idea and time travel works but merlin, the guy who later builds the ori killing holy grail, is like “don’t meddle with the universe son” and puts all his notes on a high shelf.
The ancients had perfected the art of pregnancywear.
weir wants to go back to her own time though and warn our guys about the energy thing but obviously time travel is out of the window till janus finds a new hiding spot so they come up with a plan to put her in the sleep thing from before. plus janus has her “rotate” the 3 ZPMs from before so that our guys had the couple of days in our timeline to fuck around on athos and puts in a failsafe for raising the city should some idiot decide to turn off the secondary systems that revives her, aka Rodney McKay with his usual infinite wisdom that makes him the head of Atlantis’ technobabble department (definitely not because zelenka’s czecknobabble wasn’t considered as being as enjoyable to English speaking viewers even though it was likely much more enjoyable). also the shelf isn’t high enough and janus get’s his usb candies back.
the real reason that the ancients died out is that their computers were made of boiled sweets and naturally they suck at most things…
when weir’s finished her story, explains that the post it is a bunch of ZPM locations that we’ll forget after next week’s episode and says she’ll always live on though weir (no, but nice try) Weir kicks the bucket, which naturally unnerves weir but that’s ok because weir scatters weir’s ashes in that snazzy funeral urn that shep got weir, how thoughtful.
well at least he didn’t have to buy them both an urn.
Final Thoughts:
the lady they got in to play old!weir was good, she had an almost identical voice, and i’ve just looked her (holly dignard) up apparently she was only 25 at the time so kudos to the age makeup department.
also janus was one of the best ancients we’ve had yet.
oh no this totally real water is going to get me. i am in terror.