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A seemingly quiet day - declared a “day of rest” for the Atlantis crew - brings a mystery man into Dr. Weir’s life, pure pain to Sheppard as Ronon introduces him to Satedan sports, and absolutely no takers on riding shotgun with Dr. Beckett for a fishing trip. It also brings frustration to Rodney when two of his junior science officers stumble upon - and activate - an Ancient device of unknown function deep within the bowels of the city. Dr. Beckett clears both of them to return to duty, finding no indication that the device affected their health in any way. And before what started as a quiet day is out, it will bring death to several Atlantis crew members, including one of the most vital members of the team.

written by Martin Gero
directed by William Waring
music by Joel Goldsmith and Neil Acree

Guest Cast: Matthew Del Negro (Mike Branton), Kavan Smith (Major Lorne), David Nykl (Dr. Zelenka), Brenda James (Dr. Brown), Caroline Cave (Dr. Cole), Lara Gilchrist (Dr. Hewston), Daniel Bacon (Dr. Watson), Lindsay Collins (Dr. Biro), Chuck Campbell (Technician), Linda Ko (Nurse), Pearce Visser (Opponent), Brandy Heidrick (Pretty Marine)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

A summit to attempt to reorganize the Free Jaffa Nation is sabotaged by a series of explosions. Many are killed, and Teal’c and Bra’tac are seriously injured. When Teal’c recovers, he learns that a Jaffa named Arkad is suspected of being behind the bombings. Arkad wants the Jaffa to follow Origin, and he has been building a base of support. Teal’c and Bra’tac have history with Arkad – they fought several battles against him when they served Apophis. So Teal’c has no patience when Gen. Landry says he wants to wait for confirmation before pursuing Arkad. He leaves the SGC and begins to pursue Arkad on his own. To complicate matters further, SGC intelligence indicates that many Ori-following Jaffa are planning an attack against Earth, and that Arkad is behind the plot. But the Jaffa says that while the former is true, the latter is not, and he offers his help to stop the plot. The IOA wants to learn more, so they agree that no action should be taken against Arkad – and SG-1 must prevent Teal’c from taking actions that will be attributed to Earth.

written by Damian Kindler
directed by Andy Mikita
music by Joel Goldsmith

Guest Cast: Tony Amendola (Bra’tac), Craig Fairbrass (Arkad), Lexa Doig (Dr. Lam)

LogBook entry by Dave Thomer

Martha manages to turn the tables on the Family as they try to force John Smith to change back into the Doctor. Smith, Joan, Martha and the other villagers run for the safety of the school, where the call to arms is sounded ahead of an attack by the Family and their army of scarecrows. Tim, the schoolboy with the pocketwatch containing the Doctor’s Time Lord essence, helps to distract the Family, and later, after Smith goes into hiding, brings the watch to him. With the English countryside under siege, even Joan is now convinced that Smith isn’t what he seems, and that he can help to save the day…but now that he’s found love and happiness in human form, will the Doctor’s alter-ego choose to become a Time Lord again?

written by Paul Cornell
directed by Charles Palmer
music by Murray Gold

Guest Cast: Jessica Hynes (Joan Redfern), Rebekah Staton (Jenny), Thomas Sangster (Tim Latimer), Harry Lloyd (Baines), Tom Palmer (Hutchinson), Gerard Horan (Clark), Lauren Wilson (Lucy Cartwright), Pip Torrens (Rocastle), Matthew White (Phillips), Sophie Turner (Vicar)

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green (click here for review and more details…)

Vala’s father asks for sanctuary in exchange for information about Arkad’s plan to attack Earth. While Vala does not trust him, he claims he is trying to change, and his intelligence seems legitimate. Once on Earth, however, Jacek continues to run minor schemes, even while Vala debates whether to attempt to repair their relationship. Others at Stargate Command recommend that she does, including Gen. Landry, who himself is in the process of trying to reconnect with his ex-wife. But when it turns out that Jacek has not been entirely forthcoming about the remnants of Arkad’s plans, SG-1 must recover a cargo ship that’s hidden near the Cheyenne Mountain base - and is rigged to explode.

written by Joesph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie
directed by Peter DeLuise
music by Joel Goldsmith

Guest Cast: Fred Willard (Jacek), Gary Jones (Sgt. Walter Harriman), Bill Dow (Dr. Lee), Lexa Doig (Dr. Lam)

LogBook entry by Dave Thomer

Weir and Sheppard lead a team to find and board a mobile drilling platform built by the Ancients to tap into the ocean crust, but once on board, Teyla’s genetic link with the Wraith allows her to pick up on one nearby. But when Rodney performs a new sensor sweep, no Wraith is detected. Teyla tries to reach out to the Wraith with her mind, but even then she doesn’t find what she’s looking for - and yet moments later, she attacks Ronon and begins to cripple the drilling station’s systems. When the Wraith presence is finally revealed, so is its identity: the Wraith Queen who lead the final attack on Atlantis at the time the Ancients abandoned it. She’s been trapped beneath the sea for centuries, and ultimately killed and consumed her own crashed ship’s crew to survive. Now she wants to bargain for an opportunity to escape her underwater prison, but it’s not a negotiation she intends to enter without having the upper hand.

written by Ken Cuperus
directed by Brenton Spencer
music by Joel Goldsmith and Neil Acree

Guest Cast: David Nykl (Dr. Zelenka), Andee Frizzell (Wraith Queen), Michael Tayles (Dr. Graydon), Noel Johansen (Dr. Dickinson), Donna Soares (Coleman)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Sally Sparrow’s inquisitive nature, and eye for a good photo, leads her to a creepy abandoned house. Under the house’s peeling wallpaper, Sally discovers a message - written to her by name - containing a warning from someone called the Doctor. When she returns to the house with her best friend, Sally is stunned when her friend vanishes - and then a man claiming to be her friend’s descendant arrives at an appointed time with a letter from his ancestor…in the distant past. Sally goes to share the shocking news with her friend’s brother Larry, and finds him obsessed over several DVD easter eggs, all of them containing cryptic (and occasionally incomprehensible) messages from a man called the Doctor. But the video messages from the Doctor are very clear on one thing: alien killers in the guide of weeping angel statues are stalking the Earth…and if Sally and Larry blink when they encounter the statues, they’re dead. But why isn’t the Doctor on hand to fight the aliens himself?

written by Steven Moffatt
directed by Hettie MacDonald
music by Murray Gold

Guest Cast: Carey Mulligan (Sally Sparrow), Lucy Gaskell (Kathy Nightingale), Finlay Robertson (Larry Nightingale), Richard Cant (Malcolm Wainwright), Michael Obiora (Billy Shipton), Louis Mahoney (Old Billy), Thomas Nelstrop (Ben Wainwright), Ian Boldsworth (Banto), Ray Sawyer (Desk Sergeant)

Notes: This episode is based in part on Steven Moffat’s short story “What I Did On My Christmas Holidays, By Sally Sparrow”, which appeared in the 2006 Doctor Who Annual as a ninth Doctor story with a much younger Sally - and no weeping angels. The original short story can be read at the BBC’s official Doctor Who site here.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green (click here for review and more details…)

Contact is lost with a civilization that the Atlantis team helped relocate when their world was threatened by a supervolcano eruption. When Sheppard and his team explore an underground installation to search for survivors, they instead find human-sized insects hatched from enormous pods. They injure one when it tries to attack Ronon, and plant explosives to destroy a hatchery full of more pods. Leftover experiments are found too, attempts to accelerate the evolution of the insect life forms that merged with humans to create the Wraith. A backup team of Marines is captured by a Wraith dart, and then Teyla is captured in the underground tunnels - by none other than Michael, the human-Wraith hybrid created by Dr. Beckett’s experiments. Michael, now outcast from either humans or Wraith, has set out to create a new conquering race even more powerful than the Wraith, and he has no problems using Sheppard’s team as his next set of test subjects.

written by Carl Binder
directed by Andy Mikita
music by Joel Goldsmith and Neil Acree

Guest Cast: Connor Trinneer (Michael), Chuck Campbell (Technician), Ryan Booth (Lt. Negley), Samuel Polin (Creature), Brian Ho (Stunt Creature), Josh Blacker (Screaming Man)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

The Doctor once again brings the TARDIS to Cardiff to recharge the timeship’s engines with energy from the interdimensional rift that runs through the city. When he spots Captain Jack running toward the TARDIS at full speed, the Doctor tries to dematerialize the TARDIS - but Jack, eager to seek the Doctor’s help with his newfound immortality, leaps onto the time machine and clings to it as it tries to escape him. The TARDIS makes a rough landing on the eve of what could be the last night of humanity: the universe is collapsing, the stars and galaxies are dying, and the last remnants of humankind huddle in a rickety launch silo, awaiting their orders to board a rocket that will take them to a planet called Utopia. Trying to help ready the rocket, but making little headway, is the enigmatic Professor Yana, who seems to have a strange reaction to the Doctor and the TARDIS. A race called the Futurekind closes in on the last human settlement to feed, and Yana reveals that the rocket really won’t work at all. As the Doctor and Jack try to help, Martha notices that Professor Yana has a pocketwatch similar to one which once hid the Doctor’s personality and genetic information - a device of Time Lord design. But when the Doctor realizes that he isn’t the last Time Lord in the universe, he faces the horrifying revelation that only one other member of his race could’ve had the drive to survive the Time War…

written by Russell T. Davies
directed by Graeme Harper
music by Murray Gold

Guest Cast: John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness), Sir Derek Jacobi (Professor Yana), Chipo Chung (Chantho), Rene Zagger (Padra), Neil Reidman (Lieutenant Atillo), Paul Marc Davies (Chieftan), Robert Forknall (Guard), John Bell (Creet), Deborah MacLaren (Kistane), Abigail Canton (Wiry Woman) and John Simm (The Master)

Notes: Both this colony and the isolated human colony seen in Frontios (1984) are said to be the last human colonies in existence in the universe, though the implication is that Utopia is set much, much further in the future, during the twilight of the universe itself. During Professor Yana’s moments of mental distress, sound clips of Roger Delgado and Anthony Ainley as past incarnations of the Master can be heard; ironically, Sir Derek Jacobi played the part of the Master in a one-off animated Doctor Who story, Scream Of The Shalka, as well as starring in a well-received Doctor Who: Unbound audio story, Deadline. Presumably, Jack’s chase after the TARDIS takes place immediately on the heels of his disappearance in the Torchwood episode End Of Days (and the Doctor remarks that the Cardiff rift has seen recent activity, possibly from the opening of the rift in that episode), although End Of Days strongly implies that the TARDIS materialized inside the Torchwood hub. (Maybe the scattered papers found by the rest of Jack’s team were an indication of how fast he ran outside…)

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green (click here for review and more details…)

Adria finds Vala in a bar somewhere in the galaxy, trying to cheat her way to a cargo ship. Vala tells her that after information she provided about the possible location of the Ancient repository led SG-3 into a trap, the IOA decided she had been compromised. They planned to remove her from the team and imprison her to prevent her from divulging information about Earth’s defenses, but instead Vala stole a personal cloaking device and escape the SGC. Adria wants to follow the lead Vala has uncovered – but when they arrive on the world in question they find SG-1 waiting with the anti-Prior device. The tables are turned yet again when Ba’al’s Jaffa beam down to the site and take Adria for themselves.

Back at Stargate Command, Vala learns that her memories of her dismissal from the team were a fake. When the team learned that Adria had returned to the Milky Way, Vala volunteered to have false memories implanted with the Galatan device in order to lure Adria into a trap. SGC’s plan was to try to convince her to order to Ori army home, but that quickly takes a back seat to retrieving her from Ba’al. SG-1 learns that the Ba’al clones are gathering for a summit – but when they arrive they find the clones and many Jaffa dead from symbiote poison. Ba’al has apparently decided to eliminate the competition, but one Jaffa who lacked a symbiote is able to give SG-1 Ba’al’s location.

The team is able to retrieve Adria – but not before Ba’al takes her as a host. SG-1 considers its options. One is to simply kill both adversaries on the spot. But the team decides to adopt a more ambitious plan: they enlist the Tok’ra to remove Ba’al and implant a Tok’ra into Adria, who will order the Ori army to leave the galaxy. But Ba’al is not interested in giving up his prize, and injects Adria with poison. The Tok’ra surgeon says that Adria is dying, but she has enough strength left to pursue a fallback option – one that could leave her even more powerful than before.

story by Alex Levine
teleplay by Alan McCullough
directed by William Waring
music by Joel Goldsmith

Guest Cast: Morena Baccarin (Adria), Cliff Simon (Ba’al), Peter Flemming (Malcolm Barrett), Erik Breker (Col. Reynolds), Jonathan Walker (Ta’seem)

LogBook entry by Dave Thomer

Gen. Landry and SG-1 travel on the Odyssey to the new Asgard homeworld, where Thor makes an announcement. The Asgard have been unable to reverse their physical deterioration, and they will all soon die. They have chosen to end their civilization in one stroke, but before they do, they want to pass their entire knowledge base and technology along to Earth, as a way of preserving their legacy. Earth is ready to take its role as the fifth race.

Before the proceedings can finish, Ori warships attack. The Odyssey’s new weapons are able to destroy one ship as the Asgard homeworld explodes. But every time the ship leaves hyperspace, the Ori are waiting for them. Landry and SG-1 decide to make a final stand and beam the crew to a nearby planet in order to take the stargate home. Before the final shot can destroy the ship, Carter activates a time dilation field that, from their perspective, brings events outside the ship to almost a standstill. She figures that this will buy her time to find a way to save the Odyssey and the Asgard technology, or at least their lives.

The task proves more complicated than expected. Even though she develops a matter converter that keeps them all fed and supplied with oxygen, she can not find a way to ensure their survival. Decades pass. Mitchell begins at impatience and makes his way to stir-crazy. Daniel and Vala begin a relationship after a heated argument breaks down Landry passes away. Finally Carter reveals that she has figured out how to reverse the time field and disengage the Asgard technology that is broadcasting their position to the Ori – but they lack the power to implement it. Mitchell suggests that they harness the power of the Ori blast that has been moving slowly toward them for fifty years, and Carter believes it may work. But one member of SG-1 will have to remain old in order to tell the team what to do, or they will simply repeat their experience over and over again.

written by Robert C. Cooper
directed by Robert C. Cooper
music by Joel Goldsmith

Guest Cast: Gary Jones (Sgt. Walter Harriman)

LogBook entry by Dave Thomer