Season 3, Episode 1 – Aired: 7/14/2006 – No Man’s Land (2)
Two Wraith Hive ships have captured Dr. McKay and Ronon and are on their way to Earth. It is up to Colonel Sheppard to rescue them and figure out a way to stop the Wraith from reaching a “new feeding ground”.
Season 3, Episode 2 – Aired: 7/21/2006 – Misbegotten (3)
After turning a Wraith hive ship crew into humans, the Atlantis team must decide on their fate. Meanwhile, Dr. Weir finds herself under the scrutiny of Richard Woolsey and the I.O.A.
No Man’s Land and Misbegotten continues the two-parter that begun with the Season 2 finale. Once again, members of Sheppard’s team find themselves prisoners on a Wraith ship. But this one is heading to Earth. The only person that can help them is one of their most dangerous enemies: Michael. Apparently, he’s stuck in limbo, no longer a human but not accepted by the Wraith. Which spins his arc into a new direction later on down the line. Lot of good space action in No Man’s Land and another dilemma when the retrovirus is unleashed upon the Wraith, leaving a ship full of devolved Wraith/human prisoners with no memory of who they really are, including Michael…again.
Season 3, Episode 3 – Aired: 7/28/2006 – Irresistible
A man from another world has an unusual effect on the Atlantis team, causing them to behave strangely. The few unaffected team members must uncover the cause.
Season 3, Episode 4 – Aired: 8/4/2006 – Sateda
Sheppard, Teyla and Ronon come under attack on a forested world. Ronon, realizing that he has been on the planet before, learns that his earlier visit came with harsh consequences.
This is one of the best episodes not only of the season, but the entire series. If you like Ronon flaying Wraithflesh, this is the episode to catch. Ronon finds an unwanted consequence from his days as a runner, the destruction of a village in which he took refuge for a night years earlier, breaking his rule to not associate with anyone for fear of bringing the Wraith to them. When he’s captured by the Wraith who initially turned him into a runner, Ronon is deposited back on Sateda for the Wraith’s sport. He has to come to terms with the destruction of his world and the life he was forced to leave behind. He dispatches Wraith upon Wraith in order to lure the leader down for a final confrontation. Even though Sheppard and the others show up to rescue him, Ronon won’t go until the Wraith who’s responsible for his misery is dead. This is probably Momoa’s best episode. On a side note, I like how Sheppard lies about how many Wraith he killed as compared to Teyla.
Season 3, Episode 5 – Aired: 8/11/2006 – Progeny
Dr. Weir accompanies Sheppard’s team on a mission to an advanced civilization with a past history with Atlantis. They uncover a connection to an earlier discovery in the city.
Season 3, Episode 6 – Aired: 8/18/2006 – The Real World
Dr. Weir awakes in a sanitarium outside Washington, D.C., and is told that Atlantis and the Stargate program exist only in her mind.
This is a somewhat tiresome scenario that continues a trend among genre shows: taking the protagonist and depositing them in some kind of fantasy world where they’re locked up in an insane asylum and their real life is just an illusion in their mind. I’ve seen it on both Buffy and Smallville as well. The circumstances as to how Weir ends up this way, Replicator nanites, will have an impact on her fate in the show later in this season.
Season 3, Episode 7 – Aired: 8/25/2006 – Common Ground
John Sheppard is captured by the evil Kolya of the Genii and imprisoned in a cell adjacent to a Wraith as Dr. Weir negotiates for his release.
Pivotal episode that introduces the other great Wraith villain to the show: Todd. Sheppard is captured by Kolya and the Genii, who torture him in front of his comrades by video link by letting Todd feed on him several times, steadily aging him to an old man. Sheppard and Todd strike up the first of what will be many uneasy alliances in order to escape and a crucial secret about the Wraith are revealed here. Not only can the Wraith suck the life out of humans, they can also restore it.
Season 3, Episode 8 – Aired: 9/8/2006 – McKay and Mrs. Miller
When his sister Jeannie comes up with a vital mathematical proof, Rodney returns to Earth to take her back with him to Atlantis. But things become complicated when another Rodney McKay from a parallel universe arrives.
Good episode that introduces Hewlett’s real life sister, Kate, as McKay’s sister, Jeannie, on the show. You get to learn a lot about McKay’s family life here, particularly that he and his sister have been estranged for years and Rodney hasn’t exactly been the best brother. Then you also get to see a completely different McKay when a mathematical proof that Jeannie wrote allows an experiment to generate power from another dimension to proceed and leads a McKay from that dimension to cross over in order to get Atlantis to stop the experiment. The Rodney of our dimension becomes dejected and uneasy when the other McKay is much cooler and seems to be fitting in much better than he does. We’ll see the other McKay in the next to last episode, Vegas, in Season 5. Very interesting tidbit and a source of neverending humiliation for McKay is his real first name: Meredith, by which Jeannie prefers to refer to him.
Season 3, Episode 9 – Aired: 9/15/2006 – Phantoms
Sheppard and Ronon find themselves under the influence of a Wraith mind-altering device that threatens to force the entire team to kill–each other!
Season 3, Episode 10 – Aired: 9/22/2006 – The Return (1)
While testing a chain of Stargates that will allow travel from Atlantis to Earth in about 30 minutes (the “McKay-Carter Intergalactic Gate Bridge”), McKay, Sheppard and the team discover an Ancient ship traveling at almost the speed of light. When Dr. Weir talks to the travelers, she is surprised by their request that the expedition members vacate the city of Atlantis.
Season 3, Episode 11 – Aired: 4/13/2007 – The Return (2)
Major General Jack O’Neill’s mission to defend Atlantis fails as he and Richard Woolsey are taken prisoner during a Replicator assault on the city. Sheppard’s team, Dr. Weir and Dr. Carson steal a Jumper from Stargate Command on Earth and come back to Pegasus galaxy with a plan to retake Atlantis.
Interesting two-parter that features guest spots by Richard Dean Anderson and Robert Picardo. With the return of the Ancients to Atlantis, the expedition has to abandon the city and return to Earth. Among those having difficulty with that turn of events is Weir, who has become lackadaisical and self-pitying. But when the Atlanteans are wiped out by the Replicators, their own creations, it’s up to Weir to suck it up and return with Sheppard and the others to rescue O’Neill and Richard Woolsey.
Season 3, Episode 12 – Aired: 4/20/2007 – Echoes
The whales of Lantea congregate around the city and the inhabitants of Atlantis begin to suffer ill effects. Are they there to communicate or attack?
Season 3, Episode 13 – Aired: 4/27/2007 – Irresponsible
While investigating reports of a “superhero” on another planet, Colonel Sheppard’s team comes across two old acquaintances.
Whimsical episode that features the return of Richard Kind as Lucius, who previously enraptured the Atlantis crew with a device that made him irresistible. Now he has an ancient personal shield that makes him invulnerable, which he’s using to con a village into thinking he’s a superhero. But when Kolya and the Genii show up, he finds he’s not nearly as super as he thought. Also features the final showdown between Sheppard and Kolya.
Season 3, Episode 14 – Aired: 5/4/2007 – Tao of Rodney
While shutting down unnecessary systems in Atlantis, McKay is zapped by a strange Ancient machine. He begins to have superpowers, but things are never as they seem, and Rodney and the team must race against his mutations to save his life.
This is one of the best episodes of the season that is the other side of the coin to the Season 5 episode, The Shrine, that features an unusual event happening to Rodney that threatens his life and humbles him. In this instance, the machine that zaps Rodney is artificially evolving his mind to the point where he will ascend. But it’s a one-way trip so that if he doesn’t ascend, he’ll die. Since he doesn’t believe that he has what it takes to ascend, this leads him to become more apologetic for the person he’s been to his comrades before the inevitable. He softens considerably to both Teyla and Ronon, going so far as to heal the scars on Ronon’s back from when he was a runner and had to have a Wraith tracking device removed. Great work by Hewlett in this episode. He will end up going in the other direction in The Shrine, where, instead of becoming super smart, he becomes dumber as an alien parasite attacks his brain. Great exchange between McKay and Ronon in this episode. McKay, whose appetite has also increased, keeps eating donuts. McKay: “You could be my sidekick. Batman and Ronon, it has a ring to it.” Ronon: You keep eating like that it’ll be Fatman and Ronon.”
Season 3, Episode 15 – Aired: 5/11/2007 – The Game
To while away the hours, Sheppard and McKay have been secretly competing against one another in a real-time strategy game they discovered on Atlantis. To their surprise, they discover that this is more than just a game….
Cautionary episode about game playing gone awry when Sheppard and McKay find out the game that’s similar to the Sims that they’ve been playing is actually taking place on another planet.
Season 3, Episode 16 – Aired: 5/18/2007 – The Ark
The Atlantis team uncovers the last survivors of a civilization who have been placed in suspended animation aboard a space station. As some of the people awaken, problems from the past threaten to destroy everyone on the station, including Sheppard.
Season 3, Episode 17 – Aired: 6/1/2007 – Sunday
The team tries to relax during a mandatory day off until the city and the Expedition are devastated by explosions.
This episode is good, but it also pissed me off, because it concerns the death of Dr. Beckett. When he discovers that an Ancient device is generating explosive tumors in people (yeah I know, but go with me on this), he refuses to abandon a crewman who has one about to detonate. This decision costs him his life. Then the rest of the expedition have to come to terms with their loss, particularly McKay. It’s a heroic sendoff for Beckett, but when fans such as me didn’t want to see him go, it was bittersweet. Heart-wrenching episode. This eventually led to an actual protest by fans outside the production offices of the show.
Season 3, Episode 18 – Aired: 6/8/2007 – Submersion
The team goes searching for an alternate power source beneath the surface of the Lantean ocean. When arriving at the power plant, Teyla senses a Wraith nearby.
Season 3, Episode 19 – Aired: 6/15/2007 – Vengeance
When Atlantis loses contact with the Taranian settlement Sheppard’s team goes to investigate and finds that Michael has been doing experiments on them involving the Iratus bug.
The return of Michael, this time making Wraith bug monsters out of the people who were the survivors from the planet with the supervolcano, including (gasp) Brandy Ledford’s character (although she’s not seen in the episode). Shitty ending for them. Interesting turn for Michael, which sets up later Wraith hybrid experiments which will devastate the Pegasus galaxy.
Season 3, Episode 20 – Aired: 6/22/2007 – First Strike (1)
Colonel Abe Ellis arrives at Atlantis with a new Earth ship, The Apollo and a new mission. Dr. Weir has misgivings about that mission, one that could start a war with a very powerful enemy. When his mission goes wrong, Weir must take radical action to save Atlantis.
Tense season finale where Atlantis takes a preemptive strike on the Replicators, who, they discover, are preparing war ships. A tactical nuclear strike on the Replicator planet leads to an interesting retaliation. The Replicators are directing a powerful energy beam through a Stargate in a shielded satellite that will continuously fire until it drains Atlantis’ shield and destroys the city. The solution by the expedition is to first sink the city. When that proves ineffective, they have to move the city by firing up the star drive. But a plan to use an asteroid to deflect the Replicator beam long enough for the city to escape the planet’s gravity goes awry and the city takes heavy damage when the beam pierces the shield. Among those critically injured is Weir, with a severe brain hemorrhage. The city then ends up in a void when the power levels from the ZPM drop to critical levels, leaving them adrift in space with a failing shield.