Something I'm a bit confused on. Weir got to Earth because Atlantis has a ZPM. Earth cannot dial out to Atlantis because they do not have a ZPM. Why did Weir need to hitch a ride with the Asgard to get back? Wouldn't a daily call from Atlantis ("are you ready to come back yet?") make more sense?

What am I missing?

My assumption was that it takes power on the sending side to send something through. So while Earth has enough power to send communications, sending a person takes a ZPM.

Let's see if I have this: Atlantis can open a wormhole and send somebody through, but even an Atlantis opened wormhole can not receive people from Earth?

Yes, basic premise of Stargate since the beginning is wormholes only go one direction, except for radio transmissions.

The Stargates have always been one way trips. Only the side that dials out can xmit matter. For some reason (mostly plot/story needs) radio communications can go both ways. That also allows the use of MALPs to do remote exploration before sending an SG team. One of the primary goals of the MALP is to determine if a Dial Home Device is present at the other gate, so that the SG team can dial home. In some cases the SG team has brought a portable Naqahdah generator when no DHD is present, in order to power the gate and dial manually.

This article also helped to clear this up for me: http://www.stargate-sg1-solutions.com/wiki/Stargate

Is it my imagination, but has Atlantis FAR surpassed SG1 as a better show?

I like the characters on SG1 more (even moreso now that Claudia Black is a full cast-member), but Atlantis has a fresher feel to it. Right now, they're pretty equal to me.

However, the sooner all sci-fi shows drop the "mysterious virus/illness/etc which takes the whole hour to cure" storyline, the happier I will be.

Awesome episode of SG-1 this week:

- love the interaction between the SG-1 & Atlantis teams. The banter between Carter and McKay is always fun (esp. when she's taken aback when he said how he thought of her while in the dark... )
- great references to old eps: as usual, one of the strengths of the show is it's ability to draw upon it's past and keep building upon it. (esp. using the black hole episode where a black hole can power a stargate indefinitely, married to the episode where they cause a wormhole to jump using a shaped explosion).
- Liked how Daniel finally went out and demanded the Ancients help in the fight against the Ori

I realize people tend to be down on SG-1, but even after 10 years, it's still pretty darn good. It'll have a few so-so episodes here and there, but they do the meta-stories quite well and has certainly evolved quite a bit since it's first season.

Yeah, it really was a great episode of SG-1 this week. McKay is easily my favorite SG character and they used him to great effect in the episode.

It's too bad the Atlantis story that followed seemed so weak in comparison. I was hoping they would at least reference the crossover on Atlantis. Instead it was a stale storyline which even Richard Kind couldn't keep afloat.

SG-1 was cool this week. The referencing of past stories and taking out the Ori ship. Two questions, though I enjoy her character interaction, what was Vala doing on that mission? Last week they made it clear she wasn't a member of SG-1 and her posting was provisional. Did I miss something? And did they mention where they got the two extra gates? On Atlantis they mentioned looking for extra gates but that seemed a bit after the fact.

Aside from some interesting Dr. Beckett moments I could have done without the Atlantis episode.

I thought Vala was cleared to join SG-1 (perhaps not as an official member) when she passed her psych test last week. As far as the extra gates, they could have retrieved them from dead planets like Atlantis was trying to do, or they could have been left over from the gates recaptured from Baal last year when he was stealing them. It is possible that the SGC couldn't return them all because they didn't know where they came from.

the beginning being the movie, some how French Stewart's character knew it was one way while they were sitting on Abidos bitching about how Daniel sort of lied about how easy it'd be for him to dial back to earth

Anybody else hoping some accident would've happened with the supergate and caused the Wraith to face off against the Ori ship? (of course we know who would've won).

The previous comment of Atlantis surpassing SG1 was completely opposite this week. SG1 was about 10x better.

I'm still hoping this happens. The Wraith figure out how to get to Earth just as some huge battle commences. Either the Ori take our the Wraith with ease or the Wraith see what's going on and figure Earth and its citizens just aren't worth the trouble.

The symbolism of the little Atlantis gate connecting to the SG-1 Supergate was very apt this week. The ending was like:

SG-1:Holy shit, we blew up an Ori Ship!!!!
Atlatnis: and don't forget, um, that hive ship...
SG-1: What? .... Oh, sure, that was great too.

Question: could the monsters on SG-1 look any cheesier than they did last night? Mitchell's VP line made an otherwise gross episode OK. This was also the first Atlantis episode I've enjoyed since the crossover. Well McKay being shot in the butt last week was funny.

you mean this?

because that's all I could think of as soon as I saw it in the previews last week

Did anyone else wanna yell "Horray Beer!" last night?

Yes the SG-1 episode was weak. The VP line was odd considering in the SG universe Cheney isn't VP. Also, I found the several anti-hunter remarks off putting. It's funny that Beau..I mean Gen Landry, was so concerned about drunken hunters shooting each other that he and Mitchell (and just about everyone else) didn't wear any blaze orange the entire episode, which would be illegal in MN. Also, Elk hunting is extremely limited in MN. Those minor quibles aside, it still lacked energy. I didn't really care about the character building stuff, or the plot.

Atlantis had some really good stuff going, until it turned into "Unnatural Selection" redux. And of course Fifth v2.0 will be back. Why is it that the SG crew can be monumentally stupid and trusting when it comes to the Wraith, but they have to betray the Replicators, especially those pesky friendly ones, at every turn. Still, the build up was good. I actually wish it had been stretched out, perhaps over 2 episodes, with the replicator/dream reveal as the cliffhanger.

That would be tremendously annoying.

I was pretty annoyed at both episodes. SG1 wasn't so great and Atlantis brings back (in a different form) Replicators for the millionth time.

So, who's looking forward to SG-1's 200th episode tommorrow? Looks like a fun, wacky one with plenty of references to the entire series.

I thought it was funny their replicators had the same "put hand in brain to create fantasy land" power. You would think that would be kind of a unique ability among the SG-1 breed, but apparently any old replicator can do it.

There was an article about it in this week's TVGuide. There looks to be many references outside the series. The "obvious" one was a great picture, made curious by who they didn't show.