It took SG-1 six years, really, before any significant changes were made to the cast when Michael Shanks left the show at the end of season five and was replaced by the Jonas Quinn character. Atlantis started making changes in the second season, and honestly they’d make a change every season thereafter. In a lot of ways, I think it kind of hurt the series even though I personally didn’t mind the majority of the changes.
The season two change is Lieutenant Ford being downgraded to a rogue reoccurring character. He was being fed on by a Wraith when a grenade exploded and knocked him and the still feeding Wraith into the ocean in the season opener “The Siege part III.” This resulted in Ford taking a massive injection of Wraith enzyme, which made him crazy and a lot more powerful. He took a jumper and bolted through the gate to another planet.
Ford’s replacement, Ronon Dex (Jason Momoa), was introduced in the third episode (“Runner”) and he even had a little scuffle with Ronon in that episode. Thankfully, Ronon actually ended up being a lot better character than Ford was (although the writers didn’t do much with Ford for whatever reason). Ronon was a Pegasus galaxy human, making him the second “alien” on Sheppard’s team, but he was much more comparable to Teal’c than Teyla was.
This season is comprised of almost nothing but good episodes, with my favorites being “Duet,” “Trinity,” “Instinct,” “Conversion,” “Aurora,” “The Lost Boys,” “The Hive,” “Grace Under Pressure,” “The Long Goodbye,” “Coup D’etat,” “Michael,” and “Allies.” Yes, I’m aware that that is a lot of favorites and that I in fact listed over half the season… like I said, it is a very good season.
The only episodes that I didn’t care for in this season were “The Intruder,” “Condemned,” and “The Tower,” and I must point out that those three episodes are not bad; they’re decent enough episodes.
This season, despite the change in the cast at the beginning of the season, is all around better than the first season which is always good to see from a show (seasons should get better, otherwise I quit watching). They also did a very good job of introducing a new villain, who would become the show’s super villain. And they did it in a way that made you sympathetic to the villain and portrayed the Atlantis team in kind of a bad light. Yeah, you can understand why they would want to suppress the Irathian bug part of the Wraith and make them human, but they did Michael wrong and would pay for it.
All in all, this is an excellent season of Stargate: Atlantis, and science fiction television in general, and should definitely be a part of your Blu-ray collection. If you don’t already own it, get it as there isn’t a bad episode in the season and the special features are all worth watching once.
Stargate Atlantis Season Two gets a four out of five: GREAT.
