2x05 Condemned
The Unofficial Snark Association of North America would like to warn you that the following recap has been rated Parents Strongly Cautioned. Those with reservations about sex, profanity, and gratuitous pants references may wish to accompany children under the age of 14.
We open mid-action to some very dramatic music and a puddle-jumper zooming out of the Stargate onto the Planet of the Week. Inside the puddle-jumper we have our New Exciting Season Two Team!, with Sheppard driving, Teyla riding shotgun, and McKay and Ronon in the backseat. I'd personally love to see this team go on some very long puddle-jumper rides together, because I imagine McKay would probably end up drawing a line down the middle of the jumper and throw a fit if Ronon moved a finger across the line to his side, and Teyla would have to get all maternal on everyone and threaten to make Shep Turn This Puddle-Jumper Around Right Now If You Don't Stop Fussing, And Just Try Me If You Think I'm Kidding. No, really, I feel bad for Teyla. She's surrounded by very attractive and overall well-meaning men, but sometimes she really must feel like she's herding cats. [Pooh: "Wait... do you have Shep and Teyla set up as the daddy and mommy in this puddle-jumper road trip scenario?" Little Red: "Don't worry, Teyla's just the babysitter."]
Anyway, back in the actual show, Teyla and Ronon both claim they've never been to this particular planet. "There's no sign of any settlements, at least nothing recent," exposits McKay, though that seems awfully unscientific to declare after 15 seconds of aerial survey, so I assume he's referring to earlier MALP readings. The thing about all these establishing exposition bits in the teasers is that they make it seem like Shep just wasn't paying attention in the mission briefing. Too busy staring at Lizzie? Unclear, but logical. Anyway, Ronon one-ups McKay's exposition by pointing out the front window, all "except for that totally obvious billow of smoke from an uncontrolled campfire at twelve o'clock." McKay's all "er, yes, I was getting to that." Teyla turns around to give Ronon an adorably proud, indulgent look, and he grins at her all, "Go Team Pegasus!" and waggles his eyebrows, and I start shrieking because we're less than a minute into the episode and they are SO TOTALLY HAVING SEX! Shep takes them in for a landing, and the jumper flies through some stock footage of a lake or marshland or something borrowed from a first-season episode (it's either "Childhood's End" or "Sanctuary", but I'm not going to check for sure. Yes, I'm a bad recapper, but I will require a bit more alcohol before sitting through "Sanctuary" again, thank you very much).
Team Atlantis: World Police wander through a really grungy settlement with a bunch of rusty junk and collapsing shacks, sort of a cross between every post-apocalyptic movie you've ever seen and my local trailer park. "It looks primitive, definitely primitive," identifies McKay, because nothing says primitive like upended oil drums. In the Really Important News of hair and makeup, Teyla's got her hair pulled back in a bit of a messy ponytail that's quite cute, and Ronon is wearing a PIMP COAT. Like... what? Where would they even get this? I'm pretty sure that, with all the bare arms and whatnot, there was no way he could have smuggled it in himself in "Runner," so that means that someone went to the trouble of finding him this two-tone leather pimp coat on Atlantis instead of just outfitting him with their regular getup. Are we to assume that the quartermaster (or, er, Marines equivalent) couldn't find a uniform jacket big enough for his awesome arm muscles? Is this some sort of cultural pimp coat? Inquiring minds demand to know!
There's some banter about how there's no one around and how McKay doesn't really think these shack-dwellers are worth even contacting. Ronon smells food, and goes for the nearest pot of stew. For the record, he does actually use the ladle instead of just sticking his hands and/or face in it, so we're moving up in the ways of the Emily Post School of Alien Etiquette. McKay bitches at him for goldilocksing the absent aliens' porridge -- both because ew! and because Ronon actually has no idea if that's "their laundry!" or not -- while Ronon bites off a bit of jerkey and offers it to Teyla with a totally cute expression. Teyla looks mildly disturbed. As much as I'm sure she'd like a big strong man to put meat on the table for her and her future young'uns, I'm not sure she really needs you to pre-chew it for her, Ronon. McKay's all, "wait, is it good?" and Shep's all, "leave it be, Goldilocks." Err. SlashWatch!
There is a rush of what the closed-captioning calls [whooshing], and a bunch of arrows fly onto the scene, one narrowly missing the Shep!crotch ["Dude, that's MY Shep!crotch. The sooner other people leave it alone, the happier we'll all be." -- Pooh]. There's some running and shooting and dramatic sound-tracking, the important gist of which seems to be that there are a whole lot of the alien folk and they're firing at the Atlanteans both with arrows and with slingshots that explode on contact. Ronon gets arrowed right through the leg. McKay's all "holy crap!", but Ronon just calmly breaks the arrow tip off and then pulls the body of the arrow out, all while a big neon sign that says RONON IS A MANLY MANLY BEAST-MAN! flashes in the background. Props, however, for proper arrow-removal. Over in the slightly less overwhelmingly manly part of the set, Shep yells, "This is not the way to make new friends!" thinking that Elizabeth is going to kill him if he manages to make another recurring enemy, and then he yells a promise to collect his team and retreat. I'm not dissing on Shep's masculinity, by the way, I'm just saying that Ronon is much more of the shoot-first-and-don't-ever-actually-ask-questions school. [Pooh: "You think Shep's questionable masculinity may be because the man is really kinda thin and needs to put on a few more pounds and is just scared of being broken in half accidentally?" Little Red: "He seemed so manly when he was just hanging out with McKay! Well, except for all the times when Teyla beat him up."]
The explosive sling-shotting stops and they plan to head back to the jumper. "McKay, help Ronon," Sheppard orders, but Ronon manlies that Shep shouldn't worry about him. "I'm a worrier!" Shep argues, and my 'ship goggles inform me that that's totally Elizabeth's word, not his, and she's been teasing him about it. My reality goggles, however, remind me that Shep in no way worries enough for Elizabeth's liking, so I must ultimately chalk that line up to sarcasm. More explosive slingshots, and Team Sheppard is forced to stay where it is. Just as they're about to get really pissed about it, though, a big ship flies in and starts to blow everyone around with its three giant engine pods. A few of the locals bare their really terrible teeth and then are blown backwards by the force of the engine blasts. Team Sheppard makes it back to the jumper. One of those Dirty People not blown backwards, who will eventually be revealed to be Leader of the Dirty People, watches them go with a look on his face that says "I'm not sure what I'm thinking, exactly, but I'm evil and so I suspect it's something nefarious."
Back in the jumper, Teyla mommies at Ronon to sit down and then forcibly raises his injured leg while Shep and McKay get a bit giddy about the very cool-looking ship that just saved their collective asses. The very cool-looking ship hails them, identifies itself as the "security vessel Poros," and commands that they follow it immediately back to the city. Rather than being worried that, I don't know, they're about to be impounded or captured or something, Shep decides not to look a gift rescue in the mouth and instead twitters, "That's how you make new friends!" ["I don't know... I think I've got an even better way." -- Pooh]
Five cent credits. I've decided, actually, to stop watching the sucky new credits altogether and just boot up my computer and play the actual season two credits, downloaded from Atlantica, to fuel my sense of credit injustice on a weekly basis. Allow me to recap that for you: Sheppard looks Heroic With A Capital H, Lizzie looks worried, Teyla looks lovely, Ronon looks feral, Carson has a bit of open-mouthed concern going on, and Rodney looks intense. I feel so incredibly ripped off.
Fade up to a city with lots of gardens and greenery and an architectural style favoring cement. There's one especially large building in the background that looks a bit like one of those space modules from the old Sim City 2000, which I take to indicate to us viewers at home that These People Are Advanced. Team Sheppard is led in by a secuity guard wearing a uniform reminiscent of the in-city vinyl Atlantis uniforms. A prim and proper-looking woman wearing a fish-gill-inspired dress greets them, introduces herself as Marin, and welcomes them to Olesia. Shep introduces his whole team by their full names and ranks, either because it's polite or because he's still getting off on being a Lieutenant Colonel. Marin invites them to come along, and Shep gives his team this cute little smug look of "see how good a diplomat I am? Someone's going to tell Dr. Weir about this, right?"
They pedeconference rather awkwardly, because Marin's dress is about three inches wide and she has to walk in a very android-like fashion to avoid dislocating her hips. Marin exposits that the island is a penal colony, but the prisoners are nice and quiet so long as no one tries to land there. Teyla wonders if, since the Stargate is on the island, this doesn't seriously crimp trade and tourism, and Marin's all, well, yes, but that just means we get to be all self-sufficient, aren't we special. John tries not to say "Well, that's stupid," by instead asking why they put a prison in such an inconvenient location. Marin passes the buck to "the magistrate," which is actually a reasonable thing for an underling to say, but, since this is a Stargate show, reads as incredibly suspicious. Of course.
Aughhh!! The next scene is artistically designed like the inside of MC Escher's head. The magistrate appears to have liked the black-and-white-and-red tiger print wallpaper in his office so much that he decided to dress in the exact same fabric. I think it's awesome that the lowly security guards on this planet are the only ones who have anything decent to wear. The magistrate smarms about how very rare it is to meet people in Pegasus who have nice technology and yet don't want to eat you, and McKay's all, "I was going to say that!" Sheppard smoothly lies and claims that "until recently" they were from Atlantis, but it was sadly destroyed by the Wraith. The magistrate's all, "How tragic!" "Yeah, we're pretty broken up about it," says Sheppard, and hilariously attempts to look really broken up about it by working his jaw and staring at the floor. Teyla ignores him, and supplies that they're part of a small group of people who escaped. "How fortunate for you!" smarms the magistrate, and I want to take a shower. Gah! He seems like he should be playing a... corrupt pope or something, which is fitting, because now that I think about it, he kind of did play a corrupt pope in that Stargate episode "Demons" with the Christians and the Teal'c being a witch and the possible inferences to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. ("What do we do with witches?" "BURN 'EM!" etc.)
McKay, who's totally done Sheppard's method acting for today, cuts off the fake pleasantries, all "Yes, yes, yes, we're alive, that rocks, whatever." He wants to know how the Olesians have managed to make these technological advances without the Wraith coming and culling their overly ambitious asses. "The Wraith have chosen to leave us aloooone," is the response, and I'm going to have to find some synonyms for smarmy right quick or else this recap is going to be all kinds of repetitive. Just assume that every single time this guy speaks it's like his throat is slicked in oil, okay? He also needs a name and, in the style of shady X-Files villains, I propose that we refer to him from here on out as Horribly Dressed Man. Shep and Ronon are a bit skeptical about this because the Wraith tend to be thorough if a bit on the cerebrally deficient side, so Horribly Dressed Man enlightens them. "The Wraith have been here many times," he oilies. "But with the ancestral ring on the island, the Wraith have always been -- how shall I put it? -- satiated with the prisoners living there. The Wraith have no need to venture any further." McKay and Shep sort of sniff derisively. Teyla and Ronon just look thoughtful, which makes sense, since their morality was honed in the middle of the food chain. Also, Ronon has a tattoo on his neck that I totally didn't notice before. It looks a bit like a barcode, and I wonder if that's on purpose to show that he's been tagged by the Wraith. That, or Teyla's a bit more artistic with her hickeys than one would expect.
Horribly Dressed Man goes on to explain that the island has been a prison for hundreds of years and its location has "benefited [his] people greatly," presumably because it keeps them from being EATEN. "Not all your people," Shep holier-than-thous. That, Shep, is not the way to make new friends. Horribly Dressed Man, who is a better -- if substantially more color-blind -- diplomat than Shep, attempts to continue the dialogue by rationalizing that only the "most violent criminals" are sent there. Ronon proves that he can use multi-syllable words, if not complete sentences, by commenting, "Good crime deterrent." "Crime is virtually nonexistant on Olesia," Horribly Dressed Man glees, which sort of begs the question where the prisoners are coming from. He promises the Olesians are a most "hospitable and civilized people," which, in Stargate terminology, means that they are really extra bad. No, seriously, have we ever met a civilized society that we didn't try to nuke by the end of the episode?
Hallway. They all pedeconference across the most atrocious bright yellow carpet in the history of the universe. McKay and Horribly Dressed Man babble about a "fissionable yet non-radioactive" mineral ore something-something, which sounds remarkably like naquadah except that McKay is totally flabbergasted by its existance in a three-dimensional physical universe. So, not!naquadah. Score. McKay wants to go play with the lab toys, but Shep wants to call home first.
'lantis. Elizabeth plays with an Ancient magna-doodle and congratulates Shep on not having earned them any mortal enemies yet today, although they are still in Act One, so she's not holding her breath. Actually, she just says that the mineral and the trade agreements sound "promising." Shep can't quite quit while he's ahead, though, so he reports a "minor moral hiccup of their form of capital punishment." In the background, Teyla pokes at an art deco standing lamp, all impressed that the Olesians have harnessed the power of fire. McKay investigates a centerpiece buffet of some kind of Olesian foodstuff, while Ronon stuffs his pockets with food. [Pooh: "It's too bad about Ronon finding it necessary to stuff his pants with food. The Shep!Pants would never need the extra filling. And I'm not saying that as a biased Shep!Pants!Lover. Really." Little Red: "I'm starting to think your obsession with Shep's penis is borderline unhealthy." Pooh: "Maybe just a smidge."] You know what? I take it back. On those long puddle-jumper car trips, McKay and Ronon are going to get along great.
McKay leaves Ronon to it and joins Sheppard in Lizzie-conference. "They have an island," he recaps, "it's their own version of Alcatraz where they send the worst criminals." Dude, I just watched Escape from Alcatraz again this week, and there was definitely nothing in that about Clint Eastwood getting eaten by aliens. Shep adds that the Stargate is on the island and Elizabeth connects the Wraith-shaped dots and deems it "cruel and unusual punishment." Rodney happily supplies his own views on capital punishment (lethal injection = yay, but he has a "certain fondness for the electric chair.") "Call me a romantic," he finishes, and Shep grins in the slashiest possible way without actually providing us with a Cameron Mitchell Flashback (tm) of Rodney, like, bringing him flowers and serenading him under the balcony. In order to wipe that image from my mind, I'm going to pretend that Shep just heard about the disastrous invasion-of-the-body-snatchers date from last week. Ronon pimps over and shrugs all "eh, well, surprised it works" without any substantial moral issues implied, having lost those along with his ability to use utensils in the past seven years. Shep does give a nod to the Prime Directive by saying that the system's been in place for hundreds of years and it's only the most violent criminals. "Do you kill all your violent criminals on Earth?" Teyla asks. "Some countries do," McKay Canadas. BURN! Shep snarks back, but Elizabeth defends McKay, causing Shep to roll his eyes all "she SO does not like you better than me." She wants to know more before they "jump to any conclusions" and/or agree to do business with the Olesians.
Room of Totally Hideous Camo-Print Wallpaper. Shep offers "possible trade opportunities" to the Horribly Dressed Man, who is all oily and delighted and, quote, "very open." Err. "Doctor Elizabeth Weir will be the one to begin official negotiations with you -- that's really her thing," says Shep, and: 1) SQUEEEEE!! Elizabeth is going off-world! 2) FINALLY someone realized that she might actually cause fewer interplanetary incidents than Team Sheppard, since this is "her thing" HER JOB, and 3) It's totally cute how he says her full name. Actually, he says it just like any other full name, but I still think he's a bit proud to be sleeping with someone who probably kept the Balkans from imploding at least three times so far. Horribly Dressed Man can't wait to meet her and start a friendship. Shep doesn't look at all concerned, since he trusts that a woman who owns such remarkably fashionable tailored suits would never actually leave him for a slimy old alien dressed in Tiger Print Modern.
Puddle-jumper flying over the ocean. "Seriously, am I the only one creeped out by that guy?" McKay wants to know. You and the entire viewing audience, dude. McKay? Come recap with me. Shep snarks that politicians are all creepy, and I'm honestly surprised that McKay doesn't defend Elizabeth here, so I will. Then he goes on to defend Margaret Thatcher of all people, so perhaps we should be glad that Lizzie wasn't placed in the same category. Oddly, although Margaret Thatcher is duly hated by several whole countries, I and just about everyone else on my friends-list automatically think of nostalgia_lj at this juncture. Teyla makes the face she does when she's totally tuning out the weird Earthling-banter as McKay goes on to insinuate that his aunt was either transgendered or the Bearded Lady or something -- high on the list of things I'd think that a tour as the resident geek of McKay's elementary school might've taught him not to ever mention. No one really cares. Of course, they're too busy being cannonballed out of the sky by the prisoners on the island. They manage to activate that 'gate, but crash-land before they can get to it. The prisoners cheer and run off after them for raping, pillaging, what-have-you.
Puddle-jumper, distinctly crashed all to hell. Teyla gets up and checks on Ronon first, who nods that he's okay, then McKay, who worries about his dental work, and finally "John." Shep apologizes for that being "not one of his better landings," heh. Ronon says that the 'gate should still be active for another few minutes, which... really? That seems wrong. Regardless of my own reservations about Ronon's intelligence, Team Sheppard hobbles out all bruised. They're ambushed by about a billion prisoners, which gives Ronon the opportunity to whip his Manly Man-Gun out from under the pimp coat (no, I didn't mean that), but not do much with it. Shep's all "I hope I didn't crash-land on anybody." Some of the prisoners actually climb on top of the puddle-jumper. The Leader of the Dirty People, deemed Leader by sheer amount of screen time so far, gives another look of nonspecific evilness.
Commercials. Teyla and Ronon eyefuck in the purple promo.
Island of the Damned. Leader of the Dirty People and, er, the Dirty People play with the new weapons they've confiscated. I seriously, seriously wish one of them had been wearing Ronon's pimp coat, because that would've been awesome. One of the dudes blows up a building by mistaking which end of the grenade launcher is up. Everyone dances around and cheers, because no one liked that particular dilapidated shack anyway, and convicts like fire.
Most of this is totally boring, so let me take this moment to discuss something very important that has been bothering your recappers for two weeks now. Teyla/Ronon: incredibly hot and porny, yet irritating to type and lacking the festive in-joke quality of "Sparky." Therefore, what the heck are we going to call them? We really do have to get a jump on this before the name-amalgamaters have their wicked way with this pairing and they end up being, like, "Teynon" or something otherwise crap. If we were in the X-Files fandom right now, where everything was a variation on "shippers," I think we'd be called "Trippers." Which is hilariously awesome, as Ronon does kinda look stoned on his own testosterone half the time, and we could say things like "they were Tripping all over that scene when Ronon randomly threw her into a closet in a manly way!" If we absolutely have to amalgamate their names in order to make it in a McShweirla fandom world out there, we could always call them TRON, which would be kinda awesome, and rhymes with pr0n. Of course, I really think we should thematically mirror "Sparky" by giving the pairing a name that seems like it should be some kind of amalgamated pairing name, but is actually the name of a dog. Because that, in my world, is true romantic comedy. [Pooh: "I vote for Tex, because if we just named them 'Sex', it would get confusing." Little Red: "No! Rover! OMG!"]
Poll
Meanwhile, on Alcatraz, Our Heroes are all tied up. Again. Ronon has been stripped of his pimp coat, but sadly, not his shirt. I should point out that in Escape from Alcatraz Clint Eastwood was stripped completely naked upon arrival to that infamous prison island, and I'm most disappointed that Stargate: Atlantis didn't see fit to grace us with that film homage. Leader of the Dirty People and his lackeys come in to lord superior over Team Sheppard. Shep's all, our people are expecting us, and the missus tends to get a bit cranky when we're late, and she'll send people here to blow you all up, SO THERE. Leader of the Dirty People is unfazed. "Is that supposed to concern me?" Pooh pointed out that this guy must have gone straight past Escape from Alcatraz in the Clint Eastwood section to Dirty Harry, but I think he's a bit too lame to be Clint Eastwood. Sheppard agrees: "Don't go getting all full of yourself, Chief." Therefore, Leader of the Dirty People will henceforth be known as Dirty Larry, with the L standing for lame, no actual dis on people named Larry.
Shep and Dirty Larry get into a bit of a pissing contest about who will blow up whom with whose superior weapons/aim, but Teyla decides to raise an actual question: "What do you want from us?" Dirty Larry brags a bit about how they've already got their weapons and fashionable outerwear and then proposes to take the puddle-jumper. McKay sasses, "You're referring to the ship you just shot down? The one that doesn't stand a hope in hell of ever flying again?" Dirty Larry: "The one that you're going to fix, yes." McKay: "Who am I, MacGyver? With what?" Dude, Clint Eastwood dug himself out of The Rock with nothing but a nail file welded to a spoon, and I imagine that in the last act of any stand-alone episode, McKay could make do with far less. Dirty Larry has apparently seen the same episodes I have, calls McKay a "smart man" in that tone that means he's totally going to do something nasty, and then says that all he needs is a little motivation. Dirty Larry shoots a hole with Ronon's gun into the wall behind McKay. Damn, these people really do not care about property maintenance! No wonder their shacks are all in such disrepair. Ronon is all "They're touching my GUN! MY BABY!" and struggles with his bonds in an intense, Manly Man way that somehow makes him look like an angry monkey. Don't piss off the monkey, Dirty Larry. I think Ronon totally named his gun in his seven years without human contact. Like Davy Crockett! From now on, Ronon's gun will be called Belle. Sheppard suggests that maybe Rodney should think about fixing the jumper after all. McKay, who still isn't used to getting shot at, agrees. "My friends tell me I have a remarkable gift for persuasion," says Dirty Larry before tossing Belle over his shoulder (to Ronon's great distress) and swaggering out. Hee. I kinda like him.
'lantis. Elizabeth's Shep sense is tingling, and she runs into the control room looking all worried, as she is wont to do. Cute Canadian Not!Grodin says that the Stargate activated, but nothing came through. "Colonel Sheppard?" guesses Lizzie, who has apparently gotten a rank refresher since last week. Also, seriously, why didn't the Ancients put freaking Caller ID in their Stargate system so you could see what planet was dialing you? Lizzie looks all kinds of worried when not!Grodin gives her more details, especially because "they should have returned by now." She orders him to dial the planet and try to establish a radio link, and then contacts Major Lorne. LORNE!! Yay! ["Still not jinxed!" -- Pooh] "I may have to go off-world to assist Colonel Sheppard," she says. Squeee! I assume Shep did at some point give Lorne the lecture about not letting Elizabeth wander onto potentially hostile alien planets, but, as Lorne -- like most of us probably would be -- is more scared of Elizabeth than Shep, he agrees to get a team together.
Island In The Sun. Ronon, Shep and Teyla attempt to loosen their bindings. I'm really a fan of this trend of them getting tied up off-world -- they're quite hot that way -- but I'd still prefer they were doing this half-naked. Ronon Angry Monkies that eventually he will get free and then Dirty Larry will PAY for manhandling Belle and stealing his coat and tying them all up and sassing them. I'm surprised he hasn't considered gnawing one of his own arms off yet. Shep intervenes in this little personal revenge vendetta and is all um, no, when you get free, you free us, and we all go back to the barn and have us some iced tea. "Let them find out we're gone after we're gone." The tuck-tail-and-run approach doesn't suit Ronon's Manly Man-ness. "You expect me to let them get away with this?" Shep still thinks that survival is better than ripping out Dirty Larry's jugular with their teeth, which makes Ronon imply that Sheppard didn't return fire on the puddle-jumper because he Just Isn't Manly Man Enough. "The weapons systems were damaged!" "If you say so," Ronon snits.
Shep, sick of having his manhood questioned by Teyla's new boyfriend, is all "I do say so, and right now, I'm saying knock it off!" Ronon wants to know if that's an order. Shep snorts, pissed off both that he's getting mocked by Ronon and that he went to great lengths to construct an alien/civilian team where he would never have to deal with the chain of command ever again and now he's being asked to... well, deal with the chain of command again. "I am beat up, tied up, and couldn't order a pizza right now if I wanted to, but if you need it to be, yeah, it's an order." At those magic words, Ronon instantly chills out: "Okay." Shep boggles. I find it hilarious that a man who hasn't used a knife and fork for almost a decade can still follow an order better than Sheppard. The best part of the entire scene is that Teyla says maybe one thing, and throughout the Manly Pissing Contest which very well might have undertones of Sheyla vs. Rover, there are about twenty reaction shots of her totally ignoring both of them. Hee. I also can't wait until we get a Ronon/Shep fistfight, which is totally on its way, because Shep's Alpha-ness has been questioned. The best part of that scene will be Elizabeth raising an eyebrow at a black-eyed Shep while trying not to chant I told you soooo out loud.
Poll
Puddle-Jumper. McKay bitches that there's no power. Dirty Larry somehow manages to swagger while standing still as he brags about a Dirty Person named Eldon who mineraled himself up some not!naquadah explosives from odds and ends he found around the house. Eldon promptly shows up and is indeed quite dirty. He's also wearing a leather cap that really makes him seem like that little guy from Monty Python and the Holy Grail who was all about anarchy and communism. Instead of squawking about the "violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm being repressed!", Eldon stammers that he's actually innocent and it's all case of mistaken identity and... okay, he is actually talking about the violence inherent in the system and being repressed, never mind. Dirty Larry doesn't care. Neither does McKay. Neither do we. McKay ignores him to babble about the lack of diagnostic tools, and Dirty Larry hilariously makes a "blah blah blah" gesture with his hand. HA! Dirty Larry says that he could threaten McKay's life in order to make him fix the Jumper, but then psychoanalyzes him as a cowardly lion with a "strength of character he doesn't even know he has." McKay's all, er, are you hitting on me, wtf? Dirty Larry wisely intuits that to motivate McKay he can't just threaten his life, but must threaten the lives of his friends. Which he then does. Dirty Larry walks out and McKay opens up a panel to begin work.
'lantis. Puddle-Jumper That Actually Still Works. Lizzie walks in and sits shotgun next to Lorne. She looks a little nervous, which is cute. Lorne asks if there has been any word. "Nothing," she answers. Lorne notices her worrying and tells her not to. "We'll find him," he says, and both Pooh and I squeak. Closed-captioning says them, and it really could go either way, but nonetheless. SQUEEE! "I was hoping to negotiate a trade agreement; now I'm worried I'm going to have to negotiate their release," she worries. "We don't know that," says Lorne in that slow voice meant to reassure people in distress because their lovers are being held hostage by aliens. Lorne rocks. Lizzie nods and orders him to dial the 'gate and go to stealth mode. Awwwww! Lorne is totally allowed to be Lizzie's bodyguard from now on.
Broke-Ass Puddle-Jumper. Eldon pulls out a random plexiglass disk from the wall and drools over how advanced the ship is. "How ironic, then, to have been shot down by the cast of Braveheart," quips McKay. Hee! McKay grabs the disk and sticks it in his pocket. Eldon babbles. McKay tells him to shut up and, to his great surprise, he actually does. Eldon holds up the plexiglass disk again, presumably after picking McKay's pocket, and McKay finally notices that it's been pulled out of the wall and might actually be something important. Okay, I realize that Eldon cobbles together not!naquadah slingshots and that's very inventive, but he still seems a few watts short. Can we meet some smart aliens next week, please?
Outside, Dirty Larry discovers and plays with a pair of Team Sheppard's radios.
Jumper. McKay asks if Eldon built the cannons, and it takes Eldon about five minutes to stammer around to saying yes. Oh my God, boring. Then McKay mocks him for being a murderer, because he's morally superior, and... okay, still boring. Eldon professes his innocence, McKay doesn't believe him, I don't care. McKay suddenly freaks out about the DHD. The prisoners, not surprisingly, don't have their own here on the island. McKay technobabbles that the ship is very broken, basically, including the onboard DHD, which means that no one's going anywhere. Does this mean that there's no way to manually dial the Pegasus Stargates the way you can with the old Milky Way rotary versions? I'd say it seems like a massive oversight to have taken out all the manual overrides upon upgrading the Stargate, but then, I'm still pissed that I can't roll up my automatic car windows without turning the car on first, so I'm not always the best consult when it comes to progress.
John and Lizzie are really pretty in that purple promo.
Shack Where Everyone Is Tied Up. Dirty Larry shoves McKay in and demands that he choose who dies first. McKay actually looks between the three of them in horror, which is a nice touch, before saying "I can't do that!" Dirty Larry is okay with playing Russian Roulette instead, unless McKay "changes [his] mind about fixing that ship." McKay flails that the ship is "broken! Do you understand 'broken'?" David Hewlett really is a fantastic actor, and I feel really badly for McKay in this episode. Dirty Larry busts out some more armchair psychology: "I know your type. You whine and you complain and you see to it that your every task is viewed as some impossible achievement," so that when he succeeds the fangirls squeee more. McKay is forced to agree that, yeah, sometimes, but not this time when it really is actually impossible. Sheppard studies McKay's face as he talks, clearly looking for the poker face. Dirty Larry leaves to give him "some time to choose," which I think is a bit lame. He should at least, like, grab Teyla and separate her from the rest of them to get the others worked up, but I suppose those bindings are all that's keeping her from opening a can of whup-ass... so... maybe Dirty Larry is a better criminal mastermind than me, after all.
Eldon comes in to warn McKay that Dirty Larry has killed 11 people and is a Very Bad Man, so it's better for everyone if McKay just plays along. For no reason at all, McKay antagonizes the helpful if irritating Eldon by saying that, since he's only killed one person, he's got some catching up to do. Sheppard doesn't believe Eldon has killed anyone, which is... kinda weird, really. It's always the quiet ones, Shep. Ronon agrees with me. Eldon insists he's not a murderer, and then exposits that the threat of being eaten by Wraith was such a good crime-deterrent that the Olesians had to start throwing all their criminals onto the island -- not just the violent ones -- to meet the Wraith food demands. Eldon is awfully trusting and sweet. If this were actually a Clint Eastwood movie, he totally wouldn't actually make it out of Alcatraz.
Planet What Not To Wear, Capitol City. They wander through that hallway of awful yellow carpeting, and Weir dishes with Horribly Dressed Man about the missing team. Marin says she'll set up search parties. Lorne wants to join them to rescue his snarky scientist boyfriend, but Horribly Dressed Man "would advise against that." "Would you?" Lizzie snaps, a little on edge since her man is all missing and stuff. Horribly Dressed Man talks about the dangers of the island, and slimily promises to find Team Sheppard. "I hope you do, Magistrate," Lizzie fake-smiles. "For all our sakes." I'm all for Elizabeth being ballsy and demanding here, because I like her as Mama Bear, but I just can't take this scene seriously because I just imagine meyerlemon's alternate dialogue for this scene where it's really all about Elizabeth slamming their decor and Horribly Dressed Man getting in a snit about how her pants are all wrinkled. Her jacket is really dorky-looking, but the Olesians are totally not allowed to throw stones here. On another wardrobe note, though, Elizabeth has been wearing a lot of turtlenecks in the past few episodes. While I'm sure this is completely due to Shep being un-subtle with the hickeys in the storage closets, and therefore is a totally fantastic development, it makes me wonder if she's still wearing that necklace of hers that may or may not have been from Simon. Has anyone been paying more attention than me here? Do I just care too much? [edit: Pooh reports that it's gone in "Duet." 1) Way to go, wardrobe! 2) Why hasn't this been fic'd a hundred thousand times by now? 3) I'm rather sad that it can't now become an If Necklaces Could Talk like Scully's little golden cross. Bother.]
Love Shack. Ronon is turning blue as he tries to rip his hands out of the bindings. "Take it easy, Chewie," Shep snarks. "You're going to cut your damned hands off." HEEEE! Oh, I love it. I've seen Star Wars referenced in a few fics as a Team Sheppard metaphor, but in Season 1, Teyla always had to be Chewie. I'm sure she's delighted to be rid of that particular comparison. I love the references to other sci-fi shows they make, and I think it's very fitting that the logical, diagnostic-loving McKay is Star Trek and John "use the force genes!" Sheppard is Star Wars. This classic science-fiction divide, Sheppard's fundamental heterosexuality notwithstanding, is the real reason why Their Love Will Never Be.
Eldon rips off a bit of shack wall and sneaks in, holding out a knife and offering to cut them loose. In exchange, he wants McKay to fix the ship and for Shep to let Eldon leave with them. McKay's all "IT'S STILL BROKEN!" and wonders why no one ever listens to him. Eldon claims that he can tell Rodney's holding back on a solution. Shep's all "Rodneyyy" (it's the space version of "Lucyyyy!", I think), but Rodney still insists that he can't. Shep's all "He'll fix it." McKay: "!?" "You really suck at lying, Rodney," Shep says. Heh. Ronon and Teyla stare at each other, since nobody asked their opinions. Shep having called his bluff, McKay admits that there's a long-shot possibility of reactivating the DHD. Satisfied, Eldon cuts Ronon's binds first, and Ronon snags the knife and holds it to Eldon's throat without skipping a beat. McKay and Shep spaz. Ronon: "Give me one reason why I shouldn't cut your throat!" Shep: "For one, it would make a mess." Always a fan of neatness, our Sheph0r. "Look, we made a deal." I want Ronon to yell "YOU made a deal, Earthling!", but he doesn't, possibly because that would require both reasoning and a complete sentence. Eldon looks like he's going to pass out. Ronon lets him go and unties everyone, bitching at McKay to "suck it up" when McKay worries about the knife being in close proximity to, er, nether regions. Because "suck it up" is such an alien thing to say, when Teyla can't even get her mind around contractions. Shut up, Ronon. Teyla fixes her hair, and then they escape. The camera pans to a radio with the talk button strapped down lying in the hay. The soundtrack dun-dun-DUHHHHN!s.
Aaaaaand, ( Condemned, recap part the second! )
Click, I command you.
We open mid-action to some very dramatic music and a puddle-jumper zooming out of the Stargate onto the Planet of the Week. Inside the puddle-jumper we have our New Exciting Season Two Team!, with Sheppard driving, Teyla riding shotgun, and McKay and Ronon in the backseat. I'd personally love to see this team go on some very long puddle-jumper rides together, because I imagine McKay would probably end up drawing a line down the middle of the jumper and throw a fit if Ronon moved a finger across the line to his side, and Teyla would have to get all maternal on everyone and threaten to make Shep Turn This Puddle-Jumper Around Right Now If You Don't Stop Fussing, And Just Try Me If You Think I'm Kidding. No, really, I feel bad for Teyla. She's surrounded by very attractive and overall well-meaning men, but sometimes she really must feel like she's herding cats. [Pooh: "Wait... do you have Shep and Teyla set up as the daddy and mommy in this puddle-jumper road trip scenario?" Little Red: "Don't worry, Teyla's just the babysitter."]
Anyway, back in the actual show, Teyla and Ronon both claim they've never been to this particular planet. "There's no sign of any settlements, at least nothing recent," exposits McKay, though that seems awfully unscientific to declare after 15 seconds of aerial survey, so I assume he's referring to earlier MALP readings. The thing about all these establishing exposition bits in the teasers is that they make it seem like Shep just wasn't paying attention in the mission briefing. Too busy staring at Lizzie? Unclear, but logical. Anyway, Ronon one-ups McKay's exposition by pointing out the front window, all "except for that totally obvious billow of smoke from an uncontrolled campfire at twelve o'clock." McKay's all "er, yes, I was getting to that." Teyla turns around to give Ronon an adorably proud, indulgent look, and he grins at her all, "Go Team Pegasus!" and waggles his eyebrows, and I start shrieking because we're less than a minute into the episode and they are SO TOTALLY HAVING SEX! Shep takes them in for a landing, and the jumper flies through some stock footage of a lake or marshland or something borrowed from a first-season episode (it's either "Childhood's End" or "Sanctuary", but I'm not going to check for sure. Yes, I'm a bad recapper, but I will require a bit more alcohol before sitting through "Sanctuary" again, thank you very much).
Team Atlantis: World Police wander through a really grungy settlement with a bunch of rusty junk and collapsing shacks, sort of a cross between every post-apocalyptic movie you've ever seen and my local trailer park. "It looks primitive, definitely primitive," identifies McKay, because nothing says primitive like upended oil drums. In the Really Important News of hair and makeup, Teyla's got her hair pulled back in a bit of a messy ponytail that's quite cute, and Ronon is wearing a PIMP COAT. Like... what? Where would they even get this? I'm pretty sure that, with all the bare arms and whatnot, there was no way he could have smuggled it in himself in "Runner," so that means that someone went to the trouble of finding him this two-tone leather pimp coat on Atlantis instead of just outfitting him with their regular getup. Are we to assume that the quartermaster (or, er, Marines equivalent) couldn't find a uniform jacket big enough for his awesome arm muscles? Is this some sort of cultural pimp coat? Inquiring minds demand to know!
There's some banter about how there's no one around and how McKay doesn't really think these shack-dwellers are worth even contacting. Ronon smells food, and goes for the nearest pot of stew. For the record, he does actually use the ladle instead of just sticking his hands and/or face in it, so we're moving up in the ways of the Emily Post School of Alien Etiquette. McKay bitches at him for goldilocksing the absent aliens' porridge -- both because ew! and because Ronon actually has no idea if that's "their laundry!" or not -- while Ronon bites off a bit of jerkey and offers it to Teyla with a totally cute expression. Teyla looks mildly disturbed. As much as I'm sure she'd like a big strong man to put meat on the table for her and her future young'uns, I'm not sure she really needs you to pre-chew it for her, Ronon. McKay's all, "wait, is it good?" and Shep's all, "leave it be, Goldilocks." Err. SlashWatch!
There is a rush of what the closed-captioning calls [whooshing], and a bunch of arrows fly onto the scene, one narrowly missing the Shep!crotch ["Dude, that's MY Shep!crotch. The sooner other people leave it alone, the happier we'll all be." -- Pooh]. There's some running and shooting and dramatic sound-tracking, the important gist of which seems to be that there are a whole lot of the alien folk and they're firing at the Atlanteans both with arrows and with slingshots that explode on contact. Ronon gets arrowed right through the leg. McKay's all "holy crap!", but Ronon just calmly breaks the arrow tip off and then pulls the body of the arrow out, all while a big neon sign that says RONON IS A MANLY MANLY BEAST-MAN! flashes in the background. Props, however, for proper arrow-removal. Over in the slightly less overwhelmingly manly part of the set, Shep yells, "This is not the way to make new friends!" thinking that Elizabeth is going to kill him if he manages to make another recurring enemy, and then he yells a promise to collect his team and retreat. I'm not dissing on Shep's masculinity, by the way, I'm just saying that Ronon is much more of the shoot-first-and-don't-ever-actually-ask-questions school. [Pooh: "You think Shep's questionable masculinity may be because the man is really kinda thin and needs to put on a few more pounds and is just scared of being broken in half accidentally?" Little Red: "He seemed so manly when he was just hanging out with McKay! Well, except for all the times when Teyla beat him up."]
The explosive sling-shotting stops and they plan to head back to the jumper. "McKay, help Ronon," Sheppard orders, but Ronon manlies that Shep shouldn't worry about him. "I'm a worrier!" Shep argues, and my 'ship goggles inform me that that's totally Elizabeth's word, not his, and she's been teasing him about it. My reality goggles, however, remind me that Shep in no way worries enough for Elizabeth's liking, so I must ultimately chalk that line up to sarcasm. More explosive slingshots, and Team Sheppard is forced to stay where it is. Just as they're about to get really pissed about it, though, a big ship flies in and starts to blow everyone around with its three giant engine pods. A few of the locals bare their really terrible teeth and then are blown backwards by the force of the engine blasts. Team Sheppard makes it back to the jumper. One of those Dirty People not blown backwards, who will eventually be revealed to be Leader of the Dirty People, watches them go with a look on his face that says "I'm not sure what I'm thinking, exactly, but I'm evil and so I suspect it's something nefarious."
Back in the jumper, Teyla mommies at Ronon to sit down and then forcibly raises his injured leg while Shep and McKay get a bit giddy about the very cool-looking ship that just saved their collective asses. The very cool-looking ship hails them, identifies itself as the "security vessel Poros," and commands that they follow it immediately back to the city. Rather than being worried that, I don't know, they're about to be impounded or captured or something, Shep decides not to look a gift rescue in the mouth and instead twitters, "That's how you make new friends!" ["I don't know... I think I've got an even better way." -- Pooh]
Five cent credits. I've decided, actually, to stop watching the sucky new credits altogether and just boot up my computer and play the actual season two credits, downloaded from Atlantica, to fuel my sense of credit injustice on a weekly basis. Allow me to recap that for you: Sheppard looks Heroic With A Capital H, Lizzie looks worried, Teyla looks lovely, Ronon looks feral, Carson has a bit of open-mouthed concern going on, and Rodney looks intense. I feel so incredibly ripped off.
Fade up to a city with lots of gardens and greenery and an architectural style favoring cement. There's one especially large building in the background that looks a bit like one of those space modules from the old Sim City 2000, which I take to indicate to us viewers at home that These People Are Advanced. Team Sheppard is led in by a secuity guard wearing a uniform reminiscent of the in-city vinyl Atlantis uniforms. A prim and proper-looking woman wearing a fish-gill-inspired dress greets them, introduces herself as Marin, and welcomes them to Olesia. Shep introduces his whole team by their full names and ranks, either because it's polite or because he's still getting off on being a Lieutenant Colonel. Marin invites them to come along, and Shep gives his team this cute little smug look of "see how good a diplomat I am? Someone's going to tell Dr. Weir about this, right?"
They pedeconference rather awkwardly, because Marin's dress is about three inches wide and she has to walk in a very android-like fashion to avoid dislocating her hips. Marin exposits that the island is a penal colony, but the prisoners are nice and quiet so long as no one tries to land there. Teyla wonders if, since the Stargate is on the island, this doesn't seriously crimp trade and tourism, and Marin's all, well, yes, but that just means we get to be all self-sufficient, aren't we special. John tries not to say "Well, that's stupid," by instead asking why they put a prison in such an inconvenient location. Marin passes the buck to "the magistrate," which is actually a reasonable thing for an underling to say, but, since this is a Stargate show, reads as incredibly suspicious. Of course.
Aughhh!! The next scene is artistically designed like the inside of MC Escher's head. The magistrate appears to have liked the black-and-white-and-red tiger print wallpaper in his office so much that he decided to dress in the exact same fabric. I think it's awesome that the lowly security guards on this planet are the only ones who have anything decent to wear. The magistrate smarms about how very rare it is to meet people in Pegasus who have nice technology and yet don't want to eat you, and McKay's all, "I was going to say that!" Sheppard smoothly lies and claims that "until recently" they were from Atlantis, but it was sadly destroyed by the Wraith. The magistrate's all, "How tragic!" "Yeah, we're pretty broken up about it," says Sheppard, and hilariously attempts to look really broken up about it by working his jaw and staring at the floor. Teyla ignores him, and supplies that they're part of a small group of people who escaped. "How fortunate for you!" smarms the magistrate, and I want to take a shower. Gah! He seems like he should be playing a... corrupt pope or something, which is fitting, because now that I think about it, he kind of did play a corrupt pope in that Stargate episode "Demons" with the Christians and the Teal'c being a witch and the possible inferences to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. ("What do we do with witches?" "BURN 'EM!" etc.)
McKay, who's totally done Sheppard's method acting for today, cuts off the fake pleasantries, all "Yes, yes, yes, we're alive, that rocks, whatever." He wants to know how the Olesians have managed to make these technological advances without the Wraith coming and culling their overly ambitious asses. "The Wraith have chosen to leave us aloooone," is the response, and I'm going to have to find some synonyms for smarmy right quick or else this recap is going to be all kinds of repetitive. Just assume that every single time this guy speaks it's like his throat is slicked in oil, okay? He also needs a name and, in the style of shady X-Files villains, I propose that we refer to him from here on out as Horribly Dressed Man. Shep and Ronon are a bit skeptical about this because the Wraith tend to be thorough if a bit on the cerebrally deficient side, so Horribly Dressed Man enlightens them. "The Wraith have been here many times," he oilies. "But with the ancestral ring on the island, the Wraith have always been -- how shall I put it? -- satiated with the prisoners living there. The Wraith have no need to venture any further." McKay and Shep sort of sniff derisively. Teyla and Ronon just look thoughtful, which makes sense, since their morality was honed in the middle of the food chain. Also, Ronon has a tattoo on his neck that I totally didn't notice before. It looks a bit like a barcode, and I wonder if that's on purpose to show that he's been tagged by the Wraith. That, or Teyla's a bit more artistic with her hickeys than one would expect.
Horribly Dressed Man goes on to explain that the island has been a prison for hundreds of years and its location has "benefited [his] people greatly," presumably because it keeps them from being EATEN. "Not all your people," Shep holier-than-thous. That, Shep, is not the way to make new friends. Horribly Dressed Man, who is a better -- if substantially more color-blind -- diplomat than Shep, attempts to continue the dialogue by rationalizing that only the "most violent criminals" are sent there. Ronon proves that he can use multi-syllable words, if not complete sentences, by commenting, "Good crime deterrent." "Crime is virtually nonexistant on Olesia," Horribly Dressed Man glees, which sort of begs the question where the prisoners are coming from. He promises the Olesians are a most "hospitable and civilized people," which, in Stargate terminology, means that they are really extra bad. No, seriously, have we ever met a civilized society that we didn't try to nuke by the end of the episode?
Hallway. They all pedeconference across the most atrocious bright yellow carpet in the history of the universe. McKay and Horribly Dressed Man babble about a "fissionable yet non-radioactive" mineral ore something-something, which sounds remarkably like naquadah except that McKay is totally flabbergasted by its existance in a three-dimensional physical universe. So, not!naquadah. Score. McKay wants to go play with the lab toys, but Shep wants to call home first.
'lantis. Elizabeth plays with an Ancient magna-doodle and congratulates Shep on not having earned them any mortal enemies yet today, although they are still in Act One, so she's not holding her breath. Actually, she just says that the mineral and the trade agreements sound "promising." Shep can't quite quit while he's ahead, though, so he reports a "minor moral hiccup of their form of capital punishment." In the background, Teyla pokes at an art deco standing lamp, all impressed that the Olesians have harnessed the power of fire. McKay investigates a centerpiece buffet of some kind of Olesian foodstuff, while Ronon stuffs his pockets with food. [Pooh: "It's too bad about Ronon finding it necessary to stuff his pants with food. The Shep!Pants would never need the extra filling. And I'm not saying that as a biased Shep!Pants!Lover. Really." Little Red: "I'm starting to think your obsession with Shep's penis is borderline unhealthy." Pooh: "Maybe just a smidge."] You know what? I take it back. On those long puddle-jumper car trips, McKay and Ronon are going to get along great.
McKay leaves Ronon to it and joins Sheppard in Lizzie-conference. "They have an island," he recaps, "it's their own version of Alcatraz where they send the worst criminals." Dude, I just watched Escape from Alcatraz again this week, and there was definitely nothing in that about Clint Eastwood getting eaten by aliens. Shep adds that the Stargate is on the island and Elizabeth connects the Wraith-shaped dots and deems it "cruel and unusual punishment." Rodney happily supplies his own views on capital punishment (lethal injection = yay, but he has a "certain fondness for the electric chair.") "Call me a romantic," he finishes, and Shep grins in the slashiest possible way without actually providing us with a Cameron Mitchell Flashback (tm) of Rodney, like, bringing him flowers and serenading him under the balcony. In order to wipe that image from my mind, I'm going to pretend that Shep just heard about the disastrous invasion-of-the-body-snatchers date from last week. Ronon pimps over and shrugs all "eh, well, surprised it works" without any substantial moral issues implied, having lost those along with his ability to use utensils in the past seven years. Shep does give a nod to the Prime Directive by saying that the system's been in place for hundreds of years and it's only the most violent criminals. "Do you kill all your violent criminals on Earth?" Teyla asks. "Some countries do," McKay Canadas. BURN! Shep snarks back, but Elizabeth defends McKay, causing Shep to roll his eyes all "she SO does not like you better than me." She wants to know more before they "jump to any conclusions" and/or agree to do business with the Olesians.
Room of Totally Hideous Camo-Print Wallpaper. Shep offers "possible trade opportunities" to the Horribly Dressed Man, who is all oily and delighted and, quote, "very open." Err. "Doctor Elizabeth Weir will be the one to begin official negotiations with you -- that's really her thing," says Shep, and: 1) SQUEEEEE!! Elizabeth is going off-world! 2) FINALLY someone realized that she might actually cause fewer interplanetary incidents than Team Sheppard, since this is "her thing" HER JOB, and 3) It's totally cute how he says her full name. Actually, he says it just like any other full name, but I still think he's a bit proud to be sleeping with someone who probably kept the Balkans from imploding at least three times so far. Horribly Dressed Man can't wait to meet her and start a friendship. Shep doesn't look at all concerned, since he trusts that a woman who owns such remarkably fashionable tailored suits would never actually leave him for a slimy old alien dressed in Tiger Print Modern.
Puddle-jumper flying over the ocean. "Seriously, am I the only one creeped out by that guy?" McKay wants to know. You and the entire viewing audience, dude. McKay? Come recap with me. Shep snarks that politicians are all creepy, and I'm honestly surprised that McKay doesn't defend Elizabeth here, so I will. Then he goes on to defend Margaret Thatcher of all people, so perhaps we should be glad that Lizzie wasn't placed in the same category. Oddly, although Margaret Thatcher is duly hated by several whole countries, I and just about everyone else on my friends-list automatically think of nostalgia_lj at this juncture. Teyla makes the face she does when she's totally tuning out the weird Earthling-banter as McKay goes on to insinuate that his aunt was either transgendered or the Bearded Lady or something -- high on the list of things I'd think that a tour as the resident geek of McKay's elementary school might've taught him not to ever mention. No one really cares. Of course, they're too busy being cannonballed out of the sky by the prisoners on the island. They manage to activate that 'gate, but crash-land before they can get to it. The prisoners cheer and run off after them for raping, pillaging, what-have-you.
Puddle-jumper, distinctly crashed all to hell. Teyla gets up and checks on Ronon first, who nods that he's okay, then McKay, who worries about his dental work, and finally "John." Shep apologizes for that being "not one of his better landings," heh. Ronon says that the 'gate should still be active for another few minutes, which... really? That seems wrong. Regardless of my own reservations about Ronon's intelligence, Team Sheppard hobbles out all bruised. They're ambushed by about a billion prisoners, which gives Ronon the opportunity to whip his Manly Man-Gun out from under the pimp coat (no, I didn't mean that), but not do much with it. Shep's all "I hope I didn't crash-land on anybody." Some of the prisoners actually climb on top of the puddle-jumper. The Leader of the Dirty People, deemed Leader by sheer amount of screen time so far, gives another look of nonspecific evilness.
Commercials. Teyla and Ronon eyefuck in the purple promo.
Island of the Damned. Leader of the Dirty People and, er, the Dirty People play with the new weapons they've confiscated. I seriously, seriously wish one of them had been wearing Ronon's pimp coat, because that would've been awesome. One of the dudes blows up a building by mistaking which end of the grenade launcher is up. Everyone dances around and cheers, because no one liked that particular dilapidated shack anyway, and convicts like fire.
Most of this is totally boring, so let me take this moment to discuss something very important that has been bothering your recappers for two weeks now. Teyla/Ronon: incredibly hot and porny, yet irritating to type and lacking the festive in-joke quality of "Sparky." Therefore, what the heck are we going to call them? We really do have to get a jump on this before the name-amalgamaters have their wicked way with this pairing and they end up being, like, "Teynon" or something otherwise crap. If we were in the X-Files fandom right now, where everything was a variation on "shippers," I think we'd be called "Trippers." Which is hilariously awesome, as Ronon does kinda look stoned on his own testosterone half the time, and we could say things like "they were Tripping all over that scene when Ronon randomly threw her into a closet in a manly way!" If we absolutely have to amalgamate their names in order to make it in a McShweirla fandom world out there, we could always call them TRON, which would be kinda awesome, and rhymes with pr0n. Of course, I really think we should thematically mirror "Sparky" by giving the pairing a name that seems like it should be some kind of amalgamated pairing name, but is actually the name of a dog. Because that, in my world, is true romantic comedy. [Pooh: "I vote for Tex, because if we just named them 'Sex', it would get confusing." Little Red: "No! Rover! OMG!"]
Poll
Meanwhile, on Alcatraz, Our Heroes are all tied up. Again. Ronon has been stripped of his pimp coat, but sadly, not his shirt. I should point out that in Escape from Alcatraz Clint Eastwood was stripped completely naked upon arrival to that infamous prison island, and I'm most disappointed that Stargate: Atlantis didn't see fit to grace us with that film homage. Leader of the Dirty People and his lackeys come in to lord superior over Team Sheppard. Shep's all, our people are expecting us, and the missus tends to get a bit cranky when we're late, and she'll send people here to blow you all up, SO THERE. Leader of the Dirty People is unfazed. "Is that supposed to concern me?" Pooh pointed out that this guy must have gone straight past Escape from Alcatraz in the Clint Eastwood section to Dirty Harry, but I think he's a bit too lame to be Clint Eastwood. Sheppard agrees: "Don't go getting all full of yourself, Chief." Therefore, Leader of the Dirty People will henceforth be known as Dirty Larry, with the L standing for lame, no actual dis on people named Larry.
Shep and Dirty Larry get into a bit of a pissing contest about who will blow up whom with whose superior weapons/aim, but Teyla decides to raise an actual question: "What do you want from us?" Dirty Larry brags a bit about how they've already got their weapons and fashionable outerwear and then proposes to take the puddle-jumper. McKay sasses, "You're referring to the ship you just shot down? The one that doesn't stand a hope in hell of ever flying again?" Dirty Larry: "The one that you're going to fix, yes." McKay: "Who am I, MacGyver? With what?" Dude, Clint Eastwood dug himself out of The Rock with nothing but a nail file welded to a spoon, and I imagine that in the last act of any stand-alone episode, McKay could make do with far less. Dirty Larry has apparently seen the same episodes I have, calls McKay a "smart man" in that tone that means he's totally going to do something nasty, and then says that all he needs is a little motivation. Dirty Larry shoots a hole with Ronon's gun into the wall behind McKay. Damn, these people really do not care about property maintenance! No wonder their shacks are all in such disrepair. Ronon is all "They're touching my GUN! MY BABY!" and struggles with his bonds in an intense, Manly Man way that somehow makes him look like an angry monkey. Don't piss off the monkey, Dirty Larry. I think Ronon totally named his gun in his seven years without human contact. Like Davy Crockett! From now on, Ronon's gun will be called Belle. Sheppard suggests that maybe Rodney should think about fixing the jumper after all. McKay, who still isn't used to getting shot at, agrees. "My friends tell me I have a remarkable gift for persuasion," says Dirty Larry before tossing Belle over his shoulder (to Ronon's great distress) and swaggering out. Hee. I kinda like him.
'lantis. Elizabeth's Shep sense is tingling, and she runs into the control room looking all worried, as she is wont to do. Cute Canadian Not!Grodin says that the Stargate activated, but nothing came through. "Colonel Sheppard?" guesses Lizzie, who has apparently gotten a rank refresher since last week. Also, seriously, why didn't the Ancients put freaking Caller ID in their Stargate system so you could see what planet was dialing you? Lizzie looks all kinds of worried when not!Grodin gives her more details, especially because "they should have returned by now." She orders him to dial the planet and try to establish a radio link, and then contacts Major Lorne. LORNE!! Yay! ["Still not jinxed!" -- Pooh] "I may have to go off-world to assist Colonel Sheppard," she says. Squeee! I assume Shep did at some point give Lorne the lecture about not letting Elizabeth wander onto potentially hostile alien planets, but, as Lorne -- like most of us probably would be -- is more scared of Elizabeth than Shep, he agrees to get a team together.
Island In The Sun. Ronon, Shep and Teyla attempt to loosen their bindings. I'm really a fan of this trend of them getting tied up off-world -- they're quite hot that way -- but I'd still prefer they were doing this half-naked. Ronon Angry Monkies that eventually he will get free and then Dirty Larry will PAY for manhandling Belle and stealing his coat and tying them all up and sassing them. I'm surprised he hasn't considered gnawing one of his own arms off yet. Shep intervenes in this little personal revenge vendetta and is all um, no, when you get free, you free us, and we all go back to the barn and have us some iced tea. "Let them find out we're gone after we're gone." The tuck-tail-and-run approach doesn't suit Ronon's Manly Man-ness. "You expect me to let them get away with this?" Shep still thinks that survival is better than ripping out Dirty Larry's jugular with their teeth, which makes Ronon imply that Sheppard didn't return fire on the puddle-jumper because he Just Isn't Manly Man Enough. "The weapons systems were damaged!" "If you say so," Ronon snits.
Shep, sick of having his manhood questioned by Teyla's new boyfriend, is all "I do say so, and right now, I'm saying knock it off!" Ronon wants to know if that's an order. Shep snorts, pissed off both that he's getting mocked by Ronon and that he went to great lengths to construct an alien/civilian team where he would never have to deal with the chain of command ever again and now he's being asked to... well, deal with the chain of command again. "I am beat up, tied up, and couldn't order a pizza right now if I wanted to, but if you need it to be, yeah, it's an order." At those magic words, Ronon instantly chills out: "Okay." Shep boggles. I find it hilarious that a man who hasn't used a knife and fork for almost a decade can still follow an order better than Sheppard. The best part of the entire scene is that Teyla says maybe one thing, and throughout the Manly Pissing Contest which very well might have undertones of Sheyla vs. Rover, there are about twenty reaction shots of her totally ignoring both of them. Hee. I also can't wait until we get a Ronon/Shep fistfight, which is totally on its way, because Shep's Alpha-ness has been questioned. The best part of that scene will be Elizabeth raising an eyebrow at a black-eyed Shep while trying not to chant I told you soooo out loud.
Poll
Puddle-Jumper. McKay bitches that there's no power. Dirty Larry somehow manages to swagger while standing still as he brags about a Dirty Person named Eldon who mineraled himself up some not!naquadah explosives from odds and ends he found around the house. Eldon promptly shows up and is indeed quite dirty. He's also wearing a leather cap that really makes him seem like that little guy from Monty Python and the Holy Grail who was all about anarchy and communism. Instead of squawking about the "violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm being repressed!", Eldon stammers that he's actually innocent and it's all case of mistaken identity and... okay, he is actually talking about the violence inherent in the system and being repressed, never mind. Dirty Larry doesn't care. Neither does McKay. Neither do we. McKay ignores him to babble about the lack of diagnostic tools, and Dirty Larry hilariously makes a "blah blah blah" gesture with his hand. HA! Dirty Larry says that he could threaten McKay's life in order to make him fix the Jumper, but then psychoanalyzes him as a cowardly lion with a "strength of character he doesn't even know he has." McKay's all, er, are you hitting on me, wtf? Dirty Larry wisely intuits that to motivate McKay he can't just threaten his life, but must threaten the lives of his friends. Which he then does. Dirty Larry walks out and McKay opens up a panel to begin work.
'lantis. Puddle-Jumper That Actually Still Works. Lizzie walks in and sits shotgun next to Lorne. She looks a little nervous, which is cute. Lorne asks if there has been any word. "Nothing," she answers. Lorne notices her worrying and tells her not to. "We'll find him," he says, and both Pooh and I squeak. Closed-captioning says them, and it really could go either way, but nonetheless. SQUEEE! "I was hoping to negotiate a trade agreement; now I'm worried I'm going to have to negotiate their release," she worries. "We don't know that," says Lorne in that slow voice meant to reassure people in distress because their lovers are being held hostage by aliens. Lorne rocks. Lizzie nods and orders him to dial the 'gate and go to stealth mode. Awwwww! Lorne is totally allowed to be Lizzie's bodyguard from now on.
Broke-Ass Puddle-Jumper. Eldon pulls out a random plexiglass disk from the wall and drools over how advanced the ship is. "How ironic, then, to have been shot down by the cast of Braveheart," quips McKay. Hee! McKay grabs the disk and sticks it in his pocket. Eldon babbles. McKay tells him to shut up and, to his great surprise, he actually does. Eldon holds up the plexiglass disk again, presumably after picking McKay's pocket, and McKay finally notices that it's been pulled out of the wall and might actually be something important. Okay, I realize that Eldon cobbles together not!naquadah slingshots and that's very inventive, but he still seems a few watts short. Can we meet some smart aliens next week, please?
Outside, Dirty Larry discovers and plays with a pair of Team Sheppard's radios.
Jumper. McKay asks if Eldon built the cannons, and it takes Eldon about five minutes to stammer around to saying yes. Oh my God, boring. Then McKay mocks him for being a murderer, because he's morally superior, and... okay, still boring. Eldon professes his innocence, McKay doesn't believe him, I don't care. McKay suddenly freaks out about the DHD. The prisoners, not surprisingly, don't have their own here on the island. McKay technobabbles that the ship is very broken, basically, including the onboard DHD, which means that no one's going anywhere. Does this mean that there's no way to manually dial the Pegasus Stargates the way you can with the old Milky Way rotary versions? I'd say it seems like a massive oversight to have taken out all the manual overrides upon upgrading the Stargate, but then, I'm still pissed that I can't roll up my automatic car windows without turning the car on first, so I'm not always the best consult when it comes to progress.
John and Lizzie are really pretty in that purple promo.
Shack Where Everyone Is Tied Up. Dirty Larry shoves McKay in and demands that he choose who dies first. McKay actually looks between the three of them in horror, which is a nice touch, before saying "I can't do that!" Dirty Larry is okay with playing Russian Roulette instead, unless McKay "changes [his] mind about fixing that ship." McKay flails that the ship is "broken! Do you understand 'broken'?" David Hewlett really is a fantastic actor, and I feel really badly for McKay in this episode. Dirty Larry busts out some more armchair psychology: "I know your type. You whine and you complain and you see to it that your every task is viewed as some impossible achievement," so that when he succeeds the fangirls squeee more. McKay is forced to agree that, yeah, sometimes, but not this time when it really is actually impossible. Sheppard studies McKay's face as he talks, clearly looking for the poker face. Dirty Larry leaves to give him "some time to choose," which I think is a bit lame. He should at least, like, grab Teyla and separate her from the rest of them to get the others worked up, but I suppose those bindings are all that's keeping her from opening a can of whup-ass... so... maybe Dirty Larry is a better criminal mastermind than me, after all.
Eldon comes in to warn McKay that Dirty Larry has killed 11 people and is a Very Bad Man, so it's better for everyone if McKay just plays along. For no reason at all, McKay antagonizes the helpful if irritating Eldon by saying that, since he's only killed one person, he's got some catching up to do. Sheppard doesn't believe Eldon has killed anyone, which is... kinda weird, really. It's always the quiet ones, Shep. Ronon agrees with me. Eldon insists he's not a murderer, and then exposits that the threat of being eaten by Wraith was such a good crime-deterrent that the Olesians had to start throwing all their criminals onto the island -- not just the violent ones -- to meet the Wraith food demands. Eldon is awfully trusting and sweet. If this were actually a Clint Eastwood movie, he totally wouldn't actually make it out of Alcatraz.
Planet What Not To Wear, Capitol City. They wander through that hallway of awful yellow carpeting, and Weir dishes with Horribly Dressed Man about the missing team. Marin says she'll set up search parties. Lorne wants to join them to rescue his snarky scientist boyfriend, but Horribly Dressed Man "would advise against that." "Would you?" Lizzie snaps, a little on edge since her man is all missing and stuff. Horribly Dressed Man talks about the dangers of the island, and slimily promises to find Team Sheppard. "I hope you do, Magistrate," Lizzie fake-smiles. "For all our sakes." I'm all for Elizabeth being ballsy and demanding here, because I like her as Mama Bear, but I just can't take this scene seriously because I just imagine meyerlemon's alternate dialogue for this scene where it's really all about Elizabeth slamming their decor and Horribly Dressed Man getting in a snit about how her pants are all wrinkled. Her jacket is really dorky-looking, but the Olesians are totally not allowed to throw stones here. On another wardrobe note, though, Elizabeth has been wearing a lot of turtlenecks in the past few episodes. While I'm sure this is completely due to Shep being un-subtle with the hickeys in the storage closets, and therefore is a totally fantastic development, it makes me wonder if she's still wearing that necklace of hers that may or may not have been from Simon. Has anyone been paying more attention than me here? Do I just care too much? [edit: Pooh reports that it's gone in "Duet." 1) Way to go, wardrobe! 2) Why hasn't this been fic'd a hundred thousand times by now? 3) I'm rather sad that it can't now become an If Necklaces Could Talk like Scully's little golden cross. Bother.]
Love Shack. Ronon is turning blue as he tries to rip his hands out of the bindings. "Take it easy, Chewie," Shep snarks. "You're going to cut your damned hands off." HEEEE! Oh, I love it. I've seen Star Wars referenced in a few fics as a Team Sheppard metaphor, but in Season 1, Teyla always had to be Chewie. I'm sure she's delighted to be rid of that particular comparison. I love the references to other sci-fi shows they make, and I think it's very fitting that the logical, diagnostic-loving McKay is Star Trek and John "use the force genes!" Sheppard is Star Wars. This classic science-fiction divide, Sheppard's fundamental heterosexuality notwithstanding, is the real reason why Their Love Will Never Be.
Eldon rips off a bit of shack wall and sneaks in, holding out a knife and offering to cut them loose. In exchange, he wants McKay to fix the ship and for Shep to let Eldon leave with them. McKay's all "IT'S STILL BROKEN!" and wonders why no one ever listens to him. Eldon claims that he can tell Rodney's holding back on a solution. Shep's all "Rodneyyy" (it's the space version of "Lucyyyy!", I think), but Rodney still insists that he can't. Shep's all "He'll fix it." McKay: "!?" "You really suck at lying, Rodney," Shep says. Heh. Ronon and Teyla stare at each other, since nobody asked their opinions. Shep having called his bluff, McKay admits that there's a long-shot possibility of reactivating the DHD. Satisfied, Eldon cuts Ronon's binds first, and Ronon snags the knife and holds it to Eldon's throat without skipping a beat. McKay and Shep spaz. Ronon: "Give me one reason why I shouldn't cut your throat!" Shep: "For one, it would make a mess." Always a fan of neatness, our Sheph0r. "Look, we made a deal." I want Ronon to yell "YOU made a deal, Earthling!", but he doesn't, possibly because that would require both reasoning and a complete sentence. Eldon looks like he's going to pass out. Ronon lets him go and unties everyone, bitching at McKay to "suck it up" when McKay worries about the knife being in close proximity to, er, nether regions. Because "suck it up" is such an alien thing to say, when Teyla can't even get her mind around contractions. Shut up, Ronon. Teyla fixes her hair, and then they escape. The camera pans to a radio with the talk button strapped down lying in the hay. The soundtrack dun-dun-DUHHHHN!s.
Aaaaaand, ( Condemned, recap part the second! )
Click, I command you.