#ep. submersion

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.

Ronon does miss his shot and his energy weapon packs enough of a punch to shatter the glass or whatever material the windscreen is made of (and seeming to confirm that they are not so deep as to need the jumper's force field to keep it from being crushed under the pressure like they had when Sheppard and Zelenka had been rescuing McKay), and the force of the sea rushing in the opening is enough to throw both of them like ragdolls, even the powerful Queen unable to withstand the tide.

It seems like Sheppard loses his consciousness together with Ronon and the Queen, both of whom we may note are made of sturdier stuff than him, and he had been closest to the water, having received the full pressure brunt of its power. And yet it is Sheppard who comes to first, and whether he struggles to regain consciousness harder than the others because he has the worried voice of McKay in his ear is anybody's guess. The scene is reminiscent of The Ark (S03E16), where Sheppard had been knocked unconscious by explosive decompression, and while the episode had taken place high up in the sky and this is in the bottom of the ocean, there are similarities between them -- the episodes rhyme. These episodes bookend the breaking up of their relationship, representing the before and the after, and so we are able to observe things that have changed.

What has not changed is how much McKay cares about Sheppard and how worried he is when he is unable to hear from the most capable person that he knows. McKay sounds wrecked as he tries to get Sheppard to respond to him because even though the life signs detector tells him there are three people alive in there, assuming that McKay and Zelenka had been able to restore the system by now -- and being an Ancient facility, the scanner may even separate people with the Ancient gene and wraith from humans -- but also likely McKay's heart tells him that Sheppard is alive because they seem to have some kind of a mental tether between them. But neither tells him anything about the condition he is in, and realizing what had happened McKay is more than worried, he worries more with every minute that passes that he does not hear from Sheppard.

But Sheppard does come to first out of everyone and he groggily lets McKay know that he is present and accounted for -- and we can observe that he does not tell McKay that he's fine, like he might usually be wont to do, as Sheppard has been able to be vulnerable with McKay in a way he has not been with others. Note that McKay is using "perfectly appropriate military parlance" as he tries reaching Sheppard, identifying himself and naming the person he is calling for. McKay asks Sheppard to "Please respond," which is military parlance but may be as much as he dares say in public, as it seems like people are listening in on him calling for Sheppard and this may even be recorded into some kind of a black box for the operation. But from his tone, McKay's concern for Sheppard comes across loud and clear. Also pay attention to the way Sheppard moves his body when he is semi-conscious and hears McKay speaking to his ear trying to wake him up, his arm moving almost as though he was intending to wrap it around someone, almost like he wanted to snuggle up closer to someone -- because for all he may have been the one to end their relationship, his body may not have gotten the memo either, especially when he is barely conscious.

Zelenka: We had to throw the emergency force fields up. The section you were in was flooding. Sheppard: I noticed! McKay: See, you were thrown by the force of the water clear of the force field bulkhead. Sheppard: Ronon!

We know that others are listening in on McKay's hail in that Zelenka joins in on the call, explaining to Sheppard that they had put up the emergency force fields since the breaking of the windscreen in the jumper had caused the ocean to rush in. Sheppard has a sarcastic response to Zelenka not just because he is trying to get some distance to his emotions, the experience having been quite intense, but also because we see again how Zelenka is not able to give Sheppard the information he needs in the format that he needs it -- Zelenka simply does not know him as well as McKay does.

McKay, on the other hand, seems able to respond to the question that Sheppard actually had been thinking -- What happened? -- filling him in on the part that he had not been around for. The force of the water had thrown them inside and clear of the force field bulkhead, which had allowed him and Zelenka to save him from being washed out into the sea. What Zelenka and McKay tell Sheppard may seem similar but McKay is able to intuitively land on precisely the explanation that Sheppard needed in this moment, that he is able to process while he is still trying to gather his wits. Attempting to make sense of things, his eyes seem to land on Ronon who had likewise been knocked unconscious on the moon base with him earlier, and as pointed out, it seems that Ronon does not come to until Sheppard calls to him by name -- and it cannot be because he had been knocked harder than Sheppard, it has to be that McKay's voice had been able to reach Sheppard, and now he is able to reach Ronon in turn. But because Ronon is younger and made of sturdier stuff than Sheppard, he is able to get up off the floor when Sheppard is still trying to gather his strength and probably hurting all over, and Sheppard can at first just watch him get up from his position on the floor.

Dex: I missed. Sheppard: I noticed that too! McKay: Everyone else is accounted for. Any sign of Dickinson?Sheppard: Stand by, McKay.

While McKay can probably hear Sheppard call out for Ronon, it is unclear whether he can hear Ronon reply back to him as he gets up and walks by the force field, needing to touch it with his own hand. While Ronon comes from one of the more technologically advanced societies in Pegasus, he had spent most of his adult years running from the wraith and likely had learned to trust only things that he could understand, and the technology of the Ancients frequently seems suspicious to him.

Having to trust now that some power is keeping the ocean at bay seems like a big ask to him, and we can pose here the question of whether Ronon had missed the shot that he had taken from rather close quarters because he found the Queen so unnerving -- it is not necessary he has had many dealings with Queens apart from the one from which he had been protecting McKay in Allies (S02E20) since the wraith warlord that had hunted him had been male -- or whether it is simply being under so much water that had unnerved Ronon. What ever the reason, he sounds bashful now as he admits to Sheppard that he had failed -- and we can note that Sheppard has a similarly sarcastic response to Ronon as he had for Zelenka.

It seems that out of all of them, only McKay manages to communicate with Sheppard in a way that does not annoy him in this moment, wet and in pain as he is -- which is really quite telling given how much McKay seems to annoy people on a general level. However, even though he seems irritated by Ronon, Sheppard lifts his brows in a way that puts this angelic look in his face as though to take some of the edge off, wanting Ronon to know that he is not actually upset with him -- knowing that there is nothing to be gained by antagonizing someone that he needs terribly. Sheppard needed to spit the words out to make himself feel better but realizing that he was projecting, he was taking things out on someone else, he seems to perform this "dehurtful retraction" with his face in an attempt to make Ronon understand that he was not being serious.

But because we cannot be sure that McKay had heard Ronon respond to Sheppard, it is possible that his report of "Everyone else is accounted for," was McKay still trying to convey information to Sheppard that he knows Sheppard would want, trying to ease his mind about Ronon being alive. The fact that they are able to "account" for people suggests that they can see the life signs, and since McKay and the others would not know about the Queen yet, it is unclear what they make of the third life sign there with them. He asks about Dickinson, and to be sure he had sent Dickinson to the jumper to use the scanner there. And it could be McKay's question that then triggers Sheppard to look around the space for if his guy Dickinson should be around, telling McKay to "stand by" -- something that again is "perfectly appropriate military parlance" and which should be readily understandable even for someone without military training, some of which McKay has had from Sheppard himself, but which we have never heard Sheppard use before. This allows Sheppard to put his conversation with McKay on hold without having to end it. There might be some meta commentary here on their relationship basically being in a "stand by" pattern currently, because even though Sheppard had not asked McKay for "more time" the way McKay seemed to ask Sheppard for more time following the events of The Siege (S01E20-S02E01), McKay certainly has not given up on Sheppard.

McKay: Look, I don't know what just happened, but we are now cut off from the jumper. Dex: I won't miss now. Sheppard: Wait! Dex: What for? Sheppard: Well, we lost the jumper, we lost communications with Atlantis. Maybe she can help us get out of this place.

It is basically McKay asking him to look around that makes Sheppard take stock of the Queen who seems to be lying unconscious, having likewise been knocked out cold by the water, and we can note that Sheppard had told McKay to "stand by" before he had noticed her, having wanted to focus on taking stock of their situation before coming to any conclusions. Having noticed the Queen, it seems like this is the biggest problem for them to solve right now, and both Sheppard and Ronon approach her, cautious of whether she is just faking being knocked out.

We can note that even though Sheppard had told McKay to "stand by," essentially having asked him to be quiet until he could figure their situation out, McKay talks to him anyway, both needing to apprise Sheppard of their situation in the way that he knows that Sheppard wants him to do but also because not talking makes him nervous, like he had told Sheppard in Tao of Rodney (S03E14). And we can also note here that even though it seems like Sheppard's focus is entirely on the Queen, he can actually hear what McKay is saying to him, and it is McKay having mentioned the jumper and being cut off, not having any means of returning to Atlantis at the moment, that makes Sheppard stay Ronon's hand before he is able to do what he has been itching to do this whole time, which is to take her out permanently.

Sheppard would for sure want to end this Queen as much as Ronon does, having confessed to hating them especially much previously, but he does not want a simple desire for revenge damn them all -- he has everyone else's well-being to think about here, and most importantly McKay's safety. If there is even a remote chance they can use this thing to rescue them, then he is willing to see it through. And we can note that Sheppard actually returns to the "we" language here, possibly entirely subconsciously, possibly in response to McKay having started using it first with his "We lost the jumper..." The two of them have worked together solving various and sundry crises for nearly three years, so when they are facing a situation where the odds are mounting up against them, it seems that both of them easily fall back to their old roles. They fit together like hands to a comfortable pair of old gloves. This they know how to do.

And we should address the strangeness of her accompanying them on this mission, which is what Sheppard seems to be commenting here more than anything else -- needing exposition for this decision that seems to be based on the contract of the actress more than anything else. While this is not a true ensemble show, with the second billing the actress is contractually obliged to appear for a set number of minutes in every episode pending on the shooting schedule, and so because the episode necessitates that they are cut off from Atlantis and cannot contact her there for what ever plot reasons they might need to get in touch with Atlantis, Weir has to come with them to the bottom of the sea in the episode. It is not plot that necessitates her presence, it is the contract of the actress.

And it is for this reason that they need some convoluted reason for her being there -- which is never actually even textualized. Apparently she had just wanted to be there -- and we can come up with reasons like they might have anticipated that they need to translate some Ancient and for what ever reason she seems to be their foremost expert on the Ancient language, but it is never made explicit why exactly she had come with them. And it might not be any clearer to Sheppard why she had come, even though he might appreciate it given the circumstances -- Sheppard must be thinking that it is a case of the more being the merrier because it means there are less chances for him to be left alone with McKay. The more people are with them, the more opportunities he has to hide behind them, to keep them between himself and McKay like we have seen him keep a magazine between them previously in Tao of Rodney (S03E14). The last thing he needs is to be stuck in some secluded location like the bottom of the ocean alone with McKay, anticipating not just awkwardness but that McKay might demand some answers from him that he does not have to give.

Sheppard is keeping a tight rein on his own feelings because if he starts having second thoughts about the decision he had made for the both of them for a moment, he might give in to temptation because even though he had ended their relationship, he neither loves nor wants McKay any less. How could he? He had never loved anyone as much as he loves McKay and he has never been as sexually compatible with anyone else either, his decision had been based purely on his desire to keep McKay safe and thinking that he is better equipped at making sure that nothing happens to him if he is not distracted by McKay occupying every one of his thoughts -- as though ending their relationship and no longer being sexually active with him might somehow make him think about McKay less. And there he was, talking about dick with other men and Sheppard seemed to be reaching the end of what ever rope he had -- so chit-chatting with the boss it was. Anything was better than having to listen in on the conversation from the back-compartment -- for so many reasons.

Sheppard had asked Weir a question, and the fact that his question seems to shake Weir out of her reverie just betrays the fact that Sheppard has scarcely said a word to her during their seemingly long journey down. She has been entertaining herself with thinking about whatever -- geothermal drilling platforms or otherwise, and there is for sure a joke about gay sex hiding in there somewhere -- and only now returns her attention to her companions in the jumper. And it is important to note that Sheppard does not actually care about her response because he was not asking to bond with her, actually curious about what she is thinking. He was not offering a penny for her thoughts because he is wanting to make a connection with her -- Sheppard is not interested in her, and he is not interested in pursuing any kind of a romantic relationship with anyone right now.

It had cost him a considerable chunk of his soul to end the relationship he had just been in, he is not looking to repeat the experience any time soon -- maybe ever. In fact, Sheppard has almost certainly tried to talk himself into becoming a celibate hermit for the unforeseeable future, even if he knows that he is not made of stone and is not unaffected by listening McKay talking about dicks, whether or not he ever is savvy to the fact that the innuendo he picks up from McKay is largely unintentional. His comment to Weir seems to communicate the fact that he is uncomfortable with the conversation that had been going on in the back, having invited her to confirm his opinion of what he had heard having been borderline inappropriate, but to his chagrin Weir had not been paying as close attention to it as Sheppard had. Weir is unable to join him in on the condemnation of the conversation in the back like Sheppard had hoped that she would, ever the Mean Girl of Atlantis in having intended to comment on their conversation in a round-about, non-direct way, basically just needing someone to witness him rolling his eyes at them -- at McKay in particular.

But what is really curious about this is that even though Sheppard is affecting a nonchalant air, he is projecting being unperturbed and like he is above the conversation that the people in the back had been having, he still seems to come to McKay's rescue in letting Weir (but everyone else at the same time) in on the fact that they should be closing in on their destination, that it should not be long now. Both Zelenka and Ronon had seemed to pile on McKay about it taking so long for them to get there, basically having started a chant of "Are we there yet, are we there yet?" like the kids at the back of the road trip car that Sheppard had just called them, and for all he cannot openly show himself siding with McKay or tell people to leave off of him, he is doing just that in this roundabout, circumspect way. Sheppard effectively tells everyone using the pretext of chatting pleasantly with the boss about how they would be arriving soon that it won't be long now and that they are almost at their destination so they can lay off McKay and stop dogpiling him now.

For all they are no longer together, Sheppard still feels the need to protect McKay and almost whiteknight for him, even to prove that he has McKay's back way more than this Graydon with a "d" has -- because he was not comfortable watching anyone with a d trying to ingratiate themselves to McKay, to weasel their way too close to him. He knows how brilliant McKay is, how accurate he is in hitting his target and finding the spot. Sheppard knows that better than anyone, thankyouverymuch. And do not miss how they are actually looking for the G-spot here -- the location of the geothermal drilling platform. McKay need only give him instruction and Sheppard would get both of them there, being the power bottom that he is. He knows how to bottom, he is an expert at bottoming -- jumpers to the bottom of the ocean or otherwise. This whole episode is like a vessel for delivering the most blatant, most obvious double-entendre that ever entendred, and they were only just about to get to their destination.

Sheppard: ...I'm getting some readings a couple of hundred feet ahead. Weir: If we did manage to find an alternate and potentially limitless power supply, that would make even this insufferably long search seem worthwhile.

Sheppard reports to Weir and anyone else who might be listening that they had just passed the thermal layer, and while they do seem to arrive at the bottom of the sea since they had been looking for a drilling platform, it is unknown how deep they actually are currently and how it compares to where McKay had been when he had been stuck in a jumper on the bottom of the ocean in Grace Under Pressure (S02E14).

They could be using some of the jumpers they had discovered in the underwater bay in The Return (S03E11) that had probably been designed specifically for underwater travel but at the same time, it does not seem like they are using the shield here (or at least it is not textualized that they are), which they had required to keep the jumper from crushing under the pressure of the sea when Sheppard had been making his way down with Zelenka previously, so even though they seem to have traveled for hours to get here, they might not be as deep as where McKay had been at the time. Being that as it may, Sheppard likely meant to communicate that they had breached the thermocline layer on the other side and had not entered the abyssal zone, given how Sheppard seems to be aware of the different layers of the sea, possibly having read up on them after or even during his rescue of his lover from the bottom of the ocean a year ago.

What is notable here however is that Sheppard and McKay appear to be the only people on board the vessel who are not feeling like it has taken a long time to get down -- lampshaded by the way even Weir comments on the lengthiness of the journey in a good-mannered fashion, seeming most of all trying to be one of the guys. For all Sheppard may have told McKay and Ronon "It's hard enough being in this damned thing for hours without listening to you guys," he does not actually seem to feel tedious but instead is alert and even a little excited, and he does not seem to have felt the time passing as slowly as the others -- and not just on account of him having been "behind the wheel" because there does not seem to have been that much for him to see from the front window. While we get no indication of it either way, it is likely that Sheppard and McKay have been trying to avoid each other recently, they have been giving each other space and a wide berth. But ending their relationship changes nothing about the fact that they really like each other and have always enjoyed each other's company.

There just is no one else out there who gets either one of them as well as the other man does, and both of them must have missed the other. And so even though they are no longer together and do not spend all of their free time, at nights and between missions, with each other, they may have relished this opportunity to spend time with the other man in what ever capacity, even or especially with all these other people there as chaperones, making sure that neither one gets any stupid ideas. Sheppard must be worried especially for his own self-control when it comes to the object of his affection and desire, needing a whole jumper full of other people to make sure that he does not get any ideas. But Sheppard seems very almost happy here as he reports that they are about to arrive, and he cannot have looked like this for the last while. Whether or not he can admit it to himself, McKay makes him happy. McKay is his happy place.

Sheppard: OK, kids, we're here. Well, hopefully it won't take too much longer to power up the station. Weir: That wasn't so hard. Sheppard: Now all I've gotta do is dock this thing and we can find out what this place is all about.

Sheppard refers to them collectively as kids again as he informs the whole jumper that they had finally reached their destination but we can note that he probably means McKay most of all -- he simply still feels uncomfortable speaking his name, feeling like he would be inviting intimacy by it.

It seems like looking for this underwater drilling station had been McKay's idea, this was his mission, and because Sheppard had been looking for the thing where McKay had suggested he might find it, he had been going to where McKay had pointed him, it follows that he would want to inform McKay in particular of them finally having found it. But while he means to inform McKay of them being here, he is also letting the other people know that McKay had been correct and that he is a brilliant scientist who is usually right about what ever he is talking about because there is no one who believes in McKay's abilities more than Sheppard does, and in subtle ways he seems to be having his back here. Realizing that the journey must have felt long to the others Sheppard also comments that he hopes that powering up the station will not take too long, possibly in an attempt at anticipating some future grumbling from the people tired of their way down, hinting here at the fact that it would not be McKay's fault it if did.

But it turns out that Sheppard does not need to worry because as they glide closer to the station it lights up brightly, and while it is more than likely Sheppard's exceptionally strong Ancient gene that the mobile drilling station is responding to, we have to account for the fact that both of them do have the gene and it seems like the others on board do not -- it is the combination of them, the two of them, that light up this secret place under the water, submerged in the bottom of the ocean. The flood lights are bright to the point of being almost blinding, and there is a metaphor here for their relationship -- it may be in the subtext but it is powerful, and it is clear to see for anyone with eyes to look for it. And just like the subtext, it seems like this station had always been there, out of sight but waiting to be discovered.

The episode begins with a view of the city from afar from which the camera is then submerged underwater -- deep in the dark underwater where it seems that Sheppard's team are joined in the submersible jumper with several others for what ever mission they are on. We first get a shot of Weir and Ronon sitting in the jumper hinting at the fact that Weir has taken McKay's usual seat, the seat of the spouse that is also called the shotgun seat, next to Sheppard -- also sometimes seen as the "seat of honour" even though in cars dignitaries are often seated in the back, on the rear right behind the driver. But seating Weir here now and McKay not being seated there currently is not arbitrary, and in fact they call attention to this in the dialogue.

Teyla walks up to McKay who seems to be seated behind Sheppard, in the seat that he had occupied traditionally and before the two of them had started an intimate relationship, the seat that seems to have been reserved for an Ancient science person, with access to scientific instruments in the jumper. McKay seems not to be looking out of the window into the darkness since there does not appear to be much out there for them to look at but is watching Sheppard, looking at the back of his head, perhaps oblivious to the fact that Sheppard may also see him from the reflection in the window. Teyla seems to be inviting herself to sit in his place, which is a curious request to make -- made especially curious by the fact that she does it by calling "shotgun," clearly not understanding what "shotgun" means in the context. Shotgun is meant for the place currently occupied by Weir, being a particularly desired seat, and since we have seen Teyla seated behind Sheppard on many of their missions recently, this suggests both that Teyla has heard McKay call "shotgun" previously while claiming his seat next to Sheppard, and that Teyla feels like McKay had taken up her seat on this mission, and it really is not her problem that someone else had claimed McKay's seat. She should not be relegated to the back of the jumper just because Weir had decided to tag along.

It seems like at some point, after Sheppard and McKay had started their relationship, she and McKay had switched seats, and Teyla had mereley come to claim her own seat now -- from wherever she was coming from. We do not know how long they have been on the way down by this time, albeit they certainly make it seem like it has been a while, and so Teyla may have gotten up to use the restroom or what ever facilities they may or may not have onboard the jumper or even just to stretch her limbs, and McKay may have taken the opportunity to claim her seat when she got up -- using the ancient principle of "you snooze, you lose," or figuring that this was a case of them playing Musical chairs and that the seat was open for anyone to claim once it was vacated. She did not feel like this, however, and all of this just calls attention to the fact that McKay is not seated on what had by this time become his usual seat by Sheppard's side -- Sheppard was no longer extending those boyfriend privileges on him. It seems like Sheppard is petty when it comes to things like that.

McKay reluctantly gets up and gives Teyla (back?) her seat, feeling the need to throw a comment as he leaves, which he seems to direct at Sheppard especially even though he does not seem to expect him to respond -- which he does not. McKay's attitude suggests that this may not even be the first seat he has had to vacate on this journey, and Sheppard may have asked him to give up his seat for Weir earlier. Sheppard loves McKay, that has not changed. He just cannot stand to be around him right now, especially knowing how much he has hurt the other man and unable to deal with his emotions, needing to project about them, needing to lay the blame on McKay for what he had done to him. And so it seems that McKay has no alternative but to move to the back with the unwashed masses, the grunts and redshirts, needing to make it known to everyone that he is doing this under duress.

McKay: What? Zelenka: Nobody said anything. McKay: You don't have to, do you? Look, it's not my fault things are hard to find on the bottom of the ocean. Zelenka: Rodney, you said you knew where it was.

Relegated to the back compartment, McKay takes up a seat that may or may not have been left vacant by Teyla. McKay seems to feel everyone having a negative disposition toward him, responding to what he thinks people are thinking by asking them to spit it out. Zelenka even points out to him that no one had said anything -- and this is another rather clear example of McKay reading people's thoughts.

We had seen McKay develop his seemingly latent ability into full-blown telepathy in Tao of Rodney (S03E14) but we see hints of him catching people's thoughts at least to some extent again and again without anyone thinking there is anything strange going on. Zelenka's comment here seems to lampshade this -- they were doing this on purpose even if it was too subtle for most viewers to pick up on. There is always the chance that McKay is just good at picking up patterns or is able to read people's expressions, possibly due to the hypervigilance he has developed on account of his abusive childhood environment, but it is curious that it keeps happening to him and no one else. And being that he seems able to sense the thoughts of the people around him (but Sheppard's the loudest since he possesses an exceptionally strong Ancient gene), it must feel uncomfortable to the point of being unbearable for him to experience everyone's frustration with him, feeling like everyone is blaming him for the trip taking too long.

McKay: I said I knew its last known location. It is a mobile drilling station, remember? Obviously that's gonna take a few hours. Dex: If we don't find it soon, this is gonna be your last known location. McKay: Oh, zing!

We get some exposition as McKay mentions that they are looking for a moveable drilling platform at the bottom of the ocean, and hence the presence of both Weir and Zelenka on this mission may recall the events of Before I Sleep (S01E15), in which both Zelenka and Sheppard had jumped with Weir from another timeline into this one and had subsequently died at the bottom of the ocean. Their remains, if there is anything left of them, have been beneath the waters for 10 000 years, since the last great battle between the Ancients and the wraith, which is not irrelevant for the events of the episode

Listening in on the conversation, Ronon turns back to make a somewhat unfriendly comment to McKay and McKay makes what seems like an equally hostile response, and we have to address what is going on here. McKay had suffered a tragic loss at the end of the previous episode to which Ronon had seemed sympathetic, and so his treatment of McKay could be seen as callous here -- and it might be by design. We do not know how long it has been since the memorial when Ronon had come to check up on him, but it could be that Ronon is trying to help McKay in his own way, trying to create a sense of normalcy when his break up with Sheppard has thrown all of their lives out of whack. He is not treating McKay like he is fragile, like he is a shrinking violet or a Victorian maiden who needs to be treated delicately.

Ronon could be doing this as a mercy, as callous and annoyed with McKay as he seems. On the other hand, McKay may have been acting particularly prickly recently, and Ronon may be genuinely sick of his antics, telling him that enough is enough and he needs to start acting like a human being again. The third, and I think the most interesting possibility, is that this is the first time Ronon is under water and he is freaking out, he is barely keeping it together because the environment is out of his control in a way it is not when they are in space -- and in this too we may see how similar he and McKay are on a deep level.

We can recall that McKay has a very traumatic memory of being under water and they seem on their way to the bottom now, and this can only remind of his previous experience even though McKay is trying not to show that he is feeling uncomfortable -- and he would not want Sheppard to see him vulnerable right now anyway. McKay had confessed to Sheppard in Echoes (S03E12) that he feels uncomfortable under water, and Sheppard may even be aware of this, even though under the circumstances he cannot react to this in any way, as concerned for McKay as he had seemed then. Ronon's comment of this being or becoming McKay's last known whereabouts also highlights the fact that this is the last known whereabouts of Sheppard and Zelenka from the other timeline. The two of them had perished here, and we are supposed to remember them.

Feeling like everyone has turned on him or that it is pile-up-on-McKay day, feeling the hostility coming at him from all quarters, McKay comments with a sarcastic rejoinder to Ronon, his tone betraying the fact that he too is frustrated by the situation -- quite possibly more frustrated than the others because while they may be bored by what seems to be a wild goose chase, McKay feels all of the blaming him for their current situation, of not having led them directly to their target even though it seems like McKay actually had given them a pretty close ballpark to where they might be able to find this platform that they had obviously found worth checking out, hoping to find information and technology of the Ancients there that might help them with their many and sundry problems.

Feeling like he is being blamed might be familiar and even feel comforting in a way to McKay but he is still acting out under the extreme pressure, unable to keep his thoughts or comments to himself at the best of times. And it must be especially upsetting to him not to have Sheppard's back anymore, not able to count on Sheppard being there for him. McKay may be surrounded by people in this jumper that seems to be filled to the maximum capacity now but he is more alone now even than he had been standing outside alone on the edge of the city in the previous episode. If the others were thinking this would be a long trip, they had no idea how long it was starting to feel like to him.

It seems that Teyla had more or less made peace with Sheppard asking her to "sit this one out" and is now found on the control platform together with Zelenka, and she is the one Sheppard contacts to inform them that they are ready to leave. Being the one in charge while the entire leadership is away, she asks Zelenka to open the jumper bay doors for them to leave, showing us that she is taking Sheppard's invitation to act in a leadership position for the benefit of the people with all due gravity, determined to do the best she can under the circumstances even though likely she would have wanted to accompany them on the mission.

Instead of saying anything pithy as they leave to remark the occasion and to acknowledge the moment that might be their last since there was every chance that this was a one-way trip and they might never be reunited, Sheppard instead chooses to use the moment to make a wiseass remark, as is his wont. He tells Teyla not to have any "wild parties" while they are away, which is what a parent might tell a teenager when they leave them home alone, leave the house for the children that are still learning responsibility. He is obviously making a joke whose context Teyla may not understand since it is a typical thing to tell a teenager in North American popular culture but which may not easily translate to Athosian customs. But she gets the sentiment easy enough, probably also knowing that this is something Sheppard is saying to conceal his genuine emotions in the moment, needing sarcastic distance to what he is really feeling here. We should note that while Sheppard is implying here that she is family, like he had confessed to her in Sateda (S03E04), the implication here is that he thinks of her like a daughter -- obviously doing it for the humour value here, although it is the kind of joke that a man romantically interested in a woman would never make, careful not to give them the wrong impression. However, between best friends, it is Sheppard's way of expressing his affection and appreciation of Teyla knowing that this might be the last thing he ever gets to say to her.

Teyla seems to know and understand her best friend enough to know that he needs to do this lest he be overwhelmed by his emotions, having remarked "Yes, I think even Rodney" to him at the end of The Ark (S03E16), suspecting that Sheppard had meant the opposite of what he had actually said in the moment. Teyla sounds wistful and fond as she acknowledges Sheppard's attempt at lightening the heavy mood, trying to respond in the same spirit, confirming that they would try to restrain themselves (but that she could make no promises), holding down the fort until they would get back. She does tell Sheppard good luck as they leave, which Sheppard does not acknowledge because it may be too close to goodbye for his comfort, even though we may recall that he had told McKay "You too" in First Strike (S03E20). Sheppard could have told Teyla and the others staying back "You too" as well, since it seems like he had invited them to make a potentially lethal jump to hyperspace in the event that they did not return in twelve hours, and they certainly could have used good luck in the city just as they drifted through space for the time they would be away, but it seems like with his game face on, he is too focused on their next step to respond.

Sheppard: Rodney? You ready? McKay: Did I mention that this might not work, and that we could either drop out of hyperspace prematurely and end up stranded in the middle of deep space, or quite possibly be vapourised the moment I touch that--

Having taken the jumper into space through the shield of the city that McKay had shrunk to the size of the central spire -- their emerging from the tip of the shield that looks like a prophylactic again tremendously phallic and recalling ejaculation -- Sheppard then turns his attention to McKay who seems to be still stood at the back of the jumper, ostensibly working on something. It is possible that McKay wanted to put some of the wires away because we can see that there are still wires that seem at the very least hazardous sticking out from different parts of the jumper but more than likely what ever McKay was doing back there, his motivation for keeping himself occupied was to manage his anxiety. He had mentioned to Sheppard earlier that there were a thousand things that could go terribly, terribly wrong and the closer they got to actually having to do it, it seems he had been reviewing them in his mind.

Sheppard asks McKay if he is ready using the intimate address that he often uses when he wants to feel closer to McKay, and his intention here may have been to call McKay to come up front and join him in his seat. Instead of inviting him to do what he wants, Sheppard asked McKay if he was ready, implying that he felt McKay should have been ready, and since they are on the clock and Sheppard had given Teyla a window of twelve hours to attempt a potentially lethal jump to hyperspace with the city, he was aware of time marching on. Instead of answering Sheppard's question, McKay finally emerges from the back of the jumper and seems to start on the same thing as he had tried to share with Ronon earlier, which is that he is feeling trepidation. It is not necessary that he is having second thoughts about the mission or their success because likely he is well beyond second thoughts at this point, but now that it was time for them to test his experimental hyperdrive engine, everything depending on him having managed in figuring out what he had been thinking when he had been way smarter than he feels now, McKay seems to be feeling increasing pressure to succeed.

We have seen before that McKay frequently tries to lower the bar for himself so as not to get crushed under the pressure of the expectations other people put on him, which people frequently misinterpret. Sheppard had called this his "impossible heroics game" in Phantoms (S03E09) and the leader of the criminals that had held them prisoner and demanded that McKay fix the jumper for them in Condemned (S02E05) had described him as the kind of man who makes his every task seem as some impossible achievement so that when he does succeed, his gargantuan efforts are viewed as all the more heroic. While Scotty from Star Trek may have highballed his estimates so that his superiors would be suitably impressed when he finished what ever he was asked to do in record time, this is not and never has been McKay. McKay is struggling with near crippling performance anxiety.

McKay seems to feel the pressure put in him to succeed and how he is not allowed failures or mistakes, as seen back in The Siege (S02E01) when Weir had asked him if he was ready and he had told her that he thought he was ready, Weir incredulously asking him to confirm with "You think?" Sheppard has told him the exact same thing earlier when he had told him that he thought they could make a jump to hyperspace. McKay is not allowed a margin of error because the things he is asked to do frequently hold all of their lives in his hands, and even though he might be the foremost expert on hyperdrives, we might recall that the entire human race has possessed hyperdrive technology for around five years by this time, and McKay himself probably had not been in on the super secret plans to build a battle cruiser from the get-go. Combined with the fact that he is nursing his wounded ego for not being as smart as he had been when he had invented the thing, it is understandable that he would be feeling uncertain now on the eve of the maiden voyage. And the irony of it is that all of the others have such faith in his abilities that it does not even occur to them that he might be feeling insecure and in need of some encouragement, someone telling him that it was going to be alright. Going back to his childhood and his piano teacher who had described him as a fine technical player, it has never been enough for McKay to just try his best.

But while he might be sympathetic to his plight and although Sheppard has often tried to relieve the pressure put on McKay by doing what ever he can to help him, this is not what Sheppard needs to hear right now. He knows they are embarking on a dangerous mission where the chances of their survival are slim even if they survive the initial jump. Sheppard is struggling himself with near debilitating fear that he will get McKay killed with his own actions, and unwittingly McKay has been reminding him of the fact that the man that he loves is in mortal peril and for all his efforts, Sheppard has yet to find any way of ensuring his safety. Sheppard had taken McKay on this mission because it is their last best chance to survive but he was really struggling with his inability to make sure McKay would be safe, and it seems like he finds himself unable to respond to McKay's words, often losing his ability to speak when he is emotionally overwhelmed and rarely as overwhelmed when McKay is volleying at him all the ways in which he might die due to Sheppard's invitation in the next while. If McKay is barely keeping himself together for his anxiety, Sheppard is barely keeping himself together for his fear.

Dex: Just answer the damned question! McKay: Yeah, I'm ready. Sheppard: Good. Sit down. Here goes. McKay: OK. Opening hyperspace window in three... two... one.

Possibly feeling grouchy and impatient on account of his injury or deciding to stand up for Sheppard who seems unable to respond to McKay's tirade in any discernible way, Ronon then snaps at McKay to answer the question instead of talking around it. They were on a mission and Sheppard needed a yes or no response from McKay so that they might proceed, and unlike before when Ronon had asked him if he was ready, McKay had not even led in with yes or no but had started circling the answer from somewhere on the outskirts of the issue. While Ronon is unable to see Sheppard's face, he may know him well enough to understand that he is unable to defend himself when it comes to McKay impacting him emotionally, and so because Ronon seems to have taken it as his mission to protect Sheppard, it is possible that he is protecting him also in this.

It seems that Ronon is successful in jamming McKay's spiraling anxiety from building up and having been reminded of what they were supposed to be doing here, he does as he had been invited to do by Ronon: he answers Sheppard's question. We see that he is trying to hide his embarrassment as he finally gives Sheppard the affirmative answer he had been looking for, feeling put in his place. We should note that there is a curiously effeminate edge to his tone and body language here, he seems almost demure as he he shuffles past Ronon to get to his place next to Sheppard as invited to do by him, as though he was exhibiting fawning behaviour in response to the aggression of his tone. it seems like Ronon's words had made him conscious of his own behaviour and forced him to review his actions against a brutally honest mirror, and he may have been reminded of Sheppard's words to stop running his mouth to make the situation worse, to not be so negative -- or to be negative after they have done this thing, like Sheppard had advised him to do in Submersion.

McKay takes his seat next to Sheppard, and while we had seen him occupy this seat when the two of them had been together since this seems to be one of the "boyfriend privileges" Sheppard likes to extend to his partner -- and he likes being able to see McKay's face when they are on missions anyway, the two of them communicating with near preternatural expediency on more levels than just their words -- this is the first time we see him seated there since Sheppard had ended their relationship. There had been a prolonged and very pointed scene about the sitting arrangements and how McKay was not allowed to sit next to Sheppard anymore in Submersion, and Sheppard inviting McKay to sit back down next to him is actually also symbolic of Sheppard inviting McKay back to an intimate connection with him -- it is the least he can do now that this might be some of their last moments alive. Sheppard glances at McKay as he says "Here goes," taking that "one last look" at the person he loves most in the world. Having been reminded of the dangers, Sheppard is slowly starting to come around to realize that he does not want to be doing this alone. Having calmed down himself, McKay then does the countdown and we should remark on the fact that the two of them make this jump together. It takes both of their efforts and them working together to get them to the other side.

Weir: Congratulations, Rodney. Your hyperdrive worked. McKay: Unfortunately, believe it or not, Zelenka was actually right. We've burned up way more power on the jump than we expected. Dex: What are you saying? We can't get back? McKay: No, no. What I am saying is that the--

As they emerge on the other side of the wormhole and Sheppard takes them toward the replicator home-world under the guise of the cloak of invisibility that may also hide them from attempts to scan for their location using electronic means, Weir congratulates McKay on the success of his invention.

We may recall that it had been to Weir that McKay had presented his invention back in Tao of Rodney (S03E14), having handed her memory sticks filled with things he had figured out to save them for posterity when he thought he was dying and was feverishly trying to write down all the thoughts he was having when his thinking had been augmented by the Ancient machine that had super-charged his genetics. His work on the experimental hyperdrive engine had not been central but something he had done on the side, busywork to keep himself from having to face his feelings and thoughts on mortality, the fact that he had actually been dying. It was fortunate for them all that McKay seems to have developed a tendency to dissociate via focusing on the work perhaps already when he had been a child when his parents had hated each other and blamed him, his misfortune frequently saving the day.

Not used to receiving praise and congratulations, much more accustomed to having to fight for his place in the world, McKay is immediately suspicious and check to see whether they had actually succeeded -- and he quickly discovers that the test run of the engine and the maiden voyage of the hyperdrive had not gone without a hitch. He mentions that Zelenka had been right -- not to sing Zelenka's praises but seemingly in an attempt at shifting the blame on him somewhat. Since Zelenka had anticipated the problem he is implying that he should have helped him fix the problem, and to be sure, if they had had any more time to work on it, together they might have been able to solve the problem. But as it is, it was too late to cry about the spilled milk now -- they had made the jump and it had burned up more energy than he and Zelenka had hoped, and he seems to be hearing Zelenka's unspoken "I told you so" in his mind even without the man being there to actually say it to him.

In fact, one of the last things Zelenka had been saying to him was "Now, as long as we don't burn up all of the power on the initial jump..." and McKay had stopped him from finishing the thought because he did not want to hear about it. McKay knew this to be a possibility but he had hoped that it would not be an issue, and it seems like he had even tried to warn Sheppard of this maybe being an issue who had not wanted to hear about it either, and so here they were. Ronon asks him whether this means that they are now stuck here without means of getting back and although McKay's first impulse is to deny it because it is too horrible for him to even contemplate (and because he is reluctant to accept blame for their failure on account of being extremely sensitive to being blamed, feeling like people are blaming him even when no one is blaming him -- superego being truly his super power like Sheppard had suggested in Tao of Rodney (S03E14) albeit in the Freudian sense of an internalized feeling of being shamed for his actions). But as soon as he has had a moment to gather his bearings he is forced to admit that to be true. They are stuck with no means of getting back.

McKay: Actually, that's exactly what I'm saying. I suppose once we steal the ZPM, I could utilise its power. I'd need to make sure I don't overload the main-- Sheppard: Let's just take this one step at a time, alright? First things first: let's worry about getting the ZPM. McKay: Right.

But while McKay recognizes that they are in quite a pickle, ever the guy who knows "exactly how screwed" they are, testament to the fact that he had taken Sheppard's words to heart in 38 Minutes (S01E04) when he had tried to reassure McKay that "There's plenty of time to solve this thing, but you've got to stop using your mouth and start using your brain," he then tries immediately to start solving the problem. He knows that he had brought them into this trouble and he was the one who needed to get them out of it, the only one who could possibly solve the problem of fixing the hyperdrive and the power issue to get them back. It also immediately occurs to him that if they succeed in their mission, which they are all hoping to do, he might be able to utilize the nigh limitless vacuum energy of the ZPM to get them back since making a jump into hyperspace with a ZPM is no problem -- the problem he needs to solve now is how to convert the power into something that the engine could run on.

Likely feeling overwhelmed as he listens to McKay try to formulate the "How Screwed We Are" report in his mind, trying to find all the ways and angles that they are in trouble but also ways in which he might get them out of this trouble, Sheppard pumps the breaks and suggests that they need to take this one step at a time. It sounds to him like they are going to need the ZPM for McKay to figure out a way for them to get back and since the ZPM is what they had come for, it seems to him like their first course of action should be to find it and then worry about the rest. Sheppard does not want to borrow trouble since they have quite enough trouble as it is. Note the way he rolls his eyes with his full body as McKay confirms that they cannot get back, having been dealing with one thing after the other ever since Ellis had first parked the Apollo on their orbit. It is not McKay he resents but the fact that McKay is always reminding him of how much danger McKay is in, and even though Sheppard does appreciate him warning him about the potholes in the road, he dreams of being able to ride his bike with his head up high watching the sky if just for a short moment secure in the knowledge that McKay was just behind him, holding on with his hands tightly wrapped around his midriff.

Being the first one to get inside his jumper since Sheppard had been giving his speech at the doorway, he is also the first to start up his systems. As he readies himself, he is also explaining things to the others and giving them instructions, informing them that he has even loaded flight information for all of them -- whether he does it now as he speaks or he had some time to prearrange for this when he and McKay had been waiting for everyone with the gene to join them in the jumper bay. It seems like Sheppard's plan was not just to take them out in the jumpers and start blasting things with the drones (and they must have restocked the jumpers with drones from the planet of The Tower (S02E15), even though we never see them revisit the planet again) but he had devised an actual plan of attack, showing his strategic competence.

McKay glances at the plan as Sheppard sends the information to all of the jumpers, and we see Sheppard's thought unfolding on all of their HUDs. Likely McKay is able to take the information easier than most of the people since he actually has clocked more hours behind the proverbial wheel of a jumper than most people -- possibly more even than the professional pilots since as a member of the flagship gate team he is simply out in the galaxy more often than most people. McKay comments on the output sent by Sheppard as looking like "the old video game Asteroids," referring to the Atari arcade game Asteroids (1979) that had come out when McKay was precisely the age to play it, and in fact it may easily have been the first computer game he had ever played. However, we should note that McKay being reminded of the game does not necessarily mean that he had been a child when he had played it -- he might be recalling more recent memories from his teenage or college days.

Regardless, we have noted before how McKay seems to share personal information as he attempts to make friends with people, having explicitly told Carter that this is how he tries to bond with others. While his intention may not be explicitly to bond here, he is feeling very unsure of himself and may be seeking to connect with Sheppard, who had just been giving him a severe case of the cold shoulder just before they boarded the jumpers. Making a comment on popular culture that he knows Sheppard would likely be familiar with may be his attempt at drawing Sheppard into engaging with him -- and it seems to work.

Sheppard: Well, whatever works for you. McKay: I was terrible at Asteroids. I think I actually scored zero once. Sheppard: Well, there's only one way to go, and that's up. Alright, everyone, let's go. [I'll] open the Jumper Bay doors.

Sheppard is also of an age to likely have played the game as a child, and he responds to McKay's comment -- that really did not require a response -- that it is fine if McKay is reminded of the game, what ever works for him. Sheppard's comment is spoken in a good-natured tone as Sheppard is trying to maintain morale among everyone, even though Sheppard's comment makes it seem like he is personally above such mental crutches. Sheppard's tone implies that it is fine if McKay is reminded of the old video game but he is not reminded of it because he is, as ever, too cool for school -- and possibly pretending like he was not such a nerd as to have wasted his life playing the game when he had been a kid, anyway. As a professional pilot, Sheppard does not need anything that would "work for him" because he is able to pilot a vessel professionally. We should note that Sheppard's comment is not a confession of him not having also been reminded of the game but it is an admission of the fact that he knows what McKay is making a reference to. Sheppard knows the game just as McKay does, he gets the reference.

However, Sheppard may be on the level of personally not having been reminded of Asteroids -- even though his family was wealthy enough that he might even have had it at home for all we know -- because it is possible that Sheppard had actually been reminded of another game that had come out around the same time, Galaxian (1979). The difference is that Asteroids never had much of a story -- the player shoots at asteroids and the occasional flying saucer to make their way through. In Galaxian, the player is protecting the Earth from invaders. Both also built on the success of Space Invaders (1978) that had come out the year before and which also drew from the film Star Wars (1977) that may have given Sheppard the idea of how to navigate them through an asteroid field originally, even if in the game one does not control a space ship but a laser cannon, resembling Sheppard's original idea of shooting the asteroids from the Chair. While he does not explicitly say it, it is possible that Sheppard himself requires a specific motivation for being able to do this -- what actually "works" for him is knowing that he is defending his home and the man that he loves.

Because McKay seems to take Sheppard's response -- possibly more his tone than what he actually says -- as an invitation to keep talking, having confessed to Sheppard in Tao of Rodney (S03E14) that not talking makes him anxious, he further comments that he was terrible at Asteroids and had even scored a zero once, which is a feat in and of itself. Since playing at an arcade had required the player for pay actual money to play, actually being so bad as to score a zero would seem to take some effort. While McKay's intention seems to be once more to lower the bar for himself -- to pessimistically suggest that he sucks so that he might be pleasantly surprised later, to rather sell himself short to come through at the end rather than to make anyone think he might actually had some skills only to fail miserably, to be "negative" the way Sheppard had told him he was being in Submersion (S03E18) -- this is exactly what Sheppard does not want to hear from him right now. Not only does he not want to think about McKay failing and possibly dying even though McKay seems to have been reminding him of the chance of this outcome all day long but he also knows that the other people, the ones who have much less experience in flying the jumpers than McKay does, really do not need to be hearing things like this right now.

Sheppard is desperately trying to keep up their morale, and while McKay might have a point in lowering the bar for himself, he is doing the others a disservice, which Sheppard seems to get. His comment about "Well, there's only one way to go, and that's up" is almost uncharacteristically encouraging, and he does not mean to encourage McKay so much as everyone else who might have been listening to McKay's words. For all McKay may be under the impression that it is just the two of them (and for all we know, his mental connection to the jumper has created him a private channel to Sheppard), Sheppard seems to be speaking to everyone, trying to encourage them to give it a go since he knows they are out of options. Everyone has to do their part now even if he has to drag them through the experience kicking and screaming, and so while it does not come naturally to him, he is trying to be an understanding and compassionate leader.

Sheppard is speaking softly here, but this is not the same kind of soft tone that he uses when he is alone with McKay -- this is a purposeful manipulation of everyone else but McKay to essentially ignore what McKay had just said, and he is trying to ignore what McKay had just said himself, as difficult as he finds it. He needs to focus on what they are doing and he needs everyone to focus on what they are doing, and so while he is not telling McKay to keep his thoughts to himself, he is praying that he gets on with the programme and stops making it harder for the newbies.

As an aside, the video game Asteroids was featured in the music video for the song Caught Up in You (1982) by 38 Special that is interesting in that while the main storyline is your average early 80's small-town bar love story, it has a side story of two guys arm wrestling who seem to be just as "caught up" on each other as the main characters, if not more. The game is featured in the music video as your typical date night activity, whether or not it had ever served as such for McKay (and if it had, it is obvious that Sheppard does not want to hear about it). For all the lyrics refer to the object of the man's attraction as "little girl," they do resemble what Sheppard has been feeling for McKay:

I never knew there'd come a day When I'd be saying to you "Don't let this good love slip away Now that we know that it's true" Don't, don't you know the kind of man I am No, I said I'd never fall in love again But it's real and the feeling comes shining through And if ever comes a day When you should turn and walk away, oh no I can't live without you So caught up in you, little girl You're the one that's got me down on my knees So caught up in you , little girl That I never want to get myself free

Sheppard: Come on, guys, stay in formation. We can't afford any gaps. Yeah, there you go. See? Not so hard. Teyla: Jumpers, you should be in range in three, two, one. Sheppard: Fire at will.

As they all emerge into space and we see the jumpers easily penetrate the shield as they emerge from the jumper bay, Sheppard is trying to direct them and get everyone to get on with the plan. He watches the jumpers on his HUD like they were pixels on a video game screen, displeased at how long it seems to take everyone to get to the formation he wants them in, finding it difficult to steer the jumpers with their minds since most of them have probably only done this in simulation and a few times in the real deal, even though the doctor had been the only one to confess to it earlier.

Sheppard explains to everyone, referring to them as "guys," that they cannot afford any gaps, that they need to form a united front so as not to let any asteroids get through. Sheppard is clearly trying to keep an upbeat, optimistic attitude even though that is far from what he actually feels here -- this is an act he is putting up for the benefit of the others, thinking that in the best case scenario he might even start believing in his own words. As they get into the formation that Sheppard had planned for them, we note that they are mostly in one single row except for a few that are doubled, some jumpers flying on top of each other -- and as we later see, one of such doubled rows is McKay's. There is absolutely no reason for Sheppard to have pre-planned for McKay to have been at one of the doubled rows (even though he had planned for McKay to break formation earlier than the others, since both he and Levine, who is one of the only actual pilots among them, seem to be flying on top of each other) because he is one of their most experienced pilots. Surely he should have made the most inexperienced pilots double up for each other to double their chances of hitting asteroids.

And yet Sheppard had arranged for McKay to fly doubled up with his next most accomplished pilot in the middle of the formation, not to maximize their efficiency (he seems to be wasting their resources here) but to maximize McKay's safety. It seems like McKay never catches on to what Sheppard is doing and most of the audience will surely never catch on to what Sheppard is doing even though it is right there on the screen, out in the open. Sheppard is taking a risk by insisting that McKay participates in the mission when he had tried to get himself off but at the same time, Sheppard is making McKay as safe as he is able here. Sheppard is actually expending considerable resources to keeping McKay safe even as they are trying to save the city, their home. But in everything that Sheppard does here, we are able to see the same thing as we see at the end of the season -- McKay is Sheppard's first priority.

Sheppard: Nice shooting, people. McKay: There's too many of them. They're coming in too fast. We're not gonna get them all. Sheppard: Alright, double up. Fire four apiece. McKay: I can't control four drones at the same time! Sheppard: Well, just concentrate.

Sheppard gives the order for everyone to "fire at will" just as Teyla informs them that they are in range, and she seems to have taken over the operations on the control station since there does not seem to be anyone else that can do the job currently. Sheppard gives them some positive reinforcement by commending their shooting, and it is obvious that Sheppard is trying to keep up the morale and maintain a positive atmosphere particularly because he knows that he is working with beginners and largely inexperienced pilots.

Sheppard is not being entirely truthful but seems to have figured that it is better that everyone feels like they are doing something right and that they are contributing rather than to focus on their failures or errors. This does not come naturally to Sheppard who seems to be the kind of leader who leads by example but who demands a lot from his people because he is willing to do the work himself. Sheppard does not do genuine emotions and he is not being genuine with his encouragement here -- he is being calculating and phony, figuring that this might get the job done and hence forcing himself to stay positive. It is rarely if ever that McKay has heard Sheppard speak like this -- and Sheppard's own military people may be just as puzzled by his positive tone here -- but what ever McKay might think about it, he keeps to himself for once. It seems like most of his focus is going to trying to keep on top of the asteroids coming at them anyway, and we have noted before how McKay seems to use performing tasks to dissociate from his emotions, and so this may be just what he had needed in the moment -- too focused on the task to actually feel fear.

None of the other people make comments, likely not feeling comfortable enough to speak out of turn or the task requiring their entire concentration (because most of the people had not been military and the doctor who had explained Weir's condition to Ronon earlier had certainly not shied away from backtalk earlier) rather than any real understanding of military hierarchy and what it is like being out on missions. McKay needs to talk things out and we know that Sheppard knows this about him, and so he seems to keep up a very even and soothing dialogue with McKay, speaking to him but trying to manage his whole flock at the same time. He is telling McKay things that might benefit McKay but which he is also hoping might benefit the others -- and we have seen Sheppard try to manage McKay's anxiety in intense situations before, Sheppard turning McKay's attention to himself so that he might forget to be afraid. It is possible for Sheppard to manage his own fear at the same time because as much as he worries for McKay's safety, McKay also seems to make him feel braver and much of the time, he needs McKay to do things with him.

Sheppard instructs McKay to fire four drones at the same time, seeming to trust that he will be able to pull through this stunt that really seems to require some concentration, a splitting of the focus. It is notable here that Sheppard instructs McKay on what to do and he then complies immediately, seeming to take instruction from Sheppard as easy as breathing, like it was natural for him to do what Sheppard tells him to do, especially with this tone of voice. We have noted before that Sheppard seems to be a power bottom who may give their partner a lot of instruction on what they want them to do, and this may not be the first time that Sheppard has invited McKay to concentrate on doing something to please him. We see McKay put his game face on as he focuses on ejaculating his drones, this intense focus something that Sheppard has likely seen on his face in a more intimate setting before.

McKay: Damn it! Sheppard: Don't worry about it. You were right -- can't get everything on the first pass.

McKay misses one of the four asteroids he was aiming for, cursing as he looks at "the one that got away" floating past him toward the city. McKay is beating himself up, and again we may note that he is the only one who comments on his failure while more than likely other people had also failed -- whether or not they had also taken up Sheppard's suggestion to try four at a time.

It could be that Sheppard had intended his advise for everyone or it could be that McKay was the only one of them he deemed expert enough in steering a jumper to even try taking on four at a time but since McKay berates himself, again Sheppard seems compelled to make a soothing comment on it, to speak kindly to McKay about not taking it so seriously. Sheppard is inviting McKay not to beat himself up about it, and whether or not he would ordinarily speak like this to him, he is trying to be as encouraging as he can -- likely for the benefit of the others. McKay has long longed to hear Sheppard say things like this to him -- he has long longed for anyone to say things like this to him because from what we had learned of his childhood, not just his parents but also his piano teacher had made him feel like nothing he did was ever good enough.

McKay is much more used to people blaming him and telling him when he has failed to live up to their expectation, and Sheppard himself has a tendency to urge McKay to do what he does faster, so it is possible that McKay does not even know how to receive kindness of this nature. McKay is not used to being treated with silk gloves the way Sheppard attempts to treat the people that may be flying a jumper now for the first time, and McKay may or may not realize why Sheppard is suddenly being so unlike himself. What Sheppard is telling him is good advice and it is common sense and it is the kind of thing that people are supposed to say to make others feel better so that they would not be discouraged and would try again, like piano teachers or coaches that care about the child rather than just the outcome -- even though McKay is unlikely to have experienced a lot of encouragement when he had been forced to participate in the ParticipACTION programme, as he had mentioned to Teyla in Vengeance (S03E19).

Sheppard even tells McKay that he was right that they cannot get all the asteroids on the first pass, reframing what McKay had said about how they won't be able to get them all as a positive, even though McKay had said nothing about the "first pass." This is the kind of thing that McKay needs to hear deep in his soul, and he needs to hear this kind of thing from someone who loves him and accepts him just the way he is -- he needs to hear this from Sheppard -- and the thing of it is that while Sheppard often thinks this, he cannot bring himself to say things like this to McKay most of the time, too afraid of showing authentic emotion, too afraid of what people might think about him if he allows them to see him for who he is. But while Sheppard might often think like this about McKay, he is not being authentic here -- he is trying to manipulate him and the others into doing their best. Sheppard is pretending to be the kind of leader that he thinks the situation calls for because the continued existence of their home depends on it, he is rising to the occasion so that others might rise to the occasion, because needs must. He is not this guy but he is making himself be this guy for now because it is, like McKay had reminded him earlier, do or die right now. He thinks that he has to be this guy right now or they won't make it, and there is literally nothing that he would not do to keep McKay safe. Nothing at all.

McKay: Now what? Sheppard: On my mark, you, Bolton and Levine are gonna break formation and head back to the city -- take out anything that we missed. McKay: Oh, that sounds important. Maybe someone else should-- Sheppard: Break!

For what ever reason, McKay asks Sheppard "Now what?" when they are still in the middle of the asteroid field, making their way through. His question seems unconnected either to the one asteroid that flew past him or having enough drones to keep going forward, perhaps just needing some further instruction from Sheppard on what to do here.

And curiously, Sheppard then invites him to "head back to the city" together with Bolton, who ever he is, and Levine -- who is a USAF Captain that must be the second most experienced pilot among them, who has clocked hours piloting a jumper before (as seen previously in The Ark (S03E16) where he had brought in Lorne and Beckett to join them in the hollowed out moon base) and who had also served on the Daedalus previously as see in The Intruder (S02E02) and who, based on his age, may have even more piloting experience than Sheppard has himself, who may have clocked more hours inside actual flight craft than he has. This is the guy that Sheppard orders to "head back" with McKay -- and the two of them must be his most accomplished jumper pilots, and for all we know, Bolton is one as well since there had been a few military personnel among the people gathered in the jumper bay earlier. This is damned curious.

Now, Sheppard does give them a mission -- to take out "anything that we missed," as though that is the reason he is sending them back. Sheppard is certainly making it seem as though this is some kind of special task that he is entrusting with McKay and his number one guy. Even though he had made it seem earlier like McKay was the worst of the worst by implying that if McKay could do it, so could everyone else, now he is conversely making it seem like McKay is the only one he could possibly trust with this important mission, and him sending Levine back with McKay only reinforces the idea. McKay even comments that he thinks this sounds important, too important for someone like him to take care of, even though the actual task Sheppard had given McKay here was to return to the city. His order is for them to get back and take out anything they see on the way, not to take out things as they head back.

Sheppard had wanted McKay inside a jumper that is a small tube-shaped object protected by a force field as they make their way through the asteroid field but it seems like most of all, Sheppard would like McKay to be protected by two force fields at the same time. It seems like Sheppard had been keeping McKay protected by having his most accomplished pilot double up for McKay, and he had calculated his timing so that if he sends McKay back now that we will be protected by the jumper and by the city's shield while they go through the worst of it -- and Sheppard had figured all of this out while devising a plan for how to save the city. It is only when McKay is back safely that Sheppard knows that he will be able to focus fully on taking care of their problem because to him, McKay's safety is always his primary concern. They do not state if explicitly and yet it is there for the seeing.

Levine: McKay, you've a big one on your left. McKay: I see it. Levine: Impact in ten seconds.

Even though McKay had made his opinion on whether he should be the one entrusted with such an important mission known to Sheppard and Sheppard had actually once more offered to explain himself to McKay, just as soon as Sheppard gives the actual order -- he tells them to break -- McKay does as he is told. The other two -- and we may assume that Bolton is likewise military, possibly even USAF -- naturally follow Sheppard's orders without any backtalk, even though Sheppard seems to very rarely issue orders even to his own men. We cannot be sure whether Sheppard had used his possibly augmented ability to push people into doing what he wants them to do here or McKay could just hear from Sheppard's tone of voice that he would brook no arguments at the moment, but he complies immediately anyway. McKay lives to do what Sheppard wants him to do.

As military men, the others know to do what they are told when they are so ordered by a superior officer, and so it is natural for them to comply. And McKay seems to know when he is expected to follow orders also, even if Sheppard gives them only rarely, knowing when Sheppard is being serious about it. We can note that McKay actually seems to take point here, and in many ways McKay actually is Sheppard's XO, even though in the case of military hierarchy it is actually Lorne who seems to officially have this role -- and we may recall that Lorne had actually stayed back with the Apollo. But because McKay is in Sheppard's gate team, he may even be considered as Sheppard's right hand man by the people of Atlantis, whether or not they have any insight into their personal relationship -- and for certain there has been talk. But we can see that Captain Levine seems to view McKay has being in the lead here, and he furthermore seems to understand his own role in keeping McKay safe, the way everyone who serves under Sheppard seems to understand their assignment. Their first priority is keeping McKay safe, and so Levine gives McKay a heads up on a "big one" that is near him and that seems to be heading toward the city -- toward one of the spires that is not protected by the shield currently.

McKay takes the asteroid out almost at the last second, again showing how proficient he is as a jumper pilot even though he does not have the confidence and may actually not even realize how good he has gotten ever since he had first gotten behind the controllers in The Defiant One (S01E12), whether or not he is still able to fly in a straight line. McKay goes toward the spire and then directs the jumper to pull up, seeming to exert a lot of mental energy as he directs the vessel with his mind, and we may notice how phallic the spire is and how him pulling up along the shaft and then breaking free from the tip resembles ejaculation. McKay seems relieved as he pulls up in a way that recalls a man who had just found release even seeming to moan a little as he releases his breath, and this is not an accident. It may not be Sheppard himself but his proxy who is with McKay when he experiences this but this is homoerotic in the extreme. We get to see McKay's O-face here -- and for sure Sheppard has seen this face before, even if he does not get to see it now.

Sheppard: Alright, we're through. Now we're gonna double back, pick up any stragglers.

While McKay and Sheppard's most accomplished pilots are heading back to the city while they are still in the middle of the asteroid field in the strangest strategic decision ever, Sheppard and the others continue clearing a path for the city. Sheppard gets the rest of the flight through the asteroid field and figuring they had done the best that they could, it is finally time for them to turn back and "pick up any stragglers," betraying the fact that it had always been his plan to actually for all of them to make a sweep on the way back, for them to pick up the stragglers together.

Sending McKay back with his next best pilot had not been about picking up stragglers, it had always been about getting McKay out of the way of danger without letting him in on the fact that Sheppard was keeping him safe. McKay is an asset to the expedition even divorced of his personal importance to Sheppard, so it only makes sense for Sheppard to want to keep him out of danger but even though Sheppard's repeated decisions to safeguard McKay's life could easily be explained, it is never textualized. Sheppard does not just try to hide how hard he is trying to keep McKay safe from others and even from the audience -- he is most of all trying to hide it from McKay himself on account of what had happened in The Siege (S02E01), when Sheppard had abandoned McKay to sacrifice his own life to save McKay, still under the impression that it had been the saving of his life that had upset McKay instead of the abandonment, the discarding of his agency in something that had very much involved him.

And Sheppard may correctly anticipate that McKay would be upset if he knew how much effort and resources Sheppard is putting into keeping him safe like he was some kind of a princess or a damsel in distress -- as afraid as he is, he wants to stand by Sheppard and face danger together. But this is the best Sheppard can do. He can take McKay out for a spin but he is going to make sure that he is protected at the end of the day because Sheppard knows that he will not survive losing McKay. Having only just been reminded of how he lost his mother had only strengthened his resolve.

Lorne asks McKay if he can hear him and McKay responds with "Five by five," which is known to many viewers as something of a catch-phrase of the character Faith from Buffy The Vampire Slayer but which seems to be an old radio communications term that has been adopted by the US military to signal readability and strength of communications. It is not a measure of five aspects of radio communication but instead determines the quality of the communication on a scale from 1-5 where 5 is the best quality. We have heard Sheppard use terms such as "negative" and "positive" during radio communications before, and it is entirely possible that he has actually trained McKay in the use of military parlance to be used in connection with radio communication since so much of what they do seems to depend on clear communication via ear pieces. Saying "five by five" has less chance to get distorted over radio signal than any single syllable affirmation might do, especially with people like Sheppard who seem to slur their words in intense situations.

McKay continues using "perfectly appropriate military parlance" as he then approaches Zelenka, now in the ZPM room monitoring the output like McKay had told Sheppard, asking him to give him a "Go or No Go" instead of asking whether he is ready. And Zelenka similarly responds with giving McKay his "Go," further elaborating that everything is in the "green." We had heard not just Zelenka but McKay himself make sure that everything was "green" in McKay and Mrs Miller (S03E08) that had caused his little sister to mock him with "Everything's green." Zelenka had stage whispered to her at the time that "He likes to do the checklist," which not only shows the care McKay takes in making sure that everything is as it should be when they are conducting dangerous, potentially universe-destorying experiments, but also displays how his time in Atlantis has changed him. It was obvious that Jeannie had never met this McKay who made sure that everything was "green" since she does not know that his diligence has come at the cost of human lives. McKay has had to send back too many of his men in zinc coffins to take his role lightly, and so we can see how much care he is putting into making sure that everything is ready before they do this.

McKay asks Sheppard if he is ready last of all not because he is the least important part of the plan but because he is the most important part, he is vital to the success of their endeavour. McKay had asked him earlier if he was sure he could do this, seeming to check in with how Sheppard was feeling about it, whereas not he simply asks if Sheppard is ready. He could have asked Sheppard similarly to give him a "Go or no Go" but instead he approaches him in a more personal way, still seeming to want to make sure that Sheppard actually is ready to do this, not just that he is set to go. He knows that Sheppard is "Go," since he had basically made sure that Sheppard was ready when he had left him, but he needs to make sure that Sheppard is with him on this, that both of them are still feeling like they are doing the right thing.

We can also note that Sheppard does not respond with an unequivocal affirmation but instead tells McKay that he is "as ready as he'll ever be," allowing the other man to hear his uncertainty and trepidation, still being open and vulnerable toward McKay. While McKay knows that he is not alone since there is a whole room watching him talk to these other people, McKay is in Sheppard's ear and to him it may feel like he is still (mostly) alone with McKay, and he may even prefer to feel this way. We also see Sheppard's chest lift as he takes in a ragged breath, clearly feeling fear but trying to calm himself the way we have seen that he knows to do likely on account of his past as a test pilot. This was not his first rodeo but this was inarguably the biggest.

McKay: OK, Major, make sure she's moving as slow as possible. Lorne: Are you sure we shouldn't just lob this thing at the satellite? McKay: No, they'd easily be able to navigate back into position. This is still our best bet. Lorne: Copy that. Package is away and on course. We're heading back to the Apollo. Good luck.

Content that everything was as it should be, McKay then invites Lorne to make sure that he and his men lob the asteroid toward the beam as slowly as possible because they needed it to be as stationary as they could make it instead of just making it pass in front of the beam, there one moment and gone the next.

The gate and the asteroid appear to be in the upper atmosphere of the planet but as a Physicist McKay knows that according to Newton's first law of motion, "an object in motion remains in motion at constant speed and in a straight line unless acted on by an unbalanced force." He knows that once they nudge the asteroid forward, it will keep going forward at constant speed since there is nothing to countermand its momentum. Whether or not Sheppard is listening in on what McKay is communicating with the others, this is surely something that he has heard McKay say before in another, more intimate context, since we have noted before that the two of them seem to run on fundamentally different times and that McKay prefers to be slow and methodical also in the bedroom. McKay may have demanded that they go slow to Sheppard's enduring frustration, even if he has started seeing the merits of it during their relationship, just as McKay has started seeing the merits of occasionally going fast and loose, coming to meet somewhere in the middle.

Before complying with McKay's command, Lorne asks him to confirm whether he should not just lob the asteroid toward the gate itself, to unsettle it so that it might shift the beam from off of Atlantis. This may or may not be something that McKay and Sheppard had thought already as they had gone over the contingencies, and McKay tells Lorne that the replicators would only navigate their satellite back into position, probably only giving them a reprieve of seconds or minutes at the most. He calls the plan that he and Sheppard had come up with their "best bet," which acknowledges the fact that what they are doing is a gamble. They are hoping that this will work but they cannot be sure of the outcome, which is why characters have been telling each other good luck, and we hear Lorne wish them good luck here, likely intending it for Atlantis as a whole but definitely also means it for McKay specifically as the guy who is supposed to pull this through. McKay does not respond to him at all just like Sheppard had not responded to Weir telling him good luck earlier, both of them perhaps feeling like the wishes were general and that they were not personally in a place to be accepting such wishes on behalf of the operations. There is a difference between all the other times good luck is wished in the episode in that Sheppard and McKay had intended theirs for each other personally.

McKay: OK, calculating travel time based on current speed. That's it. We're good. Here goes nothing.

McKay seems to be tracking the asteroid in real time using the short range scanners of Atlantis, and he does some last minute calculations based on the current speed of the asteroid -- and we should acknowledge the fact that this is somewhat simple maths where he seemed to need Zelenka's assistance with the more complicated maths they had done earlier, and had even admitted that Zelenka was checking his coding earlier. And while it is entirely possible that McKay could not anticipate the asteroid breaking up when it does, there is also the off chance that he actually makes an error in his calculations here just on account of maths really not being his strongest suit.

But as the plan is now underway, McKay tells the others "Here goes nothing" and presses some button that starts bringing the city back from the bottom of the ocean where he and Zelenka had submerged it earlier, and the emersion of the city seems to be a much faster process than taking it under had been. Even accounting for us getting a speed-run of the process, it does not seem to take them hours to bring the city up from the depths where it is entirely possible that the way down had taken up to two hours of which we had only seen a fraction. Regardless, all of them are feeling the city shaking up around them as it slowly emerges from the depths, using up power provided by the underground drilling platform to get it to the surface and closer to the deadly laser bearing down on them from the skies, just as it had done in Rising (S01E02) and that Zelenka had recounted in his video message in Letters from Pegasus (S01E17) due to the failsafe that the Ancient scientist Janus had built into the system to make sure that they would not drown with the city, only in a more controlled fashion this time. McKay had mentioned to Weir that it felt like they had come a full circle when he had brought the city down earlier but it is actually now that they had come the full 380, all the way around.

McKay: Asteroid is entering the beam. We're on the surface. Fire the stardrive.

They seem to be using the power of the mobile drilling station all the way until they reach the surface since the umbillicals would be able to provide the city with power up until it leaves the sea. Keeping an eye on all the moving parts McKay makes the observation that the asteroid was about the enter the sustained energy beam of the replicators and that they had come as far as they could just by emerging from the ocean floor, and so McKay then invites Sheppard to "fire the stardrive," to actually make the city fly for them. Sheppard has his eyes closed as he hears McKay's voice in his ear telling him what to do, and we do not see him react in any outward way when obviously he gives the city the command to do as McKay had invited them to do, we get to see a momentous response from Sheppard to the sound of McKay's voice in his ear.

This is something that Sheppard has been excited to do ever since they had discovered the city's stardrive, and definitely ever since they had experienced what it was like to fly on a city ship like this in Progeny (S03E05). Knowing that the city was capable of flying on an abstract level and actually experiencing it were two different things, and ever since he had been a passenger on the replicator city space ship, Sheppard has dreamt of one day being able to do it for himself. And now it was time. He and McKay had come up with this plan together and Sheppard knows that McKay knows that he had wanted to do this for such a long time. McKay gives Sheppard the word, just like he had told Sheppard to "Think of our place in the solar system" so long ago in the Antarctic when Sheppard had seated himself on one of the Ancient Control Chairs for the first time. He hears McKay's voice in his ear as he concentrates, as he thinks to the city "Fly!"

Walking in, Sheppard asks Teyla how she is feeling, checking in on a member of his team like he should do -- especially since it seems like Sheppard is the one who had exposed her to quite a lot of danger to resolve the situation. At the end of the previous scene Sheppard had suggested that McKay had chosen to stay hidden with the gun and allowed him to be bait because he had been concerned that the Queen might kill him before disabling the self-destruct, and it is possible that it had not even occurred to Sheppard that she might have killed Teyla before taking off to disable it just as easily.

In fact, it is possible that it still has not occurred to him even to have worried about it, even though their plan seems to have placed her in even more danger than it placed him, since at least with him McKay had been there with a gun as a fail safe. While it could be that Ronon had stayed around to make sure that the Queen would not kill Teyla, what we had actually seen was Teyla sending him away, and we do not know whether Ronon had even been in on the plan. Regardless, they are all safe and sound now, and Teyla confesses to feeling easier now that she is not sensing the wraith -- providing also an answer to the question McKay had asked at the end of the previous scene of whether she was truly dead. Sheppard had seemed so uncomfortable not even to have bothered to check whether she was dead, which is something that they surely should have done, but at least here Teyla seems to confirm it. Sheppard tries to make her feel better by pointing out that the wraith had been exceptionally strong and it had taken a lot of bullets to put her down, reliving the moment that he and McKay had ended her together.

Weir: He's right, you know. I mean, deceiving a wraith Queen -- that's no small feat. Teyla: Well, when there are so many lives at stake, it's easy to summon the strength. McKay: Well, Zelenka's finally got communications back up. Turns out Atlantis had sent another jumper. Should be here within the hour. Weir: That's good news! Dex: Yeah, no kidding. I can't wait to see the sun.

Ronon bemoans not having been there to kill the Queen, not to even have seen it, and this only calls attention to how Sheppard had chosen McKay to come with him -- McKay had suggested that Sheppard should go alone or to put anyone else into the only other suit and Sheppard had almost seemed offended that he would think he wanted to go anywhere without McKay. Out of all the people he could have chosen, for Sheppard McKay had been his first and only choice. They actually seem to call attention to McKay having accompanied Sheppard here by how Teyla confesses that it is easy to summon strength with so many lives at stake because it seems like it was not everybody's lives that had motivated McKay -- whether it is everyone else or his own life on the line, McKay would always do anything that Sheppard asked him to do. It is not the greater good or his own self-preservation that comes first for McKay, it is Sheppard. McKay lives to do what Sheppard wants him to do.

And speaking of McKay, he walks in after the others and seems to walk right up to Weir, almost as though he is ignoring Sheppard. He turns his back to the bed where Sheppard had sat himself down and rests his hand on the top bunk that Ronon had reserved for himself, making it seem like he had come over to give this report specifically to Weir, expecting her to join him in the control station once more. Because he explains to them that Zelenka had been able to restore communications, it is possible that Weir gets up to join McKay specifically to have a word with Atlantis since it is unclear what her job down on the mobile drilling station with them has been, but her job as the director of the expedition surely requires her to be in contact with the city.

Both Weir and Ronon comment on McKay's report but just as McKay seemed to ignore Sheppard, Sheppard also does not respond to McKay coming in to give this report, the two of them seeming again to almost be ignoring each other. Whether or what they had discussed on their return trip to the station, their other "long walk on the beach" alone together, we do not know -- but it is almost like they are giving each other space, like they are trying not to make it more difficult than it has to be. We had heard how soft Sheppard had sounded when it had been just the two of them, we know that they both love each other even if it seems like they cannot be together right now. Ronon tells them that he cannot wait to see the sun -- and that is also true of them. But it is not time for them to see the sun yet, they are still submerged underwater in the dark.

McKay: What? No-no-no -- we haven't finished what we came here for. Look, the wraith's gone -- we've got a ton of research to do. Weir: Yes, we do. McKay: In fact, I'm pretty sure we should be able to come up with a way to get auxiliary power online in a couple of days.

And it seems like McKay is not quite ready to leave their underwater abode yet since with everything else going on, he had not even had the chance to start on their research, the reason they had come down here in the first place. And McKay's almost chipper tone here, incongruous with the fact that he had just lost two of his people -- again, so soon after losing other people, after having lost his best friend to what he thought had been his own fault, not having done his job properly -- speaks of his dissociation.

Using tones that are incongruous with the emotional temperature of the moment is a sign of clinical dissociation, and while his tone is fitting with the jubilation of having survived, it seems like McKay is trying to outrun these feelings of guilt that he has to face sooner or later. We know that he does not take losing people working for him lightly, that he had confessed to Sheppard in Trinity (S02E06) that he understands the gravity of having lost someone working for him, that he would have to live with the knowledge for the rest of his life. And for all Zelenka had been trying to convince him of how it had not been his fault, he knows that he had been the one to send the two men to their death. He knows that he was responsible, and risking his life to save the city and everyone else would not erase that. This is another reason why McKay might sound so eager to get to work -- he does not want their deaths to be for nothing. If they can learn something here then they would have meant something. He wants them to get to work now for Graydon and Dickinson.

As Weir gets up to leave to the control station with McKay, he starts filling her in on his plans on what they might do here, and he at least had planned on spending a couple of days here even if not everyone would have to stay down for all that time. And Weir seems to agree that it is worth doing the research now that they had come to figure out what this place was and what it could do, whether or not she would spend all of that time down here herself. She did have a city to run and, having seen that she has very little to do down here, she for one might have wanted to return. But for all Sheppard seems to have been avoiding McKay for the past while and may not have felt comfortable being locked up in a small mobile drilling platform with him, he too seemed prepared to stay down here for the next while. He would not leave McKay here alone, not after what they had just been through. He knows that it is his responsibility to keep McKay safe -- he knows it to be true now more than ever.

Dex: Is he serious? Sheppard: Yeah. He is. Teyla: Well, I for one intend to spend the next little while resting. Dex: Same here. Sheppard: Yeah. Same here.

Clearly having had his fill of life in the Abyssal zone and seeming to have been uncomfortable being underwater the whole time, Ronon asks Sheppard to confirm whether McKay is serious or not -- seeming to understand that Sheppard knows McKay best. What Ronon is also asking is for Sheppard to confirm whether they would be spending all this time underwater with McKay or whether they might be able to leave, and Sheppard seems to be telling Ronon the bad news -- yes, they also would be staying underwater. They would be staying in the mobile drilling station just as long as McKay is because he is not leaving McKay here alone. He had gone to the bottom of the ocean to save McKay once, he had risked being killed to keep McKay alive now, and there is no limit to how many times he would risk death in the abyss to make sure that McKay stays alive -- just like Bud in that film he had name-checked twice in this episode.

Sheppard says "Yeah, he is," like he is half-apologizing for McKay, like he is regrettably confirming that yeah, this is what McKay is like. But he is also confirming that there is no one who knows McKay as well as he does. And even though Sheppard seems to be smoothing things over for McKay for his team the way Zelenka occasionally seems to smooth things over for McKay as it comes to the other scientists, the thing of it is that Sheppard loves McKay. For all he may have ended their relationship, McKay is his favourite person, and even if he cannot express his genuine emotions and needs to keep a sarcastic distance lest people think he cares about things or something mushy like that, Sheppard actually loves seeing McKay excited like this. McKay is safe and sound and in his element, and Sheppard could not ask for more. Sheppard could not lay back and relax if he had not been able to see McKay like this, knowing that McKay is fine -- or at least as fine as he can be under the circumstances. For all he is trying to effect an air of "Yeah, take a load of this guy!" Sheppard does genuinely not just love but like McKay, but he has appearances to keep up and so this is as far as he can go to expressing it. We should recall that Sheppard thinks that his love gets people killed, and so he is not just trying to hide it from other people how much he cares about McKay -- he is trying to hide if from fate itself.

We should also take stock of how they are occupying their beds here in the crew quarters. Where Weir had been sitting on Teyla's bed, both women on the bottom bunk, Ronon had taken a top bunk and had laid down on his stomach on it -- like a top would. Sheppard takes the bottom bunk -- and there have been actual academic papers written on who gets to have top bunk in homosocial environments like prison -- and he not only chooses the bottom bunk but he then lays down on it on his back. This leaves the top bunk on top of him unoccupied by anyone, and we can only surmise that this bunk would go to McKay if McKay were to sleep with them, and he had just made the claim that he would like to spend at least a couple of days down there, meaning that he would have to sleep at some point.

We had also seen in Duet (S02E4) that just like Ronon, McKay would be likely to fall asleep on his stomach. This means that McKay would be asleep on his stomach on top of Sheppard, who lays down on his back on the bottom bunk. Nothing would be happening down here with everyone around obviously even if the two of them had still been in a relationship, but they seem to nonetheless be hinting at something with how everyone have chosen to take their places in this top bunk/bottom bunk environment since the episode contained more than a fair share of innuendo, and in the immortal words of Mickey Milkovitch of Shameless who had also preferred the bottom bunk in prison -- "Liking what I like don't make me a bitch." McKay's bunk may stay empty now, for the time being, but we can still easily imagine how they would have slept, and how under some other circumstances McKay might have abandoned the top bunk altogether. Leaving the bunk on top of Sheppard unoccupied while it is fairly obvious who would claim it is precisely how they have been carrying the subtext.

For all this episode may have submerged Sheppard and McKay's relationship that had been carried in the subtext until the previous episode, for once the title does not appear to have a convenient artifact of popular media that can be seen as the inspiration for it. There were no films, stage plays, albums or even songs with the title Submersion -- even if the whole series had started with the city being submerged before it had left Earth, and the city had been submerged when the expedition had first arrived to it in Rising (S01E01). Zelenka had described the experience of it becoming unsubmerged in Letters from Pegasus (S01E17):

On the bottom of the sea we have a failsafe mechanism. It pulled up the anchor of the city from the bottom of the sea with great force. We... we were... we were scared. That was incredible, what happened? And that noise. The whole city was shaking, it was like an earthquake. That was so incredible. And then we were moving. The whole city was rising. It was rising up, rising up to the ocean surface. It was, it was really incredible and the towers broke through the surface. We were going up. Water, waves, waterfalls were falling down from the heights. And we... we were shot up, right to the top. Sun... just shined... It was shining through all the windows. I'll remember it for the rest of my life... for the rest of my life.

While he had described this in Czech and obviously the comedic beat came from him waxing poetic in his native language while Ford had not understood a word he had said, checking to see whether he had said anything that might not pass the security clearance, I had discussed at the time how this seemed to also match what Sheppard had felt when he realized he had fallen in love with McKay. Sheppard's experiences often seems to match what the city itself undergoes because as the main character, he and Atlantis are connected, they are both actually the main attraction of the show. And the experience of falling in love with McKay had been so powerful, making love with McKay for the first time in his life, when ever it had happened, had been such a powerful experience to Sheppard that it felt like his foundations had shaken loose.

There are a few films called Submerged, of which the 2005 one with Steven Seagal is unlikely to give us any insight into the episode if not in the reference of the film title to the main character having been sent to military prison as the result of him going against orders, submerged from society in the way that Sheppard could have been if his father had not intervened on his behalf in Afghanistan. Another film with the same title came out in 2000, featuring a rescue mission of an airplane that has been submerged in the bottom of the ocean, resembling more the plot of Grace Under Pressure (S02E14), even if it is unlikely to have directly influenced it.

A more interesting connection might be with the 1877 novella Aquis Submersus by Theodor Storm that also goes by the name Beneath the Flood, a tragic love story set in the 30 Years War that is relevant for the fact that the underlying story of the show seems to have been Tolstoy's War and Peace (in space!), another tragic romance set against the backdrop of war. It was made into a film with the title Immortal Beloved (1951), being the story of a woman who is in love with a poor painter whose brother forces her to marry a wealthy neighbour instead, but like Princess Buttercup in The Princess Bride, she refuses and waits for the man that she loves.

The name of the story comes from what her beloved later writes on a painting he had made of their drowned child: "Culpa patris aquis submersus (drowned in the water due to the fault of the father)," blaming himself for having let his eyes off the child while reconnecting with the child's mother, the love of his life. While they ride off into the sunset together, this tragic death of their child would always haunt them and it is not irrelevant to where Sheppard and McKay are currently that it had happened because they were too in love with each other, they were unable to see the world around them from each other. This seems precisely what Sheppard had been afraid of -- that someone would drown when he had his eyes on McKay because he knows that when McKay is near him, he is unable to look out for anyone else. And most of all he fears that his focus on McKay would end up hurting McKay himself. Regarding how the title is explained in the book, we should also acknowledge the fact that Sheppard has arrived at this submersion of his thoughts in the deep dark waters on account of his own father, that he is still trying to work through the trauma of his childhood by having made himself into "the man in black."

They also named the film The Abyss (1989) twice in the episode, and the film actually begins with a famous quote by the German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, "And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you" but leaves out the first part of "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster," since this part is not relevant to the film as such. While Nietzsche used the word "Abgrund" that refers to pit or chasm, the Abyss is often associated with hell and it may be relevant to where Sheppard is at the moment that the road to hell is said to be paved with good intentions. Sheppard had the best intentions in ending his relationship with McKay but he is slowly waking up to the cost, to all the things he had not anticipated when he had unilaterally made the decision -- and in making decisions for other people becoming more like his own father than he would ever be comfortable admitting. In fighting his monsters, it is important to see to it that he does not become his own father.

In literary and film theory, submersion is often used in connection of female characters drowned in water akin to Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet -- which we know had been important to the writers seeing as how they had named several episodes with lines from the play, especially in the upcoming fourth season. In this context, submersion is seen as symbolizing or representing the social oppression of these women, their silenced agency and submission to the female element. We may recall that it is Sheppard who becomes submerged in the episode with the rushing waters crashing over him and whom we see lying wet and helpless on the floor at a pivotal point in the episode. While Sheppard is not a damsel in distress, he is the figure that is subjected to oppressive forces in the context of the military apparatus that forces him to hide the most important relationship of his life, and for him too having had to give it up feels like death.