Vengeance, Pt. 18
McKay gets to work sifting through Michael's research hoping to find something that might help them take him or his creatures down, or even just to explain what the hell was going on. McKay appears to be nursing a big gash on the side of his face that he seems to have gotten from the bug man that had jumped him, groaning as he gets to work. We have seen before how McKay's traumatic childhood has caused him to dissociate from his emotions when he needs to get work done, likely on account of having had to do his homework under hectic conditions. It serves him well in situations like this, able to push all uncomfortable feelings aside and roll up his sleeves, even to ignore what must be considerable pain even though we have seen McKay whining over minor injuries before, usually in pursuit of attention and sympathy more than anything else. Meanwhile, Sheppard and Ronon had taken after Michael, and they again find themselves at a T-junction not knowing which way to go. Because there are two of them and Sheppard does not fear for Ronon's life in the same way that he frets for McKay's safety, he decides to split them up.
Sheppard: You go that way, I'll go the other. Oh, hey, wait. Set your gun to stun. Dex: What? Sheppard: Yeah. We're gonna need to question him.
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.
Continued in Pt. 19