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Recap / Stargate Atlantis S03 E09 "Phantoms"

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I'm sorry for shooting everybody.
Sheppard

Tropes

  • Apocalyptic Log: Largent's camcorder.
  • Brown Note: The Wraith device generates a ULF signal that cause everyone to experience full sensory hallucinations. The one exception is Teyla, whose Wraith DNA makes her immune to its effects.
  • Continuity Nod: One of the hallucinating soldiers tries to contact the Prometheus, which McKay says was destroyed a year ago.
  • Dead All Along: Sergeant Barosso.
  • Driven to Suicide: Major Leonard kills himself with a grenade when he thinks he's been cornered by Kull Warriors.
  • Failure Is the Only Option: Weir deploys the UAV. It gets shot down. This is because no UAV in the history of the franchise has failed to crash in some way or another.
  • Finger-Twitching Revival.
  • Gone Horribly Wrong: The Wraith device was supposed to amplify their telepathic abilities. Instead, it caused the humans exposed to it to lose their minds.
  • Gory Discretion Shot: We only see Sheppard's reaction to Major Leonard blowing himself up.
  • My Greatest Failure: Sheppard's failure to save his friend, Captain Holland in Afghanistan.
  • Mythology Gag: Leonard's hallucinations take the form of Kull Warriors from SG-1. This also makes this hallucination the only appearance of the Kulls outside of SG-1.
  • Noodle Incident: Leonard's previous encounter with Kull Warriors prior to begin assigned to Pegasus.
  • No One Gets Left Behind: complicated.
  • Only Sane Man: Teyla, quite literally thanks to her Wraith telepathic abilities.
  • Readings Are Off the Scale: The device makes Rodney believe it is about to go critical, when he was actually close to turning it off.
  • Resolved Noodle Incident: Sheppard's hallucination finally explores more details about the long-established black mark in Afghanistan that got him dumped in Antarctica prior to "Rising".
  • Rule of Three: "[Sheppard] shot me!"
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story: Sheppard admits to Teyla that, despite going AWOL on an unauthorized rescue mission in Taliban-occupied territory, his friend Holland ended up dying regardless.
  • Through the Eyes of Madness: Most of the episode.
  • Unfriendly Fire: Leonard murders his team under the effects of the device, then fires on the team sent to rescue him. Leonard, Ronon, and Sheppard all end up exchanging fire with each other, thinking they are enemies.
  • Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: The Genii tried this on the Wraith device, which only made it worse.
  • Worst Aid: The device interferes with Beckett's treatment of Kagan and Barosso.

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