Outcast

Plot: Sheppard returns to Earth to attend his father's funeral. He's accompanied by Ronon and the pair find themselves embroiled in the hunt for a missing replicator, developed by an Earth scientist.

You'd think all of these scientists would learn not to play with nanite technology, as it invariably leads to bad things happening. In this episode, it transpires that a scientist has developed two replicators. One is a military model and is likely to kill if he's backed in to a corner. We find later that the other was posing as a human woman, in a bid to help Sheppard and Ronon track down the other. She was designed for social interaction and possibly the ability to feel empathy. The interesting thing is that she so easily fooled everyone in to believing that she was a human. With this in mind, it's possible that well designed replicators could exist within society without causing any harm. Or at least not causing any harm until they're called upon to do so.

I get the feeling that all of the Earth-based replicator development that we're seeing is leading up to something. Possibly for a big two-parter sometime in the future.

A large part of the hunt for the replicator takes place around a group of abandoned warehouses at a dock. It was a well choreographed and exciting chase and shoot out sequence, culminating with the two replicators fighting it out. A great bit of action, I thought. In the end, the bad replicator is beamed in to a low Earth orbit and disintegrates on re-entry, while the good replicator has her conciousness downloaded in to a virtual reality simulation without her knowledge.

For me, the most fascinating part of this episode was a chance to get a bit of Sheppard's back story, specifically relating to his family. We find out that John and his father never really got on, mostly due to him joining the Air Force instead of going in to the family business. It's also clear that his brother holds some resentment for him. This has been caused by the fact that John is absent for such long stretches of time, leaving them with no knowledge of his whereabouts and the task of looking after the business and their father. His brother believes that he has only attended the funeral to make sure he gets his cut from the will. It's amazing that this made me quite angry. We know John better than his brother, clearly. We know that he'd never be a money-grabber and that he doesn't really need the money anyway.

Finally, we meet John's ex-wife. She's played by Kari Wuhrer of Sliders fame. We learn that his going off on top secret missions at the drop of a hat really put a strain on their relationship that she couldn't bear. I couldn't imagine that married life really suited him anyway.

This is a tough episode to call. These Earth based episodes always seem a bit tedious because we're so far away from all of the usual excitement taking place throughout the gate network. I'm starting to feel like this whole replicator-shtick has been done to death, even if it did produce a couple of exciting scenes here. It's a sub-plot that continues to grow, but needs to do something soon if it's to maintain any interest for the audience.

6 out of 10