Stargate Atlantis: 02-14, “Grace Under Pressure”
Rating: 
A puddle jumper test including Rodney goes drastically wrong and the jumper falls out of the sky and into the ocean. It’s sinking to the ocean floor quickly and the Atlantis crew needs to figure out a way to rescue Rodney. Rodney desperately tries to figure a way out of this situation himself and conjures a hallucination of Samantha Carter to help him find a solution.
Episode spoilers inside! Continue reading at your own risk.
I thought the title of this episode was the most interesting part of it. “Grace Under Pressure” could indicate Rodney’s struggle to compose himself and trust anyone but himself to find a way out. But I can’t believe that the name Grace doesn’t also have a connotation with Samantha Carter herself. In season seven of SG-1, there was an episode titled “Grace” in which Sam hallucinates a little girl with that name. I don’t exactly know what the connection is, but the similarities in the details seem too coincidental for there not to be.
In the end, Sheppard and Zelenka take a puddle jumper under water and turn its cloak into a shield against the pressure of the ocean. They find a huge sea creature circling something and figure it must be the sunken puddle jumper. They’re able to rescue Rodney. As Rodney and Sheppard walk from one puddle jumper to the other on the bottom of the ocean floor, protected by the shield, they look up to see the most magnificent whale like creature I’ve ever laid eyes on.
I believe this is the first glance of Atlantis wildlife we’ve ever gotten an opportunity to see. I hope there was some significance to the huge sea creature that will come into play in a later episode. It seems like a waste if it was just done for the awesome factor. This episode was a little boring, but it was well acted and a bit on the comical side under the circumstances. Plus, seeing Carter come up from the water in just a bra was kind of worth it as well.
