Stargate Atlantis/Recap/S02/E07 Instinct

• Main
• Characters
• Recap
  • S01
    • E01 E02 Rising
    • E03 Hide and Seek
    • E04 Thirty-Eight Minutes
    • E05 Suspicion
    • E06 Childhoods End
    • E07 Poisoning the Well
    • E08 Underground
    • E09 Home
    • E10 The Storm
    • E11 The Eye
    • E12 The Defiant One
    • E13 Hot Zone
    • E14 Sanctuary
    • E15 Before I Sleep
    • E16 The Brotherhood
    • E17 Letters From Pegasus
    • E18 The Gift
    • E19 The Siege, Part 1
    • E20 The Siege, Part 2
  • S02
    • E01 The Siege, Part 3
    • E02 The Intruder
    • E03 Runner
    • E04 Duet
    • E05 Condemned
    • E06 Trinity
    • E07 Instinct
    • E08 Conversion
    • E09 Aurora
    • E10 The Lost Boys
    • E11 The Hive
    • E12 Epiphany
    • E13 Critical Mass
    • E14 Grace Under Pressure
    • E15 The Tower
    • E16 The Long Goodbye
    • E17 Coup d'Etat
    • E18 Michael
    • E19 Inferno
    • E20 Allies
  • S03
    • E01 No Man's Land
    • E02 Misbegotten
    • E03 Irresistible
    • E04 Sateda
    • E05 Progeny
    • E06 The Real World
    • E07 Common Ground
    • E08 McKay and Mrs. Miller
    • E09 Phantoms
    • E10 The Return, Part 1
    • E11 The Return, Part 2
    • E12 Echoes
    • E13 Irresponsible
    • E14 Tao of Rodney
    • E15 The Game
    • E16 The Ark
    • E17 Sunday
    • E18 Submersion
    • E19 Vengeance
    • E20 First Strike
  • S04
    • E01 Adrift
    • E02 Lifeline
    • E03 Reunion
    • E04 Doppelganger
    • E05 Travelers
    • E06 Tabula Rasa
    • E07 Missing
    • E08 The Seer
    • E09 Miller's Crossing
    • E10 This Mortal Coil
    • E11 Be All My Sins Remembered
    • E12 Spoils of War
    • E13 Quarantine
    • E14 Harmony
    • E15 Outcast
    • E16 Trio
    • E17 Midway
    • E18 The Kindred, Part 1
    • E19 The Kindred, Part 2
    • E20 The Last Man
  • S05
    • E01 Search and Rescue
    • E02 The Seed
    • E03 Broken Ties
    • E04 The Daedalus Variations
    • E05 Ghost in the Machine
    • E06 The Shrine
    • E07 Whispers
    • E08 The Queen
    • E09 Tracker
    • E10 First Contact
    • E11 The Lost Tribe
    • E12 Outsiders
    • E13 Inquisition
    • E14 The Prodigal
    • E15 Remnants
    • E16 Brain Storm
    • E17 Infection
    • E18 Identity
    • E19 Vegas
    • E20 Enemy at the Gate
• Trivia
• YMMV
• Fanfic Recs
• Headscratchers
• WMG
• Crowners
  • Awesome
  • Funny
  • Heartwarming
  • Nightmare Fuel
  • Tear Jerker
• Wikipedia
• All Subpages
• Create New

So it’s a teenage thing. Pimples, rebellion, life sucking. —Sheppard grasps the Wraith life-cycle.

The team arrives on a world being terrorized by an entity known as the Daimos. They infer that the Daimos is a lone Wraith hiding out in the forest, the last survivor of a crash ten years ago. They promise to kill it, and Ronon breaks out his tracking skills.

What they find is a young female Wraith and her "father" Zaddik. Zaddik explains that he found the girl, Ellia, as a child and has raised her as his own. Moreover, she no longer needs to feed on humans because of a serum he has developed, and could not possibly have been behind the attacks. Ronon, Sheppard, and Teyla go looking for the presumed second Wraith (an adult male) while Dr. Beckett is called in to examine Zaddik's serum.

Beckett in the meantime has been working on developing a retrovirus that will erase a Wraith's Iratus bug DNA, effectively turning them human. He hopes that Ellia's cooperation will help him improve the retrovirus to the point of practicability (since right now it is incomplete). It turns out, though, that Zaddik's serum never actually worked on Ellia, and she's been masking her own feeding by going out at the same time as the other Wraith. When they kill the other, she won't be able to hide anymore. So, when Zaddik and Beckett leave the room briefly, she injects herself with the retrovirus.

The others manage to kill the adult Wraith without too much effort, but not before it has fed again, bringing the villagers out in force. Unfortunately, the retrovirus has had exactly the opposite effect on Ellia of the one intended - it starts overwriting her human DNA and turning her into something more like the Iratus bug, with vastly increased strength and scary claw-like hands. Zaddik tries to reason with her, but in her animalistic state she throws him off, wounding him fatally. Sheppard and Ronon pursue her into the woods, but she manages to grab hold of Sheppard's arm, (presumably) feedng off of him bug style. Ronon arrives and shoots her off of him, and the two are forced to kill her.

Tropes

• Call Back: to the episode "Thirty-Eight Minutes"
• Hey, It's That Guy!: Ellia is Kaylee from Firefly
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Zaddik tries this with Ellia
• Luke, You Are My Father: Zaddik reveals himself to be the presumed-dead son of the village leader. The reason they look the same age? Zaddik let Ellia feed off of him until he could develop his serum.
• The Virus: Beckett's retrovirus, one way or the other.
• Torches and Pitchforks
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?