Atlantis fen need to know these things.

[castalia]

I know it's still early in the fandom, but there are things about the Atlantisverse I need to know and wish TPTB would tell me already. There's fic to be written, and I don't want to get Jossed all to hell.

Want a few for-instances? Ok.

- Bathrooms. Yeah, I know, this comes up in every sci-fi show set in space. We never saw Trek bathrooms until Archer's shower in Enterprise (a favorite Ookla the Mok filk of mine is all about this lack, complete with the line "soon I'm gonna boldly go where no one's ever gone before", hee), and the only show I can recall to actually design space facilities was Firefly, and they got mocked for it. Still, how are the Atlantis people taking care of business? Are there showers? Toilets? For that matter, toilet paper? Did they pack anything? They seem clean, shaven (hush, nos), and the women have makeup and have curled their hair. Have they found power outlets or is everything battery powered? How are they plugging in their hairdryers and curling irons? Inquiring minds want to know, s'all I'm saying.

- The Atlantis crew. Is that what we call them? Can we call them Atlanteans now? Something else? How about the mission teams? Do they have designations ala SG teams? Are they going to start calling Shep, McKay, Ford and Teyla "AG1" or something?

- Also, how many people are there in Atlantis? Did they ever say? So far they've lost only Sumner, so that's not too bad, but how many did they bring? What's the ratio of scientist types to military? Is everyone either a physicist or an anthropologist/archaeologist type? Are there biologists and chemists (though Carson seems to play in these fields too, not to mention genetics), linguists, engineers, psychologists (c'mon, they have to have a shrink somewhere, it's a law in space), seamstresses, hairdressers (hey, Teyla got her hair cut, there must be one), random-people-who-cook-clean-and-do-laundry? Who's doing all the dirty jobs that have to be done in any society? They brought the "best and brightest" - does that mean they grabbed some guy out the SGC mess and said "Ok, you're the best person on the planet at heating up processed food and ladleing it onto tin trays, plus you have no family. You get to come to Atlantis, yay!"?

- The planet Atlantis is on, does it have a name? It must have an address in the dialing computer, right? Is that all they're calling it? What about the mainland? Like nostalgia_lj mentioned, we're not gonna call it Atlantica. That's just stupid, yo. Everyone agreed Ford didn't get to name anything.

- Those nifty little Dell Inspiron laptops (which look exactly like mine, except mine's blue and silver, heh), are those running only on battery power? I never see them plugged into any walls. Are they on a network? Can they actually talk to other computers? It's not like they have a local ISP in Pegasus.

- In the same vein, how is everyone doing all their research? Did they bring *everything* ever written with them in digital format? Science relies on archives, people borrowing what other people have written and expanding on it. You have to have *references* - dusty journals and PDF files of articles and the types of books you have to pay out the arse to own b/c no one reads them but us scientific types. Scientists have a nifty way of knowing a lot of stuff, but only about their pet subject. I'm sure even Sam had to go look something up occasionally b/c it wasn't her specialization (though TPTB clearly want us to think otherwise).

- The different colored uniforms. From what I can tell, we only have red, blue, black, and yellow. Weir gets red, b/c it is obviously her "I'm in charge so only I get to wear this color, nyah" right as leader. McKay gets blue, and so do all the rest of the scientists (no matter what discipline?). Shep, Ford, and all the military types get black (oh well, the US military never has been creative when it comes to color). Beckett and his staff are the only ones in yellow, so yellow = medical. Is that it? Is this like the colors in Star Trek that I never could keep track of b/c they seemed to keep changing?

Edited to add: Argh, I missed one! There's a random guy with green! Green! WTF? What's green for? He's the Asian guy in 38 Minutes, and he seems to share Chevron Guy duties with Grodin, but Grodin's in blue and this guy gets green. His shiny shirt is a strange pale green. I have no idea what it's for. Also, Weir isn't the only one with red - random background people in the control room are in red. So if red isn't for "person in charge", what's it for? Argh!

- Related to uniforms, those shiny shirts they wear underneath. Weir's is always red, matches her uniform, and isn't as shiny. She and Shep both have the less shiny ones that zip up instead. Everyone else has the shiny shirts that remind me of the material used to make soccer/football jerseys. They have high necks, strange lines, and aren't the most flattering things on some of the actors. They seem to have an endless supply of these, and everyone except Weir (and her endless civilian clothes closet, ala Buffy) wears them a lot on and off-duty. McKay's is blue, also matching his uniform, but instead of yellow to match, Carson gets a pretty silvery-grey one. I like the silver shirt, it's a good color on him (much prettier than a washed-out yellow, so yay).

- Amusingly, these military types (and scientists who are on mission teams) don't seem to wear combat boots. They have fancy Reeboks instead. What's up with that?

- Everyone has the same watch. They're big and bulky and I'm not sure I like them. How'd they decide what time it is in Atlantis? How long are the days on Atlantis? Months? Years? Did the Ancients leave old versions of calendars lying around so they'd know?

- Did Daniel finally figure out the entire Ancient language and teach it to everyone? Is he the author of The Language of the Ancients for Dummies"? Weir and McKay seem to be fluent already, and presumably others, b/c I'm sure those two can't spend all their time translating the Ancients' notes for everyone.

- Because I am a huge geek and want to know where everything is, what's the layout of Atlantis? We've only seen Shep's room, Ford's, a tv room above the Gateroom, rooms for the Athosians who aren't there anymore anyway, the infirmary, the Jumper Bay, and a few scattered labs and corridors. Who decided who got which quarters? Did the main staff get first pick? How do you get from the Jumper Bay to the Gateroom? Obviously there's a way, and it must be close by. From Suspicion, it looks like the infirmary is pretty close to the Gateroom, and it would make sense to have it nearby in the event of injury (it always seemed like Janet had to go so far on SG1, which isn't practical).

- Also about the infirmary, what all do they have? Obviously the basics, but how much equipment do they have and how specialized is it? Are there going to be injuries they can't fix? Carson appears to have all the toys required for playing around with genetic material, and they brought a lot of O2 with them, but they used up quite a bit of that on the Hoffans. How do they plan to get any more? They can't have an endless supply of bandages, medicines, IV solutions, and blood. And yet, they try to trade medicines for food. Morons. What happens when you run out? What are you going to do when something breaks and you don't have a replacement part? Dude, someone drops a microscope and you're screwed.

- Somewhere down the road, are all the women in Atlantis going to resort to sticking cloth rags in their panties once a month? Are they all taking some sort of drug so they won't have to deal with it?

- Please tell us more about how the Wraith do what they do. Before they killed Steve, did Carson take a sample of that chemical they inject? Where is the chemical manufactured? Is it injected by the strange growth thing on their index fingers? If the Hoffan drug mixed with it and caused that lethal mutation, shouldn't they be studying that to see if they can reproduce the effect? If they can, I'm thinking poison bullets here. That would be cool.

- The Ancients had human physical bodies, right? So they must have had hygiene facilities, their own hospital/infirmary/whatever, food production, seamstresses and hairdressers, right? I'll bet they even had a janitor. Is the Atlantis crew going to find replicators, kitchens, magic healing devices, salons, and an indoor garden (now dead, of course) in the city? Let's see them explore the city some more, please!

- McKay's almost depleted their coffee supplies, but how are they making it? Is it (ick) instant? Did the Ancients have stoves and ovens? Has everyone been boiling water on camping stoves? Are there Atlantean microwaves? Did they invent battery-powered coffee pots? (does such a thing exist???)

- What's up with the military command structure? Sheppard gets to be in charge now that their only colonel is gone, but are there any other majors? How about captains? Ford is now second-in-command, and he's only a lieutenant. Are there other lieutenants? Surely they brought more officers than that. We have Sergeant Bates, so that's one NCO (but he's both Head of Security and leading a team as well). Are there privates? Airmen? Whatever? Is everyone either Air Force or Marines? Who answers to whom? Carson told Sumner he didn't answer to him, but to Weir. Bates ordered Rodney to go through Teyla's stuff. Who has what authority here?

- Did everyone get lasik surgery before coming on this trip? Contacts would be a bitch to deal with, especially once you ran out of solution. But Zelenka has glasses. What happens if he breaks them? Did they bring an optometrist along?

- How did Shep get his football recording to work? Is it on DVD? Did he find an Ancient version of a VCR or DVD player? Did they have to adapt something? Was that an Ancient tv/vid screen, or did they bring their own from Earth?

- What is everyone doing for recreation? I doubt there's cable in Pegasus. I know half the crew are big geeks and will probably just want to play with technology on their off-time, but what about other things? Books? Games? Music? In between saving the galaxy and screwing it up, these people are going to get bored.

- Are there fraternization rules? People being people, someone's going to have sex eventually. I kinda doubt they're equipped to deal with pregnancy and STDs out there. Do their supplies include condoms and birth control? All the more reason to encourage the gay sex!

- What controls the atmosphere/environment in Atlantis? Is there a heating/air conditioning system? Does everyone have personal controls in their quarters so that if some like it hot, some cold, and some a happy medium, there isn't any bitching?

- How many bullets did they bring? You're shooting a lot on missions, what're you gonna do when you run out? Did they bring a gunsmith and someone who knows how to make bullets? What about other weapons? Does Ford have other ordnance to play with besides stun grenades and tazers?

Um, I'm sure there's more, but this is getting long-winded as it is. I can't help it; I'm a nosy bint who wants to know everything about a universe and how it works. I'm sure they'll get around to telling us some of these things eventually, but dude, impatient.

Discuss?

Comments

[castalianspring.livejournal.com]

Not really, 'cause the SGC gateroom isn't all *that* big.

Word about Ford. A lieutenant second-in-command? And a 24 year-old one at that? I boggle. He *is* just a big kid.

Hmm, intriguing re the solar power. Maybe that's why so much of the outside of the city is made out of that crystal-looking stuff? Crystals seem to be a big part of alien tech.

I'm just glad Carson's shirt isn't yellow. Becauuse he's a gorgeous, gorgeous man, but that striped jacket thing is hideous. I keep wanting to tear it off him, and not just for fun, sexy times, either.

Heh. Sometimes I think those look good, and other times...yeah. I think it's the way the colored bits are situated - they sort of come down over the chest area, and make it look like a saggy bra or something *g*