Stargate Atlantis - "Underground" (TV Episode Review #13)

“Underground” may not be one of the strongest episodes of Stargate Atlantis, but it is one of the most crucial.  It features the Atlantis team’s first encounter with the Genii, one of the major recurring factions in the series.  They first arrive on the Genii’s homeworld, just looking to trade for some food.  What starts as a simple expedition to trade food and supplies balloons into a web of lies and deceit.

The Genii are a people with many secrets.  They seem like a simple agricultural people at first, but that is soon revealed as a facade for who they really are: an advanced militarist culture underneath.  They have a great point to behave like this, because this secrecy shields them from Wraith attack while they build themselves up for the next war with them—and this cover has worked for so long, too.  In a way, they had a very good right to be skeptical about Atlantis when they found out about the Wraith awakening a few decades ahead of schedule.

That is not to say they are very understanding of outside perspectives, however.  While the looming threat of the Wraith has made them technologically progressive with their continuous mobilization, they are staunchly conservative politically.  Most of the episode is spent on John, Teyla, Ford, and Rodney trying to negotiate peacefully with the Genii’s leader, Cowen, but he and the rest of his people are very stubborn and will only agree to offers on their own terms, even if Atlantis’s point of view proves to be the better option.  This culminates with a rather chilling finale, where the Genii are revealed as backstabbers who were using the Atlantis team for their own purposes the whole time.

In hindsight, it is obvious that diplomacy will break down and the Genii and Atlantis will become on-and-off enemies, but their debut here comes off as rather tragic.  This is especially the case with Teyla, who really gets to shine in this episode.  She has known the Genii personally for quite some time, or so she thought.  She trusted them, but had been deceived the whole time, just like everyone the Genii trades with.  And she is just as shocked as everyone else is to find out the truth.

This episode is not entirely strong, though.  Its weakest moment occurs during their joint mission to the Wraith hive in the climax, which goes awry.  The main flaw is the way the Genii character of Tyrus is killed off.  On the hive, he fatally shoots a captive pleading for help with his gun (without a silencer, by the way), which alerts a Wraith and gets him shot—right after he and Cowen argue that saving the captives is no use because it is a bigger priority to avoid detection.  This makes Tyrus look like an idiot, especially since he easily could have just used any quieter killing method if he really wanted to avoid detection.

Other than that screw-up, the episode is quite well-written.  In offering the Genii his help, Rodney gets to show off his scientific knowledge, albeit after being a bit of a blabbermouth, and several of his scenes with the Genii, such as one where Cowen expresses faith in Rodney (but only on his own terms), are genuinely funny.  Dr. Weir addresses the Genii’s sketchy diplomatic proceedings to John Sheppard several times back in Atlantis, and these moments are where the audience is reminded that the Genii have underlying antagonistic undertones when compared to their demeanors onscreen.

While not a perfect episode, “Underground” introduces a layered antagonist faction with their own legit motives and goals.  It gains extra points for how it shrouds the Genii in such shades of gray before unveiling their true intentions by the end.  It is often said, “A story is only as good as its villain.”  If that rings true, then “Underground” succeeds in that regard.  Unlike the Wraith or the Replicators, this is not so much the introduction of a new enemy as it is a diplomatic mission gone wrong.