Ahhhh…

The reason I like the Stargate series so much, is that it has that perfect balance between hard scifi, and the kind where in the script is just says “put technobabble here.” So it’s partway between Star Trek and Firefly, and still has the guts to occasionally make fun of itself. Stargate is my personal favorite of the “Star” franchises (including Trek and Wars), seeing as the first series made of it lasted for a total of 143 hours worth of time, not counting commercials. That’s more than twice as long as the original Star Trek series, and while the franchise has had a rough spot (Stargate: infinity *gag*), so have others (Star Wars Christmas special, and DS9)

More to the point however, Stargate Atlantis (for those who don’t know, it’s a spinoff of the TV series Stargate SG-1, which in turn is spun off from the 1994 film Stargate. See their Wikipedia page for more details), having just made it to it’s 4^th season, embodies the best parts of that balance in this episode. They manage to convey a sense of desperation, a sort of fix one thing and another one breaks panic. Between the shield failing, passing through an asteroid belt, weir going part replicator, fixing the hyperdrive, and conserving power, they have to rest their last little ray of hope on an experimental hyperdrive-powered jumper, followed by stealing a power source from the enemy, and getting out alive. All within 30 hours, which is when the shield will fail completely leaving them pretty well screwed.

Or they could, y’know, use the experimental jumper to get to a planet with a gate, use that to contact midway station or the Daedalus, to get the Daedalus’s ZPM, use the jumper to get back to Atlantis and hyperdrive to the rendezvous piont, at which time they will return the ZPM.

But that’s just crazy talk.

Gods I love this show.