...and now, the conclusion.
The hive ship queen is about to get down to the serious business of sucking the life out of Sheppard for information, when suddenly a second hive ship drops out of hyperspace. The queen stops in disgust and the guards drag Sheppard back to his cell. With the use of many concealed knives, Ronon eventually manages to trigger the door opening mechanism, an the five of them (Sheppard, Teyla, Ronon, Ford, and Ford's last remaining follower Kanayo) are able to escape. As they go, Ford injects himself with the last of the enzyme.
They get sidetracked by a call for help. Some of the cocooned humans, far from being too far gone to bother with, are in fact awake and lucid. Against Ford's urgings, Sheppard stops to free them. It turns out that they are two very pretty and very grateful girls. Unfortunately, all the racket brings the Wraith running, and they are captured and thrown into cells again — this time with Sheppard, Ford, and the girl Neera in one and Teyla, Ronon, and Kanayo in a separate cell.
Meanwhile, back on Ford's planet, McKay is getting ever more antsy over how late Sheppard and the others are in reporting in. He tries, unsuccessfully, to convince the two guys guarding him to give him the dialing crystals so he can get backup from Atlantis. When even begging won't work, he decides to take matters into his own hands. He sneaks into the back room and injects himself with a super dose of the enzyme...and then proceeds to beat the two guards into a bloody pulp. As the mental effects of the drug set in, he has just enough wherewithal remaining to retrieve the crystals and escape through the gate.
Once he gets to the other side, he's completly incoherent, but exceptionally pleased with himself. Weir tries to get information about the rest of the team out of him, but he finally passes out from his overdose and has to be rushed to the infirmary. Without a supply of the Wraith enzyme, Beckett can't wean McKay off of it gently, and it takes all of his efforts to prevent the withdrawals from being fatal.
The folks on the hive ship, however, aren't nearly so fortunate. Teyla and Ronon are starting to experience violent withdrawals themselves, and are understandably freaked out when Kanayo, who has been on the drug much longer, suddenly drops dead. The Wraith remove his body, and likewise Ford's when he starts exhibiting violent withdrawals as well a little while later. Neera explains that they are most likely going to cocoon him to keep him alive. She cuddles up to Sheppard and proceeds to pump him for information about his world, but he restricts himself to a fairly accurate description of British Columbia and an explanation of his coulrophobia.
Rightly so, for when the Wraith queen summons Sheppard again, she reveals that Neera serves and worships the Wraith. She questions Sheppard about the dart, and he tells her that he was hired by a rival queen to assassinate her. Which queen? Well, the one who just dropped out of hyperspace right next to her. While she screams in rage, Ford turns up, glowing with a new dose of enzyme, and rescues him. Sheppard steals a dart while Ford stays behind to hold off the Wraith, then vacuums up Ronon and Teyla and joins the darts leaving the hive ship to begin the culling.
By this time, McKay has regained his capacities enough to tell everyone where the rest of the team is, and he and the Daedalus come screaming to the rescue. The Wraith are able to jam their transporters so that they can neither transport Sheppard and his team out nor beam a nuke in. They are happily surprised, therefore, when the two Wraith ships start firing on each other. The cause is a single dart attacking one of the hive ships — Sheppard, stirring up trouble. The ships annihilate each other (and all the surrounding darts) and everyone goes home happy.
Tropes:
- Back-to-Back Badasses: Ford and Ronon, briefly.
- The Determinator: Beckett surmises that the only reason McKay was able to survive such a high dose of the enzyme was his natural stubbornness.
- Drunk on the Dark Side: McKay confirms that being under influence of the Wraith enzyme acts like this, making the person affected believe that they are being completely rational while everyone else is acting crazy.
- Extended Disarming: Ronon removes a succession of knives from about his person while the team is trying to escape the Wraith holding cell.
- The Farmer and the Viper: Rescuing people from hive ships seems to be just universally a bad idea.
- Going Cold Turkey: Everyone who's been given the Wraith Enzyme (except Ford) sooner or later, with varying results. Played straightest with McKay. Ford mentions having undergone this at least once before, before he found more enzyme.
- Gut Feeling: Type 3. Sheppard is convinced at the end of the episode that Ford is still alive. The fact that we never see him again seems to indicate that he's wrong about this, though a novel set after season 5 (The Third Path) brought him back to finish off his story.
- Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Played for levity after Carson surmises Rodney survived the enzyme due to his natural stubbornness. Weir and Beckett reflect on that for a moment...and then both quickly (and with wry amusement) agree never to tell Rodney this (as it would only be fuel for his ego).
- Motor Mouth: McKay, after returning to Atlantis with a huge dose of Wraith enzyme in his system.
- Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: See page quote. Well, more like a Post-Asskicking One-Liner, since he says it after he's kicked their asses.
- Shout-Out: Beckett, after treating McKayBeckett: I feel not unlike the priest in The Exorcist.
- Stealth Pun:Sheppard: Oh yeah, the clowns. We fight them too. Entire armies spilling out of Volkswagens. We do our best to fight them off, but they keep sending them in.
- Stimulant Speedtalk: Rodney gives himself an injection of Wraith enzyme to overcome the guards keeping him from reaching the Stargate, and he manages to get back to Atlantis just as the mental symptoms really take hold... and unlike Ford, the other major enzyme user encountered, the mental symptoms feature Rodney babbling like a cocaine addict and being unable to focus on anything other than the two guards he beat up.
- Unstoppable Rage: McKay, although it's drug-induced.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Neera is a Wraith-worshipper trying to get information out of Sheppard by posing as a frightened prisoner sharing his cell. Sheppard doesn't buy it, and informs the Wraith Queen of this.
