Podcast: Download

SSG273: Cut your hand and watch it close. Sheppard takes a sparring wound from Ronon, Dr. Keller insists it never happened, and by the next scene the wound is gone. That’s the crack that opens Stargate Atlantis Season 4, Episode 10, “This Mortal Coil,” and behind it is the news that four members of the team, the city around them, and every memory they have are copies.

Lisa Jones, Jeff Haecker, and Victor Lams land in the same place from three directions. The premise is good. The delivery is exhausting.

The first act works. The gate has been dead for a week, a probe self-destructs the moment McKay finds nanite programming in it, and Ronon starts noticing people acting wrong. Jeff had forgotten where this one goes, so the setup landed for him. Then the explanations start and don’t stop. Rebel Asurans, Niam’s faction, ascension, souls, a duplicate Atlantis on another world, a warship stolen off the replicator homeworld that we never see stolen. Victor’s verdict: telling instead of showing, with more Stargate mythology than 42 minutes can hold.

Then there’s Elizabeth Weir. If you’ve been asking what happened to Elizabeth Weir in Stargate Atlantis, this is the episode that answers it, and the answer arrives as a shrug. Captured months earlier, her influence spreading through the Asuran network, terminated by Oberoth, delivered in one line. Torri Higginson comes back to play the replicator copy who breaks the news about herself, and the panel works through why that lands so flat.

The comparisons write themselves. “Tin Man.” “Double Jeopardy.” “Foothold.” SG-1 covered duplicate teams and impostors on the base years earlier and did it better. In “Double Jeopardy” the robot doubles had been running missions on their own, and their deaths meant something. Here all four duplicates climb into one puddle jumper, take off uncloaked, and get shot down inside a second.

Lisa points out the wrinkle behind all of it: human-form replicators were meant to be Atlantis’s big villain from the start, and SG-1 used them first. Victor is fine with that trade. He’ll take the Wraith over what he calls the most boring bad guys in the franchise.

The production talk is the fun part. The duplicates wear the season 1 through 3 jackets as a planted clue, and McKay’s complaint that they bunch up under the arms is an in-joke about David Hewlett lobbying for new uniforms.

The title is Hamlet, out of the “To be, or not to be” soliloquy, and so is next week’s “Be All My Sins Remember’d.”

Everyone agrees on the ending. Joel Goldsmith’s sting cuts out, the silence holds, and the blips keep coming as dozens of Asuran warships fill the display. Stay through the fade for Rodney’s reaction.

Plus listener feedback on civil sci-fi podcasting and Amazon walking away from the new Stargate series.

Get all new episodes automatically and for free:

Follow by Email | Listen to this episode and subscribe on YouTube.

Help us continue to offer the Secrets of Stargate. Won’t you make a pledge at SQPN.com/give today?

Links for this episode:

• Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts!
• You can watch all of the Stargate series on Amazon Prime.
• Get the official Secrets of Stargate t-shirt at sqpn.com/merch.
• Join the conversation at the SQPN Facebook page.
• Be part of the StarQuest Discord community at SQPN.com/discord
• Send your feedback or comments to [email protected]

Want to Sponsor A Show?
Support StarQuest’s mission to explore the intersection of faith and pop culture by becoming a named sponsor of the show of your choice on the StarQuest network. Click to get started or find out more.