Weir: Well, turtles are pretty hardy. I'm sure they'll be fine.
Sheppard: And they make good soup.
The Daedalus heads out to the literal middle of nowhere between the Milky Way and Pagasus galaxies for the first test of the completed McKay–Carter Intergalactic Gate Bridge. Halfway through the tests, however, McKay gets distracted by strange proximity readings. It's an Aurora-class Ancient warship travelling at just under the speed of light — and due to the magic of relativity, it is chock full of living, breathing Ancients, only a few years out of Atlantis.
The Ancients are overjoyed to find their city intact, and return immediately to Atlantis. The first thing they do, of course, is to throw out the Earth expedition. Everyone packs up and leaves — except Richard Woolsey of all people, who the Ancients keep on as a liaison. O'Neill can stay too. Sheppard joins SG-4, McKay gets shipped off to Area 51, Beckett… does doctory things…, and Weir stares at the wall. And everyone is miserable, except possibly Beckett, who buys himself some wee baby turtles.
Out at dinner, trying to be a bit less miserable, they get a sudden call from General Landry. (Except for Beckett, who is singularly unloved in this episode). Atlantis is under attack from the Asurans. Not to worry, though, since it's written into their base codes that they can't harm the Ancients. Just take a jumper up and show them the new occupants and — KABOOM! Hmm… maybe they changed that after someone rewrote part of their base codes.
General Landry organizes an immediate rescue mission tells them all to go home (especially Beckett, who wasn't even invited), in order to obey General O'Neill's standing orders to nuke the city. Ever dutiful, the team decides to steal the jumper the SGC happens to have at the moment and head back to save the city on their own. Weir distracts Dr. Lee with her ignorance of World of Warcraft, and they escape via the McKay-Carter Intergalactic Space Bridge. Stopping briefly to rescue Ronon and Teyla from their new life of soup making, they head off to save Atlantis!
...to be continued.
Tropes:
- AI Is A Crap Shoot: It turns out McKay's attempt to rewrite Niam's base code in Progeny had some unintended consequences.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Brought up by Rodney when discussing the Ancient ship travelling at 0.999c (using a ZPM on their sublight engines to accelerate that fast - the ship's hyperdrive was broken and they were unable to repair it with what they had on board the ship - also staying where they were would've meant certain death). He said that while it was a very impressive achievement, it wasn't very useful, as in 10,000 years they had barely covered a tiny fraction of the distance between Pegasus and Milky Way (though from the perspective of the Ancients on board it had only been a few years due to relativity).
- Back for the Dead: A crew of unascended Ancients, who only show up for a few scenes before being Killed Offscreen by the end of the third act.
- Butt-Monkey: Two SGC personnel get stunned when the Atlantis crew make their break out: a nameless Air Force SF and Sergeant Siler… as usual.
- Broken Pedestal: Teyla and the Athosians have been praying that the Ancients would return and save the Pegasus galaxy for much of their recorded history, only to be booted off the planet and basically ignored by them. The Atlantis Expedition feels the same way. Not to mention, any hope that the Ancients would be able to stop the Wraith or Replicators is dashed when they are quickly and easily killed off by the Asurans.
- Character Overlap: As part of the SGC's support staff, Sergent Siler finally crosses over to the spinoff. This is thus not only Siler's only appearance on Atlantis, but also his only appearance outside of SG-1.
- Continuity Overlap: This episode is running parallel to mid-Season 10 of SG-1. So, the Ori Crusade is now in full swing over in the parent show and acknowledged in dialogue (when a post-Atlantis Sheppard is leading an SG team). This is also the first explicit mention of the Ori on Atlantis.
- Crossover: Much of the episode takes place on Earth and at the SGC. Generals O'Neill and Landry and Richard Woolsey are all major characters, with Dr. Lee and Sgt. Siler appearing as well.
- Kick the Dog: While making the Tau'ri return to Earth is a Jerkass move on the Ancients' part, it is somewhat understandable that they would want their home city to themselves. Throwing the Athosians off the mainland and forcing them to move to another planet is just petty and has no justification whatsoever.
- Killed Offscreen: Helia and her crew of Ancients.
- Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Beckett mentions at one point that his relationship with Lt. Cadman was strained by the fact that their first kiss was through McKay. And the
Ho Yay goes through the roof.McKay: I thought we promised never to mention that again.
Beckett: I didn't. - Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: It's probably all McKay's fault. As usual.
- Nuke 'em: Apparently these are General O'Neill's standing orders. Wow. Justified however, as he's had enough experience with the Milky Way Replicators to know that this is an appropriate amount of firepower to throw at them. Furthermore, the EMP from a nuclear blast has been proven to knock them out before.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: The IOA, as usual. When the time comes to select a 'liaison' to remain in Atlantis with the Ancients, instead of sending any of the Atlantis scientists who are familiar with the city, they send their stooge Woolsey, whom even the Ancients can't stand. Justified by the fact that the Ancients specifically requested that Weir NOT take the role.
- Redshirt Army: The Ancients certainly don't last long after retaking the city. Particularly since it seems that the Asuran takeover of Atlantis took less than a day. Compare this to the similar circumstance encountered in "The Siege", where the Atlantis team held out against multiple Wraith ships, for twice as long and with far fewer resources and less knowledge to work with. Can be justified in that: the Ancients expected the Asurans to back down upon realizing Ancients inhabited the city (not knowing the Asurans reprogrammed themselves so they can harm Ancients); the fact that the Asurans were much more advanced than the Wraith; and that the Asurans knew the design of the city, including the proper areas to strike for maximum effect.
- Required Spinoff Crossover: After the Spinoff Sendoff in the Pilot (and his role in locating the Lost City), Jack O'Neill finally gets to go to Atlantis.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Team Atlantis plus Weir and Beckett refuse to stand by and let Atlantis be nuked, so they commandeer a Puddle Jumper, travel back to Pegasus, and recruit Teyla and Ronon to retake the city.
- Screw You, Elves!: Woolsey of all people delivers one to the Ancients. When they dismiss the suggestion of humanity remaining in Atlantis by pointing out that they accidentally awoke the Wraith, he politely counters that Ancients accidentally created them in the first place. The Ancients have no reply.
- Smug Super: The Ancients' arrogance that the Replicators can't attack them ends up being what leads to their demise, not that they could have predicted McKay's meddling would allow the Asurans to override that particular safety protocol.
- Time Dilation: The Ancients aboard the Tria are still alive because they've been travelling at near lightspeed for over 10,000 years, but it's only been a few years from their perspective.
- Ungrateful Bastard: The Ancients. Lampshaded by Sheppard, who remarks that to them it's like coming home and finding someone else is sitting on their couch. Though he still thinks that they should probably have left them in the intergalactic void.
