Stargate: Atlantis 2.16: "The Long Goodbye"

Written by Damien Kindler
Directed by Andy Mikita

In which Weir and Sheppard become possessed by the dying personalities of the last two survivors of an endless war, and they spread their final conflict throughout Atlantis…


In my review for the previous episode, I was less than pleased by the fact that the events were clearly contrived to result in the acquisition of some puddle-jumpers and drones, leaving the actual episode with a spare and predictable plot with little character exploration. Some people took me to task for calling the writers “complacent”; an equal number of comments agreed with the fact that the writers dropped the ball.

Still others, who have seen the episodes earlier than the mainstream US audience, predicted that I would hate this episode even more. After all, this episode seems to have even less to do with the threadbare season arc, doesn’t really delve into the characters in any meaningful way, and follows a relatively predictable plot thread. In essence, many felt that I would have a strong negative reaction to any episode that didn’t fit into what I felt was the “season arc”, and that’s all there was to it.

Well, it’s not that simple. I actually liked many things about this episode. There’s a very big difference between “filler”, which I see no excuse for, and “stand-alone”, which is a perfectly acceptable form of storytelling. Even arc-driven shows have stand-alone episodes (even if the best shows will ensure that the stand-alone episodes fit within the thematic side of a season arc). The “X-Files” had several excellent episodes that had nothing to do with the series’ mythology, after all, and that was a series fraught with consistency issues.

The difference between the previous episode and this episode should be plain, though some won’t recognize it. It has to do with the depth of effort. The previous episode didn’t pave any new ground, didn’t pose an interesting scenario, and then compounded the problem by dumping in a possible long-term plot element into the mix as if it justified the lack of depth in the rest of the episode. This time around, while the scenario itself was somewhat thin, it gave two cast members the chance to play with new material, and no attempt was made to force in a connection to the season arc. It was a pure “stand-alone”, and it worked on that level.

That’s not to say that it didn’t have problems. Even with Caldwell’s objections (which made a lot of sense, given his recent history), the team on Atlantis agreed to the idea of letting Sheppard join Weir in the “possession” situation a bit too easily. I also felt that McKay’s attitude was a little forced, even if it makes sense for him to rail against Caldwell’s assumption of command. The fact is, none of them were in a position to deal with an alien with all of Weir’s knowledge, and Caldwell didn’t screw up any worse than any of the team would have in the same situation. And there was no doubt that Weir and Sheppard would survive; it was just a question of how.

I did like, however, the apparent return of the subtext between Sheppard, Weir, and Teyla. I’ve always said that Sheppard and Teyla were circling each other, whatever else they might have to say about it, and Weir certainly has had her thoughts about Sheppard since the beginning of the series. It might have been better to muddy the picture a bit, so the audience couldn’t be sure who was acting at any given time, but it still touches on character dynamics that have been sorely lacking of late. It’s unlikely that this will ever come up again, except in passing, but this was a capable stand-alone.

Writing: 1/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 2/4

Final Rating: 7/10