Stargate Sunday: Irresponsible & Tao of Rodney

The Stargate episodes I watched this week were Irresponsible and Tao of Rodney, the 13th and 14th episodes of Stargate Atlantis season 3.

Irresponsible

The Atlantis Expedition has learned of a planet where a "great hero" has protected the citizens from threats.  Hoping to find an ally against the Wraith, Sheppard's team goes to the planet, only to find Lucius Lavin (the Harry Mudd of the Stargate franchise) is using an Ancient personal shield to make himself this hero.  The team is not impressed, even after a gang of Genii mercenaries attack the town and Lucius "saves" them.  

We find out later that Lucius hired the mercenaries to pretend to attack the town and be driven off by him.  The mercenaries were exiled survivors of Cowen's guard, and after Lucius shortchanges them on their payment for the "attack", contact Commander Kolya to let him know about Sheppard's team being on the planet.

Kolya shows up and eventually captures the entire team except for Sheppard himself.  Lucius manages to escape as well and he and Sheppard discover that the gate is guarded, preventing them from calling in reinforcements.  Sheppard hatches a plan and gets Lucius to convince the town to rise up against the Genii while he confronts Kolya.  In a scene reminiscent of a gunfight from a western, Sheppard walks into the town square to prevent Kolya from killing McKay.  The Genii soldiers shoot him, only to discover that Sheppard is wearing the personal shield.  The shield conveniently fails after they all run out of ammo, leaving Sheppard unprotected.  The villagers show up with their weapons, forcing the Genii to surrender, but Kolya goes for his gun, forcing John to kill him.

Despite the presence of Lucius, this episode wasn't as bad as I remembered.  Unlike Lucius' other appearance in Irresistible, he wasn't particularly offensive.  I still think it's a shame that Kolya wasn't more involved in the episode he was killed in, but his presence did make the episode far more interesting than it would have been with a random mercenary.

I did find it strangely fitting that the last shot we see of Lucius is a kid kicking him between his legs, expecting the shield to still protect him.

Tao Of Rodney

Rodney McKay and Radek Zelenka are leading a science team checking out a previously unexplored section of Atlantis when they discover an Ancient lab.  Rodney attempts to turn the systems off to save power when a spiral of strange energy surrounds him.  He doesn't notice any negative effects, but a short time later, starts exhibiting enhanced hearing and telekinesis.  Radek and Dr. Weir start investigating the machine further and discover that it was created to manipulate DNA to aid the process of Ascension.  

Dr. Beckett checks up on McKay to look for any negative side effects before letting him out of the infirmary, escorted by Ronon.  On his way up to the command center, Rodney discovered that he can now read minds as well.  He gets permission to use his increasing intelligence to reconfigure the city's power systems, but part way through the process is interrupted by Weir, who discovered that if he doesn't Ascend, the changes to his DNA will kill him.  This distraction results in a power surge, which critically injures Zelenka.  Rodney uses the healing powers we have seen Ancients use in the past to save Zelenka, then starts using the time he has left to do as much inventing as he can, including improvements to the shields of the Daedalus and a hyperdrive for a Puddle Jumper.  After his attempts to learn meditation in order to ascend fail, Rodney begins saying farewell to his team members, leading to touching scenes with Zelenka, Teyla, and Ronon.

As Rodney's body starts to die, he successfully meditates, getting his brain activity down to the point at which he could ascend.  He suddenly wakes back up and grabs Beckett, giving him an idea as to how to save him.  The idea works, using the machine to revert Rodney to his condition before his DNA was manipulated.

I enjoyed this episode.  McKay is my favorite character, so that's part of it, but this was a good combination of seeing McKay at his abrasive best and seeing his softer side, especially when he apologizes to Zelenka for the way he treats him and when he heals Ronon's scars.  I do wish there had been a similar "farewell" scene with Rodney and Carson, but it doesn't drag the episode down at all.

Trivia:

In a couple scenes, we see the label SGA/BLU ## on server racks in McKay's lab.  The production crew referred to the server racks as "Blinking Light Units" to reflect their role in making the background more interesting.  You can see the label in the upper-middle portion of the screenshot below.

Quotes:

"Does superego count as a power?"

"And with great potential comes great responsibility."

"If you're a highly-evolved super-genius, put up your hand."