Rewatch: The Ark

[twinsarein.livejournal.com]

On a distant moon, Sheppard, McKay, Ronon Dex and Teyla find an elaborate subterranean base. The technology is anything but up to date and the base seems to be abandoned, until McKay decides to restore power. When he does so, a scientist materializes and it would seem that he had developed a means of using transporter technology to store a person's essence. The technology was developed to save as many of their people as possible from the Wraith culling and there are several thousand of them in stasis. As the decrepit station begins to fail, Teyla is pulled into stasis by one of the surviving scientists forcing Sheppard to risk his own life to save all of them. [Poll #1848954]

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Comment B

[helenkacan.livejournal.com]

And we have another crackpot on board. Echoes of Poisoning the Well ("five generations") and The Tower (obliquely, because of sacrificing their people) and even The Long Goodbye (the hatred that overrides logic and reason to its bitter end). But what these people did (the scientists, eh?) was worse than what happened with the Hoffans. Because here only 1,000 were rescued while hundreds of thousands were massacred as collateral damage in trying to eliminate the Wraith. There's also an echo from Sateda, when Ronon tells Malena that he's arranged transport for her on Kell's evacuating vessel.

Jamus is sneaky and has obviously picked up on John's leave-noone-behind philosophy.

I love Rodney reiterating John's claim that he can fly anything. But, whoa. Interesting to see that Evan agrees with Rodney. But Ronon thinks John can do it. John's confident enough to bet a week's wages with Rodney. Good to see that they're finding real life applications for their competitiveness, now that THAT game is not available.

When everyone except for John is in the 'jumper, it's cute to see Rodney pressing John to see if he has anything else he wants to say. What, Rodney? Like the other times he's gone on suicide missions?

Naturally, nothing goes smoothly when John can't free the shuttle from the moon, 'cuz the bolts won't fire. So he's along for a fiery ride ... until the moon finally disintegrates. The visuals were really fabulous for this one. Of course, John brings the shuttle down in a ::shudders:: controlled glide to the best of his ability. He semi knocks himself out. But will someone tell me WHY he removed his helmet. Was there any air in the cockpit?

Aww, cute coda with John visiting Teyla in the infirmary. Elizabeth is also there. So Carson says there were people who experienced some memory loss while in storage. I'm wondering if going mentally unhinged was also a side-effect, considering what both Herick and Jamus did.

I'm really surprised to hear Teyla say that they would have done the same thing. John's indignant to hear that. I agree. It's one thing to be ruthless and brutal with people who actually DO harm you and yours (hello, Genii?), but our people had done nothing to deserve being threatened. And there's some banter at the end, though Rodney's kinda getting the pointy end of it (in absentia). He so does not deserve it, because I thought he was a very brave and manly little toaster!

Audio Commentary was with Martin Wood (Director and Supervising Producer) and Mark Savela (Visual Effects Supervisor). I'm basically ignoring what they're talking about, because it's mostly about the visual techniques involved (even though I was very impressed). But around 15:35 there's a hilarious oops. On the right side of the screen, near Herick's hand, a film crew member left behind a Snickers bar and a water bottle.

I did learn how funny (well, I don't think Joe F thought so) it was to shoot the scenes of John being all shook-up in the cockpit. Martin Wood was squeezed into a space that shouldn't hold two bodies with a hand-held camera in one shaking hand, while he was shaking Joe's body with his other hand. Well, considering that we've become so accustomed to seeing our people flying around with inertial dampeners engaged, it was fun to experience a jarring old-school space shuttle reentry.