Stargate Atlantis: "Brain Storm" spoiler ridden, complaint-ridden review

[wraithfodder]

Gah! Here are my comments on "Brain Storm," one of the last Stargate Atlantis episodes to air, and damn, what a waste of an hour...

Where do I begin?

Okay, at the beginning. The Shep and Ronon going off camping/surfing - why could we have NOT seen that plot instead? Anyway, once they're out of frame, it goes downhill.

First, I don't mind McKeller - if it's done well, but this episode looked like it was written by someone in high school, and that is to say, ti's Marty Sue fanfic. I can only envision that Gero lives vicariously through McKay to get the girl.

The medicine, or lack thereof, in this episode sucked. First a guy is half flash-frozen. Oh, he's in bad shape, declares Keller, who promptly spends the rest of the episode not doing a damned thing for the guy, who, at best, has severe frostbite. Revoke her license (no, revoke the writer's license!, no, his paycheck!). Secondly, Keller is hypothermic, then Rodney finds her in frigid water, ohmygod, not breathing, no pulse, let's do chest compressions, which in the time-honored tradition of bad TV writing, snaps her out of it immediately and despite the fact she's hypothermic, she's not shivering, she seems fine, and in fact, is so fine she smiles and kisses McKay.

Why could the security guards not rescue Keller? Why did McKay have to? (Wait, Marty Sue to the rescue!)

Why were McKay and Keller flown back in private jet in wet clothes? Did Tunny not have any spare clothing anywhere? That, I can't believe since if you'r ein such an isolated facility, you keep spare stuff around. And after hypothermia, chest compressions, Jennifer's frisky enough to suggest sex???

Rodney signs a 200 page document without reading it, even skimming it? To another scientist whom he doesn't like? Puh-lease. Rodney, you've signed away your first born, a kidney, the rights to your life in a movie and all future patents. Tsk ;)

I like Stargate Atlantis because it is in outer space. WHen they go back to Earth, it loses something, and in this case, it fell into a sinkhole.

I sooooooooo hope there will be some fanfic of Shep and Ronon out camping (not slash, but gen, preferably whump) to make up for this episode.


Wraithfodder

Comments

[wraithfodder.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I like that plot - strange alien jellyfish on beach - of course, it should turn out to be incredibly predatory and be a land-jellyfish (so it can chase 'em through teh woods).

brain storm

[(Anonymous)]

OMG Rodney hit that!

Alien Jellyfish

[jkirk3279.livejournal.com]

I was thinking more in these lines:

Shepard is showing Ronon how to surf when an ominous fin appears... cue the Jaws music and cut to commercial.

Return from commercial: Ronon and Shepard are running through the woods. Ronon is griping about the fact his gun isn't waterproof and he had to leave it on the beach when he swam out to help fight off the shark-thing.

Flashback:

Which turns out to be the cherished pet of some very angry mermaids (with legs, webbed toes, etc: the results of a breeding experiment to shield humans from the Wraith), with very sharp tridents and an amazing ability to hold grudges...

End Flashback.

And at that moment they fall into a concealed tiger trap, set by furry forest dwellers to capture aggressive mermaids.

And the hits just keep on coming... 43 minutes of hair-raising dodging and weaving, punctuated with the odd thirty seconds of gasping for breath.

Ronon gets his gun back, they activate the StarGate and jump through, followed by several of those very sharp tridents.

When asked how the vacation went, Ronon and Shepard look at each other. Shepard says "It was fine. Sun, Sand, some surfing. What's not to like?"

Ronon grunts, "yeah, fine".

What about those tridents?

Shepard: "Oh, just a misunderstanding".

END



My biggest problem with Brain Storm was, literally, the storm. I'll give the writers a pass on the 'shipping, and assume that they were a little pissed at Atlantis only lasting half as long as SG1 did.

But honestly, the science here was whacko. Matter Bridges are fine, no problem there. Alternate Universes? A sure thing, from my point of view.

It's the idea that a sudden release of a tiny amount of cold air would create a tornado. That's infantile in it's stupidity.

If you're going to venture into technobabble territory, STAY there.

Don't stray back into the realm of normal physics and then mess it up, it makes you look stupid, and demeans all Science Fiction in the process.

Deserts get very cold at night, and you'll never see tornadoes then... the only time you WILL see a dust devil is during the heat of the day.

And when the containment field goes down, you see a rush of air whooshing upward. Uh, no. Cold air doesn't rise. It just sits there.

IF the cold spot was at absolute zero, you'd see air moving DOWN toward the cold spot as the warmer air outside cooled. But there wouldn't be any great speed to that process.

To put this in perspective: the Vehicle Assembly Building NASA uses is actually big enough to have it's own weather. I understand it occasionally rains indoors. No tornadoes though.

Now the VAB is LARGE. Many times larger than the desert facility.

So, no, just having cool 32 degree air in that tiny volume would NOT create any change in the weather.

If the writers just HAD to have tornadoes, they could have said the matter bridge was malfunctioning and creating exotic particle feedback.

The idea of vacuum energy does hold for this. Virtual particles are supposed to form and decay constantly. If that balance was altered even in the slightest amount, the field created by the matter bridge could create ionizing particles in the atmosphere above the heat sink.

Harmless to humans. But quite capable of causing a storm to form if there was enough moisture, dust and heat energy in the air mass.


The ionized particles would cause water droplets to condense. Add in some more technobabble about the heat sink's effects propagating straight upward and you've got your storm.

[jkirk3279.livejournal.com]

Uhm, yeah, he died.

It's iffy, yes. If he was flash-frozen, his entire body, then ice crystals wouldn't have time to form and he could be revived.

Ah, but only HALF his body was frozen. So while his head is frozen, his right side isn't: it will die from lack of oxygen to the internal organs.

Unless they could find a way to finish flash-freezing him, he's dead one way or another.

Barring a very quick trip to a sarcophagus or Ancient healing device, the best they could do would be pop his head into liquid nitrogen and hope for revival when cloning a new body became available.