Stargate Atlantis: "The Kindred" Part 1

Not my favorite storyline
We finally see Kanan--no Kanaan onscreen.

The father of Teyla's unborn baby finally appears.

In "Be All My Sins Remember'd," he was Kanan (the same name as the Tok'ra symbiote Jack O'Neill was blended with in SG-1 Season 6 episode "Abyss"). Now he's Kanaan (a belated last second spelling tweak?)

Tomato. Tomatoe.

Not having met Kanan--er, Kanaan until this episode, he didn't strike me as being particularly memorable or charming. Intellectually, I know he's supposed to be important to Teyla since she reveals that she's known him since childhood and he shares the same ability to detect the Wraith as she does. Emotionally, he wasn't built up for me to connect with him.

Teyla receives dreams of Kanaan (an ability she's never had before), telling her to search for signs of him on the planet Croya. The dreams are so lucid and clear that it feels like an oversight when Kanaan doesn't say where he actually is. I wonder how the dreams would've been if Teyla and Kanaan had walked walked through a marketplace that she vaguely recognized and Kanaan had said something cryptic about how important the planet Croya is?

At the same time, Keller reports to Carter and Team Atlantis that a new illness is spreading througout the Pegasus galaxy that kills 30% of the humans it infects and all the Wraith who feed on them. Keller also knows already that it's a variation on the innoculation developed by the Hoffan people in Season 1 "Poisoning the Well" to make humans toxic to the Wraith.

Teyla goes to Croya, where she finds a man selling Athosian jewelry. She gets him to show her where he found the trinkets, but a dart beams her up on the way to the stargate. A set up.

Meantime, Todd the Wraith sets off a subspace beacon to signal Sheppard to come to a meeting, where they trade info on the Hoffan protein for the location of Michael, the Wraith-Human hybrid, who by process of elimination must be behind the latest attack on the Wraith.

Teyla wakes up on a Wraith ship, where she finds Michael staring at her. He shows her that the feeding orifice on his right hand is gone thanks to genetic engineering and tells her he sent the dreams, posing as Kanaan, has plans for her baby, says he created a new uber race to replace the Wraith by mutating the Athosians, and displays Kanaan, who's a brainwashed Wraith-human hybrid.

With Todd's help, Sheppard and Lorne take their teams to a planet, where Michael may have a base. Caldwell transports them on the Daedalus. After he beams them to the base, a Wraith cruiser jumps out of hyperspace, and he commences to skirmish with just conventional rail gun batteries. Sheppard and Lorne's teams have an average fire fight with some Wraith worshipping humans armed with single shot hand stunners. No contest.

The Wraith cruiser (presumably with Teyla on board) flees into hyperspace when the Daedalus belatedly uses its Asgard beam weapons and Sheppard and Rodney find Beckett in a holding cell.

Beckett is wondering what took them so long, and things cut out at this point to be continued next week.

Lots of telling and infodumping in this episode with no drama.

Kanaan, unseen for 4 years and newly invented this season, has no impact and is a victim rather than an active character.

Beckett is supposedly the real Beckett even though he was killed in Season 3 "Sunday." I'll wait for the explanation on how this is possible.

It was nice to see Beckett again, but I don't feel that he should've been "killed" in the first place.

Carter and Teyla had a small bonding moment when Carter let Teyla go to Croya even though she thought it was a trap, telling Teyla to call her Sam. Moments like this were few and far in between this season. And ultimately irrelevant since Carter was around only part time and will not be a regular character next year.

Compared to other season finales and two-parters, this story leaves me uninvolved and skeptical.