The Daedalus Variations - Recap

On Atlantis, McKay is telling Sheppard that Teyla is hiding her baby from him. They detect a ship out in space, appearing from nowhere. They identify it as the Daedalus, which was last logged as heading back to Earth. They try to communicate with it and get no response: McKay determines there are no life signs on board.

Sheppard’s team takes a Jumper up to the Daedalus, while SGC confirms the Daedalus is confirmed heading toward Earth. They approach the mystery ship and spot weapon damage while picking up an unknown energy reading. They dock and find no 302s but one Jumper. They split up and Sheppard and Teyla head for the bridge while McKay and Ronon go to Engineering to restore power. McKay succeeds while Sheppard and Teyla check out the ship’s log, where a Colonel Sobel, commander of the Daedalus, says they’re abandoning ship to an inhabitable planet. Sheppard doesn’t recognize Sobel.

McKay determines the energy reading is going up and the Daedalus starts to vibrate… then disappears in a burst of light. Sheppard is unable to raise Atlantis, while Atlantis is unable to contact Sheppard and his team. McKay confirms that the ship has some new form of drive that activated, even though they seemingly didn’t leave orbit. Rodney realizes the energy surge is the same that they registered when his parallel duplicate arrived: they’re in an alternate universe. Sheppard and the other find the dead bodies of Sheppard, Teyla, McKay, and Ronon.

They bag the bodies and are unable to determine how long they’ve been dead. McKay goes over his counterpart’s datapad and determines their counterparts were in the same situation: they discovered the mystery ship in orbit, boarded it, it shifted, and they starved to death. McKay powers up the systems and they locate a sealed chamber containing the alternate-reality drive. McKay notes his counterpart couldn’t figure it out but goes ahead anyway, using his duplicate’s research. Ronon and Teyla look for supplies while Teyla wonders if her counterpart had a son.

McKay determines that the drive was created by another of his counterparts. He warns that it requires ZPM levels of power and they have to let it build up without any control. The energy builds up to critical and they shift dimensions again. This time Atlantis is on the planet below and they spot an unidentified ship in orbit. It powers up and fires on Atlantis and Sheppard opts to help Atlantis, opening fire. They disable its weapons but it launches fighters, and Sheppard has Ronon help him at weapon controls. They take serious damage to the subdrives and McKay manages to enhance the drive efficiency so they can jump sooner. He warns that he can’t undo it so they’ll start jumping faster and faster. Sheppard tells him to go ahead and they jump out just as several fighters crash into them. However, the hull temperature starts rising and they realize they’re close to the sun, despite the fact they’re not supposed to have shifted.

As the ship starts to overheat, Rodney realizes they’re in a reality where the sun expanded early. Rodney reroutes the power to the shields but warns that he doesn’t know how long they have until the next jump. The others go down to Engineering to reroute the power, while Ronon hears a noise and goes to investigate. He confronts an alien soldier who easily disarms him and throws him around.

Sheppard and Teyla complete the power reroute but McKay warns it won’t be sufficient. Meanwhile, Ronon manages to fire his gun off to the side, alerting the others. Sheppard goes to investigate and shoots the alien several times. It’s resistant to bullets and it takes both men firing to take the alien down. Sheppard notices he’s wearing the same symbol as the alien ship that was attacking Atlantis in the previous reality, and figure they boarded when the fighters crashed into the ship. More of the aliens attack, while McKay determines the shields will crash before they jump despite his best efforts. He has Teyla drop the shields and uses the temperature surge to power the drive. The ship jumps again, and Ronon and Sheppard use the distraction of the energy flare to take out their opponents. Sheppard congratulates McKay, who warns that they overtaxed the drive and they only have a handful of jumps left before they’re stranded forever.

This time they’re in an asteroid field that is all that’s left of the planet. Rodney comes up with a way to retrace their path, but Sheppard notes that they barely survived the other realities. McKay explains that they can use maneuver thrusters to achieve a higher orbit above the red sun in the last reality. However, they’ll need sublight engines to get past the aliens. They go back one jump, safely in orbit above the sun, and McKay starts working on the sublights, with Teyla helping him. As they work, she thanks him for not giving up. However, the drive is charging faster and they jump before McKay can complete repairs.

They return to the next previous dimension and find the alien ship behind them. It launches more fighters but McKay and Teyla manage to get sublights working. They pull away but the fighters are still closing in. They open fire, taking out the sublights, and Ronon and Sheppard return fire. However, F-302s from Atlantis enter the battle and take out the alien fighters. That universe’s Sheppard contacts the Daedalus and Sheppard responds. One damaged fighter heads directly for the bridge but the alternate Sheppard takes it out just in time. He wishes them luck and the <I>Daedalus</I> jumps again. They’re now only one reality away from their own. They prepare to board the Jumper but one of the alien boarders is still alive and wounds McKay. They kill him but it’s holding a failsafe self-destruct. They get out of the section just in time but the explosion causes a hull breech and they’ve lost the Jumper. They broke orbit so they’ll be too far away from Atlantis to rescue them in time. Ronon suggests they blow up the jump drive but McKay warns that could destroy the entire system by opening a time-space rift.

Atlantis detects the Daedalus</I> as it arrives but are unable to establish contact. Lorne and Zelenka take a Jumper out and detect the increasing energy reading. The Daedalus disappears from in front of them, but they sense four life signs dead ahead: Sheppard’s team abandoned ship in spacesuits.

As McKay recovers in the infirmary, he starts working on an improved version of the drive but Sheppard warns against it. Teyla arrives and offers McKay the chance to hold Torren... briefly.

Share this article with your friends