SG1 are undercover on an alien world recently taken by the ORI and a now fully grown Adria makes an appearance, after a rousing speech which has the locals aka survivors cheering an energy wave is detected by the Odyssey in orbit, they beam SG1 onboard and watch helplessly as every living thing on the planet is vaporised. Meanwhile back at the SGC Bra’tac arrives to bring news of a new offensive against ORI held planets using the Ancient weapon at Dakara, the current Jaffa council have decided that sacrificing whole worlds to kill the ORI armies is a worthy trade off and with an ORI starship now abandoned the race is on to take control of it. As SG1 investigate the ship they find the bridge and the robes of a Prior which indicates they control the ship which negates the whole premise of the Jaffa believing they can take the ship and use it to fight the ORI but there is no trust and the two groups spend more time fighting each other. The surprise for both of them is that Adria thanks to her connection with Celestis is still very much alive and is perhaps the most advanced being in the galaxy at this time and she takes control of the ship and with the information gained from the “dead” Jaffa she sets course for Dakara to destroy the weapon. Bra’tac and Landry are being held by the Council and their leader Se’tak who is a little paranoid holds up in the bunker and activates the weapon when the ORI ship is in orbit, it kills his men but Adria is again untouched and she fires on the planet ripping apart the ancient technology while Landry and Bra’tac flee through the Stargate.

Counterstrike is a well written episode and delves into the use of a device the Ancients meant as a tool for creation (think the Genesis device from Star Trek 2) but to create it has to manipulate raw material so when used as a weapon the need to create is a by product and the destruction of in this case life forms becomes it’s sole purpose. Of course the moral and ethical dilemma is exposed when every the decision to sacrifice innocents and non-combatants to strike at actual military targets and we get plenty of opportunity to explore that. That said we don’t get a lot of insight into the limitations of the Jaffa decision, piece meal strikes will simply be giving the ORI enough time to eventually discover the technology and source of the weapon and the foolish belief the Jaffa could make use of an ORI ship given that we know the Prior are the key to their technology beyond hand weapons etc. Ultimately the strike against this planet was misguided and achieved little and does kinda indicate that conventional means will not defeat the ORI and even some out of the blue almost mystical technology may not even be a total solution, I guess even Daniel may be wishing on a star in his hope for Merlin’s weapon.

Thanks for the feedback for last weeks episode The Real World and thanks to those that voted in the poll, the results seems to indicate a very pro Elizabeth (Torri) camp within the Stargate Atlantis fanbase and like the character or not she really should have been given more to do or sidelined even more in the way of General Hammond, this middle ground didn’t seem to work for anyone. This weeks promo is for The BatCave Podcast and next week we are going to be covering the Atlantis episode Common Ground where John has a close encounter with an old enemy and gets even closer to a potential friend or at least respected enemy, should be fun. Thanks to Brad for joining us on this episode and given the hoops we were jumping through it didn’t turn out to bad but overall came in a few minutes shorter than normally, could have done with a bit of extra content (reviews, comments etc) yep that’s a hint:)

Promo…

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• The Batcave Podcast
  

Links…

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• Counterstrike IMDB
  
• Counterstrike Wiki
  
• Morena Baccarin
  
• Tony Amendola
  
• Matthew Glave
  
• Richard Whiten
  
• David Andrews
  
• Martin Christopher
  
• Shirane Haas
  
• Peter Nicholas Smyth
  
• Andy Mikita
  

Mentions…

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• Armageddon Expo
  
• Belfast Film & Comic Con
  
• Stan Lee’s COMIKAZE
  
• The Real World Poll Results
  

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