Synopsis:

An injured Sheppard is trapped alongside Ronon beneath the rubble of Michael's collapsed compound. Trapped in another debris pocket, McKay and Lorne realize that a subspace burst has already reached Michael.

Light years away, Michael's flagship Wraith Cruiser hurtles towards the compound. Imprisoned onboard, a pregnant Teyla begs Kanann, the father of her baby, to help save her.

Carter leads a rescue mission to the planet. Her team succeeds in digging up McKay and Lorne, but Ronon and a rapidly deteriorating Sheppard are buried far deeper in the rubble. With Michael and his hybrids on their way back to deal with intruders, and the Daedalus already enroute, the question becomes: Who will reach them first?
 

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Written by
MARTIN GERO

Directed by
ANDY MIKITA

Stargate: Atlantis

“Search and Rescue”

Review by W. Joseph Thomas

“Major Marks, please make that ship go away.”

--Col. Steven Caldwell

2.5 out of 4 stars

Bottom Line: “Search and Rescue” is a competently written, competently executed episode that benefits from a fast-moving plot underscored by a handful of strong performances.  After last season, this is the best we could hope for.

I went into “Search and Rescue” with a mixture of hope and fear.  This is a convenient turn of phrase, because, like “Hope and Fear,” the fourth season Voyager finale, I knew “Search and Rescue” would be a make-or-break episode for Atlantis.  Following the roundly abysmal fourth season, this would be the Pegasus Galaxy’s last chance to get back on track.  It would either get back to telling mildly diverting science fiction stories built on strong character interactions and humor, or it would continue on its course of telling mildly diverting science fiction stories based on Epic Space Wars of Doom (!)—a course universally endorsed by the fanboy legions, but which only actually works for a handful of shows like Battlestar Galactica.  When attempted last year, the Epic Space Wars approach drove Atlantis to episodes like “Outcast,” “Missing,” and “Quarantine,” a “Trio” of episodes that—yes, I admit it—drove me to buy the DVD box set of The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Which actually turned out to be a show miles more mature and involving than Torchwood.  But that’s another review.

I am pleased to report that “Search and Rescue” represents a return to form for Stargate: Atlantis, giving us the first episode since “Be All My Sins Remember’d” that manages to use the full ensemble cast without making me want to stab my eyes out with forks.  We open on the same cryptically-named planet (MST-3K-! or something to that effect), and, after a terrifying opening sequence involving Sheppard and Teyla—terrifying because it looked for a moment like a post-episode flashforward, which is possibly the worst teaser cliché ever developed… but fortunately it turned out to be nothing more than a way to get Rainbow Sun Francks into the episode—we discover that the entire Atlantis team miraculously survived the destruction of Michael’s factory at the end of “The Last Man.”

Well, not everyone.  All the redshirts that went into the building with them died.  But I didn’t even remember that there were redshirts with the team until Carter mentioned them in the middle of Act Three.  The point is, the characters with names survived, and, if you have trouble accepting the wildly small odds of that happening, it’s time you picked up a different franchise.

McKay and Lorne are in one part of the wreckage, dealing with Lorne’s broken leg and McKay’s claustrophobia, and Sheppard and Ronon are in a much deeper part of the wreckage, dealing with Sheppard’s immobilized leg and Ronon’s wounded aura of manliness.  Meanwhile, the redshirt that had been standing outside the factory when it ‘asploded gets back to Atlantis and notifies Col. Carter of the disaster.  Meanwhile, Michael is aboard his hive ship, doing what he does best: giving cryptic orders out of context.  Between the three settings, they manage to recap the previous episode and introduce this episode’s major complications—Michael’s hive ship is en route to MST-3K-!, and Teyla is extremely pregnant—in an impressive five or so minutes.

The nice thing is that, having recapped to our satisfaction and gotten in the requisite number of McCay Arrogant One-Liners (the real reason I watch this show), we are pleasantly surprised by the fact that the titular “Search and Rescue” is already half over.  McCay and Lorne are out of the wreckage by the time we get back from the first commercial break.

This sets the tone for the rest of the episode, which moves briskly from point to point.  Michael’s cruiser is in orbit moments later, a Wraith attack and Atlantean retreat takes all of forty-five seconds, and the Daedalus crew only says “Shields are down to X percent!” twice.  For the rest of the episode, the well-worn Atlantis tropes we’ve come to know all too well are used and discarded so quickly that the boredom of Yet Another Hive Ship Battle that haunted me all through “Spoils of War” (did I mention I hated Season Four?) never touched me during “Search and Rescue’s” own hive ship sequence.

This is great, because the less time the Atlantis team spends shooting their hopelessly outmoded automatic weaponry and giving Ronon and Sheppard chances to outman each other, the more time we have for solid character moments.  This is where the episode shines.  Sheppard and Ronon, still trapped in the ruins as Michael’s goons move in, face death as only Sheppard and Ronon can: with honor, manliness, and a Simpsons joke.  McKay and Teyla have quite simply their best scene together since McKay faced down the Wraith in “The Siege, Part 3,” and managed to rekindle my fervent and extreme minority view that Teyla/McKay is a match made in heaven, and the sooner Sheppard and Ronon stop trying to stand in their way, the happier Teyla will be.

Carter has several nice scenes, but Amanda Tapping only managed to remind me again and again why I’m so happy that she’s being replaced.  If I were a real-world Atlantis team member, Sam Carter would absolutely be my choice for team leader.  She lacks the inner darkness and hardline morality of Dr. Weir, and is the naturally uplifting presence for everyone on the base that Richard Woolsey can never possibly be.  I don’t believe she has ever made a bad decision.  Unfortunately, this makes for really boring television.  Never in all of Season Four did we get the slightest sense that the Atlantis commander had anything resembling an inner life, and the few arguments she had with her team members came off universally as superficial and uninteresting—except perhaps the one with Zelenka in “Quarantine.”  Carter rapidly faded to the show’s background, leaving Season Four without an anchor back on Atlantis base.  Robert Picardo as Richard Woolsey—I hope—won’t be able to help being a complete one-eighty.  We’ll see.

The real standout in this episode, surprisingly, is Col. Caldwell (Mitch Pileggi), who seems to have finally gotten away from his original characterization as a passive-aggressive whiny military type, through his long stretch as Supply Run Guy and occasionally Atlantis Bailout Guy (which would make anyone aggressive and whiny), and has emerged as a delightful, ironic commanding officer.  It’s finally clear that Caldwell considers himself right at home on the bridge of the Daedalus, that he has a good relationship with his crew, and that he is neither afraid of risks nor afraid of accepting the consequences when things go wrong—as, of course, they do.  His understated performance was wonderful, and, frankly, carried the climax of the last act.

So, “Search and Rescue” is a lot of fun.  It doesn’t break any new ground for science fiction, but, then, when has that ever been Stargate’s forte?  Atlantis is not Galactica, and the writers seem to have finally remembered that, instead building stories on solid characterization that shines through the formulaic plots.  If this is any indication of the character interplay we can expect with the arrival of Mr. Woolsey next week, we may be gearing up for the best season yet.

Oh, and, yes, there is a scene right at the end where Woolsey shows up and gives Carter the boot, but it was so clearly tacked-on after a very successful episode that I chose to simply ignore it.

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