Sateda
Original Airdate: August 4, 2006
Reviewed By Karma

Summary | Review | Screen Caps | Cast | Guest Cast | Creative Staff

Summary

While exploring another alien planet, that nevertheless looks a lot like someplace you might find in British Columbia, our intrepid heroes come across a village, where the natives are not particularly pleased to see Ronon Dex, calling him “Wraithbringer” and busting out the crossbows. Falling back to the Stargate, Ronon, Teyla, and Sheppard are shot by tranquilizer darts, while a wounded Doctor McKay manages to escape back to Atlantis.

When they come to, Sheppard, Teyla, and Ronon find themselves locked in a cage, informed that the villagers have made a deal with the Wraith to turn Ronon over if he should return. The trio try to convince them that this is a very bad idea, as the Wraith will decimate their village should they return, but the village elder Ketulah has already contacted the Wraith. Ronon, distraught over what had happened to the village the last time he visited, as a Runner, convinces the villagers to free Teyla and Sheppard by threatening suicide. But he refuses to leave himself, determined to somehow make it up to the villagers.

As Sheppard and the new Atlanteans try and determine how best to retrieve their obdurate comrade, the Wraith arrive and, as predicted, destroy the village before leaving, taking Ronon with them.

Aboard the Hive, which, interestingly, is led by a male Wraith (who shall hereafter be referred to as Mr. Growly) rather than the traditional female, Ronon is once again made a Runner and is taken back to his homeworld of Sateda, which was devastated in a Wraith culling years ago, and set free to be hunted.

Ronon quickly proves to be a major badass, disposing of Wraith after Wraith, first with improvised weapons, then with Satedan weapons he finds lying around; even going so far as to taunt Mr. Growly over the Wraith equivalent of television.

Ultimately, Teyla and Sheppard arrive, along with Beckett and McKay, aboard a cloaked jumper, and set about assisting a wounded Ronon in dispatching the last of the Wraith hunting him. In response, Mr. Growly himself comes down to the planet’s surface to finish off Ronon once and for all.

The two fight, and though they could easily dispatch Mr. Growly, Teyla and Sheppard are bound by a promise not to interfere – and the threat of death at Ronon’s hands if they do. In the end, the strength of Mr. Growly proves too much for the maimed Satedan, but, before Mr. Growly can finish him off, he is, in turn, blasted by a drone fired from the jumper.

Back aboard the jumper, instead of killing him, an exhausted Ronon hugs Beckett for his part in the defeat of Mr. Growly, and our heroes turn for home as the Hive bombards the planet from orbit.

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Review

"Sateda" is hard to review. On the one hand, it provides a look, a long overdue look, into the character of Ronon Dex. It also allowed Jason Momoa to stretch his acting muscles (who knew he even had any!?), ultimately demonstrating that there's much more to Ronon than dreadlocks and threatening stares. Which is not to say that there aren't any threatening stares from Ronon in "Sateda", because there were plenty.

In the end, however, while the "kewl" factor is high, thanks to the combination of some spiffy action scenes as Ronon (assisted minimally by Teyla and even more minimally by Sheppard) goes to town on the Wraith, some interesting Wraith night-vision, Atlantis’ typically great humour, and some of the best music and directing Stargate Atlantis - or even the Stargate franchise in general - has ever seen, it's not all that great. Or rather, it suffers from being the second consecutive episode that has nothing to do with anything.

Not even the surprisingly skilled and varied performance by Jason Momoa can overcome that single desultory fact. Don't get me wrong, this is an episode that needed to happen, but it needed to happen last season. It is clear that the writers suddenly realized that Ronon was going the same direction as Rainbow Sun-Franks' Aiden Ford, and sought to do something, anything, to give the character a personality and to explore his backstory. Which, to be fair, is unexpectedly interesting, if, perhaps, ultimately flawed.

I say flawed because, while the idea of a "Runner" is fairly easy to accept - one needs look no further than the human race to understand the "hunter" mentality among humans, to see that to some it is more interesting to go out and actually catch your food, rather than simply heading off to the nearest grocery store (or in the case of the Wraith, human-inhabited planet) to pick up a nice juicy steak (or, well, I'm not going to specifically mention the Wraith equivalent here, because that would just be a little creepy) - but when you introduce Dan Payne’s Mr. Growly, the Wraith's answer to Captain Ahab, who goes to stupefying lengths to recapture Ronon and then to take his revenge, all because Ronon was the one "who got away", it starts to diverge, at least in my mind, into the realm of the ludicrous.

On the upside, there was a lot to like about “Sateda” beyond the pleasant revelation about Jason Momoa’s acting abilities and kewl factor, perhaps the most significant one being the extent to which the episode set about establishing the strength of the relationships between the lead characters. Sheppard’s revelations to Teyla aboard the Daedalus were particularly striking, and enough to, at least for a little while, actually succeeded in making me like the character.

The one “problem” I had with the team building aspects of “Sateda” was the inclusion of Beckett. I have trouble understanding what would motivate him to grab a gun and rush out to assist Ronon. I can understand McKay’s desire to do so, because his claim to there being a bond between them isn't entirely unreasonable, and because, despite the outwardly efforts to make him seem unlikable, it’s fairly obvious that McKay is meant to inwardly be a good person. Beckett, however, while a good person, has no particular attachment to Ronon. Aside from their initial meeting, when Beckett removed the Wraith tracking device (and while on that particular event, how is it that Ronon can have major surgery on his spine yet barely make a sound, yet the act of pulling a piece of shrapnel from his leg causes him to scream like a baby), I can barely even recall them having been on screen at the same time, let alone actually interacting to the point that Beckett would form an attachment to Ronon.

Finally, I would be remiss if I failed to mention the excellent production values on “Sateda”. Atlantis is a well-made show, but it seemed like they reached for a whole new level on “Sateda”. The sets on Sateda, for example, while, to the reviewer at least, very reminiscent of something from the new Battlestar Galactica were excellent, as were the camera angles and the music, which, while not typical for an episode of Stargate, was possibly some of the best on either series.

“Sateda” was a good episode, but it looses points for coming too late, and for coming at a time when the hour could have been better spent attending to more “important” matters. Nevertheless, it deserves a good grade, if only for the line McKay spoke to Beckett as they fought over the gun: "Oh, what? And you're Rambo now?"

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Grade: 6.5/10 (C)

Cast:

Joe Flanigan as Lt. Col. John Sheppard
Torri Higginson as Doctor Elizabeth Weir
Rachel Luttrell as Teyla Emmagan
Jason Momoa as Ronon Dex
Paul McGillion as Dr. Carson Beckett
David Hewlett as Dr. Rodney McKay

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Guest Cast:

Frank Collison as Keturah
Chiara Zanni as Malena
Curtis Caravaggio
Mitch Pileggi as Col. Caldwell
Dan Payne as Big Wraith a.k.a. "Mr. Growly"
David Pauls as Anton
Chuck Campbell as Technician
Todd Scott as Malik
Alexandra Carter as Linor
John Stewart as Villager

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Creative Staff:

Written by Robert C. Cooper
Directed by Robert C. Cooper

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