Stargate Atlantis - "Rising" (TV Episode Review #4)

As the pilot of Stargate Atlantis, “Rising” was the culmination of the buildup from the SG-1 episodes “Lost City” and “New Order”, themselves the culmination of numerous plot threads surrounding the Ancients.  If this pilot had failed, then it—and all the SG-1 story arcs that preceded it—would have been all for nothing.  As such, it is so satisfying that Stargate Atlantis managed to find its own ground in its first episode.

Though directly continuing from the story arcs of Stargate SG-1, “Rising” does quite a good job at quickly filling in any new viewers regarding the mythology basics SG-1 had established.  In addition, “Rising” provides a first look into a change of pace with said mythology.  Aside from Atlantis itself, the Pegasus Galaxy is not influenced by any of Earth’s real-life mythologies, unlike the Milky Way in the original SG-1.  This is made very clear in “Rising”, which is devoted to raising early questions such as: What happened to the Ancients?  Why did they leave Earth long ago?  Who are the Wraith?  Many of these questions are further explored in later episodes of the series, which also branches out to explore other mythological threads—just like SG-1.

The pilot also has stunning high-budget visual effects to boast.  The geometric set design of Atlantis’s interior is suitable enough for the Tau’ri and is a true reflection of an advanced ancient civilization built by the ancestors of the Tau’ri.  By contrast, the Wraith Hive’s biomechanical structure resembles a true alien hive.  There is a general unnerving atmosphere in the hive, and the dark lighting only adds to it.  The CGI looks surprisingly realistic, even 15 years later, with some breathtaking visual effects and action sequences throughout the episode.

The city of Atlantis itself, while an alien ship at its core, is nonetheless based in plausibility and practicality.  In the episode, there is a subplot revolving around the city’s systems failing.  This makes sense because practically speaking, there is no way that a megastructure—let alone a city-ship—of that size could sustain itself for millions of years.  The notion that the waterproof shield keeping Atlantis at bay is about to collapse creates a looming suspense that makes Major Sheppard and his team’s problems that they encounter more suspenseful with every passing second.

Much of the episodes’ plot is structured around suspense.  Firstly, Atlantis’s dome shield, keeping the water from crashing in on the city, is failing after millions of years; there is the possibility that Atlantis could be flooded once that shield fails.  Even after all these years, it still makes the audience wonder if Dr. Weir, Rodney, & co. will find a resolution to this situation.  The resolution to this is a failsafe that is built up so well right up to the last moment.   On the surface, it may seem like a deus ex machina; but in its defense, it works because it adds to the sense that there is much more to Atlantis that the Tau’ri don’t know about.  After all, it raises another mystery: how did the Ancients prepare such a failsafe to happen? (Resolved in a later episode, “Before I Sleep”)

The introduction of the main villains of the series, the Wraith, is also very suspenseful and executed extremely well.  First shrouded in mystery and mentioned in name only by the Athosians, more hints about the Wraith progressively build up before their proper introduction.  The Athosians, especially Teyla Emmagan, build the Wraith up as a serious threat that brings constant terror to their people.  As such, when the Wraith are introduced, they deliver fully on how terrifying they really are.  To add to that, the prosthetic costume for the Wraith treads the uncanny valley in a good way, depicting a creature that looks somewhat human, but visually different enough to make it alien.  And that makes it all the more horrifying.

Given that Stargate SG-1 was already an iconic cult sensation in its own right going strong for seven years in 2004, Stargate Atlantis played a crucial role in expanding Stargate into the lucrative media franchise it was during the 2000s.  For all the setup that “Lost City” and “New Order” provided, “Rising” was the key stepping stone in that process.  From “Rising” onward, Atlantis stepped out of SG-1’s shadow and succeeded as a remarkable sci-fi TV series in its own right.