Stargate Atlantis: 02-13, “Critical Mass”
Rating: 
When Stargate Atlantis spun off into its own series, there were questions like, “Why didn’t they take any staff weapons or zats with them to Atlantis?” Atlantis seemed to be ignoring a lot of the established Stargate-verse and to the fans, that just didn’t make much sense. The reasoning as I understood it, was that the creators wanted Atlantis to hold its own. They didn’t want a Stargate newbie to tune into Atlantis and be confused by all the references to pre-discovered alien technology or enemies. The common tie between Atlantis and SG-1 was the Ancients, the builders of the gates themselves.
This resolve was somewhat broken by the 9th episode of the first season, “Home”, where the team returns to what they believe to be Earth and we see characters we’d normally see only on SG-1. Since then they’ve added an Asgard to the cast and have a method of returning home, securing the possibility for many cross overs and plot tie-ins from SG-1.
This episode put a final nail on the coffin of making Atlantis a stand-alone show. Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was great, but there’s no way someone who didn’t watch SG-1 will get the full impact of what happened.
Spoilers inside! Do not continue if you don’t want to be spoiled for this episode.
General Landry at the SGC learns that “The Trust” (which is under control of the Gou’uld) has access to Atlantis and planted a bomb. When Atlantis is informed of this, they start searching for it, only to eventually find out that it’s more of a computer virus built to overload the system causing an explosion that will destroy the city when the Stargate dials Earth. If they don’t activate the Stargate, a failsafe was implemented that would dial the gate itself to trigger the overload. The answer is somewhat simple: deactivate the ZPM so the gate doesn’t have the power to connect to Earth. The only problem with that is a distress beacon went out drawing some Wraith cruisers to investigate and Atlantis needs the ZPM to power the shields.
Weir starts questioning her own, but in particular Dr. Kavanagh, a crewman of the Daedalus who has openly disagreed with her authority in Atlantis in the past. As usual when the good guys assume they know who the bad guy is based only on the fact that they’re jerks, Weir turned out to be wrong about Kavanagh’s involvement. Instead, the mole turns out to be none other than Colonel Caldwell himself! If that isn’t fantastic enough for you, he isn’t just a mole, he’s a Gou’uld!
I have to admit, I was worried when his eyes glowed because I loved the addition of the X-Files’ Mitch Pileggi to the cast and thought this might spell the end for him. It doesn’t look like Pileggi’s job is in danger from this encounter though, because Hermiod, the Asgard, figured out a way to remove the Gou’uld from Caldwell with the Daedalus’ beaming technology.
A fantastic episode overall. It was a little boring in the beginning, but I was thrown a twist at the end and didn’t expect Caldwell at all. The fact that he was playing host to a Gou’uld was even better.
