Last Time On Letters From Pegasus:

“what can only be described as a “FUCKOFF HURRICANE” shows up and robs teylaa of her ability to make convincing facial expressions”

“he’s the goddamed master stick ninja and colm tells him to go on a commando raid on atlantis to go and steal all the calpol they were promised”

“fortunately team science dudes decide to follow in the footsteps of victor Frankenstein, Barry Allen and He-Man and use lightning to solve all their problems”

“carson beckett, teylaa and ford are stuck on the mainland looking for some idiots who wandered off”

“master stick ninja shows up on atlantis and shoots those two dudes. cold, they’re not even in the same galaxy as the nearest redshirt factory. even sora thinks so.”

“master stick ninja like many hans grubers before him takes hostages in the form of mkay and weir”

“shep steals all the c4 and calpol and leaves master stick ninja a walkie talkie so he can snark at him like so many John McClanes before him”

“master stick ninja’s shanked mkay who told him about their plan to save atlantis and wants the city for himself”

“MSN is like “ok, i’m killing a hostage because no-one will beat my high store, not even you brian blessed who sacrificed half your own dudes!” and points a gun at weir”

and now the conclusion

Pre-Credits:

we’re still having one of these? Ok then.

so shep starts shouting at Master Stick Ninja like he was suddenly possessed by the Ghost of Christmas Sgt Michael Ransom. then Mkay decides that since he got stabbed he might as well flip the fuck out, it’s not going to make anything worse is it? of course in a surprising show of common sense for a hysterically shouting egotistical precursor to Leonard from the big bang theory he manages to convey through means of calm and though out debate that killing any of them would leave him at the helm of a fragile city ship without a forcefield in the middle of the encroaching FUCKOFFF HURRICANE without anyone who understands anything about the city, anyone who is known to have the marker gene required to use half of the shit lying around and anyone who could potentially fix the button that lets them use lightning for the shield. rather taken aback by how calm and collected mkay naturally was in his delivery Master Stick Ninja thinks this over and decides the best course of action is to let them live and then tell shep that he killed weir because it’s a smart move to piss off the loose canon experienced commando with near messianic control over the technology that makes up your new base and several levels in being captain kirk, the kind of smart move that allows him to outrank the vice president of the genii. also weir tries to convert said vice president sora from the dark side but her doubt gauge isn’t full enough yet.

y’know it amazes me that ancients, sci-fi’s biggest dumbasses, managed to take advice from sci-fi’s second biggest dumbasses starfleet and make a city so fragile and reliant on it’s shields that a large hurricane could break it up when they could also seed several galaxies with virtually indestructible yet incredibly complex giant teleporters that still take tectonics level nukes to destroy after 50 million years of weathering.

The Episode:

So Shep goes into bezerker rage and starts picking off genii one by one, the genii’s head Australian bearded guy (they have so many accents for a small community) tries to track shep using atlantis’ computers but this fails as all ancient technology is lacking in key areas and incredibly unintuitive: expressed here by a lack of height display. it doesn’t matter anyway as shep starts stealing the keys off of Atlantis team’s naquada generators and things start loosing power. mkay and weir are forced by MSN to work on fixing the grounding station by MSN. meanwhile Carson and his team are surprised that a FUCKOFF HURRICANE would have a FUCKOFF EYE in the middle. Master Stick Ninja orders sora and berdo to gate in reinforcements but shep gives them a shia surprise and raises the stargate shield. for those of you wondering when you put an object or shield within micrnanowhatevers of an active stargate it prevents matter, like people, from materializing. it also makes a really satisfying thud. so 54 out of the 60 reinforcement dudes, including MSN’s drinking buddies son (aka not a big deal) get thudded into non-existence.

so what have we learned here? don’t tell Major John Sheppard that you killed one of his friends, he does not take it well, not at all.

Master Stick Ninja realises this and tells shep to give him power back to the grounding station or he’ll kill weir again. Ford, Teylaa and carson sneak back to atlantis by flying up through the FUCKOFF EYE and land in the gateship bay under the cover of FUCKOFF DARKNESS. ford takes command and heads off to the armoury to grab wraith tasers. oh and by the way did i mention that MSN didn’t tell any of his troops that shep is turning the power back on? well he didn’t because there a reason he has a bearded Australian and the vice president around to do his job for him. speaking of which Ford beckett and teylaa save shep from an ambush at the power generator that he needed to put back on with the wraith taser and sora starts hunting teylaa because she killed her father, prepare to die. mkay and weir fix the grounding thing and everyone flees to the control centre so they don’t get zapped by the acients poor design. shep and ford come up with a plan to storm the gateroom and free weir and mkay using carson and teylaa in a jumper but that gets stopped when teylaa is challenged to a shank fight by sora. also ford leaves the taser behind which could have been a plot point but it’s stolen by his dreamworld self on his way out to Antarctica. in the gateroom apparently mkay’s plan to “it’s a long shot, but it just might work” was too much of a long shot and MSN decides the best course of action is to retreat and take the hostages with him which means shep ain’t got time to wait for the catfight to end and rushes them with guns, saving weir and mkay and wounding MSN in the shoulder. oh and it turns out mkay was lying and they can put the shields up now only they have to wait for teylaa and sora to have their knife fight so they get out of the corridors. sora’s about as good at ninja shank as she is at ninja sticks and because teylaa spares her life they grab carson and get to safety. a FUCKOFF TSUNAMI arrives but fortunately the get enough FUCKOFF LIGHTNING to run the shield and the day is saved. we close on weir, shep and mkay discussing what they’re going to do with sora. weir suggests trading her to the genii for a nuke in the season finale but the think better of it and allow her to go off and play Taser tag with dreamworld ford where she’ll be no furling at all.

Final Thoughts:

i gloss over it in the summary but Rodney Mckay, the guy who’s afraid of fighting and lemons stood in front of a gun to protect weir. that must have taken a lot of balls or a lot of bloodloss but kudos on how far he as a character and his friendship with weir have advanced in this series so far. good job writers.

And good job actors, Tori higgson (weir) and David Hewlett (mckay) do a stellar job of being hostages really angry at their captors. as before.

Sora (erin chambers) is yet again a great character, not falling to the “emotions are weak” school of “strong independent woman” and being understandably distraught over her father’s death a few episodes on. it’s a pity they didn’t bring her back because so far i care more about her than teyla.

subject of which: teyla: still very little character and her face acting in this two parter was akin to doing a cat impression. really dropped the ball there guys.

and also shep, apart from a little hammy yelling at the start he didn’t really seem that bothered about weir’s apparent death beyond killing all those guys. really

this episode was awesome, it drew from pre-established continuity for it’s enemies, it is tense, features high stakes and even manages to go by without our heroes picking up any idiot balls. sure not everyone is clever, F-ing Master Stick Ninja doesn’t tell sora why she has to get out of the corridors, if mkay and weir hadn’t faked the genii out about the lightning not working the best character in the show so far would have been fried! what were you thinking man?