Stargate Atlantis (season 1)
{3.5/5} “You’re right. If only we had a magical tool that could slow down time. I foolishly left mine on Earth — did you bring yours?”
Stargate Atlantis season 1, aired in 2004-05
I watched all of Stargate SG-1 last year so I thought I’d check out the rest of the Stargate franchise before moving on to something else.
In the Stargate universe Atlantis is a city on a planet in a galaxy far from Earth. The people who originally lived there are the Ancients. Humans from Earth went there to explore and to see if they could find anything that would help defend them against their enemies. When they got there they found themselves a new enemy. The Wraith are creatures who feed on humans — there are a lot of them, and they are very powerful.
The beginning of Stargate Atlantis is a bit ho hum, but so was the beginning of Stargate SG-1. Since SG-1 jumped in quality somewhere in the second half of its first season, I was willing to give Atlantis the opportunity to do the same. Which it did. One of the main reasons I enjoyed SG-1 was because of the humour of Richard Dean Anderson’s character Jack O’Neill. On Atlantis John Sheppard is certainly amusing at times, but he’s no Jack O’Neill.
Joe Flanigan (Thoughtcrimes) plays Major John Sheppard, Rachel Luttrell (the TV show Street Legal) plays Teyla Emmagan, David Hewlitt (Cube) plays Dr. Rodney McKay, and Rainbow Sun Francks (the TV show The Listener) plays Lt. Aiden Ford. They form the main team that goes off exploring. Torri Higginson (Smile of April) plays Elizabeth Weir, who stays at Atlantis running things. We were introduced to McKay and Weir in Stargate SG-1.
One of my favourite episodes of this season is “Home.” The Atlantis team has been stranded — they haven’t had enough power to get back home. In this episode they discover a way they can go home. But when they get there they discover something just isn’t right. My other favourite is “Before I Sleep.” They find an old woman in suspended animation in an unexplored area of Atlantis. They wake her up and discover that she’s Elizabeth Weir — who time travelled 10 000 years into the past and has been sleeping all this time. The season ends with a couple of exciting episodes and a cliffhanger.
The fabulous theme music was written by Joel Goldsmith. Among other things he composed some music for Star Trek: First Contact — most of the music for that movie was written by his father, Jerry.
Brad Wright co-created Stargate SG-1. Wright and Robert C. Cooper created Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe.