Intro:
Stargate Atlantis, the fairly successful spin off of Stargate SG-1, begins it’s third year on DVD with this first volume, which contains the first four episodes and a handful of extras to tide you over until the next release.
The series follows the exploits of the Atlantis Expedition, sent to investigate an ancient city in the Pegasus galaxy, their battle against the alien Wraith and their struggle to survive in a distant galaxy.
Episodes:
3.1: No Man’s Land
‘No Man’s Land’ carries on from ‘Allies’, where the Wraith have betrayed Atlantis and are headed for Earth in search of a new feeding ground. Ronan and Rodney find themselves trapped within one of the hive ships as the Daedalus tries to slow down or stop the Wraith hive ships after they have left Atlantis.
The episode revolves around three main plotlines; with the main plotline being stopping the Wraith hive ships, with two ‘buddy’ subplots with Ronan and Rodney and Sheppard and Michael, and Weir’s review with the IOA. These plots merge together as the main story progresses, culminating in a big showdown as they find the two hive ships between galaxies.
The main appeal of this episode is the interplay between the characters, in the subplots, with the pairings of very different character types in each, with the actors playing well off each other. Notable scenes of this are Ronan and Rodney when they are trapped in the pods, with Ronan’s gritty pragmatism paired off against Rodney’s sarcastic pessimism. You also have Weir getting a rare moment to shine as she faces off against the IOA over her leadership of the expedition, where she shows she has some bite when she refuses to back down.
The CGI in this episode also deserves a mention, as it seems they are finally making full use of their budget with some great effects work, particularly the opening space battle sequence, with the various camera set ups and action set pieces within the battle.
3.2: Misbegotten
‘Misbegotten’ carries on from the conclusion of ‘No Man’s Land’ where the Atlantis team find themselves with a hive ship and a couple hundred converted Wraith. Setting up a base camp for them on an isolated world while they try to figure out what to do with them, as the retrovirus is the only thing stopping them from remembering their true nature.
There are really only two plotlines in this episode, Atlantis’s side and questioning their decisions about the Wraith camp and the other being the Wraith who begin to remember, lead by Michael.
The episode itself was mostly a rehash of ‘Michael’, with the Wraith retrovirus making them human and forgetting. Though the ethics of the whole situation are briefly mentioned they aren’t fully used, as it would have lead to a much more interesting storyline as nothing else of any real significance really happens. The acting in the episode is fairly good even if they don’t really have much to do, though Connor Trinneer as Michael was a worthy highlight as he begins to revert later on in the episode and remembers that he had been betrayed twice.
3.3: Irresistible
When the team arrive at a new planet they find a town that seem to be completely devoted to Lucius Lavin, a somewhat grating individual who they seem to like for no apparent reason. However it seems that as time goes on other people from the expedition begin to feel the same way towards Lucius and it is left up to Sheppard and Mckay to find out why.
This is one of those episodes that most people will probably love or hate, due to it trying to be a fun episode. You have Richard Kind, who plays an essentially more grating character than he used for Paul in Spin city, which is what will define how you react to the episode as he has the most screen time apart from Sheppard. There were a few funny moments, such as when Sheppard kidnaps Carson in order to create a cure, however the humour isn’t consistent throughout the episode and as such the episode as a whole kind of falls flat.
3.4: Sateda
While exploring the team come across a small village, where Ronan is recognized as having been there before. The villagers capture and later release them, but keep Ronan as a peace offering as part of a deal with the Wraith. However things don’t go as planned and Ronan is once again captured by the Wraith and made into a Runner.
This episode features the expected two-sided plot, with Ronan trying to survive against the Wraith, while the team try to find him and rescue him before they run out of time.
This is definitely one of the better episodes of the season, with great action sequences, ignoring a couple of somewhat cheesy moments, such as Ronan throwing a grenade over his shoulder to blow up an enemy. You finally have an episode that explores Ronan’s past, interspersed throughout the episode as he wanders around the ruins of his home world and well-choreographed fight and slow motion sequences. The team’s part in this episode isn’t particularly noticeably and is somewhat formulaic apart from some light humour moments provided by Mckay.
Disk Review:
The episodes overall aren’t bad, with a couple of good episodes offset by a couple of not so good ones. The episodes that failed were mainly down to their failure to make full use of the options available to their storyline, such as the implications of what was being done in ‘Misbegotten’, which could have created a darker , more human story.
The film quality of the transfer is fairly good, considering it is a transfer from Hi-Def to DVD, although while the quality is quite high on detail shots there is a noticeable shimmer at times on out of focus areas and backgrounds. The sound is also comparably high and clear, though there are only a handful of occasions on this disk that will get the best use of a surround system, mostly the battle sequences and parts of ‘Sateda’.
Extras:
This disk has the usual light extras that have become the standard for these volume releases, with a director featurette, a single unique featurette, commentaries and a production photo gallery.
The director featurettes for Atlantis are labelled as Mission Directives, with this one focusing on the episode ‘Sateda’ with director Robert C. Cooper. The featurette covers the usual parts of filming the episode, with a large segment talking about the stuntmen and Jason Mamoa during filming.
The second featurette explores the Visual FX team behind Atlantis, which involves various commentaries by crew on how the process works, how they work through their parts in the overall process and how the scenes in each episode come together.
The commentaries are your usual collection of a few cast and crew and discuss each part of the episode in question with the odd sidetrack. This is probably more of interest for those who are after a little bit more information about what goes on in each episode.
Overall:
This isn’t a bad set of episodes, but could be better considering the price tag. If you are after specific episodes or are intent on getting the volume releases then you should pick this up for ‘No Man’s Land’ and ‘Sateda’, however the rest may hold off for the inevitable box set release.