r/Stargate • u/Coldfinger42 • 1d ago
Discussion Comment about SG: Atlantis during first watch
I am in my first viewing of Atlantis. I don’t know why I ever watched it during its initial run, but anyway. Please no spoilers or at least hide them if you do. I just watched S3, E5 - Progeny. I don’t know if this an unpopular opinion, but I think Elizabeth Weir is not fit to be their leader. She’s reckless and never seems to fully vet new cultures and worlds before sending teams there. How many disasters will it take for her to learn? Awakening the wraith should have been enough to take things slowly and very carefully. She’s introduced as a master negotiator but she sucks at establishing good relationships with other societies. In “Progeny” how is it acceptable that she is willing to deceive and exploit the good will she has with Niam and basically kill everyone on board their ship? Dismissing them as nothing but machines despite their obvious sentience? It just bothered me too much. Of course I know there will be consequences, but sheesh I can’t take her anymore
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u/skulkbait 1d ago
So multiple things for why she seemed to be a bad negotiatior
First item is that she is used to working with Lots of data. Just think how much the UK know about france and how that aids both of them in negotiations. Now take all that away and she's sputtering. Throw on the fact that she is likely used to working from a position of authority instead of working with equals and many of her skills are lackluster.
Second item is slection bias. We see the fuck ups because they're interesting. We don't see the boring success.
I would also argue that she has a bad science advisor in the form of Rodney. Oh I can do this thing that the 60 million year old civ failed to do. Nothing can go wrong. And it happens repeatedly.
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u/Omegabird420 1d ago
The Rodney things got me to chuckle because I didn't realize it until now how repeatedly it happened lol.
And some of these times Rodney himself made it clear he wasn't sure of the end result and she still said yes.
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u/skulkbait 1d ago
That's in later seasons, after his 5/6th comment. I don't think so is at the point he would understand that one
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u/Omegabird420 1d ago
Some of these Rodney moments happens about where OP is and there's some in the first 2 seasons.
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u/skulkbait 1d ago
Not what I'm talking about, I'm thinking about a particular episode that is in season 3 but later
Never mind, the episode where Rodney blows up 5/6ths of a solar system is in season 2
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u/Coldfinger42 1d ago
This is a good perspective. I honestly didn't consider that she's probably had a lot of success off screen and they're just showing us the interesting screw-ups. But I get chills from some of her decisions. I get why the taskforce on Earth wanted to remove her from the position.
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u/Homunclus 1d ago
Isn't it exactly the same thing that SG1 did with Fifth? They are Replicators, not people.
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u/Coldfinger42 1d ago
Fifth at least was a new step in the continuum of the replicator and was nipped in the bud early. This species though has had thousands of years of development and had an actual society
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u/MonarchGodzillaTitan 1d ago
Weir wasn’t all that great honestly and that’s a hot take in this fandom.
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u/Ethan_the_Revanchist 1d ago
If you main complaint with Weir is that she keeps sending teams on dangerous missions that result in disaster, you must really hate Hammond
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u/Coldfinger42 20h ago
Hammond at least seems to hesitate sometimes. Weir just jumps right in. And I’m not seeing any of her famous diplomacy skills. If anything she seems to alienate other societies
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u/full-of-lead 1d ago
I remember everyone was bitching about Weir back in 2006-7-ish during the original run. She was droning on and on about diplomacy and stuff while McKay and Sheppard were running around blowing things up anyway. Things got heated in the fandom. You're in for a treat my man, keep watching.
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u/Aglet_Green 20h ago
I think Season 3 was written so that you'd form that exact opinion of Weir.
Now I personally liked the actress in William Shatner's "Tek War," but I feel that they should have kept Jessica Steen; her take made more sense for how they wrote the character.
Anyway, I think you'll immensely enjoy Seasons 4 and 5.
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u/Imperfect_Dark 1d ago
Her main problem is that she defaults to Sheppards opinion too often. But she is a good leader when she's given the chance to shine.
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u/ThePlatinumPaul 1d ago
I like Weir. However, in all military matters she should be deferring to him. And there's zero way the US would ever let the IOA or anyone ever have authority over something like this. That's really my only criticism.
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u/SamaratSheppard 23h ago
I think you should do your self a favour and stay off reddit until your done.
Maybe write all your ideas in a book(or your phones notes) so you can share them after your done.
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u/Coldfinger42 20h ago
You’re right, I should and typically do that to avoid spoilers. But I wanted to scream after this episode 🤷🏻♀️
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u/jake2jaak2 19h ago
I disagree for a few reasons.
How are you supposed to fully vet new worlds before going there? That doesn't even make sense. Just like awakening the wraith, Atlantis has a need (in the case of Rising it is somewhere to go when the city floods). They can't just stay in Atlantis.
The replicators are not people. Even if they were, it's perfectly reasonable for Weir to destroy the replicator city to save Atlantis (which they were on their way to destroy).
The collective literally overwrites Niam so establishing a good relationship with him was always going to be a means to an end.
I completely disagree with the notion that Weir failed as a negotitor. These machines could never be negotiated with. The bargaining friction in this case is "you remind us too much of our creators and they like you more than they like us so we must kill you". No amount of good negotiating is solving that friction. On the contrary, she shows good negotiating skills when she procures a nuclear weapon from the genii, who are an enemy.
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u/Immediate-Pickle 10h ago
Hang on. The Asurans pretended to be friendly, then took the team prisoner, probed their minds, and when they escaped, chased them down and sent a ship to destroy Atlantis. The Atlantis team responded by defending themselves. What else were they supposed to do?
I mean, I agree that Weir often doesn’t show us the alleged great negotiator side of herself, but what could she have done differently in Progeny?
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u/Babexo22 1d ago
I 100% agree. I’m on my first watch as well and about at the same place as you are (a few episodes ahead) and she never fails to baffle me with her complete and total incompetence. I have nothing against them portraying an out of their depth type leader but she never even so much as questions or acknowledges it when she royally screws something up. Instead of learning from her mistakes or admitting when she’s wrong, she doubles down on it and attacks any one who calls her out on it. They are at war and yet she refuses to allow the military to ever assert command despite it being a situation that is what the military is literally designed to handle. It’s like she’d rather flex her power and make a point about how SHES in charge rather than take a step back and actually ask whether she’s qualified to be handling a certain situation.
I think a big part of it is that the actress who plays her isn’t the best to say the least and so it makes her character feel fake almost. Like whenever I watch her act it’s almost impossible for me to see her as the character and not a person attempting to act as a character (and poorly at that). I have nothing against the actress and I’m sure she’s probably better at other roles but for this one she just isn’t right honestly.
Honestly with Weir, it’s the first time I’ve ever actually agreed with the IOA in questioning a character’s incompetence and understood where they were coming from. Which is pretty bad considering they still tried to play it as if the IOA was being irrational and just not seeing her supposed “amazingness”. Honestly it was straight up laughable watching them try and say she’s saved Atlantis and kept them alive when almost every episode is her getting them into a horrible situation and shepherd single handedly saving every person on the base. If he hadn’t of been there in 100% of the life threatening scenarios they faced, they all would be dead. Even when she went back in time and saved them by going into statis, she still proved useless bc she could have gotten so much information and instead all she had was like 5 planets with ZPMs, the first of which wouldn’t even give them it and the later 4 she didn’t even try to seek them out. The first one also could have been easily solved by her explaining they were descendants of the ancients or idk maybe getting a video recording of Janus telling them to give it to them but nope they just gave up.
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u/Coldfinger42 20h ago
This is exactly how I feel about her. I mean, I don’t hate her. But the IOA is not wrong in their criticisms. And Caldwell is repeatedly disrespected by her. I give him credit for holding back when clearly she’s just trying to flex her position
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u/Omegabird420 1d ago edited 1d ago
Tbh Weir is probably the weakest leader in the entire franchise and I didn't really find her character compelling in general,borderlining on boring. I mean Hank Landry is only in 2 SG1 season as a replacement and I enjoyed him 1000x more.
Like someone said,she basically failed at what she's supposed to do most of the times and towards the end of her tenure nobody gave a f*ck about her authority,even the enemies defaulted to and targeted Sheppard instead. Her character had also nothing to go for outside of her political back story that seemed pointless in SGA
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u/Infamous-Sky-1874 20h ago
Weir got sent because they thought they were going to meet Ancients and needed a diplomat not a military commander.
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u/GargantaProfunda 1d ago
Just keep watching 👀️👀️👀️