Podcast: Download

SSG274: Kill the food supply and the Wraith starve. That’s the Asuran plan, and by the middle of season 4 it’s working. Whole human populations across Pegasus are gone, and Atlantis has run out of room to wait.

“Be All My Sins Remember’d” is season 4, episode 11 of Stargate Atlantis, and it’s the payoff for the ten episodes in front of it. Martin Gero wrote it. The visual effects cost more than any Atlantis episode before it, and with the in-house team busy on The Ark of Truth, the work went out to houses around Vancouver. What came back is the biggest space battle the franchise ever put on screen: Daedalus and Apollo carrying new Asgard plasma beams, seven Wraith hives, a Traveler fleet, and the Asurans defending their own homeworld.

Victor Lams, Jeff Haecker, and Lisa Jones work through an episode that carries more plot than some whole seasons.

The heart of it is Fran. McKay swears he isn’t building another human-form replicator, then builds one anyway, gives her the ability to speak, names her the Friendly Replicator Android, and beams her down to Asuras to be pulled apart molecule by molecule. Every nanite on the planet collapses toward her into one mass. When it still isn’t heavy enough, McKay retunes it to pull neutronium out of the crust until it sinks to the core and the planet implodes. Fran is cheerful about all of it, which is the joke and also the problem. Jeff makes the case that she’s a fast computer running its instructions; Lisa points out how quickly the show raises the ethics and then moves on.

Then there’s Todd, who isn’t Todd yet. Christopher Heyerdahl had a scheduling conflict, so a stand-in wears the makeup and Heyerdahl dubbed the dialogue in afterward. All three hosts clocked that his face was wrong before they knew why.

Carter dresses down Colonel Ellis for the way he speaks to McKay, and Jeff, who happens to be rewatching SG-1, ties it straight back to “48 Hours.” Teyla finally tells Sheppard she’s pregnant and he blows up, which Lisa reads as two reactions stacked together: the friend first, then the commanding officer. Ronon just says “Congratulations,” and offers his own name for the kid, boy or girl.

Larrin turns up with the Travelers and gets talked into the fight faster than she probably should. The panel likes her better this time anyway.

And then the last shot. The planet is gone, the alliance is over, McKay has gleefully deleted Asuras from the database, and one replicator ship is still drifting in the debris with a replicator Elizabeth Weir in command.

Also in this one: the Hamlet titles, Hermiod’s absence, the Colonel/Colonel/Colonel scene lifted out of Spies Like Us, three foreign episode titles, and a letter from Andrew about saying goodbye to Fr. Cory Sticha.

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.