As if killing off fan-favorite Dr. Carson Beckett in the third
season wasn’t enough, the brain trust behind Stargate: Atlantis decided to
enrage their fan base even further in the fourth season of their series by
getting rid of Elizabeth Weir (Torri Higginson), the thoughtful, dove-leaning
leader of the Atlantis expedition who found herself clashing with the more
hawkish tactics of her earth-based superiors against the Replicators. Whatever
decent drama that was being built up with this storyline was quickly squashed
when Weir fell victim to the Replicators--a villainous race who, in the hands of
the Atlantis writers, were about as scary and menacing as a group of angry Smurfs.
Weir was replaced by SG-1 fan-favorite Samantha Carter (Amanda Tapping), who
took over command of the Atlantis base.
Tapping had negotiated a new contract for the eleventh season of Stargate: SG-1,
which would only have her do 14 out of the 20 episodes. When SG-1 was cancelled
after its tenth season, the Stargate powers that be moved her over to Atlantis
with the same contract, and the same stipulation. Since you only have your lead
actress for 14 episodes, it would be prudent to make the most of all of her
appearances, right? Well, no--not if you’re a member of the Atlantis brain trust.
In the episode Outcast, Carter is given just one line to say, as she informs
Sheppard of a loss in his family. Thanks to the continuing ineptitude of the
show runners, Carter actually appears in only 13 episodes of Atlantis. Despite
this stumbling, Carter’s
transition as a base commander is a smooth one; Tapping does her customary good
job playing Carter as being slightly more mature, and commanding here, without being
overbearing.
All quibbles aside, the fourth season of Stargate Atlantis is actually much
better--more enjoyable overall--than the third, and one wonders if the writers
were energized by having Carter on board. There are some genuinely good episodes
here, including Be All My Sins Remember’d, which finally deals with the
Replicators with a rousing, epic space battle that recalls the best of the Star
Wars films. Although Jewel Staite--who played Kaylee on Firefly--made her first
appearance as the new chief medical officer Jennifer Keller in the last episode
of the third season, she finally gets to shine in this season's Missing,
where she bonds with warrior woman Teyla while they’re being hunted in the woods.
Quarantine is a great medical thriller with a paranoid twist, and Midway is a
spectacular action thriller that teams up Ronon with Teal’c, from SG-1. My
favorite episode of the bunch is Trio, which finds Carter, Rodney McKay and Dr.
Keller in a tight spot.
But this new-found quality is tempered by more silliness in such episodes as
Travelers, which introduces a new ally in the form of a gypsy-like bunch of
humans that are led by a leather-clad dominatrix hottie who’s so over the top,
she’s unintentionally funny. The writers also compounded on their third season
mistake of killing off Carson Beckett by giving in to fandom demands and bringing him back as a
clone. And then there’s the
unfortunate Harmony, which has Sheppard and McKay escorting a bratty little
princess through the woods for a ceremony. But these bad episodes still can’t
drag down the overall feeling of revitalization that the fourth season has been
charged with. Tapping left Atlantis after the fourth season so that she could
work on Sanctuary, her own series on the Sci-Fi Channel, but while she was there,
her Sam Carter character infused Stargate: Atlantis with some much-needed vigor
that made it enjoyable to watch.
--SF
