Stargate Atlantis - Season 3 - First Strike - The Judgement Of Asuras 

Just like ME trilogy lol.

the technical stuff isn't important.. hell I still enjoy Babylon 5 and even the old computer animation because the story is so great.

Battlestar Galactica had such an amazing visual fx team, and budget, it looks amazing to this day, I think they ran at the same time mostly. Stargate always did ship explosions pretty bad, especially Atlantis with all their shots. In comparison, DS9 looks so smooth and even higher detail in the late seasons, a whole decade earlier. Stargate still comes out on top for me.

So why not destroy the earth ship first? It would limit enemy movement, take out a possible threat, that likely would fault more easily. tv logic ^^

@@kinngrimm Probably limitations of targeting system

_Stargate_ 's Prime Directive.

Gotta keep the drama rolling. That aside If I remember right, the only time it did actually apply it was rendered moot by SGC's inability to quickly dial the gate before it was redialed by the attacker

I mean to be fair, why would it ever come up outside of abnormal circumstances?

Not exactly true. Sometimes they used the 38min to dial out, but one instance they couldnt dial fast enough. So got redialed. A DHD is just faster than their computer. Also considering their computer does just "manual dialing", thats why in SGC the wheel is spinning every time. In any Stargate with a DHD the spinning is bypassed, there is not real reason to spin. The spinning is just the backup mechanism, which is a clever design by the Ancients.

​@@livinlicious"I'm the General and I want it to spin!"

Very much like Anubis' weapon

Yes, most likely a new method the ancient force would love to have on hand

Like they read the Stargate RPG manual and minmaxed 😄

It's a fantasy you nerds.

@@deadpanfish No, this is a documentary series.

yea, you would hate it if his optimism was negative

Optimistic negativity: It's either an enemy we know with limitless power, or a brand-new enemy we know nothing about. At least it can't be _both._

​@@BogeyTheBearI swear that's on point

Yeah that line was perfection.

Stargate was just at that sweet spot in time, where SciFi was still very smartly written. It became less and less so. I mostly blame the "speed-up" of storytelling. Most Scifi now needs to be hyperdramatic, and the story has to move so fast, otherwise viewer gets bored. Thats why world-building scenes get cut, and the whole story lacks then. You "NEED" exposition and "talking" scenes. They slow down, so todays people get quickly bored. Its a vicious cycle. Audience has low attention span, Media gets faster, Audience gets lower attention span, repeat until everything just sucks.

@@livinliciousIt does suck. When you place SG-1 and SG-A against modern science-fiction, the difference in the pace of plot progression becomes stark.

@@Ragitsu Adding to that the comically high budgets of so much of modern media combined with VFX costs (despite in a lot of cases the costs not equaling quality due to rushing) axing the number of episodes produced. A season only a decade ago or so could survive a couple bad episodes but nowadays with 10 to 6 episode seasons that's considerably harder to swallow and dents the quality of the show a lot more.

​@@livinlicious The expanse is quite well writen. It can still be done...

@@Coyote27981 TMR.

I also noticed that, I’m sure its a little bit of a reference.

Would be interesting. Not only an advanced civilization capable of both hiding from everyone and defending itself from any threat, but also able to covertly spy on all other advanced civilizations in the galaxy to know such an attack has happened and where it was launched from.

I would either still keep to myself or try to talking to them.

It's been too long since I watched the show. At what stage did SGC perform a first strike?

​@@Viktor16161616It was earlier in this episode. The Apollo went to the replicator homeworld to conduct a preemptive first strike and took out an armada of ships the replicators were building.

This couldve been a good intro to some unascended Ancients who fled to another galaxy, became less Ancienty and turned more militaristic after the wraith war and have now returned - that wouldve been beautiful

How long was his crossing from the milky-way, plenty of reading time

@@pobvic a few weeks

Yeah sure, lets make captain of "Planet killing ship" some newbie, who was briefed half a year ago... Dude, Ellis was in SG program probably from beginning in 1994. It is same logic, to think that captain of aircraft carrier does not need to have years of experience from Navy.

Good in theory but it comes to the same issue they always had, power. The Asuran's had ZPM's stockpiled like they were double AA batteries meanwhile the Earth crew could barely keep one or two at a time.

​@@LordWolf696 in fact, he's talking about ancients and when they were fighting a war against wraiths

Problem is the wraith numbers back then were insane and they far outnumbered the Ancient's ability to produce drones and zpms. Plus, the wraith don't rely on stargates, and with their numerous hive ships such satellites would be limited in what they can hit. Plus, you can only fire one at a time, so for every planet you lockdown plenty others are left defenceless. The only reason such a simple solution works against the expedition is because they rely on Atlantis as a base and have limited capability to use, as they cannot reproduce drones or zpms. The fact is the ancients couldn't maintain their war effort, hence why they had so many experimental weapons, they were trying to find an alternative solution because they couldn't replace their losses. Asurans are a whole different animal to the ancients, they not only have the knowledge of the ancients, but as machines they don't have the same physical weaknesses and can replace any losses much easier than the ancients could. Even when Asurans lose a ship they don't lose its crew and can just build another ship, something neither the ancients or wraith can do. Wraith relied on their numbers to negate the power disparity between themselves and the ancients, able to replace ships quicker than the ancients could destroy them, but it didn't work against the Asurans. Hence why they resorted to hacking them and avoiding them for thousands of years. But back to this strategy, it wouldn't work on the wraith, they don't have many stationary bases, they're usually mobile, and any losses they do suffer can easily be replaced. This satellite is tailor made to target the expedition, they only have the one primary base, they rely on this base, it can't easily move, firing the laser locks them into place, and they lack powerful weapons to drain enough power. The Asurans probably couldn't keep this attack up forever, but they don't have to, they just need to keep it up long enough to drain the limited resources of the expedition and then destroy the city.

Only flaw I see is that it exploited Atlantis' difficulties with power, wraith can just leave through hyperspace

@@Riku-zv5dk Speaking purely about the Ancients, such a weapon (as with many others) would have utterly crushed the Wraith. The Ancients had a manpower problem, first and foremost. A centralized outpost to provide all the firepower works greatly within those constraints. The Stargates are DRONES, completely expendable. You can only FIRE one at a time but you can move all of them all the time. A few seconds after one stops firing, another can start. The Ancients seeded the entire galaxy, millions of habitable planets, with the new-age Stargates, obviously their production capabilities were still vast despite their small numbers. They could have kept every drone-gate in hyperspace or really close by any potential planet of interest, waited for the Wraith to leave ships vulnerable then annihilated them, at most risking a Stargate and some engines. At some point the Attero device would become beneficial for the Wraith to use themselves to preserve some remains of their race. Of course, that would have made for some shit TV.

No, they had Ronan, help out Superman and Batman as Aquaman.

Are you really body-shaming Momoa?

@@tomascernak6112 you are dumb as fuck for that comment not clever. getting upset on the behalf of others is moronic. not admirable

Not really, this weapon is only effective because Atlantis is planet bound and can't easily move. The wraith have countless hive ships scattered through the galaxy, they're not bound to a planet (which this weapon needs to work), it takes up a lot of energy to both fire and protect the weapon, and it would be limited defensively because you cannot dial a gate in close proximity to the same planet. Not to mention the ancients already had similar weapons (like the S1 satellite that could one shot a hive which was stated to be one of many the ancients once had). The problem the ancients had was never firepower, it was numbers. The ancients could hit the wraith as hard as they wanted, but the wraith would shrug off the losses while any the ancients suffered were difficult to replace. The ancients attempted many solutions to this issue, but could never breach the number issue, the one device that could have won risked heavy collateral damage (the atero device, which stopped the wraith from using their hyperdrive but caused active gates to blow) which didn't actually guarantee victory (Wraith could just go into hiding and hibernation and wait for it to shut down while the ancients relied on the gate and would need to shut it down).

To be honest it was explained why the Ancients lost. Overwhelming numbers.

the P-90 did. seriously, watch that clip

"better" is far more subjective/open to opinion than "simpler".

How do they drag it? It's shielded. And it has the ability to manoeuvre so even if they attempted to punt it out of orbit, it would simply move back.

@@DomWeasel Apollo: *Activates Hyperdrive, drags it to the sun, drops out.* Satellite: *Activates Hyperdrive, goes back to Atlantis.* That's also assuming the gate doesn't just explode the Apollo when it gets close enough to try and drag it in its hyperspace field. It can turn and hit the Apollo as they approach and we clearly saw the Apollo can't tank this things hits.

Let's rather say a perfect weapon to install on a ship. The only problem is that the weapon will only work near a planet or sun.

Glad I'm not the only one who noticed the familiar music.

Darts don't drop out of hyperspace.

I would imagine it'd probably be able to handle it better. It's the same generators that form the shield over the Stargate, but instead of needing the power to cover the entirety of the city, you'd only have to form the shield over the gate, using a fraction of the power. Plus, since the shield is so close to the event horizon, you might actually negate the overall power of the beam.

It tanked an exploding gate in one episoide and that's supposedly a planet killing explosion

In all honesty if they dialed the Atlantis gate it would probably melt the gate room, the gate would fall on its back, and then the beam would just shoot into space, at least until it melted through the tower if it even could. The Atlantis gate is fixed, the point of the satellite was to aim the gate and move the beam.

@@vonfaustien3957 the exploding gate was actually the city shield that got retracted to only encompass the gate. I dont think its the same system as the gate shield.

@@builder396 ah that makes sense. been a while since I saw Atlantis

How about encasing the satellite in a hollowed out rock (leaving an opening for the laser) and then nudging the trapped satellite away from the planet?

Attach an Asgard time dilation device to the satellite. Either it will be destroyed by the increased energy coming through the gate, or the deadly laser will be slowed down to a nice geostationary spotlight.

You gunning for John's job?

@@lcstark You gunning for Rodney's job?

It would just hyperspace back. That's how it got there.

The asguard did hear of this most likely. They were noting the struggle from containing that type of firepower. They adapted it for their use but had to give it to taurine due to ori and wraith a major threat That deserves their attention.

The shield basically has infinite capacity, all those would do nothing

@@Josh-oj9mm Mckay made the point explicitly that it was barely noticeable.

shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Probably took a jumper down. Lantean ships can pass through the shield with no problems.

Most likely they adjusted the shield frequency to let the transporter beam through. The Goa'uld do the same thing when ringing aboard a mothership in a potentially hostile environment or situation the crew on the mothership will adjust the shield frequency to let the beam through then change it back again once transport is complete.

we see at other times puddle jumpers can pass through the shield, so probably knowing the right frequency allows friendly ships to land through it while keeping out the enemy. This is more common in stargate than you might think, as everyone uses shields, it just seems more noticeable here because the shield is more apparent in how active it is, but everyone does it. Even the laser firing is an example of something passing through the shield.

The Lanteans invented the Rings, too and the Daedalus class ships did use those. So they might just ring up and down at will. Funny how we never see rings in Atlantis though....

Potentially, but more problematic is that the gate satellite would just move around and target whatever is trying to tow it away.

Stargate shields are at least consistent in the concept of things always go out, not always in. Since the beam is comming from the inside of the shield, it can leave just fine.

@@kuhljager2429 im interested in the hypothetical physical rule of why that is considered "its okay, this is possible". If you have an obstacle, may it a Door, Wall or a shield, its attribute of not letting things pass through counts for both directions. You can create Doors and Walls with holes in it to interact with the other Side, but that means to create weakpoints, that can be exploited. If you have an Energy-Shield, that let things through from one Side, it means that it has a weakpoint. May it be an exception for energy-beams with the exact modulation of this one or that the Shield gets opened at the exact spot where the Beam is. I remember an old Episode of Stargate, where one goa'uld had a personal energy-shield that could stop energy and physical projectiles, but was ineffective against a throwing knife. There has to be a weakpoint in that satellite-shield, because if it doesnt has a weakpoint, the Beam couldnt pass through. I know its silly to think about such stuff... but thats how my Brain works XD

i think its down to they got the jump on them cus the asurans thought atlantis was their only ship in the pegasus now they know this isen't the case they would have every zpn powered drone arsenal on the planet waiting for atlantis to try another attack out of desperation the satellite weapon was clearly designed to destroy atlantis without wasteing unneeded rescources but also to antagonise atlantis into attacking again preferablly with all available ships so the asurans could take out their whole presence in pegasus unstead of having to guess were their ships have gone after they lose atlantis you have to remember the asuran replicators while arrogant are proberally the most advanced race besides the ancients and the asgard plus they operate off of a hive minded neural network like the forerunners in halo so they can near instantly communicate and also plan i imagine they decided baiting atlantis with a attack they could try to stop would be easiest and most efficent after all they are machines

Basically, Colonel Ellis remarks that the _Apollo_ was severely taxed by the satellite's initial attack.

Also considering how powerful Atlantis is it's weird that it's always on the verge of being destroyed in nearly every episode

@@adambarnes49 It is as powerful as the amount of available zero point modules; welcome to the secret of this show's consistent tension.

@@Ragitsu True

Even if the drones had 1000 times the firepower of the deadaluse would not have changed anything. Rodney said it was a drop in power of .002. The drones would need to be 50000 times more powerful than the deadalus to collapse the shields.

@@theyux1 No they don't. Drones were introduced as ancient tech capable of bypassing any shiedsystem. I was trying to convey that in my first statement, that's why I talked about how strong those shields are. The asgaard had even lantian ships that were capable of passing Atlantis shield dome. I thought they should fire a single drone through that shield to kill that thing.

@@TheCaptainCrack Ancient shields can also be configured to keep ancient tech out. It's how they stopped the Vanir from raiding the city again, Rodney disabled the functionality so Ancient tech can't just pop into Atlantis' shield anymore. Replicators would have done the same thing here, nothing needs to enter the shield, so why bother setting it to allow that functionality. Also drone's don't just penetrate one shot ships with shields. If they did the battle of Asuras would have ended REAL FAST when the Replicators started firing the drones at literally everyone attacking.

By the time they visually identified it was a Stargate / its purpose, it was already too late.

It would only be useless for 38 minutes, until your gate closes.

@@Veldrusara Unless you can feed it with enough Energy to bypass this Limit. It happened with the Episode of SG1 where a Black Hole bypassed it. Replicators/Replicants can easily bypass this Limit, they have nearly unlimited amounts of Energy thanks to ZPMs

@@Veldrusara If they can't destroy it within those 38 minutes (the shield is powered through the established wormhole) then they deserve to be wiped out.

they get reprogramed when ever the plot demands it?

They're not as creative as Sam Carter

The replicators had no way of accessing the black hole because it was in different galaxy and hadn’t built 2 more stargates yet. They knew that the bc 304 was watching them as they knew the ship is asguard+human tech. 😊

@@debbiebernhardt5406 there's other black holes, including one in Pegasus used later in the Pegasus project.

Its a lot more work, than firing the doom lazer. Like its not like it failed by much. They had no reason to expect the doom lazer would not work. Its kinda like shooting reporter Clark Kent with a gun, you had no of knowing that was not gonna go your way.

@@theyux1 Instead of the laser they build a second stargate carrier, one goes to Atlantis, the other to the hole. Done.

It is a maneuverable satellite, it would just reorient itself back into position.

Helping to defend Atlantis, of course.

dropped who and why....

@@pbluma the replicator satelite, knocking it down wouldve worked i guess

@@dexnocturna2448 Beam can power propulsion system too. Satellite will just get itself back into position

They literally explained why that did not work. And given that dailing the Stargate almost destroyed the city twice, they won't dial carelessly.

@@christopherg2347 I think he meant, 'quick, dial the gate before the satellite activates' oops too late.

@@epiendless1128 As I said: Given the gate almost blew Atlantis up twice, they are not going to dial it without purpose.

@@christopherg2347 There's also the possibility that it could have been a deliberate ploy to get the humans to activate their Stargate.

@@christopherg2347 if they activated there gate to some random planet before the asurans could dial in then the weapon would be useless. just like with the Prometheus hesitation was there undoing.

Why build something that can be destroyed when you can build something very powerful in the heart of your territory and build something cheap to deliver it to the enemy

whats more efficient? building a massive fleet or 1 tiny ship that costs almost nothing in resources and is just as deadly

This puny satellite was more than enough to do the job, it was the plot armor that saved the main characters

they managed to build this little thing and pump energy into it through the gate, but not enough to penetrate a shield sustained by 1 tired zpm? come on. they are replicators. they have the knowledge and tech of the ancients + a few thousand years more.

@@yzdatabase4175 cause its still the city shield which is to our knowledge the most powerful shield ever constructed and it would still go down in under a day. And its not like there in a rush, the replicators have literally unlimited amount of time to kill them.