- This is about your people missing, this is about the father of your child missing - you wanna go out, you wanna tear it up, you wanna kick ass, but you can't! And the sooner you realise that, the better!— Sheppard, to Teyla
It is the very end of the battle above Asuras, this time from the Wraith perspective. Aboard Todd's hiveship everyone is delighted to see the replicator mass descend through the planet's crust - but Todd holds the ship, awaiting the return of three darts. Their mission: to retrieve unguarded ZPMs before Asuras goes critical.
Cut to Atlantis, one week later. The long range sensors have picked up Todd's signal, drifting in deep space hours from the nearest Stargate. They find the hiveship abandoned, its crew dead and fed on - it tangled with a second hiveship and lost. Whee, free hiveship! The only person who can fly it, however, is Teyla - whom Sheppard has grounded due to pregnancy. They get the ship operational and have her fly it along its previous heading.
What they discover is a secret Wraith cloning facility. This was how the Wraith managed to overwhelm the Ancients with superior numbers, but it's been inoperational for the last 10,000 years due to its excessive power requirements. Now with Todd's captured ZPMs, the Wraith have gotten it up and running again.
Leaving Teyla and Lorne on the hiveship, Sheppard, McKay and Ronon try to find some way of destroying the facility before it can be activated. On their way, they find and rescue Todd from the cell where he's been since the other hiveship captured him. He leads them towards a control room, but the other wraith catch up with them before they can blow the whole thing up. Todd escapes, and makes his way to up to the hive, where he lets Teyla and Lorne know what's been going on.
Teyla takes mental control of the hive queen with the help of extra psychic power from her unborn child. She frees the others, but the queen realizes what's going on and mentally attacks the baby. Sheppard shoots the queen just in time, and they destroy the cloning facility by ramming it with the hiveship. The team returns to Atlantis in their jumper, while Todd goes his own way in a dart.
Tropes:
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: Teyla battles the Wraith queen in this manner, using the added strength of her unborn child.
- Foreshadowing:
- This episode establishes that the Wraith possess their own version of cloning technology. This sets up the upcoming big reveal at the end of “The Kindred, Part 1”.
- Attentive viewers will notice that Todd never actually states just how many ZPMs he salvaged from Asuras. This will become very important over a year later during the series finale.
- Ghost Ship: Todd's hive
- Hive Queen: We finally learn how Wraith reproduce (at least, how they reproduce when they're in a hurry to create an army very quickly). It's not pretty.
- Kneel Before Zod: Sheppard before the Wraith Queen.
- Perspective Flip: The prologue retells the Battle of Asuras (or at least the tail end of it) last episode from Todd's perspective. This flip also answers why the last Wraith Hive was so slow to make the jump to hyperspace even as Asuras was about to go boom.
- Pregnant Badass: Teyla - now with extra mind-control.
- The Reveal: Not only do the Wraith possess their own form of cloning technology, but this was their secret weapon that allowed them to triumph over the Ancients 10,000 years ago.
- Ramming Always Works: Crashing the hiveship into the cloning facility is the best way the team can think of destroying it.
- Running Gag: As on SG-1 and earlier in the spinoff, the Tau'ri once again get a new alien spacecraft (Todd's Hive)...and losing it almost as quickly (taking out the Cloning Facility).
- Some Call Me "Tim": Sheppard dubs their Wraith friend "Todd" after a particularly pale guy he knew in college.
- Targeted to Hurt the Hero: Hive Queen almost attempts to feed on Rodney to get Sheppard to confess.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The Wraith Queen says this almost word for word when "Todd" is no longer needed for her plans (and she "must feed").
- We Have Reserves: The origin of the Wraith's reserves is finally revealed.
- Zerg Rush: The Wraith cloning facility is revealed in-story to be how the Hives were able to build up their numbers enough to do this to the Lanteans during the War 10,000 years ago.
