The Kindred, Parts 1 & 2 (SGA)

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SSG281: Teyla keeps dreaming about Kanaan, and the dreams are telling her something. Stargate Atlantis Season 4, Episodes 18 and 19, “The Kindred” Parts 1 and 2, turn those visions into a trap: a lead on the missing Athosians, a Wraith dart, and Michael waiting at the other end with plans for Teyla’s unborn son. Meanwhile a plague built from the old Hoffan drug is killing people across Pegasus, Todd wants the research, and the last thing anyone expects to find in Michael’s facility is Carson Beckett.

Jeff Haecker, Lisa Jones and Victor Lams liked this two-parter, and they spend a good share of the hour on why. Michael, played by Connor Trinneer, is more menacing and more human-looking than he has been, and his scenes with Rachel Luttrell carry the episode. Kanaan finally appears, only to be burned alive in a dream and then return as one of Michael’s hybrids. The panel works through why Teyla and Kanaan share the Wraith sense, why that makes their child so important, and how Luttrell’s real pregnancy reshaped the whole season, including the writers’ early talk of making Sheppard the father.

The Carson Beckett clone is the heart of Part 2. The panel talks through his long scene with McKay, Ronon’s refusal to trust anything Michael made, and a Beckett who is dying without Michael’s injections yet still insists on going after Teyla, because that is what the real Beckett would have done. His walk to the stasis pod, shot by director Martin Wood as one long goodbye to the team, closes out Beckett’s return for now.

There is plenty more: Todd’s beacon and his uneasy trade of intel with Atlantis, P90s in the hands of Michael’s mercenaries, Carter’s thin role on the base, and McKay’s gift of recordings of his own thoughts for Teyla’s baby. Victor brings notes from the DVD commentaries too, from Joe Flanigan‘s sons appearing as Athosian children to a warehouse shoot so hot the cast was drenched in sweat on the catwalk, and Lisa wishes Todd had more to do, though Christopher Heyerdahl gets his due by playing Todd in Part 1 and Halling in Part 2. The episode opens with news that Amazon is reportedly looking for a new Stargate writer and closes with listener feedback and the question of how to cover Stargate Universe.

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