on with the series! finally!
this indeterminate period of time’s episode is called hide and seek. now all the way back at the start of sg-1 right after it’s 2 part/tv movie pilot for some reason, from what i remember it was because they didn’t prepare anything until they knew the series was going to be broadcast and needed to make something using existing sets so the prop department could prepare for the mongol-feminist episode 3 they were planning or something, called the enemy within in which kawalsky from the movie got goa’ulded and then split in two by a transporter. then the “evil” one of sexually assaulted yeo… wrong enemy within. TL;DR: kawalsky’s actor wanted out despite only being in one episode (and not even the movie, they swapped all the actors). this episode is, like that, a bottle episode set on the base sets only this time it’s a horror movie.
sure is a good thing LT blackguy’s only a few days from retirement, oh and have you seen this photo of his niece and nephew, i hear he’s gonna visit them when he gets back. oh and did i mention he’s a black guy in a horror movie?
Summary:
the episode starts with McKay and Beckett being the comedy duo i hoped they would. there is some clunky expository dialog for anyone who skipped the pilot and then beckett gives McKay instant gene therapy (just add water) so that he can now use ancient doohickeys, and rodney goes of to try out a personal shield broach thing. then weir and… uh… chakotay i guess are talking about something to do with the space refugees, they discover rodney who is now invincible asking people to kick him off balconies and stuff to fool them into thinking he’s cool. unfortunately he can’t turn the shield broach off and now he can’t eat or drink. he takes this in stride by spending the rest of the episode making sarcastic remarks about how he’s gonna die of dehydration (or eventually be unable to hold his excrements in any longer, whichever comes first). meanwhile weir doesn’t trust teyla and the space farmers because she suspects one of them tipped off the wraith, chakotay sets up a nuke but doesn’t tell teyla about it and shepard is telling space kids about jason voorhees and this earth thing called “hockey”. by the way did you remember from last time where the guys were superstitious of an ancient city? good going shep, now they all think Atlantis is full of ghosts. one of the kids goes missing playing shepard vs space vampires and shepard and space dad go out to search for him because the sensors in atlantis can’t pick out individual life signs and… HE’S SUCH A LOOSE CANNON!, GOING OUT THERE SAVING LITTLE CHILDREN!! this next part they don’t actually have in the episode but seeing that they can track individuals and space wedgies later i can only assume weir told chakotay how stupid that was and got him to fish out some asgard ones out of a crate or something. then the stargate has a premature activation and everyone retreats back to atlantis tower to see what the hell that was about. one of the space kids thinks that she saw a wraith hologram and consoler teyla can’t sense any wraith and we all know how reliable she’s been in the past, but no shep discovers instead that an energy eating shadow is going around. that’s right, the darkness is attacking them. the darkness starts a’tappping their generators so they shut them off and lead it round in a loop for ages but the darkness apparently has the power over doors and goes a’trapping blackguy and… sgt steakhouse (apparently) in a corridor. popcorn time kids! they manage to hot wire a space door just in time but lt blackguy attacked by the energy draining darkness… and it burns him, well that doesn’t seem like energy draining to me, and he survives… Damn it, is this not a horror episode?
meanwhile shep and dead man snarking hear the little kid over the PA, it turns out he went into a storage closet, look i don’t usually use the term but think of the jokes i can make now, and it was actually a teleporter that took him to some lab full of do not touch signs. so in SG-1 the teleporters are these cool ring thingies that flew up when in use and in Atlantis the teleporters could easily be mistaken for a unfurnished toilet? well this series sucks subscribed. turns out the kid did touch something, a reused prop from the other show, and that was what was trapping the darkness. then someone tells the kid that it wasn’t his fault like how the wraith attacking in the pilot wasn’t the Atlantis expedition’s fault… BULLTRIPE!! the wraith attack last episode was a freak dramatic convenience, they had nothing to do with it. this kid THIS DAMN KID HAS UNLEASHED AN INVISIBLE KATAMARI OF DOOM AND ENERGY SUCKING ON THE WHOLE TEAM. worst part is that he tries to apologise for it before that. STUPID, STUPID & STUPID! the kid fucked up big time and to tell him that his big mistake of messing with shit he was told not to mess with and possibly killed everyone wasn’t his fault? that is bad… well they weren’t his parents… bad stupid, that’s what it is. can we have something less stupid now?
teyla calms all the space kids by telling them the energy eating monster is afraid of fire and lighting candles.
THIS THING CAN SENSE ENERGY FROM A CITY BLOCK AWAY AND GOES AROUND SAPPING IT, DO YOU REALLY THINK PUTTING FUCKING CANDLES NEAR YOUR KIDS WILL PROTECT THEM FROM THAT? DO YOU!?
sorry, it’s just stupid that’s all. they want to seal the darkness back in it’s can, they ask the Rodney to do it because… well he’s invulnerable. fortunately for him though the shield turns out to be controlled subconsciously, figures that he’s more in harms way with it one and cuts out. so who do they fall back on? 80s action movie star John Shepard. they turn off all the power and attract the darkness to the can, the darkness doesn’t fall for that and everyone goes back and camps in the tower for the night. in the morning they turn the power on to check if it’s still there but it turns out the energy eating monster that can sense energy from a city block away can sense energy and beelines for em. in the vain hope that they can get rid of it they stick one of their indispensable valuable limited supply of portable naquada generators on one of their indispensable valuable limited supply of MALPs and try to lead the darkness through the stargate to some uninhabited barren moon they discovered off camera at some point between the pilot and now, unfortunately the darkness has grown and manages to a’sap the MALP’s double As before it gets though. then the B and A plot combine: Rodney sneaks off with the shield broach, activates it and wades into the darkness to throw the generator through the gate in a big damn cowardly heroes moment! Wahoo! yeah, darkness defeated! you see all they had to do was cast Naquada missile.
Characters:
this episode featured a lot of rodney snarking about his apparent inevitable demise, i know from personal experience that constant snarking can rub some people the wrong way but i liked it. i also liked that like rattrap before him they’ve decided to go down the cowardly hero route for him, which is one of my favourite types of hero because as a coward who is, despite my best efforts, benign i can instantly relate to that. i’m a bit disappointed that him having to rely on others for ATA stuff wasn’t a character arc but i guess they can’t do everything, and it’s early days so everything’s more episodic anyway as per the good-comedy-drama-show formula.
this episode also features that guy i called chakotay, i have no idea where he came from but i’m gonna be honest i don’t care because apparently he dies at the end of season 1 without becoming a main character.
oh and also teyla is an idiot who couldn’t even sense a giant space squid in pain if it were right underneath her and magicking up a whole orchard painted purple with yellow polka dots.
“it’s Rodney the human nerd and he’s carrying a 12 pack of naquada generators!” “seriously, Rodney’s carrying naquada generators too?” “if i roll a 10 or above then yes: 11!”