While exploring Atlantis and accessing some of the recent water damage areas of the city members of one of the teams vanish and their screams echo over the radio, rushing to their aid they find the two experiencing hallucinations and both violently convulse and die. Weir orders a lockdown and McKay reads the riot act to some of the scientist as to the limitations and restrictions when dealing with an as yet unknown contagion but John of all people seems to ignore Weir and her big picture thinking to chase down one of the scientists and that in turns starts another ball rolling. Atlantis itself engages containment protocols and with a time frame put onto the “infection” drastic measures are the only solution and even then Weir is unconvinced they are the right steps to take.
Hot Zone is a story set on Atlantis and draws from existing lore and opens up a new potential long term thread in regards to who was responsible for creating the “virus” especially given that it shows a bias towards the standard human genome. It’s interesting that we get a very definite clash between John and Elisabeth in the story, there have been occasions before which offered this potential but none have been exploited to this extent. Given the events in the finale and with plenty of hindsight you wonder if they were preparing the way for a change in John’s long term status or other more fundamental change, either way the clash of military and civilian was carried through pretty well.
McKay once again has his moments and his character continues to evolve in the episode building upon the events in The Defiant One, he’s not quite upto the heroic Rodney he will become but he is getting there and we do find out about his sister, more of her to come in later seasons.
Overall an average episode, some good bits but falling short of some of the better episodes from the first season. Next week we are back to SG1 with the Harry Maybourne episode “It’s Good to Be King” we hope you can join us for that. We have some feedback from Facebook and G+ which was most welcome and again we always appreciate any comments etc on past, current and future episodes of Stargate and Gatecast.
Promo…
Links…
- Hot Zone IMDB
- Hot Zone Wiki
- Dean Marshall
- David Nykel
- Paul McGillion
- Craig Veroni
- Damon Johnson
- Linsay Collins
- Nahannu Arntzen
- Peter Grier
- Michelle Addison
- Allison Graham
- Mario Azzopardi
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Ah yes, the boots:)
Hey Guys,
Sorry I haven’t been very vocal on the forums. I’m still here, changing jobs, mergers, etc. Can’t wait to listen to this ep. Don’t really remember it. Looking forward to Avalon 1&2. Will try to keep in touch better.
Daniel