Stargate Atlantis

About the series

Contains story spoilers.

Stargate Atlantis takes the doorway-to-another-world idea of Stargate SG-1 and moves the expedition to the Pegasus galaxy. Its central group is a mixture of soldiers, scientists and people whose homes are already threatened by the Wraith. Joe Flanigan plays John Sheppard, Torri Higginson plays expedition leader Elizabeth Weir, and David Hewlett returns as Rodney McKay, a scientist carried over from SG-1. Rachel Luttrell’s Teyla Emmagan provides a connection to Pegasus itself, while Rainbow Sun Francks plays Aiden Ford. Jason Momoa joins as Ronon Dex from the second season. The series ran from 2004 to 2009, and its changing leadership eventually includes Samantha Carter and Richard Woolsey. That mixture gives the mission several competing responsibilities: exploration, survival and obligations to the people it encounters.

The opening expedition finds Atlantis submerged beneath an ocean, with the city’s protective shield running out of power. An off-world search for help brings Sheppard and his colleagues to Athos, where Teyla’s people live under the threat of being harvested by the Wraith. An attack takes villagers and Colonel Sumner prisoner. Back at Atlantis, the expected catastrophe becomes a surprise when the city rises to the surface instead of flooding. Sheppard then pilots a Puddle Jumper on a rescue mission, but finds Sumner being fed upon by a Wraith Keeper and shoots him to end his suffering. Killing the Keeper has another consequence: the Wraith awaken from hibernation. The survivors escape, and the Athosians become allies, but the expedition has made an enormous enemy before it has properly established its new home.

The city is vulnerable to human enemies as well. During the storm crisis, Kolya’s Genii forces hold Weir and McKay while Sheppard fights back elsewhere in Atlantis. In “The Eye,” Kolya keeps his captives alive because they are needed to repair a damaged grounding station. Their attempts to delay the work become part of the resistance, while Ford, Carson Beckett and Teyla return through the storm in a Puddle Jumper. Sheppard turns the gate shield against arriving reinforcements, killing a number of Kolya’s men. Sora’s position complicates the invading force: she wants revenge against Teyla for her father’s death, yet begins to question the mission’s growing cost. The same city technology that requires scientific expertise to maintain can become a weapon in a struggle over who controls it.

The Wraith siege makes that struggle much larger. An Ancient defence satellite destroys one approaching hive ship, but overloads before it can fire again; the remaining ships destroy it, killing Peter Grodin. Sheppard subsequently takes a nuclear weapon toward a hive in a Puddle Jumper, expecting a suicide mission. The arrival of Daedalus changes that outcome, allowing his rescue through Asgard teleportation and bringing a Zero Point Module to Atlantis. It is not a clean victory. Ford’s exposure to a Wraith enzyme leaves him paranoid, and he escapes through the Stargate. More hive ships arrive, and their countermeasures prevent a simple repeat of the teleportation tactic. The expedition survives by detonating a weapon above Atlantis and cloaking the city, convincing the attackers that their target has destroyed itself.

Ownership of Atlantis becomes an awkward question in “The Return.” During a test of the intergalactic bridge, Daedalus encounters an Ancient warship carrying almost a hundred surviving Ancients. Once rescued, they order the Earth expedition to leave the city. The humans’ attachment to Atlantis does not override the returning inhabitants’ claim, so the team has to abandon the place it has defended. That arrangement collapses when Asurans seize Atlantis and kill the Ancients. O’Neill and Woolsey are caught in the takeover, and Weir’s group disobeys orders to return to Pegasus. Reunited with Teyla and Ronon, they reclaim the city before Daedalus arrives to destroy it with nuclear weapons. Their return is therefore also a rescue of Atlantis itself from Earth’s proposed answer to the occupation.

By the fifth season, Pegasus communities also challenge the expedition’s record. “Inquisition” puts the team before a tribunal organised by the Coalition, a group of human civilisations. Their discoveries and interventions are not treated as automatically beneficial by people living with the consequences. One Latiran representative blames them for the Asurans’ destruction of his homeworld, while another judge is working with the Genii. Woolsey’s defence has to address that political imbalance. He persuades an unbiased judge that the team is innocent and argues to the Genii-aligned judge that Atlantis would be more useful as the Coalition’s military strength. The resulting not-guilty verdict combines a defence of the team with negotiation over its future role.

The final episode brings the danger to Earth. A Wraith hive enhanced by a Zero Point Module learns Earth’s location from a transmission originating in an alternate reality. Earth’s defending ships cannot stop it, and attacking darts destroy the Ancient control chair at Area 51. Sheppard prepares to detonate a nuclear weapon inside the hive. Meanwhile, Beckett flies Atlantis toward Earth, and Zelenka’s wormhole drive gets the city there after its stardrive fails. Teyla, Ronon, McKay and Lorne enter the hive through its Stargate; Ronon is killed, then revived by the Wraith and rescued. The team stops Sheppard’s immediate detonation, escapes and destroys the hive remotely. Atlantis survives its descent into the atmosphere and lands in the Pacific, eventually moving under cloak near San Francisco. The city that began as an isolated outpost ends within sight of the Golden Gate Bridge.