Owen Stewart I mean if you think about it he could have opened a small portion of the gate to allow a small beam to escape the shield in the opposite direction of everyone in the gate room. (Effectively making a shaped explosion in the opposite direction)
@@MrCoolguy425 that's what he did. They cut to outside to be cliffhanger. Problem was it didnt work fully cause drama. Honestly this scene was a bunch of "bad thing happens because plot"
I don't care what anyone says. Bringing the explosion of a chain reaction of nukes down to an ACME bomb was a huge feat of ingenuity by Sheppard and also a feat of engineering by Zelenka.
You know I only realize this now years later washing in retrospect, but the writers of the show sure did like to blow up a lot of critical infrastructure for plot convenience, didn't they?
An unfortunate effect of tech power creep. Plus they used this idea before. Yet I still enjoyed the episode(s), because even if you know all this, the suspense remains and the acting and pacing still works. So yeah: you're technically right. But also: whatever.
Well if you think about it, having access to the Atlantian database they should have been able to find solutions to pretty much any problem they had aside from the Wreight. I was always astonished that they had no way to sort that information like a search engine.
I am Czech and I just love Radek's quotes, because in Czech version lot of his swearing was censored. But it's great to see him in the original, saying things like "I'm trying, do prdele" and such
@@owtena That particular line would loosely translated mean something like "I'm fucking trying" and he had a lot of other lines like this, like "Man, this is such bullshit, what kind of idiot thought about sending us under water this time" when he goes with Sheppard to rescue Rodney who crashed into the ocean with puddle jumper. And in the episode in the first season when they are recording messages for their loved ones before the Wraith attack, there is no profanity, but he basically tells his wife or girlfriend about everything that has been going on in Atlantis and how kickass it was, despite her having zero security clearence xD
@@martinh.5193 Thank you! Do you remember what he was saying when they got back from planet with children, when he was covered in different colors? I was always wondering 🤔😄
@@owtena I don't really remember him saying anything in czech in the end of an episode, but in the beginning he says something like: "Say hi to the kids from me" - Oh, you are gonna get it from me later, you're such an idiot!
@@owtena There you are, a majority of Radek's Czech lines (including the children planet) is translated here: czcams.com/video/7CmaE4oILck/video.html In this specific clip he's just saying "What's that? What's happening?"
In fairness, for only about 2 or so minutes of work, Radek did one hell of a job condensing a dozen nuclear blasts down to the size of a single room exploding (and not even a strong enough blast to hurt him or Sheppard). That's the difference between a grenade exploding compared to a bubble popping.
Personally I think SG-1 & SG-A were consistently good, and that the Ori arc is rather underrated overall. The Credit Crunch put paid to both though, as MGM suddenly was in dire straits financially, and the cost of filming in Canada had shot up.
Those Dell Laptops they have are so cool. I loved the way the business laptops were designed around this time so nice looking and well built. They still run even til this day and held up great.
An additional command to 'everyone who doesn't need to be here get to the edge of the city..." would have been... "Anyone who can fly a jumper, get upstairs and fly one to the edge of the city. For all they knew the blast when it happened could have also taken out thye jumper room above the gate room. Oh the joys have growing up reading the classical science fiction novels :)
@ComocosonoEWL I've watched every episode of SGA and have no memory of any event. And it makes no sense, the gate itself exploded which would have instantly cut off the wormhole. The energy from the blast was diffused by the cities shields.
@ComocosonoEWL No it was because of the Vanir having Daniel Jackson and Rodney McKay activating the Attero device, a machine capable of destroying any wraith ship that tried to make a subspace window. The unrealized consequence was that it caused residual energy buildup in the event horizon of any wormhole formed that would basically destroy any Stargate that had an active wormhole at the same time the device was on.
The shield was absorbing tons of energy with every pulse. The fireball was trying to expand, it hits the shield and is reflected back towards the center until the pressure once again reverses the direction and sends it towards the shield once more. This keeps happening over and over as a series of high-frequency pulses and the shield is absorbing energy with each new hit.
Being part of Mensa proves that he can think logically and his military training taught him to remain calm and focused during stressful situations. While others panic he can think of ideas that the technicians/scientist can use. He probably doesn't know HOW to collapse the City shield, but can tell Zelenka to do it.
@Alduin the Anti-Dragonborn, even if he did mean beam weapon instead of transporters. The drones have been shown to have limitations in terms of damage they can do to certain targets in small numbers or those with Alteran level shields. Seeing as they are a resource that can’t at any known point be replicated and with a finite number, having an energy based weapons system would be advantageous.
Yeah, in an SG-1 episode it's confirmed that they can't do that. And a forcefield with a ball of plasma inside would likely also not work or the plot would collapse in on itself.
Zelenka:"Gate exploding is equivalent of dozen nuclear explosion" Sheppard(paraphased): "You could have mention not to look into the blast" What did Sheppard think?
Well to be fair I would expect shield to absorb/filter most of the light too, I mean if shield would not be able to block light then it would be pretty useless against any light/laser based weapons.
@@belisarian6429 blocking the light should have been a secondary idea once enough of the explosion was defused since it put more stain on the emitters and they were lucky they did not fully wreck them
Dunno about you, but the defining moment of SGA for me was, when the Deadalus appeared in The Siege Part II and the scene cut to Colonel Caldwell announcing who he is.
David Nykl was very young when his parents moved to Canada. He's the 'Russian' guy with a black beard on Arrow. Oddly enough, I Googled him earlier today. I'm doing an Arrow marathon on Netflix.
Atlantis really was the Ancients at the height of their tech. Everything worked together like giant cogwheels in a machine. The city itself was the biggest star in this series if you ask me.
I know its a small point, but I really wish shows like Voyager (where the ship is stranded without a drydock to repair when extremely damaged), and Atlantis (where presumably the city is made of materials that are not reproducable by the humans living there) would tell how they repair significant damage for the next episode. I know in the episode with the replicators when Shepard blew up the control room, the tower is repaired by the Replicators, but when they are left to it themselves, I am curious how they (would) do it.
@@kirstymca For Atlantis purposes, the glass needed to be strong enough to withstand the pressure of the ocean - in case the city needed to be submerged and, strong enough to keep the pressure inside, in case the city needed to lift off again. A cheaper alternative might've been solid concrete instead of glass. Fortunately, Woolsey was in command of Atlantis, and he was probably able to pull some strings with the IOA when it comes to funding.
I remember seeing this when it aired where I am. I also remember thinking, if they have such precise control of the Atlantis shield emitters, simply dial down the outward-facing ones, and allow the energy to bleed off on a somewhat directed manner. There was a large window behind the gate which you see in the outside shot. As long as there were no city structures in the way, all good. Worst-case, it might have capsized Atlantis, or they could have at least done zoomies around on the ocean surface with the city.
The writers on this show really outdid themselves with the characters. Hero, villain, major character, minor character, you couldn't help but like just about all of them. So much so that it got to me when Peter Grodin died. Hell, I liked Kolya! Then again, I like Robert Davi anyway. And, of course, the ever put-upon Zelenka.
+XerShade Eh, not exactly. More "We managed to recover the city after the Ancients got themselves butchered first by their own creations many thousands of years ago, then, after a group of Ancient survivors found the city and evicted us and were immediately butchered by a *different* set of their own creations (noticing a pattern?), we cleaned up their mess, again." All in all, the Tau'ri are far better caretakers than the Ancients ever were, and with far fewer resources to boot.
The Ascended does not care. They are having *fun* on the higher plane...(you know,they didn't care about the Ori for example)...ohh btw they didn't leave the city in our care....the expedition got lucky because 1 of them had the guts to help out in secret...(I think it's the guy who made the device which caused the gates to blow up XD)
FUGlitchyLogin, a Ha'tak bolt is just that. A bolt. A blast that lasts less than a second. This was a minute. That's the equivalent of being hit with an entire beam bombardment, each beam hitting every point on the shield continuously without interruption. You saw how bad the shield fared against *one* continuous beam, or Weir would be having this convo with us. Imagine 5 trillion.
Everything about this scene is perfect! They succesfully built a great atmosphere of fear mixed with enthusiasm, everyone is being very objective and quick to act, Radek is being awesome in Rodney's absence, Sheppard is showing his unexpect smarts, as we've grown accostumed to see, and finally, the animations of the gate, the city shield collapsing around it and the explosion seen from outside, outstanding! The greatest sci-fi series of all time!
@@Xershade late reply but it is highly likely the city has something simular to the robots you see in SGU, most likely not as advanced as replicators, but enough to keep maintenece of the city if repairs were needed. would just need time and raw materials
During this episode the macguffin was fucking with subspace to destroy Wraith ships. This frequency also messed with the Stargates essentially creating a feedback loop. The wormholes didn't go out thus the Stargate had an energy buildup in the horizon.
@@SoranoGuardias Yeah no that's not how wormholes work, you'd have a MUCH bigger issue than the gate exploding if you linked the same spot in space to itself. The gates function normally right until they start just keep making power generate at the event horizion of the wormhole's ends because Janus.
Alway thought he should have extended the shape of the shield bubble out the back side of the tower to spread the area the explosion had to dissipate. Most of the final explosion would then have been harmlessly outside and well above the city.
@@LyokoisGreat2 The city seemed to have control of the shield shape for the city, so it isn't a stretch to expect the gate shield was manipulatable as well. Even if it had to extend straight up, take out Jumper and save the control room.
You'd have really thought they'd retrofit the gate room and have installed a whole suite of blast doors and glass by now like the SGC. Hell probably they'd have moved the gate room to somewhere in the heart of the city by now specifically for this purpose. It kinda makes sense why the ancients didn't do it- they were pretty unconcerned with failure and appearances meant a lot to them
I appreciate how the scientists/engineers in SGA are all actually good at their job. Compare that to SG1 where all the scientists, that aren't Carter, are made to look like a bunch of imbeciles that are so bad at their supposed 'expertise' that they could barely pass a high school AP physics exam. Its sad when you see writers having to resort to making some characters incompetent just to try and make others look good. In the end it makes Rodney look more impressive than Carter because he's the most intelligent person among a lot of intelligent people, whereas Carter is almost always shown as only being smarter than a bunch of idiots. They even made Rodney look stupid when he first showed up in the franchise on SG1. Thankfully when they made SGA they saw the potential his character had and brought him onto the show where we got to see him actually being the genius he was always supposed to be.
Should have added the normal gate shield, since that would operate off a different set of emitter(s) - presumably far less powerful, but only a tiny amount bleeds through
Wouldn't have worked. That stops the wormhole and anything coming through. The entire stargate was detonating. Doubt the Gate shield works like the adaptable city shield.
With 20/20 hindsight yes. But I get the impression that the Ancients were like the Vorlons. Creating new concepts, without following them through to their conclusions, and after they left, the galaxy being littered with 'failled' experiments.
and at the best part too. I wanted to see what happened with Ronon and everything else after Atlantis landed on Earth and finally had a full complement of ZPMs
@@lordofudead On the other hand if you'r options are immediate death or radiating the planet so that you still have time to evacuate..then that's not so bad idea. Maybe they could have created a thin "funnel" with those shields and direct that energy to space directly.
@@lordofudead Did they ever say if exploding Naquadah created radiation? I always assumed it was non radioactive seeing as Goa'uld hosts have it in their blood. Also they never once said the metal itself was radioactive like weapons grade uranium or plutonium.
I dunno about that... remember the time he blew up a star system? Sam also blew up a star system although in a different way? Zelenka is a small fry in the blowing things up category. :)
The one thing i wondered is could in theory the energy stored in the capsters of a stargate be channeled into other systems. since in theory if you could they could have beeld of the overloading surge of power but starting up systems like the stardrive
They've expanded and contracted the shield a number of times, there's no reason at all it couldn't function that small A sustained strain isn't the shields weakness, you're talking about the sustained beam from the replicators, that wasn't bad because the shield was specifically weak to it, just that it's harder for anything to protect against
@@andyt2k Even then they were at a power disadvantage. I don't think they had a geothermal power station on this planet so the power was strictly from their single zpm.
See, what they _should_ have done was open a hole in the back of the shield, the side facing away from the gate room, and allowed the pressure to shoot out through the hole. That would have greatly limited the damage while also reducing the amount of pressure on the shield. This would have let the shield last for the duration of the explosion.
If you double the diameter of the shield, you increase the surface area of the shield by 4, but the volume of the sphere increases by 8. And since pressure is a factor of volume, that would reduce the energy required by the shield by half. All they had to do was let the shield expand a bit, and they could have contained the explosion no problem. Also, if all else failed, why not let the explosion vent in a controlled manner in a safe direction?
This was true SciFi. It clearly is pseudo science gibberish nonsense like collapse shield around the gate etc. but I love it as a tech guy. This is pure fiction and love it. Shame the show was killed. It had another 5 years easily in it.
The end of the episode based sci-fi genre. I miss Old Stargate, old Trek, with episode-based adventure, and a very light story ark. Now we got super short arc-based series. I like them but since SG:A I can't remember any good sci-fi like this. SG:U not exist for me. Maybe the Orville.
Orville is great. Can't wait for the new season - originally I thought it's going to be much more in the comedy genre but it turns out to be quite good as a sci fy too
SG:U also felt bad at the time, but compared to everything else when watched 10 years later it's actually quite good... if you liked BSG. (many people had the same think with ENT) Instead of more "dark" series that came afterwards, I feel that SG:U mas modeled after BSG, and sure it's not the TNG but still.
Wouldnt they all be blind regardless if they didnt look directly into it. I know survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan were blinded by the flash and this should be several 1000x more powerful
The shield would block it, because that's dangerous levels of energy. A shield that can't block heat, radiation, and blinding levels of light, would be a pretty useless shield.
+("RNA0ROGER") You have to remember that the Atlantis Shield held an entire ocean at bay for 10,000 years under several atmospheres of pressure. So it is amazingly cool and awesome. :D
Man took, an explosion that could take out a small continent to "you can survive being in the same room as it, albeit with extreme, instant medical care
I don't see how that would have been possible; you're talking about two completely different types of energy - plus, the city shield emitters were never designed to take power from anywhere else EXCEPT the city itself; so, unless you think Radek can completely rebuild and reprogram the shield emitters in the seconds it would take to do what you're suggesting...all while using those SAME shields to protect the gate room and the city from the explosion while he was doing it - I just don't see it. The Ancients, or the Asgard, MIGHT have been able to pull it off - but not the Atlantis crew!
I am a fanatic Stargate fan. But scientifically If all of the energy is blocked by the sheild that only makes your problem worse all they had to do was create a small opening in the sheild to direct the energy out the window.
Před 4 lety
Maybe the wormhole was still alive and most of the explosion energy goes through it.
Incidentally, this how how a photon torpedo in Star Trek is supposed to work: a matter-antimatter explosion is initiated and the fireball is kept contained in a force-field established within the torpedo casing. Energy is bled from this fireball to power the propulsion, and upon impact the field dissipates so the remaining energy in the fireball escapes at full force. The fireball is so bright that it shines clear through the normally-opaque torpedo casing, causing that signature glowing-ball look of a torpedo in flight.
the only worse thing the writers did for this show, was to never allow the expidition to figure out where the ZPMs were made.. not even when dr Weir went to bck in time, or her replicator one..never gave the secret..that would have beenmy first demand..before anything else
In hindsight that "I'll see if I can divert more energy to the shield" is probably the only reason it failed. They should have evacuated the tower and let it do it's thing.
andyt2k The shield was already containing the blast it was just leaking a bit too much radiation. With how close it was to dissipating all of the energy, that blast at the end was a ridiculously tiny portion of the whole thing, gaining even a couple seconds would have been enough. He even said that the emitters were what were failing; he was forcing too much power through them. If he'd left the shield to do it's thing and got everyone out of the room, the radiation could be bad, the shield would have successfully absorbed the explosion.
WarGrowlmon18 The shield was containing the blast fine, it was just letting through a bit too much radiation. All he did was make it "safe" to be in the same room and overstress the shield emitters.
In the first season they were discussing how a self destruct of Atlantis wouldn't be enough and leave valuable data still intact. They should have just planned on using this lol, an explosion the size of a dozen nukes would probably completely disintegrate Atlantis
I'm pretty sure the Atlantis expedition was given the option of parking a Gatebuster at the base of the tower as a self-destruct device, though I seriously doubt they would have accepted the offer.
@@BogeyTheBear The other problem is you also can't normally get gates to explode on demand, you have to be doing something pretty deliberate to build up power like that, and its usually not something you can normally do. There's only two devices that we've seen make gates go boom, and those devices have gone boom.
Yeah, the self destruct could barely destroy the city in totality, but not enough obviously, while the dozen nukes explosion could destroy the whole planet without this powerful energy shield x)
The wraith wrote beam jamming codes after the Earth ships bombed several of their hive ships, they couldn't stop them before. The ring teleporters are a better point. It was never said if that was ancient technology iirc.
@DavidPennable Lets see a nuclear explosion is a few miles so about a dozen is way bigger. If the shield didn't encompass the whole gate, as soon as the explosion got bigger then the shield it would expand past it.
Different situation, that was an incoming wormhole, and a slow build up. This was an outgoing wormhole and no weapon acting on it from the other end. The build up happened so quickly that they discovered it in seconds, and the gate exploded in about a minute.
@Xershade but the yield of the blast would have been directed out the window, the shield would have created a kicker to point it out the back, the shield would hold because it's only containing a part of the explosion, think like a linear shaped charge for demolition, directed energy,
MGM killed TWO SG series (Atlantis and Universe) when there were people willing to watch and pay for it, and financing available to continue production! In case of Atlantis already, and for Universe - literally within DAYS.... sheet... week without paycheck at worst for next few YEARS of stable work!
now if it wouldn't have been contained, it'd have been like a Tsar Bomb, and made a huge crater on the planet equal to the crater on Aegis 7 in Dead Space! :O
Yeah way worse than that, a gate exploding on sub-level 28 of the complex on earth would have had enough force left oever to screw over the planet completely. This gate and many others like it aren't buried several hundred feet underground. XD
@@Xershade That is actually terrifying, now that I've taken physics it makes sense to be MUCH larger of a blast since being underneath a mountain would continuously magnify it by causing the shockwave and heat to resonate until the mountain collapsed, and the shockwave after that would probably decimate the surface of the Earth.
![Stargate: Atlantis - Destruction of The Phoenix & Death of Carter! [4K]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/OpvPa4xNaQU/mqdefault.jpg)
![Stargate: Atlantis - Destruction of The Phoenix & Death of Carter! [4K]](/img/tr.png)
![Stargate: SG-1 - Battle of P3Y-229 (Ori Invasion) [4K]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/idg6AsX6hsg/mqdefault.jpg)
Zelenka was such a good character. A shame we did not get more SGA to see more of him.
and that's MGM's Fault for cancelling sga and sgu
did he perish?
@@raven4k998 all because they wanted Star Gate to be more like Battle Star
@@randomrazr No, Zelenka survived the series. They were just complaining we didn't get *more* series.
We deserved a wrap up movie at minimum, damn it.
Zelenka should have been in the intro since at least season 3
"We're burning out the emitters" "Put more power in them"
It probably failed because he "tried to block more of the radiation" but it was already holding the explosion.
Weapons at maximum!
@@DarkNexarius It failed because of dramatic requirements...
Owen Stewart I mean if you think about it he could have opened a small portion of the gate to allow a small beam to escape the shield in the opposite direction of everyone in the gate room. (Effectively making a shaped explosion in the opposite direction)
@@MrCoolguy425 that's what he did. They cut to outside to be cliffhanger. Problem was it didnt work fully cause drama. Honestly this scene was a bunch of "bad thing happens because plot"
I don't care what anyone says. Bringing the explosion of a chain reaction of nukes down to an ACME bomb was a huge feat of ingenuity by Sheppard and also a feat of engineering by Zelenka.
Yep
Emergency collapse of shield triggered by the emergency the gate was experiencing. It explodes in failsafe mode from explosive damage
Didn't do anything but take a shield that already existed and moved it to the boom
Nice reference to the "roadrunner,coyote ".days
You know I only realize this now years later washing in retrospect, but the writers of the show sure did like to blow up a lot of critical infrastructure for plot convenience, didn't they?
An unfortunate effect of tech power creep. Plus they used this idea before. Yet I still enjoyed the episode(s), because even if you know all this, the suspense remains and the acting and pacing still works. So yeah: you're technically right. But also: whatever.
@Amirus you'd like to die because someone pointed out that Stargate overused a couple of plot devices? goddamn I hope you never step on a lego
@Amirus I don't even like Star Wars, dude.
I'm sorry that you're so fragile that someone pointing out a flaw in Stargate makes you want to die
@Amirus how is not a critique?
Well if you think about it, having access to the Atlantian database they should have been able to find solutions to pretty much any problem they had aside from the Wreight. I was always astonished that they had no way to sort that information like a search engine.
I am Czech and I just love Radek's quotes, because in Czech version lot of his swearing was censored. But it's great to see him in the original, saying things like "I'm trying, do prdele" and such
could you translate them? I was always wondering what he was saying 😄
@@owtena That particular line would loosely translated mean something like "I'm fucking trying" and he had a lot of other lines like this, like "Man, this is such bullshit, what kind of idiot thought about sending us under water this time" when he goes with Sheppard to rescue Rodney who crashed into the ocean with puddle jumper. And in the episode in the first season when they are recording messages for their loved ones before the Wraith attack, there is no profanity, but he basically tells his wife or girlfriend about everything that has been going on in Atlantis and how kickass it was, despite her having zero security clearence xD
@@martinh.5193 Thank you! Do you remember what he was saying when they got back from planet with children, when he was covered in different colors? I was always wondering 🤔😄
@@owtena I don't really remember him saying anything in czech in the end of an episode, but in the beginning he says something like: "Say hi to the kids from me" - Oh, you are gonna get it from me later, you're such an idiot!
@@owtena There you are, a majority of Radek's Czech lines (including the children planet) is translated here:
czcams.com/video/7CmaE4oILck/video.html
In this specific clip he's just saying "What's that? What's happening?"
In fairness, for only about 2 or so minutes of work, Radek did one hell of a job condensing a dozen nuclear blasts down to the size of a single room exploding (and not even a strong enough blast to hurt him or Sheppard).
That's the difference between a grenade exploding compared to a bubble popping.
He saved the entire population of Atlantis
@@andyt2k Exactly... and the fact that he was so quickly able to do so shows why he was picked for the mission in the first place.
@@BYERE Yea, he's the second smartest person in Atlantis. He can easily keep up with McKay's ideas. If Rodney is 10 Zelenka is solid 8.
@@radeknaprstek3886 I'd say at least a 9...
@@radeknaprstek3886 I am a firm believer that Zalenka is actually smarter than rodney
Seriously this is when Stargate was at its peak. Shame this show got cancelled when it did because each season just kept getting better
but sg1
@@MegaAlexPink SG-1 went downhill. I hate to admit it but Atlantis was the better show once SG-1 hit season 9. The Ori seasons were a letdown to me.
@@removefromme Yeah, it did. but it still had like 7 seasons and the original film that pretty much nailed it. The peak of SG1 was surely better?
Personally I think SG-1 & SG-A were consistently good, and that the Ori arc is rather underrated overall.
The Credit Crunch put paid to both though, as MGM suddenly was in dire straits financially, and the cost of filming in Canada had shot up.
They did manage to make a couple of TV movies after the show ended to close the Baal and Adria/Ori arcs though.
I love Radek, he's a great scientist and person !
Him and McKay had a great chemistry
Those Dell Laptops they have are so cool. I loved the way the business laptops were designed around this time so nice looking and well built. They still run even til this day and held up great.
Had a inspiron 1100. Distinctive blue decor on top, you could not miss it on the show. Plus it ran well.
I think I ordered some at work after seeing them on Atlantis
I have the same model MacBook they used in SG1 to dial the gate, bought it in 2010. Still runs albeit I need to replace the battery
My Dad brought home a Dell laptop for me, it was surplus to his workplace so he got it for £20. Thing fell apart in weeks.
Haha yea, I went on Reddit talking about my very good MacBook experience and I got massively downloaded for some reason. Oh well
An additional command to 'everyone who doesn't need to be here get to the edge of the city..." would have been...
"Anyone who can fly a jumper, get upstairs and fly one to the edge of the city.
For all they knew the blast when it happened could have also taken out thye jumper room above the gate room.
Oh the joys have growing up reading the classical science fiction novels :)
Gotta admit that was a pretty small explosion considering what it started as.
I'm pretty sure the next episode actually gave a reason why the explosion wasn't as big as it should have been.
@@Hei_Darkfire Yeah, the city's shield absorbed most of the energy of the explosion. Which is pretty impressive.
@ComocosonoEWL I've watched every episode of SGA and have no memory of any event. And it makes no sense, the gate itself exploded which would have instantly cut off the wormhole. The energy from the blast was diffused by the cities shields.
@ComocosonoEWL No it was because of the Vanir having Daniel Jackson and Rodney McKay activating the Attero device, a machine capable of destroying any wraith ship that tried to make a subspace window. The unrealized consequence was that it caused residual energy buildup in the event horizon of any wormhole formed that would basically destroy any Stargate that had an active wormhole at the same time the device was on.
The shield was absorbing tons of energy with every pulse. The fireball was trying to expand, it hits the shield and is reflected back towards the center until the pressure once again reverses the direction and sends it towards the shield once more. This keeps happening over and over as a series of high-frequency pulses and the shield is absorbing energy with each new hit.
And this proves Sheperd is actually up there in the smarts, not many of the military characters otherwise in the SGC would think "Collapse the shield"
He actually had McKay do it for saving power. But the whole shield system was straining power constantly like this exploding power
In universe, Sheppard was in Mensa
Being part of Mensa proves that he can think logically and his military training taught him to remain calm and focused during stressful situations. While others panic he can think of ideas that the technicians/scientist can use. He probably doesn't know HOW to collapse the City shield, but can tell Zelenka to do it.
They really should have installed Asgard beams on Atlantis itself. They probably couldn't beam an active gate into space, but it's an idea...
I mean, it had drones, which are arguably more powerful than Asgard beams since it can go through shields and easily cut into hull.
@@alduintheanti-dragonborn I meant transport beam tech as opposed to the energy beam weapons.
@Alduin the Anti-Dragonborn, even if he did mean beam weapon instead of transporters. The drones have been shown to have limitations in terms of damage they can do to certain targets in small numbers or those with Alteran level shields. Seeing as they are a resource that can’t at any known point be replicated and with a finite number, having an energy based weapons system would be advantageous.
Yeah, in an SG-1 episode it's confirmed that they can't do that. And a forcefield with a ball of plasma inside would likely also not work or the plot would collapse in on itself.
@@MrCCollins1993 they should have installed beam weapons from the asgards as well
Zelenka:"Gate exploding is equivalent of dozen nuclear explosion"
Sheppard(paraphased): "You could have mention not to look into the blast"
What did Sheppard think?
Well to be fair I would expect shield to absorb/filter most of the light too, I mean if shield would not be able to block light then it would be pretty useless against any light/laser based weapons.
@@belisarian6429 Yes that is true, but I still find it funny.
And that's the guy who could have entered Mensa
You do realize that they only had 90 seconds right?
@@belisarian6429 blocking the light should have been a secondary idea once enough of the explosion was defused since it put more stain on the emitters and they were lucky they did not fully wreck them
This is one of my favorite moments in the whole series I must say!
And this double episode in general
I love the shield emitters are burning out so divert more power is his moronic solution which does not work when power is causing the failure🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I don't know why, but as a kid, this moment (along with First Strike) was the defining memory for SGA
Yeah First Strike...
Atlantis was a more serious show than SG1 but with lots of charm
Dunno about you, but the defining moment of SGA for me was, when the Deadalus appeared in The Siege Part II and the scene cut to Colonel Caldwell announcing who he is.
For me was when the Daedalus arrived for the first time, almost fell off of my chair from excitement.
No, its Czech. RadEk Zelenka is from the Czech Republic.
Hes from canada, but yes he is a lot of czech. :D
@@tomassvaton3784 Not true.
The actor, David Nykl, is indeed Czech-Canadian.
But the character, Radek Zelenka, is just Czech.
David Nykl was very young when his parents moved to Canada. He's the 'Russian' guy with a black beard on Arrow.
Oddly enough, I Googled him earlier today. I'm doing an Arrow marathon on Netflix.
I love him, because he swears a lot in Czech. They let him in the original, but in Czech version he had to redub these parts :D
The best thing to come from this attack is the trust and friendship Johb and Zelenka develop in the Books.
They become as close as John and Rodney!!!
Atlantis really was the Ancients at the height of their tech. Everything worked together like giant cogwheels in a machine. The city itself was the biggest star in this series if you ask me.
The height of their tech, but also their arrogance. It definitely made a good series afterwards though.
0:12 Radek Zelenka: "Co to je? Co se děje?" (What is this? What's happening?)
Making team multinational was one of coolest thing about SG:A
@@piotrd.4850 I never saw a Swiss guy though :/
:D
This is what I love about SGA. You think they are save and suddenly such an unexpected event happens
I know its a small point, but I really wish shows like Voyager (where the ship is stranded without a drydock to repair when extremely damaged), and Atlantis (where presumably the city is made of materials that are not reproducable by the humans living there) would tell how they repair significant damage for the next episode. I know in the episode with the replicators when Shepard blew up the control room, the tower is repaired by the Replicators, but when they are left to it themselves, I am curious how they (would) do it.
Yes. Also how they justify using their budget to replace stained glass like for like instead of just using plain glass.
Someone has a count of the number of perhaps it was torpedoes used in ST Voyager for similar reasons
@@kirstymca For Atlantis purposes, the glass needed to be strong enough to withstand the pressure of the ocean - in case the city needed to be submerged and, strong enough to keep the pressure inside, in case the city needed to lift off again. A cheaper alternative might've been solid concrete instead of glass. Fortunately, Woolsey was in command of Atlantis, and he was probably able to pull some strings with the IOA when it comes to funding.
@@danielk5780 It doesn't. That is the job of the shield.
Voyager never got extremely damaged though. It went all the way back to the Alpha quadrant without even a new coat of paint.
I remember seeing this when it aired where I am. I also remember thinking, if they have such precise control of the Atlantis shield emitters, simply dial down the outward-facing ones, and allow the energy to bleed off on a somewhat directed manner. There was a large window behind the gate which you see in the outside shot. As long as there were no city structures in the way, all good. Worst-case, it might have capsized Atlantis, or they could have at least done zoomies around on the ocean surface with the city.
The writers on this show really outdid themselves with the characters. Hero, villain, major character, minor character, you couldn't help but like just about all of them. So much so that it got to me when Peter Grodin died. Hell, I liked Kolya! Then again, I like Robert Davi anyway. And, of course, the ever put-upon Zelenka.
Damn this was a good series.
This show was my nerd dream
Sends you to M7R-227 with some nanites. You can rebuild and live in that galaxy forever.
One of my favorite episodes! And a cliffhanger!!
2:52 - Ascended: "**facepalm** And we left the city in their care...."
XerShade They were probably already drinking after Sheppard blew it up the first time and the Replicators had to rebuild it.
Leon Kernan Well we know what killed off some of the Ascended in Pegasus then. :P
+XerShade Eh, not exactly. More "We managed to recover the city after the Ancients got themselves butchered first by their own creations many thousands of years ago, then, after a group of Ancient survivors found the city and evicted us and were immediately butchered by a *different* set of their own creations (noticing a pattern?), we cleaned up their mess, again." All in all, the Tau'ri are far better caretakers than the Ancients ever were, and with far fewer resources to boot.
+XerShade yeah, well the Ascended are a punch of pussies
The Ascended does not care. They are having *fun* on the higher plane...(you know,they didn't care about the Ori for example)...ohh btw they didn't leave the city in our care....the expedition got lucky because 1 of them had the guts to help out in secret...(I think it's the guy who made the device which caused the gates to blow up XD)
FUGlitchyLogin, a Ha'tak bolt is just that. A bolt. A blast that lasts less than a second. This was a minute. That's the equivalent of being hit with an entire beam bombardment, each beam hitting every point on the shield continuously without interruption. You saw how bad the shield fared against *one* continuous beam, or Weir would be having this convo with us. Imagine 5 trillion.
@Amirus You're right. I was an arrogant piece of crap back in 2015.
@@Renji9031 what? u were right
Everything about this scene is perfect! They succesfully built a great atmosphere of fear mixed with enthusiasm, everyone is being very objective and quick to act, Radek is being awesome in Rodney's absence, Sheppard is showing his unexpect smarts, as we've grown accostumed to see, and finally, the animations of the gate, the city shield collapsing around it and the explosion seen from outside, outstanding! The greatest sci-fi series of all time!
That’s right, all run down the stairs toward the supernova in the gate room!
I assume they're running to the nearest transporter?
That's literally the only way down from there, there's stairs to the side and directly in front of the gate. The other doors go to the balcony...
Makes you wonder how they replace those windows after the explosion
Spoiler alert
Replicators :p
@@joost199207 spoil right if you are not able to just don't 😉😁🤦🏽
@@malikmohamed6051 I mean they literally have the tech there to make replicators, probably didn't but still could have.
Contractors at Replicators'
@@Xershade late reply but it is highly likely the city has something simular to the robots you see in SGU, most likely not as advanced as replicators, but enough to keep maintenece of the city if repairs were needed. would just need time and raw materials
Just imagine the gate at the other end... RIP
During this episode the macguffin was fucking with subspace to destroy Wraith ships. This frequency also messed with the Stargates essentially creating a feedback loop. The wormholes didn't go out thus the Stargate had an energy buildup in the horizon.
@@SoranoGuardias Yeah no that's not how wormholes work, you'd have a MUCH bigger issue than the gate exploding if you linked the same spot in space to itself. The gates function normally right until they start just keep making power generate at the event horizion of the wormhole's ends because Janus.
Alway thought he should have extended the shape of the shield bubble out the back side of the tower to spread the area the explosion had to dissipate. Most of the final explosion would then have been harmlessly outside and well above the city.
Similarly I was thinking just open a hole in the back to have a little flamethrower action out the back relieving the pressure.
@@JamesLee-sw6ss Exactly, once it got well below the nuclear detonation level, they could have dissipated the remaining energy out the back.
@@brianflowers4217 the hole would come out the top due to how the Shield forms
@@LyokoisGreat2 The city seemed to have control of the shield shape for the city, so it isn't a stretch to expect the gate shield was manipulatable as well. Even if it had to extend straight up, take out Jumper and save the control room.
You'd have really thought they'd retrofit the gate room and have installed a whole suite of blast doors and glass by now like the SGC. Hell probably they'd have moved the gate room to somewhere in the heart of the city by now specifically for this purpose. It kinda makes sense why the ancients didn't do it- they were pretty unconcerned with failure and appearances meant a lot to them
I appreciate how the scientists/engineers in SGA are all actually good at their job. Compare that to SG1 where all the scientists, that aren't Carter, are made to look like a bunch of imbeciles that are so bad at their supposed 'expertise' that they could barely pass a high school AP physics exam. Its sad when you see writers having to resort to making some characters incompetent just to try and make others look good. In the end it makes Rodney look more impressive than Carter because he's the most intelligent person among a lot of intelligent people, whereas Carter is almost always shown as only being smarter than a bunch of idiots.
They even made Rodney look stupid when he first showed up in the franchise on SG1. Thankfully when they made SGA they saw the potential his character had and brought him onto the show where we got to see him actually being the genius he was always supposed to be.
What an awesome episode this was.
2:51 To be fair, that explosion was significantly less than a dozen nuclear warheads. So while it "Wasn't enough" it was still pretty darn good
0:40 I like to think that the ancients had this exact same conversation back when the divorce was first activated
"Its like a dozen nuclear bombs going off"
"So your saying I should look directly at it?"
they couldn't stop it, couldn't contain the full blast, but they did weaken it enough to keep the damage to a minimal.
Should have added the normal gate shield, since that would operate off a different set of emitter(s) - presumably far less powerful, but only a tiny amount bleeds through
Wouldn't have worked. That stops the wormhole and anything coming through. The entire stargate was detonating. Doubt the Gate shield works like the adaptable city shield.
they must have had a system for ejecting the gate or for deformation of the shield into cylinder with one wall left open..like 3 km away from Atlantis
With 20/20 hindsight yes.
But I get the impression that the Ancients were like the Vorlons. Creating new concepts, without following them through to their conclusions, and after they left, the galaxy being littered with 'failled' experiments.
3km wasn't enough to escape a nuclear blast. That is only two miles.
yeah, but it is enough to survive even with minimal sheilding
Right, well now I have to watch 5x11 because I don't remember what happens
The good guy does a back flip snaps the bad guys neck and saves the day. lol
I think they hid in a jumper
Why the hell did they ever cancel this show over SGU.
and at the best part too. I wanted to see what happened with Ronon and everything else after Atlantis landed on Earth and finally had a full complement of ZPMs
Because season 4 and 5 got worse and worse with each episode. They should NEVER have killed of Weir. Idiots!
She kinda came back in the comic
SGU was such garbage. Just a low rent softcore porn fest. No wonder nobody will touch the franchise again.
Dumb ass executives
Should of opened a hole in the shield on the backside of the gate to let the energy out through the window.
Exactly!! Simple solution. At the end that is what happened. Shield collapsed at one point allowing thus somehow safe release of the blast.
I think the MASSIVE amounts of radiation that would spill out over the city, atmosphere and ocean probably made that a bad idea.
@@lordofudead
On the other hand if you'r options are immediate death or radiating the planet so that you still have time to evacuate..then that's not so bad idea. Maybe they could have created a thin "funnel" with those shields and direct that energy to space directly.
I dunno, I think Id prefer to choose immediate death over death by radiation.
@@lordofudead Did they ever say if exploding Naquadah created radiation? I always assumed it was non radioactive seeing as Goa'uld hosts have it in their blood. Also they never once said the metal itself was radioactive like weapons grade uranium or plutonium.
I miss this show. McKay would have stopped it
I don't know about that I prefer Carter
They both could stop it. McKay or Carter.
ValentinE carter quicker from season 3of sg1
I'd take Carter over McKay any day of the week, he'd keep the whining to minimum and figure something out
I dunno about that... remember the time he blew up a star system? Sam also blew up a star system although in a different way? Zelenka is a small fry in the blowing things up category. :)
Such a good show
1:34 I just love that sound
The one thing i wondered is could in theory the energy stored in the capsters of a stargate be channeled into other systems. since in theory if you could they could have beeld of the overloading surge of power but starting up systems like the stardrive
Okay,
1) The shield was not made to be operated that small.
2) That blast was sustained strain which is the shield weakness.
They've expanded and contracted the shield a number of times, there's no reason at all it couldn't function that small
A sustained strain isn't the shields weakness, you're talking about the sustained beam from the replicators, that wasn't bad because the shield was specifically weak to it, just that it's harder for anything to protect against
@@andyt2k Even then they were at a power disadvantage. I don't think they had a geothermal power station on this planet so the power was strictly from their single zpm.
Damn the plot holes. damn the physics!
See, what they _should_ have done was open a hole in the back of the shield, the side facing away from the gate room, and allowed the pressure to shoot out through the hole. That would have greatly limited the damage while also reducing the amount of pressure on the shield. This would have let the shield last for the duration of the explosion.
If you double the diameter of the shield, you increase the surface area of the shield by 4, but the volume of the sphere increases by 8. And since pressure is a factor of volume, that would reduce the energy required by the shield by half.
All they had to do was let the shield expand a bit, and they could have contained the explosion no problem.
Also, if all else failed, why not let the explosion vent in a controlled manner in a safe direction?
This was true SciFi. It clearly is pseudo science gibberish nonsense like collapse shield around the gate etc. but I love it as a tech guy. This is pure fiction and love it.
Shame the show was killed. It had another 5 years easily in it.
Wish theyd do a reaction shot of teyla and a few others from the lower levels
Wasn't that how next episode (5x11) started?
@@ABogdanovs it is not 5 10 anyway
The end of the episode based sci-fi genre. I miss Old Stargate, old Trek, with episode-based adventure, and a very light story ark. Now we got super short arc-based series. I like them but since SG:A I can't remember any good sci-fi like this. SG:U not exist for me. Maybe the Orville.
Orville is great. Can't wait for the new season - originally I thought it's going to be much more in the comedy genre but it turns out to be quite good as a sci fy too
SG:U also felt bad at the time, but compared to everything else when watched 10 years later it's actually quite good... if you liked BSG. (many people had the same think with ENT)
Instead of more "dark" series that came afterwards, I feel that SG:U mas modeled after BSG, and sure it's not the TNG but still.
Wouldnt they all be blind regardless if they didnt look directly into it. I know survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan were blinded by the flash and this should be several 1000x more powerful
Thankfully they were looking through something that shielded them...
A plot hole!
The shield would block it, because that's dangerous levels of energy. A shield that can't block heat, radiation, and blinding levels of light, would be a pretty useless shield.
Awesome scene. I miss it so much!
That shield must really be something special to contain that much energy.
+("RNA0ROGER") and in that small volume.
+("RNA0ROGER") You have to remember that the Atlantis Shield held an entire ocean at bay for 10,000 years under several atmospheres of pressure. So it is amazingly cool and awesome. :D
Killerofkings100
I wish I had one.
+Killerofkings100 It's also designed to shield a city and they shrunk it to cover the gate, so it was much more powerful
As long as you can maintain the power needed for the stress on it the Atlantis shield can block pretty much ANYTHING the universe can throw at it.
I gotta go back and watch this I forgot what happened next
I remember it was such a freaky way to end the show. I hope they make some more episodes some day.
This isnt how the show ends?
What do you mean?
This wasn't the end
You would think that they might have some sort of Asgard beaming devise on the gate for just such an emergency. Beam it as far away as possible.
Love this scene! Thanks!
Man took, an explosion that could take out a small continent to "you can survive being in the same room as it, albeit with extreme, instant medical care
Say what you will.. Radek is a genius ~!
I love how they contain the energy of thousands of nuclear explosions on a 2007 laptop.
2:15 - 2:19 you can see how much John cares for Teyla
I think also he takes seriously the fact that she is a parent.
@@kirstymca there's also that, but mostly is the fact that by this time they are a item (it''s canon, according with the creator of the show)
Could you imagine if we got s6 ? They had holy grail back on earth... All that power and knowledge....
When the Sci-Fi channel was good. I miss it.
Honestly, they could have converted the energy from the blast to the shields around the gate, chance of survival very high.
I don't see how that would have been possible; you're talking about two completely different types of energy - plus, the city shield emitters were never designed to take power from anywhere else EXCEPT the city itself; so, unless you think Radek can completely rebuild and reprogram the shield emitters in the seconds it would take to do what you're suggesting...all while using those SAME shields to protect the gate room and the city from the explosion while he was doing it - I just don't see it. The Ancients, or the Asgard, MIGHT have been able to pull it off - but not the Atlantis crew!
@@SeatBill Pretty sure the Ancients, or especially the Asgard, would have just yeet beamed the gate into space.
I am a fanatic Stargate fan. But scientifically If all of the energy is blocked by the sheild that only makes your problem worse all they had to do was create a small opening in the sheild to direct the energy out the window.
Maybe the wormhole was still alive and most of the explosion energy goes through it.
This is one of the best cliffhangers
Shutting down the power in the city wouldn't help the emitters. It's not a problem of power, but of durability of the hardware to transfer it.
If shes been lost I do believe Sheppard would wage a one man war on the wraith
In the Books (still Canon), her son calls him "Da" and they begin dating, so yes. He would have waged a war against all Atlantis enemies!
It's be like the Doom slayer
"Oh no..." The least you want to hear.
Especially from Zalenka.
"Whoops" is the most terrifying word in the universe.
Incidentally, this how how a photon torpedo in Star Trek is supposed to work: a matter-antimatter explosion is initiated and the fireball is kept contained in a force-field established within the torpedo casing. Energy is bled from this fireball to power the propulsion, and upon impact the field dissipates so the remaining energy in the fireball escapes at full force. The fireball is so bright that it shines clear through the normally-opaque torpedo casing, causing that signature glowing-ball look of a torpedo in flight.
I do wonder if they could ever change the shape of the shield into a funnel and just funnel the explosion out a window
the only worse thing the writers did for this show, was to never allow the expidition to figure out where the ZPMs were made.. not even when dr Weir went to bck in time, or her replicator one..never gave the secret..that would have beenmy first demand..before anything else
In hindsight that "I'll see if I can divert more energy to the shield" is probably the only reason it failed. They should have evacuated the tower and let it do it's thing.
+Jack Evans Diverting power is what bought the others enough time to evacuate and reduced the blast when it did go off
andyt2k
The shield was already containing the blast it was just leaking a bit too much radiation. With how close it was to dissipating all of the energy, that blast at the end was a ridiculously tiny portion of the whole thing, gaining even a couple seconds would have been enough. He even said that the emitters were what were failing; he was forcing too much power through them. If he'd left the shield to do it's thing and got everyone out of the room, the radiation could be bad, the shield would have successfully absorbed the explosion.
+Jack Evans He had no choice. The power in that blast was massive. In the next episode a similar blast was visible from SPACE!!!
WarGrowlmon18
The shield was containing the blast fine, it was just letting through a bit too much radiation. All he did was make it "safe" to be in the same room and overstress the shield emitters.
Don't repeat what you've already said. That was stupid.
That quality though.
In the first season they were discussing how a self destruct of Atlantis wouldn't be enough and leave valuable data still intact. They should have just planned on using this lol, an explosion the size of a dozen nukes would probably completely disintegrate Atlantis
I'm pretty sure the Atlantis expedition was given the option of parking a Gatebuster at the base of the tower as a self-destruct device, though I seriously doubt they would have accepted the offer.
@@BogeyTheBear The other problem is you also can't normally get gates to explode on demand, you have to be doing something pretty deliberate to build up power like that, and its usually not something you can normally do. There's only two devices that we've seen make gates go boom, and those devices have gone boom.
Yeah, the self destruct could barely destroy the city in totality, but not enough obviously, while the dozen nukes explosion could destroy the whole planet without this powerful energy shield x)
It would have been able to hold on, if they were the "Ancients". Apparently they have the genetic dna in them, but not the mind set.
The ancients would have probably just beamed the gate off the planet.
XerShade i like that
Except that the anicents didn't have beam technology, the asgard invented that.
Except they did, what do you think the Wraith needed beam jamming codes for. Also what do you think the teleporters and rings are based off of.
The wraith wrote beam jamming codes after the Earth ships bombed several of their hive ships, they couldn't stop them before. The ring teleporters are a better point. It was never said if that was ancient technology iirc.
I just hate when that happens
Still missing new Stargate stories here...
I blame Rodney and Daniel for blowing up the Stargate😊
@DavidPennable Lets see a nuclear explosion is a few miles so about a dozen is way bigger. If the shield didn't encompass the whole gate, as soon as the explosion got bigger then the shield it would expand past it.
0:57 "I don't know it's never happened before.". SG-1 season 6? Redemption?
the 1st thing i taught of when he said that, they didnt read all mission reports hhhhh
Different situation, that was an incoming wormhole, and a slow build up. This was an outgoing wormhole and no weapon acting on it from the other end. The build up happened so quickly that they discovered it in seconds, and the gate exploded in about a minute.
Co to je? Co se ďěje? :D
prostě Zelenka :D
Tvl ani to děje neumíš napsat ...
@Xershade but the yield of the blast would have been directed out the window, the shield would have created a kicker to point it out the back, the shield would hold because it's only containing a part of the explosion, think like a linear shaped charge for demolition, directed energy,
yes because when your processor is burning down because of the overclock, the best idea is to put more power in it
Says cute foxy :)
McKay would have collapsed the shield into a cylinder and funneled the explosion up through the open jumper bay 😏
*destroy the tower, now, now, now, now.*
Where is Rodney MacKay in this scene when you need him. (He is part genius.)
He's busy being the one inadvertently causing the Gate (and all pegasus gates) to explode.
@DavidPennable The tower is in the center of the city. Firing it out the window will nuke the city behind it.
I really want to know what Teyla thought she could do to help the situation by staying.
she was needed to lead the city if what Radek attempted failed and killed them in the explosion.
Should have made a small hole at the end so power would go out from the city in one direction
That's the principle of a rocket
@@circSquare Yep, but the forcefield won't move. In all the episodes ship fields never moved after impacts
Soo several minutes later the original 12 nuclear explosions are reduced to blast out windows!!??
well they are the city's defensive shields which are designed to take bombardments by weapons far more powerful than a nuke.
MGM killed TWO SG series (Atlantis and Universe) when there were people willing to watch and pay for it, and financing available to continue production! In case of Atlantis already, and for Universe - literally within DAYS.... sheet... week without paycheck at worst for next few YEARS of stable work!
now if it wouldn't have been contained, it'd have been like a Tsar Bomb, and made a huge crater on the planet equal to the crater on Aegis 7 in Dead Space! :O
Yeah way worse than that, a gate exploding on sub-level 28 of the complex on earth would have had enough force left oever to screw over the planet completely. This gate and many others like it aren't buried several hundred feet underground. XD
@@Xershade That is actually terrifying, now that I've taken physics it makes sense to be MUCH larger of a blast since being underneath a mountain would continuously magnify it by causing the shockwave and heat to resonate until the mountain collapsed, and the shockwave after that would probably decimate the surface of the Earth.
Anyone saying they should done this or that
How about just enjoy it I did
wouldn't the explosion cause temporary blindness or something