The silence from the transplanted Taranin people worries Elizabeth and she sends the team to investigate, upon arrival they found the settlement empty but knowing it was built upon a huge complex of tunnels holds out hope that the people have moved underground perhaps to safeguard themselves from the Wraith. As the team searches the complex they detect a lifeform but then are attacked by a large creature, they wound it and as it flees they find a store room full of dead bodies, they have discovered the fate of the Taranins. In an adjacent room there is a large pod/cocoon and Ronon going walkabout finds the lab with the remnants of carnage and an Iratus bug in a container, having lost contact with the Marines sent as backup they return to the Stargate only to find that the control crystal of the DHD has been removed, they have no option but to return to the underground complex and search for whoever is responsible.
The culprit is revealed when her returns to find the destroyed remnants of his horrifying experiment, it’s Michael Kenmore who is exploiting the very technology that was used to create his own circumstance with a true megalomaniacs desire to take over not only the world but the entire galaxy with his own genetically engineered creatures who are a mixture of Iratus and human. Teyla is isolated from the team and taken captive by Michael who as always had an affinity for her but now views her as an enemy and just one more ingredient to create more of his minions but after running battles, tense standoffs and lots of hide and seek the team evade the horde of creatures and using Michael’s own dart escape the planet and return to Atlantis.
Well Vengeance is a pretty dark episode, Stargate has never been afraid to move past the grey but we get a rather graphic display of the horror’s Michael is willing to impose on his captives. That said he is a creation of Carson Beckett who should probably have known better than attempting to alter a species so dramatically regardless of the threat they pose and it’s 50/50 if the Wraith as a whole or Michael as an individual is the greater threat. We got some high quality prosthetic and suit work in the episode from Masters FX and certainly the lower lighting conditions helped to sell the scenes the acting and stunt work combined with the makeup and pyrotechnics delivered a pulse pounding action sequence time and time again. As always Conner more than delivers a stellar performance, it may be the writing or he may have simply found the style of “Michael”, either way he is delivering a level of calm and controlled menace all the best bad guys have in spades.
Vengeance was a pleasure to watch and yes they made no bones about the casual lifting of ideas from the Alien franchise with their own particular twist of course:)
A big thank you to Shannon for joining us for the first time, a seasoned podcaster who despite some jury rigging was able to get into the swing of how we do things effortlessly. Our next recording will be for the Atlantis season 3 wrap up so the favourite episode poll is now up and running, it will close on the 16th of May so please let us know by voting which is your favourite S3 episode. This weeks promo is for the Voices of Defiance which is hosted by Shannon and they should return with new content in time for the third season of Defiance on Syfy and next week we have the Stargate SG1 series finale Unending, please join us for that and if you are going to give us some feedback that is the episode to do it for 🙂
Promo…
Links…
- Vengeance IMDB
- Vengeance Wiki
- Connor Trinneer
- Ryan Jefferson Booth
- Sam Polin
- Brian Ho
- Josh Blacker
- Andy Mikita
Mentions…
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