So it’s christmas and boy do i have a treat for you loyal reade… the average of 2 guys a day who accidentally click onto this site, look at one of my posts and then leave in disgust… the important thing is that you’re here and that it’s probably not christmas by the time you’re reading it but it’s a theme for the summary so whatever and have a nice day
Pre-Credits:
Sheppard Claus out of kindness has decided to take that cantankerous Ebenezer McKay out in his gatesleigh and give him driving lessons, you’ll remember Ebenezer McKay was gifted the ability to use ancient technology back in Hide and Seek by his dear friend Bob Beckett, and also is on a voyage to relieve a gift from the ancients in the form of a FUNOFF KILLSAT at “The Lagrangian Point”.
hark, i hear with my ear from thine three questions: which planet’s Lagrangian point? which type of Lagrangian point? What’s a Lagrangian point? well in reverse order: a Lagrangian point is a region in space where two bodies hold anything in there stationary compared to both of them because of the way gravity works out. presumably it’s an L1 (between both of them) or L2 (behind the smaller body). it’s not going to be L3 (behind the bigger body) because it’s never L3, #### L3. it may be L4 or L5 (off to each side) as we do that with the moon occasionally. as to what planet assuming the distances that would be reasonable travelling in a small shuttle probably between lantea (the world atlantis is on) and it’s moon.
anyway, back to the topic and christmasness, Sheppard Claus and his passengers Ebenezer, motion sickness elf and scared elf come up on the FUNOFF KILLSAT to discover that though batteries were once included they’re also flat as this thing has been lying around for millions of years. oh and then a wench (wraith grinch, look it was the funniest thing i could come up with) sends a distress signal from the planet, again probably lantea. Sheppard Claus is caught in dilemma, Dare he assume this wench to be on the naughty list or give it the benefit of the doubt and check it out? read on dear accidental readers and you may find the… something chrismassy i guess?
The Episode:
Well it turns out that it’s a Lagrange point satellite on a different planet 15 hours away from lantea, although Sheppard Claus wishes it wasn’t as nobody likes long car journeys on the holiday season. so they completely forget about the satellite, cool as it may be, and ask weir for permission to go down to not!lantea and explore the wrench crashsite on what is the beach sand dune equivalent to Vasquez Rocks. apparently the radio’s blocked any nobody catches on to the fact that they’re in a sci-fi horror movie without Lt “blackguy” ford around to be killed before them but hey, glowing energy being dots that aren’t explained and like chocolate. they go to the downed wraith ship and find it’s batteries too have expired but for some reason it’s 10000 year old vagina-doors are perplexingly still in the ragged and not completely decomposed state. this is a wench meat wagon, literally, and the crew and cargo seem to have all been eaten by a wench, sure am glad we can definitely detect them in all situations and not just when they’re awake or we might be in trouble. naturally they split up and weir sensing that they’ve done something stupid sends a rescue party out to save whoever survives that bad decision. the last wench/wraith wakes up, you can tell he’s a wraith because he’s played by the same actor who does every wraith, turns scared elf into a dead Paul McCartney and turns motion sickness elf into mark hamill with his voice from the 70s and body from now. he reasons that people must have come from somewhere and since he tortured the location of the gatesleigh from mark he sets off to see if he can hotwire it. shep claus, getting into the classic sci-fi cosplay vibe, decides that nobody’s messing with his ship that he loves like a woman and sets about murder-killing the wraith. if it seems like this isn’t really a chirstmas episode then you’re thinking about it the wrong way, think of it as a gift of having an episode of stargate, the movie alien 3, that episode of south park about assisted suicide and the classic star trek episode arena (“a wealth of precious minerals, but i would trade them all for a good sturdy club” or kirk makes a bazooka out of bamboo and fights the gorn) all blended into one. the south park assisted suicide episode you say? well shep’s having a pretty epic duel against the wraith (who in the script was refereed to as “mister hooper”, which is hilarious. thanks stargatewiki) who manages to shrug off bullets, bullets, bullets, grenades, bullets, bullets… etcetera for the 15 hours that it takes for ford and the rescue crew to arrive. fortunately mark hamill sacrifices himself so that rodney doesn’t have to stick around and can go help sheppard fight “mister hooper” and also when backup does arrive shep uses the energy bugs love of chocolate to have them serve as an indicator for the guys up on the gateship on who to shoot and so mister hooper is blown up where he’ll be not humbug at all.
Final Thoughts:
look if you want to tell a story about someone sacrificing themselves to spur someone else into being a hero then have it be someone we know and/or care about. they do a good job of making him seem like an ok dude but still if he’d have shown up in an earlier episode, or several, then it’d have had so much more effect. also his reasoning for killing himself is stupid: “i’ve been left behind almost alive so that rodney has to stay behind and look after me and not help sheppard fight the wraith, ergo to free up rodney i shoot myself in the head”. or you tell him this and he rushes off to help sheppard knowing not to stay here and we pick you up later in the jumper. and did i mention how dissonantly young his voice is? it’s almost as distracting as the fact that the wraith apparently turn your hair old despite the fact that hair isn’t alive or part of your biology anymore.
plus the pre-credits for this episode features a killsat about the size of the JJ Abrams version USS enterprise, why isn’t this about that? sure sheppard playing captain kirk against a green dude is ok but killsat exploring sounds much better than that.
oh and apparently shep left loaded pistols with the safety off around his gateship, because as a millitary commander he knows that that’s the smart thing to do. either that or mister hooper figured out how to use an automatic pistol in seconds when mkay’s still confused by it after firing a whole volley.
the energy being equivalent of Deanna Troi: big on chocolate, big on cowboys and not good at reading emotions such as pissed off.