There are three major arcs working in Season 4. The first is the ultimate fate of Dr. Weir, the second the Replicator / Wraith War and the collateral damage it ends up causing, and what happened to Teyla’s people, the Athosians, including the father of her baby, Kanan. This is also the season where Amanda Tapping joins the cast, replacing Torri Higginson…and not necessarily to the betterment of the show.
Season 4, Episode 1 – Aired: 9/28/2007 – Adrift (2)
With only 24 hours of power left, and unable to use the Stargate, the Atlantis team must once again save the city from certain doom, while Dr. Weir struggles to survive.
Season 4, Episode 2 – Aired: 10/5/2007 – Lifeline (3)
While Carter and the Apollo search for missing city of Atlantis, Sheppard and his team risk their lives on a mission to steal a ZPM from the Replicators.
Adrift may have been the best season premiere of the entire series run, because it features multiple problems for Atlantis on multiple fronts, all concerning the city’s diminishing power and failing shield in the depths of space. Also, Weir was fighting for her life in a seemingly losing battle. This featured a lot of cool space action, including having to use jumpers to blast a path though an asteroid field for the city. Sheppard and Zelenka also have a nifty space walk to perform. Rodney of course has to come up with a solution that involves a daring raid on the Replicators. it also features tension between Sheppard and McKay when McKay activates the dormant Replicator nanites in Weir’s body to fix her brain injury, against Sheppard’s orders. “Lifeline” featured not only Sheppard’s team’s raid on Replicator City, but Carter looking for a way to contact Atlantis. The resolution of this three part story arc led to Weir going missing and thus Torri Higginson’s departure from the show, again, to my dismay. Amanda Tapping then joined the cast as the new leader of Atlantis until Weir could be found.
Season 4, Episode 3 – Aired: 10/12/2007 – Reunion
Ronon is reunited with a group of his fellow Satedans who ask him to leave Atlantis and join them. Colonel Samantha Carter arrives at Atlantis to assume command.
Good action episode that featured Mark Dacascos as a fellow Satedan to Ronon who ends up betraying him when it’s discovered he’s been turned by a process the Wraith use involving repeatedly feeding on humans and then restoring them in order to get them hooked on the Wraith enzyme. Some good Satedan-on-Satedan battle action in the climax.
Season 4, Episode 4 – Aired: 10/19/2007 – Doppelganger
After discovering a crystal entity, the team begins to have nightmares involving Sheppard.
Season 4, Episode 5 – Aired: 10/26/2007 – Travelers
Sheppard is captured by a space-faring race who wish to use his Ancient gene for their own ends.
Good Sheppard-centric episode that finds him matching wits with a hot commander (Jill Wagner) of a space faring people who find an Ancient battleship that they need Sheppard to fly. Sheppard has to play cat and mouse with not only his captors, but some Wraith as well. I was kind of disappointed though, that they hinted at the origin of Ronon’s famed space revolver gun, but not how he came to get it. Jill Wagner in leather is always welcome, though.
Season 4, Episode 6 – Aired: 11/2/2007 – Tabula Rasa
When a deadly infection causes key members of Atlantis to lose their memories, it’s up to Teyla and Ronon to find a cure. But when the Marines begin hunting down everyone and no one remembers why, it’s hard to work together to cure everyone.
Another tried (tired) and true genre show staple: everybody loses their memories and have to rediscover who they are. A similar episode occurred on not only Buffy (Tabula Rasa) and Angel (Spin The Bottle), but even SG-1 itself (Beneath the Surface).
Season 4, Episode 7 – Aired: 11/9/2007 – Missing
During a visit to New Athos, Teyla and Dr. Keller find themselves on the run from a primitive tribe of warriors and Teyla makes a shocking discovery.
Season 4, Episode 8 – Aired: 11/16/2007 – The Seer
The team meets a man with extraordinary prophetic abilities, who gives them a dark prediction about Atlantis’ future. Meanwhile, they join forces with a Wraith in an attempt to fix the virus Rodney created earlier to stop the Replicators, that has since malfunctioned. Woolsey arrives at Atlantis to conduct an evaluation of Carter’s command.
Season 4, Episode 9 – Aired: 11/30/2007 – Miller’s Crossing
After McKay and his sister Jeanie Miller are kidnapped on Earth, Sheppard and Ronon must enlist the help of the NID to find them.
Season 4, Episode 10 – Aired: 12/7/2007 – This Mortal Coil (1)
When a mysterious probe crashes into the city the team is convinced the Replicators have found them.
Season 4, Episode 11 – Aired: 1/4/2008 – Be All My Sins Remember’d (2)
With a way to finally track the Replicators ships, the Atlantis team must come up with a way to finally be rid of the Replicators once and for all.
Season 4, Episode 12 – Aired: 1/11/2008 – Spoils of War (3)
The team obtains a Wraith Hive ship after the battle with the Replicators and learn something new about their enemy.
This Mortal Coil, Be All My Sins Remember’d, and Spoils of War are another mini-arc within the season that deals with the final confrontation with the Replicators. Coil deals with Replicator duplicates of Sheppard’s team becoming self aware after thinking they’re the real deal. It’s also presented in this episode that Weir was indeed killed by the Replicators, even though the duplicate has all of her memories. Be All My Sins Remember’d features the biggest team up of ships to unite against the Replicators in a daring plan by Rodney to use a human form Replicator named FRAN to destroy them once and for all. Some good space battles and an impressive finale that features a massive clumping of Replicators on their planet, leading to their destruction, and a surprise return of a character (Weir), as a Replicator? Spoils of War is a sort of epilogue to that battle, dealing with Teyla and her pregnancy on a mission to destroy a Wraith cloning facility. Coil was a disappointing episode, because almost the same concept had been done on SG-1, with androids who thought they were the real SG-1 team (Tin Man). It’s part of the final arc for Weir which I didn’t like. It’s also the final appearance for Torri Higginson on the show.
Season 4, Episode 13 – Aired: 1/18/2008 – Quarantine
When Atlantis is put under quarantine, everyone gets stuck in a room with another person. While dealing with personal issues, they also try to figure out why there’s a quarantine, and how to get out.
Season 4, Episode 14 – Aired: 1/25/2008 – Harmony
While accompanying a princess on a pilgrimage to become queen Sheppard and McKay encounter a familiar foe.
Season 4, Episode 15 – Aired: 2/1/2008 – Outcast
After the death of his father, Sheppard returns to Earth where he learns that scientists have created a human-form Replicator that is now on the loose.
Season 4, Episode 16 – Aired: 2/8/2008 – Trio
Colonel Carter joins Dr. McKay and Dr. Keller on an off-world mission, to convince the people of a world rocked by earthquakes, to relocate. However, things take a turn for the worst when they are plunged into a sinkhole and become trapped in an old Genii mining facility.
This is a “they fell into a hole” episode that wasn’t very interesting. Carter falls from a great height not once, not twice, but three times. Fairly boring installment.
Season 4, Episode 17 – Aired: 2/15/2008 – Midway
When Colonel Carter invites Teal’C to Atlantis to counsel Ronon, who is up for review by the I.O.A., word comes in that the Wraith have discovered the now fully operational Midway Space Station.
Midway is one of the best episodes of the season. It features a confrontation that Stargate fans had been hoping for for years: Teal’C vs. Ronon. And it didn’t disappoint. The two have a sparring session that lasts over an hour without producing a winner. And later, Teal’C and Ronon get stuck on the Midway station between Atlantis and Earth and have to deal with a contingent of Wraith invaders who are looking to use the Stargate system to get to Earth. Plenty of good Wraith dispatching to be found in this episode. Also a nice nod to the fans to have Ronon ask Teal’C why he says “indeed” all the time and Teal’C be oblivious that that was an annoying habit of his.
Season 4, Episode 18 – Aired: 2/22/2008 – The Kindred (1)
While a disease spreads through the Pegasus Galaxy, Teyla believes the father of her child is trying to communicate with her. While searching for answers, the team comes across a very interesting discovery.
Season 4, Episode 19 – Aired: 2/29/2008 –
The Kindred (2)After finding some of the missing Athosians, Teyla plans an escape from Michael’s secret facility. Meanwhile, Keller investigates the origins of the Beckett duplicate.
Season 4, Episode 20 – Aired: 3/7/2008 – The Last Man (1)
Sheppard returns from a mission and finds Atlantis abandoned and surrounded by sand dunes. He soon finds a hologram of Dr. McKay, who tells him he has come 48,000 years into the future, and everyone is long dead. But the McKay hologram has a plan to save the city and restore Sheppard to his own time.
The Last Man is a good season finale that makes use of the wormhole time travel / solar flare effect introduced in the SG-1 episode, 1969, and also in the Stargate: Continuum movie. Except this time, Sheppard is the one who time travels, and it’s some 48,000 years into the future, where Atlantis is an abandoned facility in the middle of a desert. He’d be screwed if McKay hadn’t figured out a way to save a little of himself for the future to help Sheppard out. So the whole exercise ends up being an alternate future kind of deal, where, as they’re working on McKay’s plan to get Sheppard back to the future, he recounts how things went to shit for the entire Atlantis expedition after Sheppard disappeared. Basically everyone died except McKay, who spent the rest of his life trying to figure out a way to change things, including finding Teyla, who was due to give birth soon before Sheppard disappeared. Good interaction between McKay and Sheppard, as they basically carry the entire episode. Also ends on an explosive note, literally.