When I heard that Atlantis would set its penultimate episode in Las Vegas, and indeed be filmed on location as a treat to the cast and crew, I assumed it would be one of their Earth-centric episodes. Maybe something Area 51-oriented and involving Sheppard's ex-wife, too?

Boy, was I wrong.

I've been covering Stargate Atlantis since the middle of its third season, and now that there are only a precious few episodes remaining, I admit I'm feeling pangs of sadness. Therefore, I'm hanging onto these last episodes like a drowning man would a lifesaver, grasping to them and savouring every minute. But this week, we got a Keller story (blerg!).

But Beckett was back (hooray!) so all was well.

Why do I get the feeling that Todd the Wraith is Lucy pulling away the football from Charlie Brown (here played by the Atlantis crew)? Every time he shows up, he screws them in some way and every time, Sheppard finds an excuse to let him continue to live. This week, his ship showed up with a distress message. Upon investigation, it turns out Keller's cure to stop the Wraith from feeding has some unintended consequences. Namely, it turns the Wraith into flesh-chomping monsters. While at first they don't trust Todd, they soon decide they do in fact need him. The ship is healing itself in bizarre ways, popping up walls where there weren't and releasing scores of flesh-hungry Wraith soldiers after them. A few good men are lost to the nasty and pointy teeth, but in the end, Todd saved the day by piloting the ship, which is now crashing to the surface of Atlantis's planet, to safety. Sheppard allows Todd to leave, presumably to find an Iratus bug to cure to perfect health.

Bill Nye the Science Guy? Neil DeGrasse Tyson? Dave Foley?

Even though I am a bona fide geek (yes, it's true), I'm not too lost in my geekdom to enjoy things that are entertaining. Many other geeks require strict, almost religious, adherence to canon and continuity to their fiction, so much so that they're not watching their so-called favorite shows for pleasure, but instead for the chance to catch the show in an act of heresy. Nothing pleases geeks more than a show breaking its rules so that the "fan" can rail against what they claim to like. This episode, Brain Storm, seems to me to be tailor made to raise the hackles of the humorless fan. I, for one, enjoyed it thoroughly. It was an episode unlike any other, taking us far away from the insulated life of Atlantis and thrusting certain characters into a situation unlike any we've seen on the show.

I knew once I saw the name of (former Bond villain) Robert Davi in the opening credits that Kolya would be making an appearance on this week's episode. That is rather bizarre, seeing as how he's dead but on a scifi show, there are ways to get around a stiff corpse. Even though the surprise of seeing Kolya was blown from seeing the actor's name, that didn't detract from a very enjoyable episode that seems (to me) that it might serve as the basis for the new Stargate series starting up in 2009.

An episode like this is more in line with what I was expecting with Stargate Atlantis winding down its run. I was hoping for big shows with lots of spectacle that resolve lingering storylines and that is exactly what we got this week when we finally saw the end of recurring bad guy Michael.

A clip show? Really? That's what you're going with in the home stretch of this series? One of the worst things I remember of watching TV when I was a kid in the 80s was the dreaded clip show. You'd tune in to your favorite show and they'd have some ridiculous premise for an episode wherein the characters would be forced to say "remember the time when..." or "hey, this reminds me of the time when..." and then you'd have to sit through scenes of episodes that any loyal viewer had already seen. "Inquisition" amounts to pretty much this although there is at least some kind of relevant story behind it.

I'm very easy to please when it comes to Stargate Atlantis. All you have to do is pop in my favorite character, Carson Beckett, and I'll enjoy the episode. Beckett was last on the show in the horror episode "Whispers" (which I really enjoyed), and his return here is very welcomed. What I really like about Beckett's last few outings on the show is that his introduction is handled in a very nonchalant manner. He's just there, doing some kind of work, and it's not a big deal that he's back. It really conveys to the viewer that he's still active out there in the Stargate universe, working on whatever it is he does, and that he can pop in at any time. That possibility of Beckett showing up unexpectedly makes me happy. Not as happy as if he were on the show full time, of course, but it's the next best thing.

If there's one thing at which Stargate Atlantis excels, it's disappointing me after cliffhangers. At the end of the last episode, the gate room on Atlantis blew up with Zelenka and Sheppard inside. We all knew they'd survive, of course, but the fun is speculating on how they survived and seeing if you're right when the conclusion airs. So how did they survive? Beats me. They apparently...just...did. They took cover or something...I'm not quite sure. It was a completely meaningless cliffhanger to build some artificial suspense that went nowhere. But on to the real plot.

Amanda Tapping left Stargate Atlantis this year to focus on her new Sci-Fi Channel series - Sanctuary (starts Friday) - but that doesn't mean she is completely finished play Carter, and will be involved a great deal with two of the movies. The Sci-Fi Channel website has up an interview, where Tapping reveals her involvement in the upcoming movies. As reported:

The third DVD Stargate film is looking at production next year, Tapping added. "Rumor has it late spring/early summer of next year, but I honestly couldn't tell you beyond that," she said. "I know Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis will be shooting movies at that time. And [Stargate] Universe, I believe, starts up in January."

Will Tapping appear in Universe, the upcoming third Stargate TV series? "No," she said emphatically. "I think if I were, people would go, 'Enough with the Carter!'"

Finally an episode in which everyone has something to do! Woolsey decides to go with Keller to meet Todd, who has showed up with his people to receive treatment to allow the Wraith to stop the need to feed on humans, while Daniel Jackson comes to Atlantis to look for a long lost Ancient secret lab. Working with McKay, Jackson finds the lab and once they enter (after solving a little puzzle), a beacon secretly activates. The other end of the beacon alerts some aliens on a distant planet that the lab has been found. Enter the new aliens that the producers have said would appear in season five.

We get what I found to be another reasonably enjoyable episode of Atlantis this week, even though it centers on characters of which I'm not overly fond of on the show. As has happened in recent weeks, most of the cast don't appear, or are seen very briefly, instead centering on a couple of them off on their own adventure. In "Tracker," those characters would be McKay, Ronon and Keller.

Well, I suppose it was only a matter of time before Atlantis resorted to that staple of sci-fi television: changing races to infiltrate aliens. It's like when Kirk becomes a Romulan. Or when Troi becomes a Romulan. Or when Sisko and the gang become Klingons. Or when James Bond became Japanese...but I digress. In this episode, Teyla becomes a Wraith, a queen no less.

By now, I'm sure most Stargate Atlantis fans know that after the 20th episode of this season, the show is done. As I've mentioned before, if they canceled Atlantis after season 4, I wouldn't have cared so much, but in the middle of this much better 5th season, this news is a sad blow, especially when we get truly different episodes such as this week's "Whispers".

This past week, we learned that Stargate Atlantis would come to an end at the conclusion of this fifth season. I can't say that I'm much surprised. The fourth season was generally sub par and the producers had been talking up a new Stargate series that they wanted to make, but not concurrently with Atlantis. The writing was on the wall and it finally happened. Atlantis cancelled (but to be continued in TV/DVD movie form) and a new series will start up next year. If this had happened last season, I wouldn't have cared much, but this new season shows some promise, so I think it will be sad to see Atlantis go.