3.20 “First Strike”
Summary
Col. Abe Ellis takes the new starship Apollo on a first strike against a Replicator planet, but when his mission goes wrong, Weir must take radical action to save Atlantis.
Details
The Apollo is a new starship, recently pressed into service. On her first voyage, she arrives at Atlantis in the Pegasus Galaxy ahead of schedule, under the command of Col. Abe Ellis. Ellis is a no-nonsense, brusque, and take-charge commander and as soon as he arrives in his ship, he immediately beams to Atlantis and requests to brief Weir, Sheppard, and McKay on the status of the Human Form Replicators’ planet. Using intelligence photos taken by Daedalus over the course of the last two months, Ellis shows that the Replicators are in the process of building a lot of ships. Rather than Atlantis having to boost their shields, Ellis proposes to “take them down” by going directly to the planet with Sheppard’s team.
Ellis brings with him a set of Mark IX tactical nuclear bombs, housed in a custom-made weapons platform code named Horizon. Horizon carries six warheads and four decoys. McKay objects, saying that six warheads are not enough to “take down” the Replicators, since a single surviving nanite is all that is needed to re-create them. Ellis says that the ships being constructed by the Replicators are not made of nanites, but of conventional materials and that the bombs will be enough to destroy the ships. He’s hoping to buy time for Area 51 to complete its Planetary Wide Anti-Replicator Weapon (PWARW), which is based on the technology the Asgard used to build their Replicator Disruptor Satellites, but Area 51 has not been as successful in adapting the technology as they would have liked.
The Replicators know where Earth is and the IOA won’t sleep soundly until something is done to prevent these ships from launching. Ellis’s primary goal is to eliminate the ships and then use the PWARW when it becomes available. He immediately has McKay beamed aboard the Apollo to inspect the weapons.
Dr. Weir is concerned, though. She’s afraid that this will start an all-out war with the Replicators, but Sheppard tells her that the war had already started long ago…
Guest Characters
- Col. Abe Ellis, commander of Apollo
- Apollo crewmembers
Production
- Written by Martin Gero
- Directed by Martin Wood
- Before cameras September 26-October 6
Spoilers are subject to change as the episode is in production.