#ep. misbegotten

Sheppard sounds very uncertain as he approaches McKay, asking for the man to stop for a moment because while Sheppard is usually fast and McKay likes to take his time, we had seen a reversal of their usual roles as McKay had been scrambling to get on top of their current crisis and Sheppard had felt like things were moving too fast and he did not have enough time to think things through, to see all the angles and figure out exactly how the situation was threatening the life and well-being of McKay in particular. Sheppard cannot seem to meet McKay's eyes at first, having to work himself up to actually looking straight at him. It seems as though a moment has passed since the previous scene even though both of them are still on the control platform, and it is possible that Sheppard had simply taken a moment to get his bearings and was now approaching McKay after coming to a decision. It seems like he had a moment to think things over, and it was with new resolve that he was now approaching the person whose attention he had been bereft of ever since he had called out for McKay from the Chair room earlier, getting no response from him.

Sheppard begins with "Listen," in contrast to the "Look," that McKay often begins what he has to say that seems to have created a Pavlovian response in Sheppard (and many others in the city) since McKay often uses it to preface something of critical importance, something he needs others to understand because their lives may depend on it. Sheppard choosing "Listen" instead betrays the fact that he needs to be heard by McKay even though he is speaking in a soft and quiet voice, vulnerable and genuine in a way that we rarely if ever see Sheppard be with anyone else. It seems as though Sheppard trusts McKay enough to allow the man to see him for who he really is -- for the most part -- trusting that McKay will not make fun of him and will not use his earnestness against him. It is not easy for Sheppard to be open and to bare himself the way he does here, and he must have come to some conclusion in the time he had spent thinking this thing through -- figuring that since he had been unable to get McKay to focus on him by being forceful and making demands that he needed to ask for it instead. Sheppard actually needed to explain himself to McKay, and it speaks of the importance for Sheppard of having this connection to McKay that he had challenged himself to actually do this. This is not a small thing, this is momentous for Sheppard to do because this does not come naturally to him. But McKay is worth it for him to lay down his defenses and actually approach McKay with openness and vulnerability.

Even though McKay is working on something that is probably important, he turns to Sheppard just as the man approaches him and actually seems to give him his whole attention because it seems that the tone of voice Sheppard was using had already invited McKay to understand that Sheppard had something important to say to him. Sheppard had invited him to listen and just like he always does, McKay wants nothing better than to give Sheppard anything he could think to ask for. Whether there actually was a lull in one disaster seeming to follow another, McKay turns himself to Sheppard and looks at him openly, prepared to listen to what ever Sheppard thinks that he should hear out -- at least until it becomes apparent to McKay that Sheppard is blaming him, seemingly for acting out of turn. We have noted before how sensitive McKay is to being blamed, largely on account of his childhood when his parents had hated each other and blamed him, and so he seems to immediately become defensive as he catches Sheppard's drift -- or so he thinks.

Sheppard tells McKay that he has been making a lot of decisions without consulting him, and this sounds like an accusation. Sheppard is saying that McKay has been flying solo and that he is not comfortable with him doing that -- McKay should have been running his decisions by him. The issue of the chain of command between them is not actually very clear, as we are reminded later in the season in Harmony (S04E14) where they tell a little girl who has a crush on Sheppard that they are basically equals while Sheppard is technically in charge since McKay is not a ranked member of the military. McKay is a member of Sheppard's gate team but he is also the head of the science corps and he is the second in command as the civilian authority of the expedition. The chain of command between them would be confused even without a recently ended romantic relationship between them -- and this has always been an issue. This was always the danger, this is why them getting involved had been a risky endeavour from the start, and it seems that now with Weir incapacitated that this was becoming an issue. Or so Sheppard claims.

But we should note here that what Sheppard is saying about what McKay has been doing is not actually true. McKay has not made a single decision in the time that we had been able to see, having only tried to gather information and to understand their problems sufficiently that he could give Sheppard the "How Screwed We Are" report that he expects Sheppard to want to have from him, as per usual. The only decision McKay had made was to let Chuck work on communications while he fried some bigger fish and what ever he had been about to do with Zelenka that he had not explained properly as the two of them had left their sentences unfinished. And this had been the whole problem with Sheppard. He was not upset that McKay was making technical decisions about how they were supposed to achieve their aims of staving off certain death for a few more minutes, which they were all agreed on -- Sheppard was upset that he did not understand what McKay was doing.

McKay did not have the time to explain to him what he was doing, which annoys Sheppard even ordinarily, and it irritates him even more for him to not understand what McKay and Zelenka are talking about amongst themselves. Sheppard knows that he is going to need to make some decisions about how best to keep McKay alive -- and he is currently coming up empty on exactly how to achieve that -- and he cannot make these decisions unless he understands what is going on. It is not McKay making decisions that upsets him -- Sheppard would gladly let anyone else make decisions for him all the live long day -- it is McKay not explaining his rationale to him. It is the same thing it always is -- the thing he had told the attractive chief scientist of the Taranans that he hated when McKay does in Inferno (S02E19). He hates it when McKay does this, when he ignores him.

Sheppard: I understand that, but with Elizabeth... incapacitated, I hate to say it, but... McKay: You're in charge, I know. I'm sorry. Sheppard: Just keep me in the loop. McKay: OK.

McKay tells Sheppard that he is sorry immediately -- not actually meaning that he is remorseful and accepting the blame for having done the wrong thing but as a prelude to excusing his behaviour. Because what Sheppard is saying to him sounds like an accusation, it seems like McKay has to defend himself and to deflect some of the blame, immediately feeling like he is being attacked by Sheppard -- and it is counterproductive of Sheppard to use this strategy because the result is not getting McKay to open up and to draw him closer, which is what Sheppard desires, but instead to get him to put his shields up and try to shut Sheppard out.

McKay explains to Sheppard that he had to move fast because they were "under the gun," again reminding Sheppard of how he is in mortal peril here, and since McKay had been scrambling to save everyone's lives, it had not even occurred to him that he had been doing anything wrong. As far as he had been aware, McKay had been doing the same thing he always does -- he had been trying to save everyone's lives while things had been falling apart all around him, another great vacation getaway in the Pegasus galaxy. He had not intended on stepping on Sheppard's toes here, and it seems to mortify McKay to realize that Sheppard feels this way -- offering up excuses a way for him to protect his ego. McKay's explanation is actually perfectly reasonable and he should not even have to give it -- but Sheppard is not coming from a place of reason here, he is coming from his "serious abandonment issues" and his fear that McKay is slipping away from him, whether or not McKay is on the level about them facing almost certain death here.

Sheppard tells McKay that he "understands" -- and on some level, he does understand that McKay needs to act fast to keep ahead of the curve of disaster, and he appreciates that -- but this is not actually about Sheppard being reasonable and having a rational grievance he is bringing up to McKay here. While Sheppard is being open and vulnerable about needing McKay, essentially asking McKay to play ball with him, what he is saying about Weir being incapacitated and him being in charge is just an excuse. Sheppard does not actually want to be in charge -- he had literally told this to Ellis in the previous episode -- and he would love nothing better than for someone else to be making command decisions. This is not about Sheppard having suddenly realized the role that had been thrust upon him and trying to grow into the role and the responsibility. Sheppard is lying about "hating to say it" because he does not even mean what he is saying here, he is saying all of this just to get McKay to pay attention to him. The only thing he hates about saying this is having to say it at all because he should not have to beg McKay to explain things to him, to be considerate of him -- to pay attention to him.

It is not even entirely clear whether Sheppard should be in charge here. We had seen McKay argue against Colonel Caldwell in The Long Goodbye (S02E16) that as a senior member of the expedition, he should have been in charge with both Weir and Sheppard incapacitated. Caldwell had argued that since it was a military situation and he was ranking military officer, he was in charge. McKay had disagreed with him but he had not felt like challenging him in the middle of a crisis, possibly fearing that he would not be able to get people to accept his authority anyway. But we had also seen in the previous episode how important retaining civilian authority over the expedition was to Weir, and so as this is not a military situation, it is not at all clear who should be in charge here. While Sheppard has de facto become Weir's second in command on the expedition, Weir herself would not want to default the leadership of the expedition to the hands of the military, and McKay is the next in line for civilian leadership.

McKay has a very good case to make here for why he should be in charge and not Sheppard -- but of course he does not make it. McKay would do anything that Sheppard asked him to do, what ever roles they were in. We had seen McKay fire on basically innocent lives at the start of the previous season, he thinks nothing of committing war crimes for Sheppard. As a matter of fact, Sheppard himself has seemed reluctant to tell McKay what to do in the past because he has seen how keen and eager McKay is to do anything that he wants, and his own relationship with his business magnate of a father seems to have taught him that having this kind of power over someone comes with a tremendous responsibility. Sheppard does not want to be in charge here, and he most of all does not want to pull rank on McKay, having tried very hard to vanish the chain of command and power hierarchy between the two of them in particular -- and likely Weir would not want him to be in charge, either. Sheppard should not be in charge of the expedition on a normal day, let alone in a crisis. We need to acknowledge that what he is actually doing here is grasping at straws. Sheppard feels like he is helpless and out of options, and it seems like pulling rank on McKay is the only way he can get the man to stop for a moment, to look at him and listen to him, to connect with him. The only thing Sheppard wants is for McKay to acknowledge him, and it seems like this is the only way he can get McKay to do it -- and it works. McKay does stop, he does acknowledge Sheppard.

McKay immediately recognizes that Sheppard is in charge, and this had never even been in question to him. McKay is in love with Sheppard and lives to serve him -- he is an acts of service kind of a guy who tries to perform tasks to earn the acceptance of people even ordinarily, let alone with the single most important person in his life. There is quite literally nothing that McKay would not do for Sheppard just like Wesley would have done anything for Princess Buttercup, telling her "I love you" with every "As you wish." For all McKay's first "I'm sorry" had not been an apology, his second one is -- heartfelt and earnest. McKay had told Sheppard in McKay and Mrs Miller (S03E08) that he is not very good at apologizing because he is so seldom wrong, but both we and Sheppard have known at least since the time of Trinity (S02E06) that this is simply not true -- McKay is actually very good at apologizing, he is capable of being open and genuine in his contriteness in a way that Sheppard could not be in a million years.

McKay tells Sheppard that he is sorry, and we actually hear his Canadian accent here in the same way that Carter had pointed out when he and his sister had apologized at the same time, and he acknowledges that Sheppard was right and that he had been in the wrong, he had been inconsiderate of Sheppard. He also promises to do better in the future, to change his behaviour in response to this perceived slight -- and he does not just say it, he also attempts to do it. McKay hits every note in his apology, and he also really means it. There is nothing more important to him than having Sheppard's confidence and his love -- even now, even after Sheppard had ended their relationship. What ever Sheppard had thought McKay was doing, it had never been his intention of being dismissive of Sheppard or ignoring him, he had just been too busy trying to save everyone's life to not have considered Sheppard's feelings, since he is under the false belief that Sheppard ending their relationship had actually meant that it was over for him.

Sheppard seems satisfied by both McKay's response but also the fact that for a moment he gets to experience being the sole focus of McKay's attention here, and so he magnanimously lets McKay off the hook with "Just keep me in the loop," as though he were the reasonable one here. This is actually the thing that Sheppard had wanted, that he had been looking for -- he needs McKay to explain things to him so that he can know what he should do about it, so that he can come to some decisions and properly assess the level of danger that McKay is in currently. Sheppard's mind has been filled with klaxons blaring danger ever since he had heard the voice call for medics while he had been in the Chair room announcing that there had been multiple injuries in the control room, and he would not be able to get his cortisol to stop spiking until he figured some way that he could stop McKay from dying with everyone else in the vacuum of space within the next day or so.

Sheppard asks McKay to keep him "in the loop," and Weir actually had said the same words before -- to Zelenka in The Brotherhood (S01E16). The thing to note is that Weir's intention had been almost the opposite of Sheppard -- she had wanted to dismiss him, basically telling him to come to her only when there was something important that she needed to know but otherwise to keep up the good work. Zelenka had chuckled and told her that "You are the loop" since basically there was no one else that he could report about things of this nature while McKay was out gallivanting on alien worlds and did not seem to care about most things that the science corps got up to -- seeing how he and Sheppard had been very much in the early stage of their relationship at the time. Weir had told him "Isn't that a nice thing to say. You're more than welcome to continue walking with me, but if there's something that you need to do…" clearly trying to dismiss him. What Sheppard is intending here is the polar opposite of what Weir had meant to communicate to Zelenka -- he actually wants to know what McKay is doing. He intends on plastering himself to McKay's side until he understands. He intends on being McKay's whole loop even if he has to bend himself into a Pretzel to achieve it.

The only sound that can be heard as McKay retakes his place next to -- but not near -- Sheppard are his footsteps echoing in the hall where everyone are keeping respectfully quiet, and likely one could hear a pin drop in the room. McKay's footsteps are replaced by those of Weir as she takes up a post next to the casket where likely McKay had been reading the poem just moments ago, this being the time for the reading of the eulogy.

Since this is the last memorial and some exposition is necessary, she recaps the proceedings by pointing out that they have already said their goodbyes to a lot of "friends" today, earlier in this memorial service, and while she is not speaking specifically to or about Sheppard and McKay, many of her words are applicable to their situation. The two of them have recently said goodbye to each other, even though Sheppard had never wanted to say goodbye to McKay and McKay never wanted to separate from Sheppard. But for all they may have said goodbye (whether or not the words were ever spoken between them, and likely they were not), as McKay himself muses in the coda, the two of them are not and never have been friends. They could not continue as friends following their relationship because that is not something that they ever were -- neither one of them could pretend like they were. There are people who can separate and continue as friends, but the two of them are not people like that. Loving someone the way they had, being as close as they had become, losing a lover that both of them were still very much in love with -- it felt like death. This may be the memorial of Carson Beckett but this is the funeral of their relationship at the same time. In their minds they are not just saying goodbyes to Beckett but also to each other, to the world they once shared. That world is no more.

Weir: Our mission is a dangerous one. We lose people -- a fact we're all painfully aware of.

Weir continues describing the mission on a general level, and while the personal nature of her grief is clear in her voice, what she says her is not dissimilar to what she had been saying to the families of the people they had lost on the mission in her video messages in Letters from Pegasus (S01E17) that we got to hear only the once but which she had likely personalized for every member of the mission who had lost their life in service of it.

Her mention of the inherent danger in their endeavour being a fact that they are all "painfully aware of" also resembles what McKay had told Sheppard in Trinity (S02E06) when the other man had been trying to guilt McKay to stop pursuing the dangerous project further, having reminded him of the member of his staff that he had lost -- just as McKay had lost one of them now to what he feels had been due to his negligence, broken up about that even if he is not as broken up about that as he is about the loss of his best friend and his lover within the span of a week -- not to hurt him but to manipulate him, Sheppard having feared for McKay's life and seeming ready to do anything to get him to stop pursuing the project further at the time. We had heard the pain in McKay's voice then even though he had been dissociating, we had heard his voice break as he had confessed to Sheppard that he would have to live with that fact for the rest of his life. He told Sheppard: "I am responsible for his death. Yes, I am painfully aware of that. I sent him in there, and I will have to live with that for the rest of my life."

Because Weir had been there to hear him speak these words, she may even be quoting him here, whether wittingly or unwittingly. She may be trying to remind McKay of the fact that it is their responsibility now to understand what had happened and to learn of it, just as it had been then. Weir may correctly suspect that McKay is blaming himself for what had happened just as McKay tends to blame himself for most things that happens in the city, and because there is an expectation put on his shoulders to save them from the things that befall them, it is easy to see how this pressure they put on him would only make him feel more like he was to blame for their failures. Weir may be trying to comfort McKay in his grief but likely she is just managing to make him feel worse about it all.

Note the way Weir seems to look from McKay to Sheppard as she mentions that they lose people -- and there are more ways to lose people than just by them dying. McKay and Sheppard have both lost people during these tragic events, both of them having lost a friend and someone working for them. But they have also very recently lost each other as surely as if the other man had died. The loss of each other feels as final to them in this moment as though the other man had died, and Weir's eulogy cannot help reminding both of them also of this fact. They are painfully aware of having lost each other too. This is why we get a close-up of the two of them for this painful fact that we are aware of. They are more aware of this fact than the others in this moment.

Weir: But Carson was… I can't remember anyone coming to me with a complaint against him -- ever. He was a kind soul. He was… he was a healer.

Weir continues, speaking now of Beckett specifically, reminiscing about what kind of person he had been. He calls him a kind soul and a healer, and likely these are things that most people can agree on. Most people seem to have liked Beckett. But it is interesting that Weir mentions here that she cannot remember anyone coming up to her with a complaint against him because this implies that people have come up to her with complaints against other people -- and what is left unspoken here is that people may have come up to her with complaints against McKay and Sheppard in particular.

McKay seems like the more obvious case given that we had seen how not self-aware he is as a leader even earlier in the episode when McKay had described himself as a "pretty easy guy to work for," causing the two people working for him to exchange a knowing look. It seems like most people who work for him do not share this self-assessment of his, and while McKay may not be an easy guy to work for, he still seems to take his leadership position seriously, he seems to put in the effort to be a good leader and a responsible leader even if he is not a nice guy. This tragic accident is something that McKay had tried to keep from happening with his safety protocols, and he had berated the "junior guys" to make them remember this moment, to impress on them how dangerous the mission is, the danger of the stuff they are dealing with. McKay had foreseen something like this happening and had taken precautions to avoid it, and it had been a series of unfortunate accidents that had led to this happening regardless. McKay is for sure blaming himself even if he had tried to keep something like this from happening. And yet McKay is an abrasive man who may have had complaints lodged against him for how he treats the people working with him and for him, whether he has ever actually heard about them, whether they have made it to his ears.

But the thing of it is that Sheppard may similarly have had complaints lodged against him, even if he has tried to create an environment for the people working for him now that he had been made officially the base commander where they could feel free to be who they are and love who they love. It seems like after being subjected to the experience of Sergeant Bates questioning his command every step of the way during their first tour and the Marine officer making insinuations about his personal conduct that may or may not have been warranted that Sheppard had chosen people for the command he expected to be loyal to him like Major Lorne. But even in spite of this Sheppard seemed to anticipate that people like "this Woolsey guy" who he felt had been interrogating him in Misbegotten (S03E02) might have wanted to lodge complaints against him. And if complaints have been brought up to Weir about Sheppard, and she looks directly at Sheppard as she speaks the words, it is unlikely they were about what a poor commander he is when he seems unable to actually give orders to his men and they might have been about his violation of certain regulations instead (regulations he had openly violated in this episode, no less) -- something that Weir seems to have made an active choice to turn a blind eye on. So while people may not have complaints against Beckett ever, they might have had ones against Sheppard and McKay -- and while both of them are good men, no one would describe either one of them as kind souls either. Both of them had respected Beckett for being a better man than either of them felt they could ever be.

Weir: And he will be very deeply missed. George Fabricius said, "Death comes to us all, but great achievements, they build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold." Every single life Carson saved is a monument to him. And that gives me great comfort.

Weir speaks the words "He will be very deeply missed" and we see McKay lift up his eyes at this, not looking at Sheppard but seeming aware of him in this moment because while he is missing Beckett, his best friend is not the only one he is missing in this moment, the man who is standing right next to him seeming to be a million miles away.

To finish up her eulogy Weir quotes a German early archaeologist and historian Georgius Fabricius, and this is a really curious -- if powerful -- quotation to throw in there. This quote is a translation from the original Latin poem that Fabricius had written for the magnum opus of his good friend Georgius Agricola De Rea Metallica (1556) about mining and minerals. The translation that Weir uses had actually been made by Herbert Hoover, later known as the US President, together with his wife in 1912 -- a labour of love -- and they had opted not the translate the whole poem, basically just translating this part of a much longer homage from one man to another:

He doth raise his country's fame with his own And in the mouths of nations yet unborn These praises shall be sung; Death comes to all But great achievements raise a monument Which shall endure until the sun grows cold.

It was his friend's book that likely was intended by Fabricius in the poem as being this great monument that endures the ages, and to be sure, the book had endured the test of time. The importance here is that the quotation seems yet another tacit acknowledgement of the subtext -- because not only is the book from which the quotation is from about the exploration of the subterranean, about the art and science of finding valuable things under ground, but the very same poem from which the quote comes contains the following lines:

It is not a vain tale that holds the mind in suspense here: But the reader will find it valuable and of great benefit. Whatever the earth has hidden deep within its bosom and lap, Everything has been revealed to you in many books before: Or, flowing above, it voluntarily strives towards the shores, Let him find an easy or more artful way.

Even though the story is now at a very suspenseful place, it is not in vain that the narrative has brought us here but this is a necessary part of their journey. We can recognize what is going on here because we have read this in many books before, we have seen this in many films before -- the narrative follows the beats of a love story. We know how this story goes because we have seen it play out so many times before. What Weir says about Beckett is a very beautiful, powerful thing to say as homage to someone -- and while Georg Fabricius had said if of his friend Georg Agricola, it was Fabricius who seems to have had many close male friendships in his life.

The quotation here is also important with regards to the W. H. Auden poem discussed in the next installment, and seems also a tacit confirmation of the fact that McKay probably would have read it -- we are to understand that he had read it based on Weir's quote because her line about the sun growing cold rhymes with the dismantling of the sun mentioned in it. Basically McKay and Weir had the same idea but we only get to hear this more obscure recitation because the Auden poem is well-known for being from a man to another man, and we can note that the camera focuses on Sheppard at these words, staring out into nothing and trying not to reveal anything of what he is thinking. Of course that is precisely what Weir's quotation is from also, a poem written by a man to another man as an expression of love, only it is less known and given to us through the filter of a heterosexual married couple -- an archetypal married couple in the form of the POTUS and the "first lady," representing the husband and the wife. The subtext is buried under several layers but it is most decidedly there.

Weir finishes up her speech and tells the gate technician to open the gate wordlessly, a Scottish man with a bag pipe sounding out a funeral dirge to send Beckett off. Weir touches the flag on the casket and walks off, seeming to give it off to Sheppard who takes over for her, watching her take up her previous spot before doing what they seem to have agreed to do previously, which is to lead the pallbearers to the coffin to walk him off into the wormhole.

It is unclear at this point how many ZPMs there are around -- Earth seems to have one at the start of the fourth season when they send in Carter through the gate -- and we do not even know whether the gate bridge is working at this time. This is to say that when Sheppard, McKay, Lorne, Zelenka, Ronon and Beckett's colleague Doctor Cole take Beckett's body -- however much was left of it -- through the gate, we do not know how long their trip to Earth is going to be. They could be gone from anywhere from an hour for anyone that did not accompany McKay to Beckett's family in Scotland to an excess of a month, since the trip back on the Daedalus would take three weeks. Regardless, this is a somber moment for the entire city, everyone looking on wordlessly as the pallbearers take their places around the coffin.

What is notable here is that Sheppard seems to look at McKay, really look at him, for the first time in this episode as he gives him a wordless request to accompany him to the casket, to take their places, and while it might again be obvious that Sheppard wanted to communicate this -- it is another example of this wordless communication between them. McKay does not need Sheppard to speak words to him for him to understand his meaning, McKay is capable of reading Sheppard's thoughts right off of his face.

It is not customary for people to wear a blue shirt to a funeral the way McKay does here, and we can note that he has been wearing blue all throughout the episode, from start to finish, from his blue bathrobe to the blue shirt he is wearing with his suit now. McKay likely is wearing a black suit but the blue shirt and the blue of the wormhole make his suit look dark blue or grey (and Weir's black suit certainly looks a lot more black than McKay's suit when they are stood in a row), and so with McKay in his Sunday suit and Sheppard dressed in his dress blues the two of them standing side by side solemn and serious makes it look like they might be attending another ceremony altogether -- and that is not an accident.

Gif-sets from this scene have been used to portray a marriage ceremony between them by more than a few people over the years, and while their intention may not have been to provide fans with material at the time, they certainly were playing with the thematic of weddings (and a funeral) with this episode. Juxtaposing the two of them in their Sunday best is on purpose here, dressing McKay in garb that is slightly off for a memorial is on purpose. Both of them had mused on marriage in this very episode, and even though they are both in mourning, even though their relationship has just ended, we are meant to think about who the both of them might want to marry one day and to actually come to the conclusion that there is no one better suited for them to marry than each other. We are taken by the hand and actually walked into this conclusion with this episode. For all marriage is usually a happier occasion than a memorial service, both of them would surely be serious and Sheppard especially would be so afraid by the prospect of marrying the love of his life that it might have looked exactly like this if they ever did get married.

Seeming lost, McKay glances at Sheppard from over Beckett's casket, the two of them stood on either side at the front, as a pair separated by grief -- and this is symbolic. Many people have noted the way Sheppard looks away from him here, unable to offer McKay the comfort that he so desperately needs here, that he is looking for from Sheppard, seeing this as his failure as a leader and a friend here.

And to be sure, Sheppard is neither a good friend nor a good team leader to McKay in this episode. It would be his duty to try to reach out to McKay when he is so obviously in pain. It is the subtext that explains why Sheppard can't be that for McKay here, why it is too much to ask from him in this moment. The two of them are truly separated by their grief in this episode, the pain dividing them as surely as the coffin between them. Apart from having tried to talk Beckett out of performing the surgery this is probably the only thing they have done together in a week following almost three years of doing almost everything together, and it has to be a bitter-sweet moment for them -- and it does not require them to actually speak to each other, which likely neither of them could have done here. Sheppard is lucky that McKay seems able to read him as well as he does, saving him from having to say things, as important as it would be for McKay to actually hear him say them. We watch them walk into the wormhole both in their private mourning, not just of a good friend but of the end of the most important relationship of both of their lives.

Before they have the chance to go their separate ways, Sheppard again reminds Ronon to put his weapon on stun, not because he particularly wants to spare Michael's life but because he suspects that they are going to need to ask him a few questions about what he has done here, not even knowing yet about what he had boasted to Teyla about having conducted these experiments on several planets. It is likely that Sheppard is thinking especially that McKay might have some questions for him after he has had a moment to go through the man's research, anticipating McKay's needs, McKay still very much on his mind even though they had just left him to go take care of this thing.

Ronon is taken aback by Sheppard calling in after him when he seemed ready to take off to his direction, seeming scarcely able to believe what he is hearing, and we should note that Sheppard even explains his reasoning here even though as a team leader he is under no obligation to explain his orders, whether or not Ronon is technically serving under him -- and we may recall from what Sheppard had told Colonel Caldwell in Sateda (S03S04) that he does consider Ronon (and Teyla) as being equal to the members of the Earth military to him, he considers them his men. It seems like Sheppard reminding Ronon to do this was in good spirits, and this is far from him reminding Ronon for the first time -- it seems like Sheppard has taken it upon himself to habitually remind Ronon of keeping his weapon on stun while hoping that Ronon would remember to take care of keeping his weapon off of the lethal setting himself, and that he would only go switching it to kill when Sheppard specifically asks for it, even though it seems like they have some differences of opinion when it comes to this. And it seems like their philosophical differences were about to clash right here and now.

Dex: No. No more talking, no more questioning. I'm gonna do what we should have done the first time we captured him. Sheppard: Ronon, listen to me... Dex: No, you listen to me, John. This whole retrovirus thing was a mistake. I said it then -- no-one listened to me. It was a bad idea. Sheppard: We had to try. If it worked, we wouldn't-- Dex: But it didn't work. Admit it. It just made things worse. How long do you wanna keep paying for it?

Even though Sheppard feels like he is being perfectly reasonable in his demand that he had once more couched more as a request, the frustration and even resentment that Ronon seems to have harboured throughout this mission (and who knows for how long before this moment, as he snaps that he had been against this Michael business from the beginning) suddenly comes spilling out -- albeit note how this does not seem to be just or even predominantly about Michael since Ronon had been feeling some kind of way long before the discovered the culprit to all this, and it is just all coming out now.

It is a rare moment for us to see Ronon confront Sheppard like this because he really seems to respect Sheppard's leadership and furthermore, being that he had been a part of a military outfit before the wraith had destroyed his homework and he had suddenly been alone and on his own for many years, he might even need leadership. Ronon is still relatively young and has lived on his own for many years while he was running from the wraith, and he may well need someone to show him the ropes. We have seen a few times that Ronon has needed Sheppard to "make it an order," seeming to feel at ease only when Sheppard has told him what to do -- which, we may recall, does not seem to come easy to Sheppard. Ronon is a man of few words anyway, which gives weight to his words when he does say them, and it seems like Sheppard's leadership in this moment goes so much against his convictions that he can no longer keep it bottled up -- and Ronon is not a person to bottle up his feelings anyway, much alike with McKay in this, even if McKay tends to emote much more often.

As noted before, there is a curious undercurrent in this episode of Ronon going against Sheppard's orders or wishes, almost disobeying him but at the very least seeming to rebel against him, and since we have not seen Ronon really questioning Sheppard's command ever since he had commented that he was starting to think Sheppard couldn't fight in Condemned (S02E05) just because Sheppard likes to keep his cards close to his chest (and which he had explained as him being "naturally lazy" to Ronon at the time), and for sure Ronon has seen Sheppard do enough things over the course of their team-up to have come to respect his leadership. Ronon had spoken highly of his past commanders in Irresponsible (S03E13) -- and had even killed one of his old commanders for betraying him and his people in Trinity (S02E06), the betrayal having broken his heart -- and he seems to really honour established military figures who had earned the respect of their men. And so Ronon has seemed perfectly content following Sheppard's suggestions, even taking orders from him -- even needing Sheppard to give him orders occasionally. What is more, Ronon seems to feel like he owes Sheppard a life debt and is determined to repay it by keeping Sheppard and the person he most cares about in the world safe.

So it is curious that he seems to almost reject Sheppard's orders in this episode and does challenge him here, not listening to him or listening to him only reluctantly. And we can ask here whether this has anything to do with Sheppard's decision to end his relationship with McKay. The episode had started with Ronon trying to teach McKay how to stay alive, and we had seen Ronon in a similar scene with Sheppard in Sunday (S03E17) -- only he had not been teaching Sheppard about staying alive but seeming to teach him a lesson about the consequences of his actions. It seemed like Ronon had been kicking Sheppard's ass because Sheppard had needed his ass kicked at the time, and their subsequent conversation about Sheppard's love life had hinted at both the fact that Ronon knew what Sheppard had done and that he did not approve of his decision. It was none of his business, of course, but perhaps Ronon had started wondering whether he could really follow a man who was stupid enough to give up on the best thing that had ever happened to him. Sheppard's decision had affected their entire team, to be sure, and by breaking up the greatest duo since peanut butter and jelly Sheppard had not just shot himself in the foot, he seems to have made it more difficult for all of them to get things done. Ronon seems to be doubting Sheppard's leadership seriously for the first time here, and we can ask whether the time he had spent with McKay has anything to do with his behaviour.

On the surface, it seems like Ronon is talking about Michael and the whole Michael situation here. He refers back to what seems like the events of Michael (S02E18), reminding Sheppard of the fact that he had been against the plan from the beginning. What he is saying to Sheppard here is not entirely fair for the fact that Sheppard also seemed to be against the plan, and had only gone along with it because Weir and Beckett had overruled him, and even then only under duress. Sheppard had tried to find the silver lining in what they had been doing, and he had for sure tried to keep McKay as far away from the plan as possible, having anticipated that it might go sideways sooner or later. But he had not exactly been cheer-leading the plan, and has been forced to defend it because they had been under official review by the IOC at the time, and because he has a massive tendency to project about his own guilty feelings anyway. Sheppard cannot easily admit that they had failed spectacularly, but that does not mean that he had been down with the plan, and so it is a little unfair for Ronon to lay it all out on him here.

But the thing of it is, while Ronon is griping about Michael and this definitely is generated by his sincere desire to end their problem once and for all -- and it seems to be Ronon's philosophy to put a permanent end to their enemies anyway, which may be excused by his experiences of running from the wraith where every wraith he could put down had been one less wraith coming to get him. He had even told Sheppard in The Return (S03E10) that he could not rest until every last wraith was dead -- that is his mission. But it almost seems like he is talking about the (other) big mistake that Sheppard had made recently, the mistake he had made personally. It does not seem as though Ronon agrees with Sheppard's decision to end his relationship with McKay, and while he does think that it is their private business, he also cannot pretend like Sheppard's decision had not affected all of them -- like it had not been a colossal mistake in his opinion.

Ronon sincerely believes that he owes Sheppard a life debt and he had taken it upon himself to protect McKay from harm because he had observed how much McKay meant to Sheppard. Sheppard kept throwing himself into the fire for McKay, which had made his job of keeping Sheppard safe more complicated. He has seen up close and personal how much McKay means to Sheppard, and so he has put his own life on the line to keep McKay safe. Ronon thinks that he is owed Sheppard taking better care of himself and his love life because it does affect him, and Sheppard has left him in a precarious situation with not knowing whether he is meant to walk in front of a bullet for McKay now or not. Ronon does not know where he stands because Sheppard does not know where he stands, and it seems like this situation is becoming untenable to him.

He tells Sheppard that he had made a mistake to his face here, and Sheppard's mistake was not letting Michael live -- Sheppard had literally ordered McKay to kill Michael the last time they had seen him, and he rarely orders McKay to do anything (and McKay's readiness and willingness to take what were essentially innocent lives just because he asked him is on top of his reasons why Sheppard rarely tells him what to do), and they had furthermore thought they succeeded. Sheppard had made a mistake that he was paying for, that he had been paying for over and over recently, but his mistake had nothing to do with Michael. Sheppard was desperately trying to convince himself that he had not made a mistake in ending his relationship with McKay but if Ronon could see that the two of them did not work together as well as they used to, then there was only so much he could do to convince himself. And the worst thing was that Sheppard knows Ronon is right. He wants to deny it and argue back but he can't.

In the main-text, Ronon is talking about Beckett's retroviral therapy for curing the wraith. But his words are also true of Sheppard's decision to end his relationship with McKay to save the man's life. It had not worked. It had only made things worse, it had probably placed McKay in more danger than he had been before. And Sheppard finds himself paying for this mistake that deep down inside he knows had been a mistake, never mind what his intentions had been in making it. He knows it, even if he does not want to admit it. It is no coincidence that he move from the impact of Ronon's question playing on Sheppard's face to McKay talking about how much has been done in such a short time.

McKay: It is amazing how much work he's been able to get done in such a short amount of time. He's quite the industrious little fella... or wraith... or whatever. What does he looks like now? I mean, is he, is he full-on wraith again? Teyla: Not quite. There are still human characteristics present in him. No doubt it's why I was confused when I first felt his presence.

Back in Michael's lab/torture chamber McKay has been going through his research, trying to make sense of it, and we can note that he actually engages Teyla while he is trying to figure out what has to be complicated things.

We have noted before how McKay has an ability to work under chaotic conditions probably due to his childhood environment, and how his brain may actually require some amount of distraction to be able to focus on solving problems because when he had been a child, he probably had to do his homework while there were distracting things going on all around him -- and possibly just having a curious younger sibling might cause one to develop such skills. McKay comments on what Michael had done without actually talking about what he had discovered in his data, and his description of Michael as an "industrious fella" prompts him to start wondering what Michael actual looks like now -- how much of him is any longer a fella. We may recall that Sheppard had kept McKay away from the planet of Misbegotten (S03E02), so McKay likely has no idea what Michael had looked like by the time Sheppard had asked him to kill him and the rest of the wraiths down on the planet regardless how much human they had in them at the time.

Teyla actually seems to deliberate McKay's question seriously because the answer to the question also interests her, and she responds that he still had some human in him, and that it had been enough to confuse her sensing of the wraith, her particular brand of "the shining." We further do not know what degree of the psychic powers of the wraith Michael still possesses, even though he had been able to overpower Teyla's mind previously in Michael (S02E18) and had even been able to dig around in Beckett's mind. But Michael had not attempted to connect with Teyla's mind this time that we had seen, and it is possible that he would not even feel comfortable doing it after having decided that it was him against the world, that there was no one else in the universe that was like him when in ways Teyla actually is the closest thing to him, a mixture of human and wraith DNA -- while obviously Teyla's cocktail has different proportions to his.

McKay: You'd think that the human side of him would temper his aggression a bit. Teyla: Yes -- because we humans aren't aggressive at all. McKay: Well, certainly less aggressive than... Oh, sarcasm. Yeah. Nice. Teyla: What Michael is doing right now must be stopped...

While most of his focus is on the data he is sifting through and trying to wrap his mind around Michael's interface, McKay idly comments that if there is still human in him that his humanity should curb his aggressive impulses -- even if Michael's disposition had not been particularly aggressive, even as it had been violent. He had told Teyla that he had been creating these new types of life forms as means of protecting himself and had not indicated he had any designs for conquest of others, violent or otherwise.

Teyla sarcastically points out that humans are not nearly as peaceful as they would like to believe, being a species famous for aggressive expansion, and she is able to say this even without knowing Earth history. As I had discussed in connection with Sateda (S03E04), humans not only kill other living things for protection and sustenance but also for sport the way the wraith had hunted Ronon and other runners for sport. But humans also kill other humans sometimes in the millions usually for being different from the ruling majority in some arbitrary way, and while we had seen hive turn against hive in The Hive (S02E11) after Sheppard had manipulated them into attacking each other, and we had just learned that the wraith Queen in Submersion (S03E18) had consumed her entire crew for her own sustenance, we have not learned anything about the wraith that suggests they have ever destroyed their own kind in similar numbers or an on industrial scale -- not only because they had never awakened in such numbers as they had after Sheppard had killed their custodian in Rising (S01E02) but also because they are a communal species who are connected to each other via a psychic network, who are likely able to feel each other's pain on a level different from humans, even if humans are also able to extend empathy to each other.

We had seen the way Sheppard had experienced McKay's pain at the start of the episode because two of them are so close to each other, but it seems like all the wraith are connected to each other on a similar level. While it takes a beat for McKay to recognize that Teyla is being sarcastic -- and while he had taken things fairly literally back when he had still been getting to know the Master of Sarcasm himself, likely here the delay in McKay "getting it" is because he was focused on something else. McKay may occasionally even employ sarcasm himself but it is not a native language to him. But note that his response of "Nice" actually is sarcasm, so he responds to Teyla in kind even if his mean seems to be to communicate that Teyla got him, that she was absolutely right about humans being aggressive -- even if that is not the only thing that they are.

Teyla: ...he cannot be allowed to escape. He's far too dangerous. McKay: You're preaching to the choir, my dear. Teyla: But I understand his anger. His life has been destroyed. He no longer has a home or a family. McKay: He had a family? Teyla: I don't know, but I've often wondered what he left behind when he was captured by us. We know nothing of his past other than that he was a wraith.

Since they are now talking about this, Teyla decides to share some of her thoughts and feelings on the topic not necessarily because she and McKay are bosom buddies -- even if McKay performing the tea ceremony on the anniversary of the death of her father in Tao of Rodney (S03E14) may have brought them a little closer -- but because it is fresh on her mind. Her encounter with Michael is still very much bothering her, and it is for her own peace of mind that she seems to need to say this.

McKay tells her that she is "preaching to the choir" about Michael being dangerous and how they cannot let him escape, which is surely what Sheppard also feels even if Ronon seems to suspect that he is being a bleeding heart about him. While McKay had been involved with Project Michael the least, they all seem to bear feelings of guilt over what had transpired, they all feel responsible for Michael being out in the universe and know that it is up to them to take him out -- and McKay had certainly tried to do that during their previous encounter. But it had not been Teyla's intention of preaching to the choir here but to make sure that McKay understands her position clearly as she then confesses that she also kind of gets him. She understands Michael's anger, and Teyla has always been the most empathetic of the characters, second only perhaps to Beckett whose empathy had possibly been augmented by his Ancient gene and which had been commented on by Michael himself. Teyla had always felt for Michael and she had worked hard to connect with him, she had been trying to make the experiment succeed where Ronon had been trying to make it fail, wanting only to put an end of the test subject. As discussed at the time, it is possible that Teyla's empathy for him was motivated by what she had learned about her own genetics in The Gift (S01E18), hoping that if they could cure Michael then perhaps they could one day cure her as well.

Teyla mentions Michael's family, possibly on account of Michael having opened up to her earlier about how he was now hunted by both the wraith and the humans, how his own kind had thought he was "unclean" because they could sense of human in him, the thing that made him different from them. Teyla herself feels kinship to her family, both her birth family that seems to have all been killed but also the chosen family she has found for herself in Atlantis, her family expanding far beyond her team mates. Teyla has lost family members and she had to walk away from her position as leader of her people to join Sheppard's team in order to do some good, but she can definitely relate to what it feels like to leave one's family behind.

Her mention of family in connection with Michael seems to take McKay by surprise because he had spent zero seconds thinking about who he had been before he had been treated with Beckett's retroviral therapy -- and partially this is excused by the fact that Sheppard seems to have gone to some pains to keep McKay away from the project, not wanting him anywhere near Michael until they could be sure about him. McKay seems to stop at this, he asks Teyla whether she knows he had a family, and he may feel some connection to him in this because he had recently reconnected with his own family and had even told Katie Brown in Sunday (S03E17) that he was looking forward to having a family of his own one day.

McKay: A very smart wraith. Teyla: Perhaps he was a scientist. McKay: Huh. Sure. Probably. Why not? One of their very best, I'd wager. Teyla: Like you. McKay: Right. Wait a minute. Teyla: What is it? McKay: I think I've just figured out how to disable the EM interference that is causing the shielding. Sheppard, you there?

Teyla confesses to McKay that she does not know, and she seems to feel bad about this. She had tried to be Michael's friend and for sure they had pretended like Michael had a family on Earth -- and we do not know whose photographs he had that had been given to him as being his parents -- but she feels like she should have tried harder to get to know him. Only half-listening to Teyla, McKay points out that Michael was a smart wraith because it seems like he had just figured out something clever that Michael had done, seeming almost impressed by his work, and Teyla suggests that Michael might be similar to McKay in this. Teyla calls him a scientist, and given that he had been running genetic experiments that he had just monologued to Teyla in some detail, this is not a great leap to make, even if there had been little indication of him having been a wraith scientist previously, seeing as how he had not been the wraith who had helped McKay with the wraith database or the weapon delivery mechanism in Allies (S02E20).

The thing of it is that Michael was always a dark mirror for Sheppard, so he was obviously clever. He was Sheppard's "We're not so different, you and I," even if he is not Sheppard's only such villain. But Teyla points out now that Michael is like McKay, underscoring the likeness because McKay had not seemed to catch her meaning when she described him as a scientist, and McKay seems to stop at this. The thought makes him uncomfortable and he does not know how to respond to it, and he does not seem sure what Teyla is saying about him. On the one hand, it seemed like Teyla was giving him a compliment -- he is one of the best scientists among humans, and for sure he has to be on the top of the scientists Teyla has ever met or even heard about. Some of the things McKay can do must seem like wizardry to most of the people in Pegasus. But at the same time, she was comparing him with a wraith who had just tied her down to a gurney and had tried feeding her to an iratus bug, and he just does not know what he is supposed to think about that.

McKay has done morally questionable things in the name of science, and he had even tried justifying the invention of the atom bomb to Sheppard in Trinity (S02E06) -- having both built one when he was a teenager and having helped the Genii build their own when they had been decades away from achieving it on their own -- making McKay capable of destruction on a scale the wraith can really only dream about. But McKay is not without qualms when it comes to "the greater good," and all the deaths he feels he has caused weigh heavily on his conscience. It is not clear what Teyla means to imply by suggesting that McKay and Michael are alike -- but because Michael is a dark mirror for Sheppard, as we are reminded in the following scene, it is also important to acknowledge that Sheppard and McKay are alike in many ways also. Sheppard is smart, and for all we know he could have been a scientist himself if his life had not taken him to another place -- which had been suggested had happened in the other dimension as revealed in McKay and Mrs Miller (S03E08). What ever the implications are, McKay forgets all about what she said when he figures out how to shut down the EM-field that Michael had used in shielding his secret lair -- and of course the first thing he does is to contact Sheppard to share with him the good news.

Sheppard does not comment on the strangeness of McKay choosing to lay down on the floor like that is a normal thing to do, but what is curious is that just as soon as McKay finds a comfortable position and closes his eyes, Sheppard actually approaches him. He comes close and sits down right where McKay's head is, keeping his legs open for the other man, and there is something extremely homoerotic just in the way Sheppard positions himself.

It was not necessary for them to do it like this -- they could have made McKay lie down with his feet toward the bed or diagonally like he does later, Sheppard could have resumed his former seat by the drawer and computer, he could have sat closer to the end of the bed -- but we now see him purposefully shifting to sit closer to McKay. They could even have given Sheppard one single chair for his room that it does not appear to have. But for some reason Sheppard wanted to sit down here, to be close to McKay, to be in a position to watch him from on top -- and we may recall from the end of the first season that Sheppard seems to watch McKay sleep then, helpless to protect him from the nightmares that had been plaguing him. McKay looks peaceful now as Sheppard tries to guide him in meditation to become more aware of his body -- and it seems Sheppard himself is growing more aware of McKay's body as this goes along.

The tone Sheppard uses in speaking to McKay is soft, and the fact that he is trying to teach McKay meditation disguises the fact that Sheppard always sounds like this when they are alone together, and he never uses this soft tone with other people. We get to see them interact longer alone together now than we normally do but what they do is not categorically different from what we have seen before. Sheppard tells McKay to breathe in and out, and McKay complies immediately and without question, eager as ever to please Sheppard and to do what he wants him to do -- being a service top to his power bottom.

Sheppard: Do it without talking. McKay: Oh -- right, OK. Sheppard: Now -- I want you to think about the things that you worry about the most. McKay: You mean, like death?

McKay repeats Sheppard's words as he relaxes and focuses on his breathing, doing precisely what Sheppard had been instructing him to do. Sheppard snaps at him to do it without talking (and McKay certainly seems like the kind of man who talks even during sex, and this may not be the first time Sheppard has had to tell him to put a sock in it) that seems to immediately jolt McKay out of his relaxed state, and he then opens his eyes and looks at Sheppard imploringly, which seems both unnecessary and counterproductive to their aims.

Sheppard snapping like this has a comedic beat in how he seems to achieve the exact opposite effect from what he was going for, but we have to acknowledge the reason why Sheppard is behaving this way. He is clearly feeling agitated, trying to calm himself down at the same time as he is directing McKay to relax, and as we shall soon see, this seems to be caused by the fact that he is turned on. Being alone together with a man he finds sexually attractive in soft candle light while the man is pliant and has his face inches from his groin would be difficult enough as it is but as suggested, it is possible that McKay's accelerated evolution is making him even more attractive to Sheppard. And the thing of it is that what McKay says, "In... and out," can so easily be interpreted in a sexual framework, "the old in and out" being an actual well-known euphemism for intercourse. Sheppard had told McKay to think about his breaths going in and out of his body but what McKay says sounds more erotic, and is easy to associate with sex. And so Sheppard snaps at McKay only to break his focus because McKay is making it more difficult for him to concentrate, and dealing with things via projection as he normally does, Sheppard blames his own inability to focus on McKay.

Then we get to another very peculiar part of the scene, which is that while McKay has his eyes closed and is focused on breathing and Sheppard tries to guide him through the meditation, we see him leafing through a magazine that he seems to have picked up from the drawer -- seeming to be an old golf magazine. The mainstream audience might interpret this as Sheppard being too cool for school, like he is so bored with what he is having to do here that he has to entertain himself by leafing through the magazine even while he is doing this. Sheppard is so unconcerned with what he is doing and having to project how much he does not care about this (to whom?) that he needs to make a display of unseriously he is taking all of this lest it come across a pansy or something. His friend is dying, so Sheppard not taking this seriously because he is such a dickhead dudebro is really a poor explanation for what is going on.

Sheppard is obviously not actually reading the magazine, he is using it to distract himself. We have seen Sheppard pretend to read before, notably in The Brotherhood (S01E16) when he was pretending he was not listening in on McKay's conversation with the beautiful local that was seeking his affections, but also at the start of the episode while he was pretending he was not listening in on McKay's conversation with Zelenka about their beautiful young colleague. What he is doing here is different in that he is not trying to make other people think he is focused on reading because he is doing it in a way that McKay cannot even see him do it, or at least he is hoping that McKay does not catch him doing it. Sheppard is doing this to distract himself from the sight of the man laid down on his back by his feet breathing in and out and who can read his thoughts, because he is powerfully turned on by this and even he realizes it is wrong. This is not the time, even if this might be the place -- at least sometimes.

I had suggested already in connection with Trinity (S02E06) that what ever had happened between the two of them when they had been alone together in Sheppard's quarters which we never got to see, it seems that Sheppard on every subsequent time the two of them are alone together in this room requires something to be placed as a physical barrier between them. Sheppard uses magazines on more than one occasion, and even the bed itself in Outcast (S04E15). And the way he maneuvers things to be between them when they are alone together in his room is not the same as how he places barriers between himself and Weir (or other people) usually because most of the time, when they are somewhere else, Sheppard tends to keep himself open for McKay, and even here he keeps his body turned toward McKay, he orients himself to McKay.

Sheppard places these objects as physical barriers between them not because he is afraid of McKay or because he expects that McKay might do something but because he is afraid of himself. Sheppard knows that it would take only one look from him for the two of them to tumble onto the bed (and the way we see Sheppard lay McKay down on the bed later is for sure not the first time he has done it here, echoing other times it has happened in other contexts), and he knows that he is weak when it comes to McKay. He knows that he cannot resist, and so he clings to these objects. He tries to distract himself. He is quite possibly doing this to hide an erection, pulling the magazine on his lap like that is a normal thing to be doing at a time like this. In the context of their situation, this seems infinitely more likely than that Sheppard is merely bored by what he is having to do here because Weir told him to do it.

Feeling chastised, McKay opens his eyes and looks up at Sheppard and there is such childlike trust in McKay's gaze that it must split Sheppard's heart right open, knowing that he is not capable of such trust and earnestness himself. Looking back at the other man McKay also lifts his chin up, exposing his naked throat, and Sheppard has a very good vantage point to see it -- the camera seems to be giving us Sheppard's point of view on McKay, inviting us to see what he sees and to feel what he feels.

Sheppard: There's no talking! Think of anything that makes you anxious. McKay: Oh, God, there are so many things! Not talking happens to be one of them, by the way. Sheppard: Deal with it!

Sheppard snaps at McKay a second time, and it is from moments such as this that it is easy for especially the mainstream audience to come to the conclusion that Sheppard does not even like McKay very much. It is easy to misinterpret Sheppard as being exasperated by McKay's antics or being fed up with him when the reason Sheppard feels so touchy here as to snap at McKay is because McKay dying is literally his worst fear, McKay dying is a thought that Sheppard cannot even begin to process, and he does not want to hear about it. He especially does not want to hear about it from McKay. Sheppard has such severe abandonment issues that the mere notion of McKay dying terrifies him, and McKay throwing the concept out there so casually feels actually offending to Sheppard. He is hurt by the thought and so he lashes out in retaliation. He is essentially telling McKay to shut up about it, not because he does not want to hear McKay talking but because he does not want to hear him talking about this. McKay asks whether Sheppard meant death as the ultimate thing to worry about, and while that is a perfectly sensible thing to worry about, Sheppard does not want to hear about it, not from McKay.

Sheppard invites McKay to think about what worries him the most instead of what worries him the most, and even he soon realizes what a mistake this was since McKay confesses to him that there are so many things that he worries about, the perpetual worry-wort. McKay had confessed to them in the beginning of Sateda that he is always expecting something bad to happen, and this seems to be his natural disposition and not just the result of having been tasked with keeping the city safe and keeping his staff unharmed. McKay is a big brother, like he had pointed out himself at the start of the episode, and older siblings often develop an inflated superego -- which Sheppard had lampooned earlier by referring to his super-ego -- meaning that they feel an overbearing sense of responsibility. Later on in Quarantine (S04E15) he tries explaining to Katie Brown that he has to be the worrier because somebody has to do it and she asks him if he could just not do that, essentially asking him not to be himself -- which is contrasted with Sheppard who loves McKay just the way he is. We later see that McKay thinks that Sheppard is asking him not to be himself here when that could not be further from the truth, Sheppard merely trying to make him feel more at ease with who he is.

McKay confesses to Sheppard that not talking is one of the things that causes him to feel anxiety, and we have seen this to be true. Sheppard had invited McKay not to talk in The Intruder (S02E02) when the two of them had been stuck together in the cockpit of an F-302 and McKay had seemed offended to the point of being injured to hear this from him. We have seen again and again that McKay babbles away to relieve his anxiety, and this may result from him having been lonely as a child, not having had anybody to talk to. We have also noted that McKay is aware that most people do not want him to talk and would like him to shut up, and Sheppard has been a notable exception to this. Sheppard seems to genuinely enjoy listening to McKay and frequently approaches him with some variation of "Talk to me, Rodney," which must have been very attractive to McKay. To have someone who not just enjoys but invites him to talk is wonderful, and it makes it all the more hurtful when ever Sheppard communicates that he wants McKay to shut up, like he does here. And McKay does not understand why Sheppard does not want him to talk -- the subject matter bothering him more than McKay talking away.

Sheppard: Now. Imagine yourself sitting on a Ferris wheel. McKay: What? Sheppard: Look, I told you, I didn't pay much attention to what the Ancients were teaching me. I like Ferris wheels, so that's what I thought about... and the fact that the woman teaching me how to meditate was... very attractive.

Purporting to take this seriously now, Sheppard puts his magazine away, leaving it laying open on his bed, and leans forward with his elbows on his thighs -- curling in on himself in a way that would hide his erection if he happened to have one. Sheppard invites McKay to imagine a Ferris wheel because he likes Ferris wheels and had hence thought about them when he had been learning how to meditate. This had been one of the first things that we (and Teyla) had learned about him in Rising (S01E01). He also mentions that he had been thinking about how attractive the woman who was teaching him to meditate was, and I have written about this before so I am quoting from before:

Later on in Tao of Rodney (S03E04), Sheppard has to use the skills that he learns here to save McKay's life, he has to try to teach McKay how to ascend. While he is doing this, Sheppard tells McKay about his time here and while the information does come through a filter, at the same time it does tell us how he viewed his time here, how he felt and what he thought about it, how he experienced it all.

While all the others in the village may have been meditating in pursuit of ascension, that was never Sheppard's motivation for doing it and that was not something he was ever interested in doing. However much he may have wanted to leave the Sanctuary, leaving by ascension was never an option for him. While he participated in meditation with them, we can tell by the faces he makes that he found it an absolute waste of time. But because McKay was now dying, he was having to rack up his memory for the teachings he had received during his time there. Also, Sheppard calls them Ancients here where they considered themselves "the ones who came after," but, although likely an error in continuity, it also tells us that he placed them in the same exact category in his mind as Chaya--which is to say, not his favourite people. Also, this tells us that the thought that he might ascend and retake human form on the other side probably had occurred to Sheppard while he was there, because he really did want to get the heck out.

So, for one, Sheppard saying "...very attractive" here has more to do with what is right in front of him on the floor than it does with what ever had happened in the sanctuary all those months ago, but let us brush that aside for a moment. The obvious reference here is to Teer. The obvious interpretation of the line is that Sheppard is remembering Teer, the woman we saw kiss him, and that he is describing her as "...very attractive". She had to have been the woman teaching him how to meditate, yes? Only, each and every time we actually see them meditate, both Teer and Avrid are behind him, and this may be because he chose to place himself so that he was not in a position to watch them out of fear that they might distract him -- which is unlikely because it seems like he had come in before them and they had taken their places after him (and also, he clearly did not care about being able to concentrate) -- or they had both chosen places and vantage points to be able to watch him. However, if what they were doing was guided meditation and there actually was someone teaching him how to meditate here, it follows that the teacher would have been up front and he actually would have been in a position to watch her during his meditation. Meaning that the attractive woman he is referring to (again 100% in an effort to think unsexy thoughts, think unsexy thoughts while McKay is lying prone right before him) was someone else, someone other than Teer. All the people in the sanctuary were attractive. He may have been distracted by any one of them. So he is not necessarily referring to Teer but who ever he was thinking about, he was thinking about them now to distract himself form McKay. In order to keep himself from making a move on McKay, he has to think about a sexy Ancient, a Ferris wheel and golf. And it seems barely to be working, as is. What Sheppard is saying and why he is saying it are two very different things. But even if Teer had not been the woman who taught him meditation, she is still very attractive, we can concede that. They are all very attractive. And we may again point out the fact that McKay seems hyper-aware of Sheppard finding women attractive (and women finding Sheppard attractive) like that is a normal thing between buddies and pals, and the same is true for Sheppard as regards McKay. McKay cannot help but snark about it even here.

The thing that I invite you to pay attention to is where Sheppard looks when he mentions this "woman" who had taught him to meditate, glancing down at McKay. This implies that it is actually McKay he is thinking about when his thoughts go to this attractive person, and it is entirely possible that he is forcing himself to think about an attractive woman to hide the fact that he is so turned on by McKay that he can barely keep his thoughts together here.

Sheppard says woman but he looks down at a man, and again what we are shown and what we are told are two very different things. Sheppard may be truthful in what he is telling McKay about having thought naughty things about his meditation teacher instead of focusing on ascension but that is not necessarily the case because Sheppard so very rarely is -- truthful. Sheppard lies pretty much all of the time, and he lies most of all to himself. Sheppard's intention here is not to confess to McKay or to the audience what turns him on, his intention is to redirect McKay's thoughts (and his own), and because he had been embarrassed by McKay's reaction to when he had been truthful -- mentioning that he likes Ferris wheels, McKay's "What?!" having made him feel silly and self-conscious about it -- he is trying to make himself come across as a smooth operator instead, only he is so flustered by McKay's presence that he ends up talking utter nonsense and balderdash instead.

Sheppard had not meant to be talking about those pansy wannabes he had turned down in favour of McKay but he is trying to cover up for himself because he is trying very hard to keep it in his pants right now for McKay's sake. He is meant to be teaching the man how to meditate, not to solicit him into a quick romp so that he might get his own thoughts under control about this, so he is trying any and everything to redirect his own thoughts about McKay lying beneath him with basically his head between his thighs. I invite you to listen to how strained his voice sounds here. This is his turned on voice implying that he is turned on right now, and it certainly is not from him reminiscing about this woman. This is the voice we had heard him use when he was looking down at McKay lying similarly down on the floor of the jumper in Condemned (S02E05), when Sheppard had been so turned on he was trembling which, as suggested at the time, may have been because McKay had also been lying down on the floor in front of him fixing the jumper just before they had made out for the first time following the end of The Defiant One (S01E12).

McKay: Why am I not surprised you didn't ascend, huh? OK, look, I'm a busy man, you're a busy man. We're both busy men. Sheppard: Just... relax, alright? I'm gonna try to remember what the woman taught me. McKay: Alright.

This is the second time in this episode that McKay snaps at Sheppard for bringing up women -- other women -- and it is more than obvious that McKay does not want to hear about them. McKay has always had problems with Sheppard and women like that is a normal thing between friends, and he makes this acerbic comment, intending it as a barb, intending to make Sheppard hurt because this hurts him. McKay immediately gets up with the intention of leaving because he is not here for this and he had not come here to be reminded of the fact that Sheppard had sex with someone else. On an intellectual level he might understand why Sheppard had done it and they had talked it over. It may have been six endless months of pining for Sheppard but it had been fucking hours (17 of them, to exact) to him, and we see here that McKay is far from being over it.

McKay getting up to go panics Sheppard because he had not meant to hurt McKay, and he has those severe abandonment issues that McKay unwittingly manages to jab at here, and so Sheppard backtracks and scrambles to convince McKay to stay. He had put his foot in his mouth and he realizes that. He does not want McKay to go. He never wants McKay to go. And the thing we have to remember here is what Sheppard may never have spelled out for McKay, which is that he did not fail to ascend -- because he was thinking about sexy women or otherwise. Sheppard had been invited to ascend and he had turned her down. Teer had extended him her hand and invited him to come with them, and he could have had what he desires most of all -- a family and companionship that would be with him always, who would never leave him. But instead he had glanced at McKay and told her he does not think he will ever be ready to join them.

Sheppard had told her the same thing as he had told Athar in Sanctuary (S01E14) and that he had told the wraith in Common Ground (S03E07) -- he has someone waiting for him back home and he was damned well getting back to him. McKay's deepest desire is to be chosen, to be someone's first choice, and he does not even realize what Sheppard has given up for him, to be with him. Sheppard has turned down ascension twice for McKay -- regardless of whether they are in a sexual relationship with each other (which they are), regardless of whether he had thought that the woman who had taught him how to meditate had been very attractive. However attractive she had been, Sheppard thinks that McKay is more attractive -- both then and now. Also, we can tell that Sheppard is lying about the woman because while he tells McKay that he is going to try to remember what the woman had taught him, what he then tells McKay is not what the woman had taught him.

Sheppard: Now, there's a dark storm swirling around your head. McKay: How is that comforting? Sheppard: I'm getting there! McKay: I just thought of a brilliant adjunct to the Chaos Theory. Look, I should write this down-- Sheppard: McKay! McKay: Letting it go. Letting it go.

This is the important bit. Sheppard tells McKay to think about Ferris wheels because that is what he had thought about when he had been learning to meditate. Then he tells McKay to think about a dark storm swirling around in his head. Only, as I had discussed at the time, the people who lived in the Sanctuary had no idea what storms even were. We heard Sheppard tell them about storms on his last day with them, telling the little girl that he had been afraid of storms when he had been a child, trying to explain what a storm even was. It seems like the time dilation field was climate-controlled and the most they ever got there was gentle summer rain.

Storms did not exist there and these people had lived in this Sanctuary with perfect weather for generations. Not only did they not know what storms were and had never experienced them, even their ancestors had never experienced them. They did not have even memories of storms passed on to them. What Sheppard is teaching McKay here, what he is telling McKay to think, is not what the attractive woman who had taught him how to meditate had told him to think, it was what Sheppard had thought for himself. And like I had mentioned at the end of the previous episode, there is a storm swirling inside Sheppard -- the Ouragan -- that has been inside of him ever since he had fallen in love with McKay, which had been symbolically represented by the once in a lifetime storm we had seen in The Storm and The Eye (S01E10-11). McKay had harnessed the power of the storm and they had both been struck by lightning in the sense that Emily Dickinson had written about in her poem.

Quoting from before:

Now, Sheppard uses the mental image of a thunder storm to help McKay focus here (and he also calls him McKay here because he needs that to create some distance between them), and this too is real interesting because we are made clear later on that there are no thunder storms in the sanctuary, where these people have lived their whole entire lives. They have no idea what that even is. They get gentle rain to water the orchards but they have never experienced storms. Sheppard tells them that storms can be "very cool". So it seems like using the storm swirling in his head and clearing into blue skies was, despite what Sheppard tells McKay, not something that this woman had taught him but had been a mental image that Sheppard had chosen himself. He had used both Ferris wheels and swirling thunder storms as his own points of focus. And let us recall that it had been during that once in a lifetime storm in The Storm (S01E10) that Sheppard and McKay had been falling in love. It had been in anticipation of the storm that McKay had realized he was in trouble, and it had been watching McKay harness the goddamn lightning that had made Sheppard look at McKay like the man was Christmas morning.

Sheppard had been thinking about storms while he sat there meditating, and if he can think of a storm again in his life without thinking about McKay, it has to be one damn impressive storm because what he had experienced then is not easily forgotten. Anyway, this is what Sheppard tells us (and McKay) about his time in the sanctuary later, specifically as it regards meditation and what had been on his mind during these meditation sessions. And since we know for damn sure that the attractive woman had not taught him about thunder storms swirling in his head given that not one of them even knew about storms, he may not have been entirely truthful about the rest of it either. He admits that McKay has a good point about the dishonesty. He is not saying that he is or was not dishonest himself.

Sheppard is a lying liar who lies, and he is lying to save McKay's life here so he is lying extra hard. His intention is to save McKay's life, not to talk about his love life or his sexual orientation or who he is attracted to. He is attracted to McKay, this much can be seen from space, but he is trying very hard to hide that fact in this moment because it is not the time for that. This is the time for being there for the man that he loves. Sheppard is really, really trying to be helpful to him. And the thing is, he is actually doing a pretty good job because he knows McKay. Sheppard knows McKay better than anyone. He actually manages to calm him down.

Sheppard: Now, the sky is clearing. All of your troubles are fading away. McKay: Bright blue sky. I am there. How'm I doing? Sheppard: Don't think that way! McKay: Oh, forget it. Look, this is never gonna work. Sheppard: What's wrong now? McKay: I just realized why light ...

It is notable that Sheppard actually manages to make McKay relax and calm down. Just by focusing on Sheppard's voice McKay is able to calm his nervous system, and as Sheppard observes his brain wave frequency come down a notch, we also see that he is feeling much more relaxed in Sheppard's presence to begin with than he had back in the infirmary when the company of his best friend had just made him more anxious. His EEG had been at 30 Hz there and now Sheppard watches it drop from 24 to 23 Hz, still in the Beta wave range but going down. The fact that McKay, who suffers from hypertension, is considerably more relaxed in Sheppard's presence than he is in the presence of his best friend with whom he is comfortable -- in spite of Sheppard purposefully riling him up -- is tangible evidence of the fact that these two men are in a romantic relationship. It is a well-established fact that being in the presence of their partner tends to calm the nervous system, and one of the most powerful aspects of relationships is co-regulation or the ability to soothe one another's nervous systems through presence, being there.

While the frequency is still relatively high, we see it drop by an entire Hertz as McKay lets himself relax, as he does what Sheppard tells him to do. What is more, when McKay apparently manages to ascend for a moment at the end of the episode, he does it using what Sheppard teaches him here, seeking those clear blue skies. We see McKay smile to himself here as he imagines it -- and it is quite possible that he is imagining himself at a beach, on a beach vacation, something he would associate with Sheppard. In his mind, he is there and he is happy. We have never seen McKay this honestly content before -- and it is possible Sheppard has neither. But then McKay ruins it, incapable of believing that he has it in him. He does not believe this will work, and then causes it to not work through his sheer pessimism, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

McKay: ...behaves as both particles and waves. Sheppard: Rodney, if you don't try to do this... McKay: I know. I don't have much time left.

We -- and Sheppard -- hear anguish in McKay's tone as he gets up and walks away, and the look on Sheppard's face is heartbreaking. He looks like a lost child, and it is more than likely McKay triggering his abandonment issues is regressing him to his childhood. The thought that McKay is going to die and there is nothing he can do to stop it is reminding Sheppard of how his mother had died when he had let her go, when he had told her goodbye because she had asked him to let her go.

And now he was being asked to let go the person he loved most in the world, and Sheppard has never been so afraid as he is now. He might have told Weir that fighting scary monsters is what he does best but he does not know how to fight this monster. He is helpless and he is hopeless and all he can do is watch McKay leave him behind, wringing his hands. For a fleeting moment we get to see Sheppard's undisguised pain and fear as we hear McKay leaving him, we hear the door closing and Sheppard is left with his own thoughts, having no escape and no respite from them. There is nothing Sheppard can hide behind and there is no one he can lie to when he is left alone in his room with nothing but Johnny to keep him company.

And it is not coincidental that the poster of Johnny Cash is there now, since the poster has often accompanied scenes and episodes where the lyrics to one of Johnny Cash's songs have given some insight into Sheppard's character and his emotional state. Sheppard does not talk about his emotions and uses projection and deflection so successfully that it is only through such devices that we gain any insight into his character. So which Johnny Cash song is appropriate for the moment? For my money, it is A Thing Called Love (1972):

Six foot six he stood on the ground He weighed two hundred and thirty-five pounds But I saw that giant of a man brought down To his knees by love He was the kind of man that would gamble on luck Look you in the eye and never back up But I saw him crying like a little whipped pup Because of love You can't see it with your eyes, hold it in your hands But like the wind it covers our land Strong enough to rule the heart of any man This thing called love It can lift you up never let you down Take your world and turn it around Ever since time nothing's ever been found That's stronger than love Most men are like me, they struggle and doubt They trouble their minds day in and day out Too busy with living to worry about A little word like love But when I see a mother's tenderness As she holds her young close to her breast Then I thank God that the world's been blessed With a thing called love You can't see it with your eyes, hold it in your hands But like the wind it covers our land Strong enough to rule the heart of any man This thing called love It can lift you up never let you down Take your world and turn it around Ever since time nothing's ever been found That's stronger than love

The wind covering the land, the Ferris wheel turning around, the troubled mind and the busy, busy men, it is all there in the song. Sheppard is the kind of man who would gamble on luck, look you in the eyes and never give up, and by the end of the episode we are going to see him crying like a little whipped pup because of a thing called love. We do not see what he was going do when the camera leaves him now but it is possible he was crying like a pup already as McKay leaves him behind here. McKay leaving him is what hurts Sheppard the most. He is not ready for McKay to leave him. He will never be ready for that.

Let us start from the very beginning of the scene: before we even see Sheppard, there is a shot of two women walking very close to each other on the floor below, on the sub-level, one dressed in the blue uniform of the science corps and the other in the green jump suit of the Daedalus crew -- Daedalus still being docked to Atlantis while Hermiod is making repairs to the hyperdrive. The fact that she is from the Daedalus is not coincidental, as we had seen that most of Sheppard's men had been bald marines and the jumpsuit tells us that this woman is not just military but is Air Force specifically. The two of them seem to be engaged in conversation and just as the camera pans up, the two of them are physically very close to each other. There seems to be intimacy between a scientist and an Air Force officer of the same sex going on literally underneath the surface. '

I have mentioned before that shots like this are used to prime the audience, to create an expectation in viewer's mind that may not even be conscious. This shot tells us what Sheppard's motivation is in this scene -- these women who may well be gay and definitely enjoy each other's company seem to be a part of the "community" that Sheppard never set out to create here on Atlantis but had created nonetheless, and they seem to be feeling free enough to be around each other while they are on base. Neither of these women belong to the crew that Sheppard had personally picked for the command but because he had made his selection carefully, it has created this atmosphere on Atlantis where people are free to be who they are. And Weir herself has facilitated that, being that she has been an ally to Sheppard from the beginning.

The camera shifts away from the women swiftly, however, showing us Sheppard's purposeful gait as he enters Weir's office and starts venting to her without preamble. He is very clearly unsettled by his interview with Woolsey that had presumably only just ended where, as we may recall, Woolsey had both referenced the lies that Sheppard had been telling and cast aspersions on his decisions and accusing Sheppard of allowing his feelings to dictate his decisions -- which has been a common complaint from his superiors. It did not seem like Woolsey and Sheppard were necessarily even having the same conversation, and it seems like Sheppard had heard accusations and judgements on his character that had never been intended. He seems more than a little defensive as he asks Weir if he might be allowed to knock the man on the head, and it is not his intention to actually ask for a permission to do that, just to share his desire to do that right this moment.

We should note that Sheppard mentions "political curiosity," recognizing that he has been asked to perform on the political arena with regards to the overseer from the IOA, which is a role that he is new to and is not entirely comfortable with. He understands that this is required of him in his new position but he does not feel equipped to fight the kind of battles that Weir has likely fought her entire career. We should note that the reason Sheppard had come directly to Weir from his interview is because he seems to have relied on Weir's protection from the very beginning, as noted when he had reminded Colonel Sumner in Rising (S01E01) that Weir was the director of the mission and it was because of Weir that he had been chosen to come in spite of Sumner's reluctance to take him on. Weir and Sheppard had further had a discussion about trust at the end of Hot Zone (S01E13) that seemed to be about this particular question -- Weir had vouched for Sheppard and hence believed she was owed his trust.

And what Sheppard does not even know is that Weir had staked her own career for him to be able to continue in his post as military commander of Atlantis in The Intruder (S02E02). Sheppard may have told Weir that he does not pay attention to guys in Inferno (S02E19) but after she had facilitated him spending nearly three weeks alone together with McKay on the Orion patching up their relationship, Sheppard seemed able to acknowledge that Weir was on their side, was in his corner, and hence he had come to her for advice because Sheppard is feeling threatened by Woolsey here. He has come to get assurance from Weir that she will protect him if "this Woolsey guy" intends to make trouble for him. It seems as though Sheppard needs Weir to explain the subtext of his conversation with Woolsey to him because it had not seemed like they were even speaking the same language.

Sheppard: It's just an impulse I had, really. One I suspect I'm going have again next time I see him. He may not even have to say anything. Weir: I've never seen you like this. What did Woolsey say to you? Sheppard: Besides judging every damned decision you've ever made?

Sheppard seems to be feeling somewhat violent toward the man that had interviewed him seemingly in good faith, and we have to note that this is coming from a place of fear. We have seen that often when Sheppard is afraid he sublimates it into anger because anger is easier for him to deal with -- which may or may not be a good trait for a military man to have. He is basically threatening to knock Woolsey out cold and while he is not actually intending to do it, the fact that he is fantasizing about it tells us that he is feeling defensive about what had just taken place, and he is feeling defensive because he is afraid. Woolsey is not a physically imposing man but he had managed to freak Sheppard out pretty badly. Weir points out that she has never seen Sheppard like this which just tells us just how badly Woolsey had managed to unsettle him.

Let us make one thing clear: What Sheppard gives Weir as his reason for feeling like this is not actually true. From what we saw of their exchange, Woolsey had done no judging of Weir's decisions whatsoever. Woolsey had not been there to talk about Weir at all, and it had been Sheppard who had brought her up to defend his own decisions, basically using Weir as a shield or throwing her under the bus to protect himself. Yes, Sheppard tells Weir that he is upset because Woolsey had judged Weir's decisions but what he says is not true. It is possible that Sheppard feels like it is true because he is once again projecting on an industrial scale but the only decision of Weir's that Sheppard truly feels that Woolsey had been judging was her decision to give Sheppard the post, to make Sheppard the commander of Atlantis.

During their interview, Sheppard had not been thinking about Weir at all beyond using her as an excuse for why things had gone fubar, and translating this into Woolsey judging Weir's decisions takes some Olympic level mental gymnastics. If Sheppard had marched directly Weir's office from the interview because he was feeling defensive of her, because he had been so indignant over Woolsey saying things about her that made him so indignant as to come out sputtering, this might be interpreted as a romantic gesture. But that is not what happened. That is simply not what had happened. Even Weir does not think that that is what happened, hence her deciding to mess with Sheppard about it.

Weir: John Sheppard, are you defending my honour? Sheppard: And judging me for agreeing with you. Weir: Well, don't be too hard on him. I think of all the circling wolves, he's the least likely to actually bite.

Weir calls Sheppard on his histrionics in a Southern drawl, clearly fucking with him. Yes, it is a flirty rejoinder but her intention is not to flirt but to point out to him how ridiculous he is sounding here. She knows perfectly well that she is not the reason that has Sheppard this worked up about his interview with Woolsey because Sheppard is not a "principle of the thing" kind of guy. He is not a politician, he is a pragmatist with real-world concerns over abstractions. Weir's comment is enough to make Sheppard himself recognize how little sense what he had just said makes and hence he immediately tries to walk it back, to offer her an explanation of how this was actually about him and not about her. Sheppard looks awkward as he leans against her desk, trying his damnedest to look unaffected and relaxed but clearly not feeling either, and Sheppard seems about as embarrassed about having expressed his feelings here as Weir had done in their meeting earlier, both of them much more comfortable repressing their emotions.

But even this is not really the truth because it had not been Woolsey judging Sheppard for agreeing with Weir's decisions, he had not been judging Sheppard at all. It was Sheppard who had used Weir as his excuse, had mentioned Weir as the real culprit that had made all the decisions where he had only supported her in them. Not only in this not true in the sense that Weir likely had very little to do with the decision to intern the wraith to get them out of McKay's feet, but because Sheppard is the military commander of Atlantis it is his responsibility to make decisions in matters pertaining to the military. They had agreed in Hot Zone that Sheppard's remit is to make military decisions but he does not get to decide what is what what is not a military matter. However, all throughout their tenure on Atlantis, Sheppard has deferred to Weir in all decisions military or otherwise, which is actually him shirking his responsibility. They both seem perfectly comfortable working this way, Weir taking the lead and Sheppard supporting her, and for the most part it seems to have worked out for them, especially following their talk in Hot Zone. That does not preclude there being ethical issues inherent in the leadership structure of the mission.

Weir: In fact, he might even convince the others to leave us alone. Sheppard: Alright, so... no head knocking. Weir: It's the thought that counts.

Weir seems to manage to get Sheppard to calm down some, to convince him that Woolsey is not necessarily out to get them and might even be able to protect them from the real predators in Washington and the IOA. Sheppard relents and takes a seat, seeming to want to stay in her office -- and whether it is to continue this conversation or to talk about something else entirely, if they even had a meeting pre-booked to go over things that had happened in Atlantis during her absence, is unknown. We may note that as Sheppard takes a seat he leans back and twists his body away from her, actually putting the maximum amount of distance between the two of them and in this Sheppard and Weir are like the opposite of how McKay and Sheppard had been seated earlier. Sheppard looks uncomfortable even as he tries to make himself seem relaxed, which he is clearly not feeling here. In fact, the way he grimaces and holds some of his weight on his hand as he seats himself again suggests that his old... tailbone injury seems to have made a comeback, and whether this has anything to do with why McKay seemed to have missed breakfast is anyone's guess.

It is Weir's line about it being the thought that counts that is curious here, and many people have noted that Weir has the Athosian vase on her desk that Sheppard had given to her as a birthday gift in Before I Sleep (S01E16), as though her line was in reference to that or that she might even be implying that that is the thought that is counting here, Sheppard's feelings toward Weir. The line transitions directly to a scene in which we see the wraith trying to contact a hive using the combined force of their thoughts, so "the thought that counts" is explicitly a bridge between the scenes. Given also that we have a scene in which Michael seems to read Beckett's thoughts later, the very tangible affect of thoughts is a theme in the episode. However, if we do take Weir's line as connected to Sheppard giving her the Athosian vase -- which has been seen on her desk many times previously -- let us recall what the thought that Sheppard had when he gave her the gift actually was.

in the episode, Sheppard had joined Weir on the balcony following the events of both Hot Zone (S01E13) and Sanctuary (S01E14), both of the episodes seeming to have fractured their working relationship and the trust between them. In the former episode they had discussed the issue of trust between them, Sheppard telling Weir that he did trust her and Weir seeming to think otherwise because Sheppard was not trusting her with everything. Sheppard giving her the gift seemed to be about making amends but even more than that, it was about reminding her (and himself) that trust was a two-way street. Sheppard tells her "Mum's the word" when she asks how he knew that it was her birthday, and it seemed like what he was implying was that while she may think that she knows some things about him, he also knows things about her, and that he can keep her confidence if she keeps his. What Sheppard tells Weir in the scene is pretty much analogous to don't ask, don't tell. "Mum's the word" is quite literally another way of saying "Don't ask, don't tell."

The thought that Sheppard had when he had given Weir the Athosian vase had been that he will support her leadership if she is willing to look the other way when it comes to his personal life -- and this had coincided with Sheppard and McKay having moved in together the first time, of explicitly looking at better, bigger rooms together. That is a thing that happened. And that, Sheppard willing to give his support to Weir's leadership if she is willing to look the other way when it comes to his personal life seems to be the exact thing that had unsettled Sheppard about his conversation with Woolsey. He thought Woolsey was accusing him of having done precisely what he had done. No one gets this defensive unless they have something they feel like they need to defend against. They don't act this guilty unless they are guilty.

Sheppard taking a seat in front of Weir's desk seems to be in conversation with the scene in Hot Zone, Sheppard even sitting the same way as he had then with twisting his body away from her. While Woolsey and Sheppard may have had very different conversations where Woolsey was just trying to figure out what was happening on Atlantis and Sheppard was feeling like he was being judged, Weir and Sheppard had been having the same conversation then, even though they were not able to talk about it using the words, they were not able to explicitly mention the issue but had been forced to circle around it, to beat around the bush.

Their conversation had been motivated by DADT and it was because Sheppard does trust Weir now, he has come to trust her about this, that he had come to her office for support, feeling threatened by Woolsey. What is more, Sheppard had come straight to Weir because he must have felt like he could not go to McKay directly from his meeting with Woolsey because he had been unsettled enough by the conversation to feel like they needed to be careful being seen together, needed to be extra-cautious on how they were viewed by others. As happy as the two of them had just been, having been able to spends some time together, finally feeling like they had worked through the issues they had to arrive at a place where things were good, and now they were forced to pretend like they were nothing to each other again because there was a "circling wolf" inside their own home. Sheppard needed to calm down about it, and Weir seems able to facilitate this. It was the thought that counted.

Both women are seated on the same bed, which is not an accidental placement of the characters because they did not want Sheppard sharing a bed with a woman -- and neither did he, as we see in the way Sheppard is crotch-blocking both of them as he rests his elbows on his thighs. He keeps his hands clasped in front of hist soft parts because his soft parts are not open for the women, to his friends.

But just as soon as McKay steps closer to him we see that Sheppard's entire body opens up for him. Sheppard first removes the hand that is on McKay's side while leaving the hand blocking the women, looking up at him, thrusting his face toward where McKay is. All at the same time Sheppard manages to thrust his pelvis up to McKay, push his upper body toward him while leaning back to give him access, turning his face toward McKay. It is really quite remarkable how obviously his body responds to McKay and to McKay specifically. His body is ridiculously responsive to McKay's presence. If one were so inclined, we might also note the way he keeps a lot of his weight on his hands as he leans back -- and whether this has anything to do with what ever Sheppard and McKay had been doing just the two of them while Teyla and Ronon were waiting for them to join them in the gate room earlier at the start of the episode is anyone's guess.

While they are also all gathered around to hear what Weir had discovered, what she had experienced during her mindwalk and how she is feeling afterward, Sheppard makes his comment to McKay and not to her. It is McKay who's opinion he is wanting to hear, it is McKay's expert analysis of the situation that he needs in this moment. He needs McKay to explain things to him, now more than ever, because the whole situation is so bewildering that there is no one he believes can make sense of it besides McKay. And we see that McKay is trying to puzzle it out, he appears to be pacing in the room because he is thinking. McKay is thinking out loud so that Sheppard can hear it because he knows that Sheppard wants to be in on it, and his comment was meant to prompt McKay to say something. Note that although Weir responds to his comment by telling him that a few of the nanites managed to survive, she is obviously reporting something that Niam had told her, not giving him her own take on the situation. It is McKay who extrapolates on what they now know, making inferences on what they had been told.

McKay: This is bad. They're very similar to an artificial intelligence that SG-1 encountered several years ago that evolved from a tiny block-Replicator into human form. They may even be related somehow. Sheppard: I read those reports. Stargate Command could barely defeat the human-form Replicators. McKay: Which is why I said, "This is bad."

Here we start seeing the mental scenario that was played out for Sheppard start to diverge from the real world, because the replicators had just not been able to render human responses properly. People are messy and inconsistent and often do and say things that they do not mean or mean things that they do not say. McKay is doing what Sheppard wants him to do in explaining the problem in a clear and concise way. What he is not doing is welcoming Sheppard to workshop the problem with him, even though Sheppard attempts to offer McKay his help in puzzling it out like he had as he had joined McKay in his lab in the mental scenario.

McKay mentions the OG replicators from the mothership SG-1, and it was never properly explored whether the Pegasus replicators are somehow connected to them. In the Milky Way, the replicators were created by an android named Reese as her toys. The android may have been created by the Ancients, as they seem to have occupied the world in which the android was subsequently found. The android was a piece of Ancient technology like the replicators, and while it was not composed of nanites like the replicators, the android contained nanites and it was the nanites that it used in rearranging matter on the molecular level to create the blocks that she built her toys from. Her toys were simple designs but like viruses the simple command to replicate made them horrifying, and the enemy that brought to the Asgard to their knees seemed overwhelming. The replicators of Pegasus appear to be more sophisticated and are not governed by the mind of a child but sought out to emulate the Ancients, and while they are a formidable new enemy to our heroes, something of the primal horror of the mindless arachnids bent on destruction is lost -- was lost even when in the Milky Way they evolved into human form in a time dilation field created by the Asgards.

What is relevant to Sheppard and McKay here is the fact that Sheppard confesses to have read up on the SG-1 files on this, and their defeat of the human form replicators that they had barely been able to do here, as Sheppard points out, had heavily featured Carter. The replicators had become so obsessed with her as to want to take her form. They had created a form not unlike the T-1000 of the Terminator franchise in "Replicarter," which is relevant to this episode in that we later see Oberoth get his own T-1000 on as the walks through a solid wall -- the liquid metal Terminator having a very obvious connection to the show as homage to Robert Patrick. In many ways, the human form replicators are the terminators of the franchise.

It is also pertinent here that Weir had left her post as the head of SG-1 at the end of The New Order, which means that she should have at least a working knowledge of what the human form replicators are even though she had not encountered them personally. McKay had not been personally involved with the replicators either, which means that he too must have read up on the missions reports, albeit his motivation had likely been much more impersonal than that of Sheppard. Sheppard does not like being reminded to Carter and the fact that McKay had worked with her, which makes McKay's rejection of Sheppard's offer to puzzle this out together with him especially hurtful here.

McKay seems to be strained not only with the crushing weight of feeling like he is the one who has to think their way out of this mess but also because he is still trying to come to grips with what ever had been done to him using Sheppard's visage in his mind probe. Sheppard and McKay appear to be at cross-purposes, there is clearly some disconnect in their usual mental accord. McKay is also coming across as inarguably condescending here, not unlike Oberoth who had told Weir earlier that he was "unaccustomed to repeating myself." But even if they are not vibing as easily as they usually do, pay attention to the way Sheppard first starts to lean his arm on his leg as like he had earlier to block him off, but then decides to draw his hand back to keep from boxing himself off from McKay. Sheppard does not like to have anything between himself and McKay, not even his own body parts, we see this repeat again and again.

Weir: The difference here is they're emulating the Ancients. They've even built themselves a version of Atlantis. Dex: And then some. Teyla: Why would they do this? Weir: I think they look at the Ancients like parents who betrayed them, and now they see humans as the favoured siblings who receive all the parents' love. They've been seeking revenge ever since.

Even though Sheppard does not say anything, it is obvious from the look on his face that McKay's dismissiveness was hurtful to him, not unlike what had happened (or would happen, depending on the sequence of the episodes) in his lab when McKay was fixing to find Ronon through the subspace frequency of his old tracker in Sateda (S03E04).

Although Weir lays out the analogy that the replicators are like the children of the Ancients jealous of their sibling, and that is how they may regard the humans if they have ever thought about humans at all, but the relationship of the replicators and the Ancients also resembles that of two people who used to lovers, who used to love each other more than anything but whose relationship had been invariably damaged by the betrayal of one party of the other that had regarded them with love and perfect trust. It is bitterness that is the fruit of their dissolved union, and there may be some foreshadowing in this. Because both Sheppard and McKay do have siblings and we are even about to meet McKay's sibling shortly, it would be tempting to read this as an analogy for familiar dysfunctions, but what the season is building toward is the breakdown in the relationship of Sheppard and McKay. It is difficult not to see the foreshadowing here.

Sheppard: Just what we need, more bad guys. McKay: Which means we've probably just identified the race that created the nanovirus that nearly killed me a couple of years ago. Sheppard: It almost killed a lot of people. McKay: Yeah.

Sheppard's line is a wink and a nudge to the audience because even though it is upsetting to the characters to have to deal with more "bad guys," the show itself would benefit from a new formidable villain as to not stagnate, the "Greater-Scope Villain" meant to combat the trope of "Power Creep." As they makes more gains, so must the odds be further stacked up against them to keep things interesting. And this is actually on brand with how Sheppard tends to use sarcasm -- to conceal his feelings but never his thoughts. More bad guys is what the show needs, even if Sheppard does not need them in his life personally.

Even though in Sheppard's mental scenario his communication with McKay and the rest of his team seemed to be easy and everyone understood precisely what he meant without him needing to even say things out loud, we see that Sheppard and McKay continue talking past each other here. McKay makes the inference that the nanite-based replicators are somehow connected to the nanovirus that had almost killed him in Hot Zone (S01E13), although the suggestion that the replicators had designed the virus seems a bit of a leap -- unless his intention was to say that they had identified the race that had created the virus which was the Ancients. The Ancients had been dabbling with nanoviruses that had been designed to kill living organisms that were not Ancient, and it had been McKay's artificial Ancient gene that had ultimately saved him -- and which had allowed him and Sheppard to work together to save everyone else. What Sheppard says here, it is easy to hear it as Sheppard telling McKay to give his ego a rest, that it had not been just about him and that he should remember that other people exist. But that is not actually what Sheppard intends here.

Both Sheppard and McKay had been very happy at the start of the episode because they had only just started their relationship. The events of The Defiant One (S01E12) had convinced Sheppard to give this a chance, that maybe they could make it work and it would not all blow up in his face, and he would not put McKay's life into jeopardy because McKay could actually take care of himself in a tight spot and he had saved Sheppard more than a few times. They had started hooking up (and not just having sex, we learn that they also seemed to play math games with each other), Teyla having paid attention to the fact that Sheppard had not had time to practice stick fighting with her for a while. Everything had been going so well for them, and then suddenly McKay had almost died completely without warning and out the blue.

It is Sheppard himself who had trouble remembering that people other than McKay existed at the time, as he had jeopardized the entire mission by breaking quarantine when he had needed to get to McKay so badly, and he had managed to upset both Teyla and Weir in his single-minded need to get to McKay. It is one of those episodes where Sheppard's actions make no sense unless you recognize what was actually motivating him, which was saving his lover. And not unlike what had happened in Sheppard's scenario where he had laid down his life for everyone else but particularly for McKay, Sheppard had also been willing to sacrifice his life then, flying the equivalent of a nuclear bomb into the atmosphere of the planet. Sheppard says "It almost killed a lot of people" here not because he wants to remind McKay of other people existing or the fact that he had almost died himself but because it is the thought "It almost killed you" that Sheppard cannot deal with. The thought of having come so close to losing McKay when they had only just started their relationship was so harrowing to him that he has still yet to come to terms with it, and he has to think about other people almost dying to keep himself from having to think about what had almost come to pass. He mentions the other people to trick himself into thinking that it had not been just about McKay to him. Sheppard is saying something that he does not mean here. It is not about the other people to him, it was always about McKay.

What he says here is actually similar to what he had told McKay at the end of the episode then, just before taking off with the jumper and the Naqadah generator, when they had the following exchange:

McKay: You're only gonna have thirty seconds once you release it before it explodes. You need to get as far away as you can. Sheppard: Get as far away from the nuclear explosion as possible -- that's good advice, Rodney, thanks! McKay: You're welcome.

Sheppard had used sarcasm to hide his feelings but not his thoughts, actually appreciating McKay's concern for him. But his response had made McKay feel like an idiot for saying something that had apparently been redundant to Sheppard, something that had not needed saying. Sheppard may not have needed McKay's advice but he appreciated it. And McKay may not have needed to give Sheppard advice but he had needed to say it. And yet both of them had misinterpreted the intention of the other, and it is quite amazing how two people who seem able to read each other's thoughts can frequently misread each other so badly. They both have a few fundamental false assumptions rising from their respective traumas that make them misunderstand each other when it comes to the big things, and the best thing they could do is to talk about it for a really long time. It is not taking the time to do that which invariably leads to disaster, and when ever they have really big disruptions, it has been preceded by not having had the time or the opportunity to connect with each other. But Sheppard is not telling McKay "Think about other people for a change, Rodney." He is saying "I really don't want to talk about when you almost died, Rodney."

Teyla: Were you not able to defeat that nanovirus with an electromagnetic pulse? McKay: That was different. Those were individual nanites, easy to disrupt with a simple EM pulse. These... these things have evolved way beyond that, with interdependent organic constituents of a far greater complexity. Asuran: Are you feeling better? Weir: Yes. Asuran: Follow me.

Teyla seems to remember the events of that day as well, as it had been the first time that he had truly doubted this man that he had chosen to follow. She also displays a certain level of understanding of what McKay had actually done then to deactivate the nanites. And it is interesting here that the way McKay responds to Teyla now is the way Sheppard wishes McKay had responded to him, Teyla's question actually able to push McKay's thinking forward, her question insightful in its own way. McKay often comes across negative as he shoots down suggestions that others make, but that is his process -- he is the how guy, he is able to tell whether something will work or whether it will not work, and that is why he needs people to feed him suggestions. McKay is not good at coming up with ideas out of the blue, he needs something to work with. And as a scientist, it is important for him to figure out all the ways an idea would not work to start off with.

McKay is thinking out loud but he is suddenly interrupted by the arrival of one of Niam's faction of ascension-curious replicators, her intention to fetch them to hear their pitch. They all seems unnerved by her arrival but note how far back Sheppard leans as she walks in among them. It is for sure mostly about being freaked out about these robots that he can barely wrap his mind around even though he has been trying to understand what McKay is telling them. But a part of it is that she has the appearance of a woman and Sheppard simply does not want women in his personal space. And while his lean back seems similar to what he did when we saw him turn toward McKay in the beginning of the scene, it is actually very different. Sheppard is rejecting her with his whole body, trying to get away from her where his intention had been to open himself up for McKay. Sheppard is not blocking the replicator because he does not consider it a woman but he is very much put off by it. He can't seem to get far enough away.

Having arrived on Atlantis, SG-1 proceed to have a meeting with the senior staff that for now seems to consist solely of Weir, Sheppard and McKay, with Carter laying out some exposition for the episode. Out of the three of them, Sheppard is the only one who does not know them from before, as McKay has worked on Cheyenne Mountain on a couple of occasions, and Weir had actually briefly been the director of SGC when the IOA had insisted on civilian leadership for the programme. A common belief among fans is that although there is overlap between the creators of the two shows, the writers of one show display poor understanding of the characters of the other show, and that the characters come across as acting out of character when appearing on the other show, when written by the writers of the other show.

This argument is volleyed especially against the writing of McKay, that McKay is made out to be much more of an asshole on the other show -- and maybe he is. But for the most part, the McKay that we see on the other show is quite literally not the same McKay as the one on Atlantis, often from alternate timelines or parallel dimensions. And the McKay we had seen before his time on Atlantis had also been a different man from the man that he is now in the sense that his time on Atlantis has definitely changed him, this had already been pointed out by his colleague Brendan Gaul in The Defiant One (S01E12). What seemed to make some viewers especially upset was the perception that the writers of the other show did not understand the dynamic between Sheppard and McKay, that they handled their relationship poorly.

Be that as it may, there seem to be actual reasons for the way the two of them are behaving in this episode, and we have to look at the context of where they actually are in their relationship to understand what is going on. For one, we have to recognize that when the episode takes place, Sheppard and McKay are very recently reconciled. They are very much together at this time, they are in a clandestine romantic relationship that is more or less known to everyone on Atlantis but that they have to keep a secret from the SGC and anyone from Earth because word getting out would most definitely jeopardize Sheppard's command. They had also very recently been alarmed by Mr Woolsey snooping around Atlantis, feeling the need for even more caution around their relationship. But the fact that they are in a good place with each other, they are about to move back in together good in their relationship right here, has everything to do with why they are behaving the way they are in this scene.

So, let us start by how they are seated around the table in the meeting room. Weir, as the director, is at the head of the table where she usually is, which is not unusual. Sheppard and McKay are on the opposite sides of the room which is also not unusual, Sheppard likes to be able to see McKay. But note that Sheppard has parked himself right next to Carter. Sheppard is boxing Carter in, which means that Carter had entered the room first, had taken a seat next to Weir, and Sheppard had then made damn sure that McKay was not getting a seat next to her by occupying the seat on her other side. We have no reason to think that McKay had been hankering for that seat, much though he (is loathe to admit that he) enjoys Carter's company professionally. But Sheppard is taking no chances here.

McKay is seated between Cam Mitchell and Daniel Jackson -- and one of the things we have to note here is that there was a similar subtext being played out between Jackson and Vala; there was a romantic undercurrent to their relationship, Jackson learning to love again while Vala was trying to heal from her trauma enough to open up for him. Jackson seated next to McKay while Vala is seated next to Sheppard is no accident, both of them turned none too subtly toward their counterparts. Both pairs are trying not to be too obvious about their appreciation for each other. And so we see Vala slouching on the table leaning in front of Sheppard in a way that from someone else might indicate interest in him but she seems to be completely ignoring him, attentive to what Carter is talking about. And Sheppard himself seems like he is leaning toward her where in fact he is leaning away from Carter, and quite obviously so. Just the very thought of Carter seems to make him very uncomfortable, and he has his reasons for that. Daniel Jackson, on the other hand, has his entire body turned toward McKay because for some unfathomable reason, he seems to like him, and respects him as a fellow scientist.

McKay: ...you should be able to keep the thing up and running almost indefinitely. Sheppard: I'm sure they thought of that before they came all this way, Rodney. Carter: It was what we were attempting to do when the Ori fleet first came through. Now the Asgard have since tried again, but for some reason, they can't dial out. Weir: But you might be able to dial in?

The first thing we have to acknowledge about this scene is that Sheppard is intimidated by Carter, he feels threatened by her presence here, in his home. Understanding this is crucial for the interpretation of what is going on here. We have seen from the get-go, from Childhood's End (S01E05) when McKay had first mentioned Carter's name for Sheppard to hear, that Sheppard has felt some kind of way about McKay's relationship with her, and positive it was not.

Sheppard is a needy, jealous man and because for reasons that at least initially had nothing to do with Sheppard McKay had made it seem like he was actually attracted to Carter, Sheppard had gotten the wrong impression of what was going on there. McKay had essentially used Carter, whom he very likely believed to be a lesbian (as per what the McKay that had married her had thought about her short-haired military version from a parallel dimension in The Road Not Taken; that McKay thought this Carter was gay), to bolster his own reputation as a man crassly and extremely loudly interested in dumb blonde women, since contracting for the US military forced him into the closet. Sheppard may well have gotten the wrong impression of what McKay actually feels toward her, which is a combination of intellectual inadequacy and a recurrence of his various mommy issues, given how she seems to resemble his mother in both looks and personality. Carter is the kind of person that McKay wishes he were, self-assured, brilliant and desired by the kind of men that McKay wants to be desired by. McKay admires her but would never admit as much, but his open lusting after her is all for show, all to bolster his reputation as a sleazebag womanizer, so that homosexual and bisexual men of his acquaintance could rest easy in his company.

But we have seen that Sheppard is made uncomfortable by the way McKay regards her. We know from later on in the season that Sheppard is in possession of the video message McKay had recorded with the purpose of protecting Sheppard's own career in Letters from Pegasus (S01E17), in which he tells basically all of SGC that his "torch was still burning" for Carter (the video message was very clearly never intended to get past the censors); and it was implied in The Lost Boys (S02E10) that Sheppard knows about the time that Carter had kissed McKay -- and probably thought it was much worse than it had actually been. Sheppard had also likely learned about McKay's near-naked hallucination of Carter in Grace Under Pressure (S02E14), where neither man seems to have quite understood what she really was and which is actually revisited in this particular episode. Adding to this that Sheppard is feeling guilty about a couple of things he had done involving women himself while having the tendency to project his issues, him pouring all of this on the figure of Carter starts making sense.

But to recap what we have discussed before: Carter knows that McKay is gay and actually started liking him better when he figured this out about him back when McKay decided to overshare with her, McKay thinks that Carter is gay and that he is helping her out by publicly hitting on her, and Sheppard knows that McKay is not interested in women ("Woolsey wasn't the weirdest thing about that timeline") but still suspects that maybe Carter is the exception for him since she is so butch and resembles his mother, and even when Sheppard does not really think that McKay is interested in women, because he is bisexual himself, he is just bothered by any woman that McKay has ever given attention to, ever, he just is, OK? He is a petty and jealous man with serious projection issues, so it says more about him than it does about McKay that Sheppard cannot let it go.

And so, what Sheppard does here is very similar to what we had seen him do in Inferno (S02E19), when he was feeling jealous over Norina giving attention to McKay even when McKay himself had been mostly ignoring her. Sheppard had been so sick with jealousy that he actually started painting McKay in a bad light for her, trying to make her see McKay as less desirable, less competent, less worth pursuing, less like the McKay that he sees when he looks at McKay himself, so that Norina might not want to pay him any more attention. And he does it here, trying to make McKay seem less appealing to Carter, to make him seem as someone not worth Carter's time. Surely Carter had thought about that already, Rodney. She doesn't need your help. And note that although Sheppard does usually call McKay Rodney especially when they are among people he trusts, here his intention is very consciously to lay claim to him. He is calling him Rodney in front of Carter to emphasize the intimacy between the two of them, well aware of the fact that Carter had known McKay before he had, had known him before the two of them had ever met. He is painfully aware of their "history," make no mistake about that.

Sheppard's reference to them "coming all this way" is further implying that he sure wishes they hadn't. He may have the home court advantage here but he does not want to have that Jezebel in his home. But at the same time, Sheppard's comment to McKay here is again one that is for him and for him alone, that shuts everyone else out of the conversation between himself and McKay. Sheppard is again inviting McKay into that world that is shared only between the two of them, only Carter seems determined to draw him right out because they have need of him. Sheppard is sitting with his hands clasped on his lap, trying very hard to make himself seem relaxed, which is the opposite of what he is actually feeling here. The more Sheppard tries to make himself look relaxed, the less he is actually feeling it. His body language here is similar to when he had been seated by this very same table in Before I Sleep (S01E15), and the older Weir had been telling them about how McKay had died saving their lives in another timeline. That is how uncomfortable Sheppard is here.

He also has to look away from Carter as she is speaking, worrying his lip in that way that he does when he is feeling mighty uncomfortable, almost pained. He hates this science-off that seems to start commencing between Carter and McKay here, knowing that he is not equipped to participate in it. He also seems to glance at Vala while biting his lip, and the uninitiated observer might think that Sheppard was turned on by her or that his gesture had anything to do with her, where the lip thing is actually his self-soothing gesture and he is looking away from Carter, not at Vala here. Vala has her hand on the table in front of Sheppard and she is drawing on the table surface with her finger, and if someone did not know Vala at all, they might also think that she was looking for Sheppard's attention, trying to flirt with him, where she is likely barely aware of his existence at all. But Sheppard does give her a cautious look, not sure what to make of her. He might think that she is flirting with him, and he is not here for it. But his focus is mainly on Carter. This is anything but easy for him.

Carter: Well, that's the problem. It was designed to dial in from another galaxy. Sheppard: Like one of the stargates in the Pegasus? McKay: No, no, no, no, no. The diameter of a stargate is not arbitrary. There is a specific correlation between the energy required to create a stable wormhole— Carter: And the size of the gate. I know that!

Sheppard's comment is insightful, showing not just that he is more intelligent than he lets on most of the time because he likes to keep his cards close to his chest, but also that he is really trying to come across as an intellectual equal to Carter, to show that he can think on the same level as she can, even though he does not have her formal education in science, because he sees Carter as his romantic rival for the attentions of McKay.

Sheppard's behaviour here has two prongs: to make McKay seem less desirable to Carter and to make himself more desirable than Carter to McKay. And most likely McKay has no idea what Sheppard is doing or why he is doing it, again feeling like he is undermining him in front of company for no discernible reason, and in front of people like the SG-1 that he really would like to impress, too. Because McKay does not realize how much Sheppard loves him, he has no way of correctly interpreting his behaviour. This is also true for much of the audience -- they see Sheppard come across as a dick for no reason because they do not recognize his motivation in this. And so, albeit we have seen that McKay really appreciates Sheppard's insight and his ideas most of the time, he contradicts him here in front of other people because Sheppard's own behaviour toward him is making him defensive.

One thing to note here is the size discussion, which is very often connected to dick size in particular. Obviously they are not talking about dick sizes here (even when Sheppard and McKay had been talking about dick sizes in Hide and Seek (S01E03), they had explicitly been talking about boat sizes), but the suggestion is always there, especially since McKay very shortly associates connecting two gates with having sex. What is interesting here is that it is Carter who seems to get defensive about gate size (the fact that she gets defensive around McKay is interesting in and of itself, possibly revealing that she is still feeling some kind of way about him calling her a dumb blonde back in the day), whereas McKay has no preference for big gates or small gates, merely calmly pointing out that they are not commensurate. We have noted before how McKay seems to have no anxiety whatsoever relating to the size of his dick, which betrays the fact that his dick is sizeable enough for him to never having had to worry about it. While the SG-1 are basically going "It's not the size of the gate, it's the motion of the event horizon" here, McKay is the one saying that size does matter. And Sheppard would agree with him there, as he had indicated that size matters to him very much when it comes to his partners, this having been one of the first conversations Sheppard and McKay ever had with each other.

What is happening around them, as McKay and Carter are having their science-off, is that Jackson keeps looking at McKay almost admiringly while Mitchell is rolling his eyes, barely able to keep his annoyance from showing (and we may note that Sheppard notices him doing it already here, which may explain his behaviour toward Mitchell later on; to say that Sheppard is defensive over McKay is an understatement). Vala seems to be paying attention mostly to Carter, trying to keep up with the conversation, and while she looks at Sheppard when he speaks, she seems almost dismissive of him. Sheppard himself has drawn his chair back from between the two women that he had chosen to sit between (and given that he is both a Lt. Colonel and dark and beautiful, Sheppard is basically an amalgamation of the two women on either side of him), seeming to need some distance to them. We see that Sheppard is very obviously leaning away from Carter but he is not sitting as close to Vala as the other angle would have led you to believe.

McKay: And, it's exponentially proportional to size, which means the energy required to create a connection with a supergate would far exceed that of an ordinary gate. It'd be like putting together a Saint Bernard and a Chihuahua. Vala: And the problem with that would be…? McKay: Well, obviously it's a question of… Oh, I see. You're mocking me, aren't you. Vala: What? No, I'm not from Earth. I honestly didn't get the reference.

This is a very interesting exchange and not just because McKay makes a reference to dog-on-dog sex, which in this instance obviously means heterosexual sex for the purposes of procreation that McKay does not seem to be a fan of, but also because he had likened Sheppard to a dog, a friendly face waiting for him when he gets home (while talking about cats) in Letters from Pegasus, and so there might be something more to his analogy. Regardless, it tells us that he is thinking about sex here, sexualizing the technical process when it did not need sexualizing, and while it is a rather apt analogy that dumbs down the complicated science behind it, Vala takes exception to him making references that she does not understand. McKay has no way of knowing it, of course, but Vala had displayed frustration over the Earthlings making references that she doesn't get earlier, and her vaguely hostile response to him had nothing to do with McKay and everything to do with the rest of her team, country bumpkin Mitchell in particular.

But what is really curious here is the way Jackson looks at Vala, and McKay interpreting his look in the wrong context. Because Jackson had been paying attention to McKay and looking at him respectfully he makes note when Jackson looks at Vala following her comment, seeming to disapprove of it. McKay interprets this as Jackson disapproving his teammate making fun of the science nerd, and McKay is immediately defensive, probably because he has been made fun of by the popular kids in school before -- something that is confirmed in McKay and Mrs Miller (S03E08). But that is not what Jackson was doing at all. As mentioned, Jackson and Vala's relationship was somewhat similar to Sheppard and McKay in that it mostly played out in the subtext, in looks and the positioning of their bodies, the way they were around each other. They did get to consummate their relationship in a timeline that was later erased but for the most part, it was extremely subtle -- more subtle even than Sheppard and McKay's relationship. And just like Sheppard and McKay had been paralleled with Carter and O'Neill previously, they are paralleled with Jackson and Vala here.

The point of this whole scene is to show that the way Jackson behaves toward Vala is the same as how McKay behaves toward Sheppard. They are both feeling mortified by the behaviour of their romantic interests in public because they both feel like the behaviour of the person they love rubs off on them. When you are in a relationship you are in a position to embarrass the other through association. If a spouse behaves badly, it reflects badly on the other partner. Jackson narrows his eyes as he looks at Vala because he does not approve of her behaviour, not for the first time and not for the last time. They are not together like Sheppard and McKay are but he does have all the hallmarks of a long-suffering spouse, and seems to feel like Vala is embarrassing him in front of someone that he respects and even admires here. The whole point of showing this little moment is to parallel the two subtextual romances, and McKay's reaction to the look that Jackson gives her only calls attention to this fact -- to how much of the narrative plays out through looks and subtle cues that can easily be misinterpreted if the viewer lacks the context, does not know what to look for.

But Jackson is not the only one who gives her a look following the comment. Sheppard also looks at her when she starts backpedalling, realizing that she had put her foot in it and offended this obviously very important stranger needlessly. Sheppard smiles as he looks at her and if you did not know Sheppard at all, this might be interpreted as a friendly smile, that he was approving of what she was saying because he obviously encourages people making fun of McKay, Sheppard being a dick like that and McKay being the butt of all of his jokes, because he sees him as some kind of comic relief like the great big high school bully that he is. Based purely on a maintext reading of this whole scene, one could easily come to the conclusion that Sheppard was the too-cool-for-school action hero and that he is embarrassed that his clown of a sidekick is making him look bad in front of the other cool kids. But when you look at his face you can see that Sheppard's eyes are cold as they move from McKay to her, his smile dangerous.

Sheppard is so in love with the man sitting across from him that it makes him very nearly actual crazy, and if Vala really had been making fun of him, she would have made an enemy for life. If Vala had been making fun of McKay and had not backpedalled because, as an alien like Ronon and Teyla, she simply failed to get his reference, Sheppard very likely would have said something biting to her. It is her bluster that makes him relent, and it is notable that Vala seems to be making her excuses to Sheppard as much if not more so than to McKay himself. And it is not because she finds Sheppard attractive and hence wants to make sure that the pretty man does not think ill of her, needing to make sure that she did not ruin his impression of her. No, Vala is good at reading people and and has a well above average survival instinct, and she seems to have caught on to the fact that Sheppard is a dangerous man who would literally kill for the man sitting across from them. The last thing she needs is smoke like that.

McKay: Oh, well, they're both dogs… Carter: McKay! Weir: Colonel Carter, please continue. Sheppard: If he speaks again, I'll shoot him. Daniel: But to answer your question, we are introducing another stargate into the equation. Teal'c should have it in position right now.

McKay seems instantly mollified by realizing that Vala was not kidding, that she actually is just a clueless alien who had been upset for not to get his brilliant analogy, and so he immediately starts earnestly explaining what he had meant because he thinks that it was actually a good way to explain what the problem is. What happens then is also significant: Carter thinks that this talk about dog sex is not appropriate for the work place and hence chides McKay, and in taking the liberty to chide him actually displays their familiarity. One does not chide colleagues like this unless they are very close, this is the kind of thing that either a sibling or a spouse might do, they have the right to chide someone in this manner. And the thing is, she is being way too familiar with McKay for Sheppard's liking here. It is not her job to chide McKay when he is being more McKay than is appropriate for polite company, it is his job. It is his right. It is his prerogative.

It is Sheppard who gets to look at McKay the way Jackson had just looked at Vala, not Carter. Carter may think that she knows him like that but she does not know him like that. Sheppard is pretty sure that he knows McKay better by now than she does. He's really pretty sure. He is positive. He is almost certain. There is no way that she could know him better than he does even if they had kissed. He has kissed McKay many more times than she has. He has kissed him way better. He is pretty sure he has done things for McKay that she couldn't even do if she wanted to. And again we see Sheppard smile as this takes place, but note how he actually pushes himself back against the chair at the same time, to maintain control of himself. It is almost as though he physically rejects having to witness it.

And yet, what she says here really rubs him the wrong way. We see that he is looking at McKay the whole time, only briefly glancing at Carter as he makes his comment because his comment is not really meant for her. He says it to her but is meaning it for him to hear. We see that his mouth was open and he was ready to say something when Carter beat him to it, and as he closes his mouth he looks truly upset. He is also tightening the grip of his hands, trying to calm himself, to keep himself under control.

And let us just be clear here: Sheppard is not actually advocating for shooting McKay, that is not what this is about. He is joking, he is making a quip, only the onus of his quip is not "We are all so very embarrassed for McKay's behaviour here on Atlantis, please do forgive us, he is our cross to bear and I intend to make sure that he plays nice," or however the mainstream audience interprets this line. As Teyla had pointed out in Trinity (S02E06), in negotiations the words spoken are often meaningless, and it is the look on Sheppard's face that is significant here, especially since we have seen that they are both capable of reading the thoughts of the other man by looking at his face. Sheppard is upset here. There is almost a cold rage bubbling underneath the surface, and it is caused by the same thing that we have seen upsetting Sheppard before: he feels like a woman is making advances on his man right in front of him and he is not allowed to put a stop to it. There is nothing he can do when a female romantic rival is moving in on his man in public.

Sheppard's comment is once more two-pronged: he puts out this severe but obviously not serious offer up for Carter to make it clear to her that reigning McKay in is not her job, it is very much his job, and he dares anyone to move in on him when it comes to that. And at the same time, he is trying to communicate to McKay how much this is actually upsetting him. He needs McKay to reign that shit in not because he is embarrassed by the dog sex talk but because he is bothered by the familiarity between him and Carter. This is the first time that Sheppard is actually seeing McKay and Carter around each other, and while there had been absolutely nothing going on between them, Sheppard still feels like she is the ex he has never gotten over.

But as good as McKay is reading Sheppard's thoughts usually, he seems lost and upset here, not understanding why Sheppard is behaving so cold and hostile toward him all of a sudden. McKay does not understand, he has no way of understanding how much Sheppard loves him, and how jealous and possessive he is about him. McKay does not regard his own life important enough to comprehend that someone actually could feel this way about him. As far as he is concerned, Sheppard seems to be trying extra hard to impress Carter -- and that figures, Carter is the brilliant blonde bombshell that all the men fall for. It is only natural for Sheppard to fall for her too, everyone else does. His only comfort here is that Carter, as far as he knows, does not like men like that, and she has in fact not been giving Sheppard any undue attention here. This scene really is a masterclass in show, don't tell.

We join up with Sheppard and McKay on the control platform where Sheppard is looking down at the gate and its open wormhole from a balcony, for what ever reason. There may be something symbolic about the way we first view him through layers of glass and have to struggle to actually see him. But Sheppard can keep himself from McKay for only so long, soon coming to park himself in front of his work station like he so often does.

Weir is stood by McKay but it is very obvious that Sheppard does not join her by McKay's desk, he joins McKay and she just happens to also be there because, like so often, McKay is where the action is. Note the way Sheppard actually looks away as he passes Weir and only upon reaching McKay turns his face toward him. Sheppard is not paying any attention to her, she might just as well not be there as far as he is concerned, and it is not that he is trying to evade or avoid her either. She is just not where his focus is. Pay attention also to Sheppard's hand that he rests on top of the desk like he is touching it in lieu of touching McKay, like he is pressing his hand as close to McKay as he dares in public. These men really should not be working together on a multi billion dollar project. They are in love. They are distracted by each other. They may try their best to stay professional but it is irresponsible to allow them to carry on like this, and Sheppard himself is starting to learn this lesson by the end of the episode.

Sheppard sounds somewhat apprehensive as he asks McKay what the facility they had discovered on the other side is, seeming to want clarification for something that McKay had already mentioned before we catch up with them. They seem to have landed on some kind of an Ancient facility and it is entirely possible that remembering the Ancient weapons platform on Doranda they had also discovered from the database in Trinity (S02E06) is what is making Sheppard cautious. It had not been the fault of the facility per se but Sheppard still would like to avoid a repeat of what had happened then, the memories probably uncomfortable for all of them. What McKay tells him, that what they had discovered here had been a research outpost and that there was scant additional information on it, has Doranda written all over it.

McKay: ....other than whatever work was being done there was completed, and the place was apparently abandoned. Weir: Well, sounds promising. Chuck: We have MALP telemetry. Environmental sensors indicate viable life support. Visuals coming in now. Weir: Put it on screen.

Because McKay is resting his left hand on the table while pushing his elbow out and Sheppard is resting his right hand on the desk, the two of them are effectively (albeit likely entirely subconsciously) creating a barrier that encloses the two of them but that leaves Weir and everyone else outside of their bubble. It is not that they are trying to push Weir out but that the two of them have this world of their own where no one else is invited but them. Sheppard is looking at McKay and McKay is similarly looking up at Sheppard, although unlike Sheppard he is at least making an effort to include Weir, glancing at her periodically to see what the boss-lady is thinking about all of this. Weir is the one who calls the shots here and hence McKay needs to know what she intends to do even if his natural inclination is to explain things to Sheppard the way Sheppard likes him to explain things.

The difference between Project Arcturus on Doranda and what ever the Ancients had been doing on this planet they later learn had been called Asuras is that according to the database, they had finished the work. What the database appears to have left unmentioned is that this "whatever work" had been an attempt at destroying their entire experiment and while the Ancients had abandoned the planet thinking that they had left it a burned up wasteland, they had not actually fixed their giant mistake, which is what grinds Sheppard's gears about the Ancients in general. But they do not know any of this yet, thinking this to be just another Pegasus society they are making first contact with.

Weir makes the call to investigate this further, and as they all turn toward the screen waiting to get some video from the planet Sheppard pushes his hand even closer to McKay, trying to be stealthy about it, actually caressing the table and rubbing it with his thumb, and McKay himself is pumping his hand that is resting on the table in that gesture that he seems to make when he is either nervous or turned on. Before McKay gets up, he puts his other hand on the table closer to Sheppard for no apparent reason, quickly pulling it back when he notices what he had been about to do. These two men are so clearly in a sexual relationship with each other. They are barely able to keep it under wraps in public.

Sheppard: Or maybe it never was abandoned. Weir: Ancients? Sheppard: He's got one of their scanners. McKay: So do we. Just because they know how to use Ancient technology doesn't mean that they're-- Niam: I am speaking to whoever sent this machine to our home. If you intend us harm, proceed no further, but if you come in friendship, please know you are most welcome here.

Sheppard steps forward to get closer to the screen but he also steps around McKay's desk to get closer to him. This is obscured by how Weir comes to stand as though between them when in reality Sheppard is standing slightly in front of both of them, Sheppard and McKay are standing side by side and she is stood behind the two of them. The camera work again seems intentional, suggesting something while showing us something else entirely. Sheppard's energy is not directed toward Weir in the least but he is trying to be less than obvious about how much of his focus is on McKay when he is meant to be focusing on other things entirely, like his work. We see at the end how Sheppard almost turns to look at McKay, he clearly wants to turn to look at McKay, but then decides against it. Sheppard is also biting on his lip as though to keep himself from commenting on something, and that something could easily have been "coming in friendship," which seems like prime real estate for making a risqué comment of some kind, of pointing out the double entendre, something that Sheppard often seems inclined to do.

And so they make first contact with what look to be people and look to be people dressed in the same garb as the Lanteans used to. Weir is the one who makes the suggestion that they might be Ancients, and she certainly seems happy over the prospect, smiling at the mere thought that they had made contact with actual Ancients. What they are are watching on the screen is Niam, who more than a little resembles Janus. This is relevant in that the Weir that had been marooned in the past in Before I Sleep (S01E15) seems to have had some kind of a relationship with Janus who had many lovers, so it is possible that Niam is very much Weir's "type." Going forward, we should also remember that she has both been bereft of romance for a while now while at the same time having to watch her co-workers live out some fairytale romance right in front of her eyes. McKay issues more caution, and he is correct in pointing out that just because someone possesses Ancient technology does not make them Ancients. Neither Sheppard nor McKay are that keen on running into more Ancients, both for their own reasons. But they had just received an invitation, and they supposed they needed to check it out.