Stargate Atlantis/Recap/S05 E02 The Seed

"The rules are there for a reason, Colonel. If I can't trust them, then...I'm not sure I can do this job."

- Richard Woolsey

Richard Woolsey of the IOA assumes command of Atlantis, to everybody's consternation. The first thing he does is to call a progress meeting, to see what everybody's been up to in the three weeks he was on the Daedalus. They haven't found any trace of Michael, but are still looking, since it seems likely that he stole the cloaked jumper and escaped when his hiveship blew up. The hybridized Athosians are making good progress in returning to humanity, with the help of Beckett's retrovirus and Michael's notes. And, with everything quited down for the moment, Keller has been devoting all of her time to figuring out how to save the still-in-stastis Dr. Beckett, but she has reached the limit of what she can get from Michael's notes.

Woolsey opts to shelve the search for Michael, to cries of distress from the others. He makes himself even less popular by telling Keller that it's a waste of time to continue working on the Beckett problem. It's not as bad as it seems though - if she's reached the end of what she can do in the lab, she has to either wake him up or shelve the problem. They decide to wake him up.

Dr. Keller's treatment seems to work - Beckett is alive and functioning at least, but is still suffering a lot of damage to all of his various organs. Woolsey will be sending him back to Earth for long term hospitalization at the next dial-out. Dr. Keller, however, has started having some problems herself, beginning with waking up with her hand covered in slime. She washes off the slime and doesn't tell anybody...and the next day she doesn't report in for work.

McKay and Teyla break into her room and find her unconscious and covered with a plant-like growth. Fortunately, Dr. Beckett is up and about, and has seen something similar while he was Michael's prisoner. Dr. Keller is in the process of turning into a hive ship, due to a pathogen she picked up digging Sheppard and the others out of Michael's lab. Sheppard, Ronon, and McKay (and presumably Lorne and Carter) are also infected, and Beckett orders them quarantined. Unfortunately he's got to head back to earth in about an hour - but he begs Woolsey to let him stay on until the emergency has been dealt with.

And it's shaping up to be a bit more of an emergency than they'd originally though. The plant hiveship thing is seeking out power to help grow - and when they cut the power to Keller's isolation ward it heads right for the main power conduit and the ZPM. Zelenka and Teyla go in to see how far it has gotten and whether they can halt it's progress, but it senses Zelenka is a threat and attacks him.

Zelenka escapes with just a concussion, but it's clear they need another plan. Beckett hypothesizes that the entity might not consider someone else who was infected to be a threat. Better yet, he's managed to create a drug that he thinks will separate Keller from the tentacle vine things. He tests it on Sheppard, and when Sheppard manages not to die he sends Ronon in to administer it to Keller. Things go great until Ronon encounters a blocked hallway and has to blast his way through - at which point Hive-Keller recognizes him as a threat and ties him up with Naughty Tentacles.

It's about this time that Sheppard wakes up, fully cured. Rather than sending in McKay as the only other infected-but-asymptomatic person on the base, Sheppard takes a jumper, the antidote, and a pistol, and ploughs his way right into Keller's ward. He injects her with the antidote, but not before he gets a little impaled by the aforementioned Naughty Tentacles, and then covers her with his pistol just in case it doesn't work.

Fortunately, it does, and Keller ends up recovering faster than Sheppard does. Oh, and Ronon has a crushed larynx, but it's unlikely anyone will notice the difference. They finally send Beckett back to Earth, and the IOA decides not to immediately fire Woolsey for commiting over half a dozen breaches of protocol in his first three days on the job.

Tropes:
"Beckett: Remember the formula comes from Michael. So as far as we know it could...
 * Bait and Switch Tyrant: Woolsey actually turns out to be quite a competant leader.
 * Body Horror
 * Call Back: Several to "Conversion", namely Beckett's hypothesis about the infected being able to sneak in safely and the following line:

Sheppard: Turn me into a bug? Been there, done that."


 * Converse with the Unconscious: According to Keller, McKay made a secret habit of going in and talking to Dr. Beckett in his stasis pod.
 * Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Sheppard.
 * Naughty Tentacles
 * Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Sheppard strays into this territory, robbing Ronon of the spotlight twice in the same episode.
 * Was Once a Man: Keller