Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

Cleaning up a mess

The continuation of the season premiere, Misbegotten, is left to tie up the loose ends from in the previous instalment. The focus is shifted back to Atlantis as the team deal with the mess they created by using the Wraith retro-virus while Weir’s leadership continues to be scruntinised. Unfortunately, the whole episode ends up feeling like it’s doing exactly that; cleaning up a disjointed mess although the final act provides a flash of the excellence Atlantis can achieve.

The main plot continues to focus around the Wraith retro-virus arc and the morality questions of biological warfare. No Man’s Land felt like a justification for the team in using the virus by not only gaining their lives but a hive ship in the process. Misbegotten wipes out that prior success and forces them to deal with the consequences of their actions: this time the team truly escapes their fate only by the skin of their teeth and with significant loss.

The most successful element is the thrilling finale. The final battle with their desperate firing on the planet below as they are shot at by the arriving Wraith ship is tense, dramatic and well-executed; the special effects providing a visual feast to support the well-drawn character reactions. The arrival of the Daedalus to find nothing but debris and no life-signs provides a moment of anxiety before the expected confirmation of Sheppard’s voice from the cloaked puddle-jumper provides relief. The loss of their newly acquired hive ship provides the notion the team have paid a price as does the very personal nature of Beckett’s torture by Michael on the planet.

Unfortunately, the lead up to these events is plodding, the scenes shifting from the SGC, to Atlantis, to the hive ship, to the planet in an almost disjointed manner. The bizarre decision to take the humanised Wraith out of stasis and placed on the planet is never truly explained beyond the need to conserve power on the hive ship. Given the failure of their previous attempt with Michael and given there is always the risk of reversion, it seems another poor judgement on Weir’s part. Yet it does provide the opportunity to examine the morality of creating and using the virus, and the obligation of the Atlantis team to care for the dehumanised Wraith.

The morality question is played out by Michael in his discussion with Teyla when she suggests using the virus will give him a life again. He correctly points out that in destroying the sense of his true self, they are effectively killing him; that the use of the virus is a form of genocide. His observation that he is not a disease to be cured is suitably poignant and heart-felt while the menace of what he is highlighted in the dynamic played out by the actors. This is taken further in the torture scene between Beckett and Michael.

Michael’s torture of Beckett serves to punish the doctor at an individual level for creating the virus and by doing so shifts the sympathy from Michael back to the Atlantis team because Beckett is the most empathetic to the humanised Wraiths. Beckett does feel a moral obligation to them. He cares about their fate and won’t abandon them. This is contrasted sharply with Ronan’s and Sheppard’s viewpoint; they don’t see the community as humans at all. Sheppard effectively admits to Woolsey that as far as he’s concerned the humanised Wraiths can never be trusted. Ultimately, the original idealistic vision of turning the Wraiths into humans and not killing them will never be achieved; the retro-virus can only be used as a weapon to weaken the Wraith before they are killed one way or another.

The story demonstrates this effectively and it is Sheppard who eventually makes the morally repugnant but strategically correct decision to destroy the humanised Wraith on the planet because they cannot risk the intelligence of Earth’s location and Atlantis’s existence to leak again. Here is the strength of character that enabled Sheppard to shoot his commanding officer and end his suffering. Sheppard excels as a military leader in Misbegotten; tough, strategically focused and utilising his team to the best of their abilities.

In contrast it is hard to see why Weir retains her position. The entire continuation of the review into Weir’s leadership has no tension or bite – even Weir seems remarkably relaxed about it, teasing Sheppard for being upset on her behalf and dismissing Woolsey as harmless. Woolsey’s decision to report less than the complete truth and facts is out of character. His distrust for the military and preference for civilian oversight might have provided an explanation except for his own quote right at the beginning (the best line of the episode); ‘nothing renews your appreciation for the military like the threat of invasion from life-sucking aliens.’ Losing the leadership would have sharply emphasised the cost of making morally ambiguous decisions.

If Weir’s decisions provoke questions over her leadership ability, her team-building does not. Both the opening scene and the briefing scene with the team united at last finally provide the all important ingredient of showing how much they care for each other. It is a shame the opening was not the ending of No Man’s Land which cried out for such a scene. Misbegotten also makes better use of its ensemble cast with all on screen although some get more of the action than others.

In conclusion

In many ways, Misbegotten delivers the appropriate sense of gravity needed, evokes sympathy for the Atlantis team and the final act delivers some much needed tension; all qualities missing from No Man’s Land. Indeed, the two work better when viewed as a whole yet there is still the sense that there is room for improvement; a sentiment that could be attributed to the entire retro-virus arc and unfortunately, with the fate of the humanised Wraith including Michael left ambiguous for a possible sequel, the story cannot be said to be concluded nor the mess completely cleaned up.