Atlantis is not much of a city

[David cgc]

Well, remember, the "the city is made out of popsicle sticks and falls apart without the shield" was invented specifically to lampshade the sense of danger in "The Storm"/"The Eye" (and expanded for "Adrift"). It's likely that, months before that episode was written, the city was designed by the art department to be airtight, without a stupid degree of reliance on the city shield.

 

[Brent]

BTW, here is the original concept design for what the city was going to look like. I like this original concept better:

There is a better pic of it somewhere out there, i'll see if i can find it

 

[Brent]

One fact I really hate about the city is how weak it is. Windows break easily, just like glass. It is really stupid to build all your windows in a city/spaceship out of glass. You'd think the Ancients would have err, eh, transparent aluminum at least, heh. Also, the city is not airtight when the doors are closed, which is also stupid. Remember when the shield dropped while they were in space and those people suffocated in the halls? Surely the Ancients could have built airtight doors. Thirdly, the whole thing is structurally weak, doors that can be blown open by regular C4? Come on, the Ancients surely had better building material than that. I mean the friggin Stargates themselves are made out of naquada and can take direct impacts from meteors without breaking. The city just seems really weak and breakable.

 

[cultcross]

One fact I really hate about the city is how weak it is. Windows break easily, just like glass. It is really stupid to build all your windows in a city/spaceship out of glass. You'd think the Ancients would have err, eh, transparent aluminum at least, heh. Also, the city is not airtight when the doors are closed, which is also stupid. Remember when the shield dropped while they were in space and those people suffocated in the halls? Surely the Ancients could have built airtight doors. Thirdly, the whole thing is structurally weak, doors that can be blown open by regular C4? Come on, the Ancients surely had better building material than that. I mean the friggin Stargates themselves are made out of naquada and can take direct impacts from meteors without breaking. The city just seems really weak and breakable.

Agreed, the city design always bugged me, other than the colour scheme it looked indistinguishable from the interior sets of a Ha'tak or the Prometheus. Long windowless corridors with wall mounted lights, automatic doors, hard floors, etc. And like every other alien tech we've seen other than the stargate itself, it's all super powerful alien technology, until you stick a small block of C4 onto it.
It feels like another alien spaceship not a city. And that I think is one major reason why Atlantis feels so much like SG-1, they're meant to be in a city rather than under a mountain, yet we seemed to see the outside world more on SG-1. If they'd done it as an actual city, with open spaces, green areas, recreation areas, windows, etc. I think it would have been much more realistic as a city rather than a ship.
With foresight, it would also have made them more distinguishable from Universe, which will be Ancient-ship based, and probably end up looking fairly similar to just another set of Atlantis corridors. TNG and Voyager had more visual variation than that and they were both set on ships built not 20 years apart.

 

[Brent]

Exactly, someone here also mentioned B5, I would have loved to have a part of the city like the simulated outdoor environment area of B5, that would have been pretty sweet. There should be a lot more open areas, and definitely more street level outdoor stuff shown to really make it feel like a city. When the shield is up we know it is ok to walk outside while in space, this should have been utilized more.

 

[Kpnuts]

Remember when the shield dropped while they were in space and those people suffocated in the halls? Surely the Ancients could have built airtight doors.

Oh god, don't remind me of that awful cringeworthy scene. That had nothing to with non-airtight doors, and EVERYTHING to do with lazy, clueless writing.

Firstly, wtf do shields have to do with artificial gravity...

Secondly, why would a sealed room full of air make crewmembers suffocate and die within 5 seconds.

Dumbasses.

 

[cylkoth]

Remember when the shield dropped while they were in space and those people suffocated in the halls? Surely the Ancients could have built airtight doors.

Oh god, don't remind me of that awful cringeworthy scene. That had nothing to with non-airtight doors, and EVERYTHING to do with lazy, clueless writing.

Firstly, wtf do shields have to do with artificial gravity...

Secondly, why would a sealed room full of air make crewmembers suffocate and die within 5 seconds.

Dumbasses.

IIRC, the city went into a kind of self preservation mode, and shut down gravity, life support while contracting the shield from the outer areas. Still, that doesn't erase how lame it was to have those guys die immediately. Had they-the writers, just stuck them out there in the sealed compartment, with the team furiously working to get a jumper out there, the drama would have actually been amped up, rather than deflated.

 

[The Borg Queen]

Atlantis should have been like Laputa: Castle in the Sky.

 

[DWF]

Remember when the shield dropped while they were in space and those people suffocated in the halls? Surely the Ancients could have built airtight doors.

Oh god, don't remind me of that awful cringeworthy scene. That had nothing to with non-airtight doors, and EVERYTHING to do with lazy, clueless writing.

Firstly, wtf do shields have to do with artificial gravity...

Secondly, why would a sealed room full of air make crewmembers suffocate and die within 5 seconds.

Dumbasses.

IIRC, the city went into a kind of self preservation mode, and shut down gravity, life support while contracting the shield from the outer areas. Still, that doesn't erase how lame it was to have those guys die immediately. Had they-the writers, just stuck them out there in the sealed compartment, with the team furiously working to get a jumper out there, the drama would have actually been amped up, rather than deflated.

The city was in hyperspace and the jumpers don't have hyperspace engines so that wouldn't have worked anyway.

 

[cylkoth]

^^Hmmm. I thought the problems began after the loss of power forced them out of hyperspace. They weren't in hyperspace when the city started contracting the shield.

 

[Brent]

Atlantis should have been like Laputa: Castle in the Sky.

Or the Nox's flying city, look how sweet the Nox can make their flying cities:

http://www.sg1archive.com/wallpaper/images/nox_1024_768.jpg

Seriously, Atlantis should have been like this, wouldn't it have been cool if the Ancient city ships were actually developed out of Nox technology research. What if it was the Nox that had been the inspiration for flying cities, and since they had an alliance the Ancients actually developed their cities based on Nox technlogy, THAT would have made the series even more interesting IMO.

 

[DWF]

^^Hmmm. I thought the problems began after the loss of power forced them out of hyperspace. They weren't in hyperspace when the city started contracting the shield.

http://www.moon-catchin.net/gatenoise/sgatranscripts/s4/401adrift.htm

You're right my fault then, but the city was still moving pretty fast I don't know if a jumper could've kept up with it.

 

[Gotham Central]

The fact that the characters spend all of their time in those windoless rooms strikes me as odd. People generally want to get out side. Even the mess hall is closed in. Personally, i think that they should have done what DS9 and B5 did was essentially build a street/mall set and then build the ship around it. At the very least have ONE outdoor pavilion. The Mess hall should have felt more like an outdoor cafe or at the very least a food court in a mall.

 

[David cgc]

You're right my fault then, but the city was still moving pretty fast I don't know if a jumper could've kept up with it.

Atlantis wasn't under power, though and was, well, adrift. All motion being relative, and there being no air resistance in space, as far as a jumper launched from the city is concerned, it would be standing still.

Even the mess hall is closed in.

It's a redress of the gateroom, and has the same giant stained-glass window. And though they rarely spend the money on shots that make it clear, most of the time they use the Blade 3 set, it's supposed to be outdoors.

Though there are exceptions to every rule.

A lot of this comes down to money. I'm sure they'd love to have people walking out in the open on the CG city more than once every other year, and to have long, lingering views out the windows onto the cityscape whenever their in someone's quarters or office (which they actually do make use of quite a bit, but for some reason it's so subtle that I pretty much have to be told it's there to look for it), but that's money taken away from making the planet-of-the-week or the latest space battle.

The same thing happened on Babylon 5. They had plenty of scenes on the Core Shuttle in season one, but I think it was only used once in season 2 (when it exploded), and never again after that. The zen garden and other "outdoor" locations on the station were also used far, far less as time went on and the show broadened its scope.

 

[DWF]

Atlantis wasn't under power, though and was, well, adrift. All motion being relative, and there being no air resistance in space, as far as a jumper launched from the city is concerned, it would be standing still.

Not exactly.

McKAY: Alright. Two bits of good news. One: I have been able to calculate our exact location.TEYLA: Does that mean we can use the Gate?McKAY: Sadly, no. To activate the Gate, we require that we stay within a fairly small area of space. We’re moving too fast to use it.SHEPPARD: Can we use the sub-lights to slow down?McKAY: Well, it’d be great if they were working, but sub-light and navigation are out.

Trying to use a jumper to recsue the guys would've stranded the jumper too far behind the city.

 

[Gotham Central]

You're right my fault then, but the city was still moving pretty fast I don't know if a jumper could've kept up with it.

Atlantis wasn't under power, though and was, well, adrift. All motion being relative, and there being no air resistance in space, as far as a jumper launched from the city is concerned, it would be standing still.

Even the mess hall is closed in.

It's a redress of the gateroom, and has the same giant stained-glass window. And though they rarely spend the money on shots that make it clear, most of the time they use the Blade 3 set, it's supposed to be outdoors.

Though there are exceptions to every rule.

A lot of this comes down to money. I'm sure they'd love to have people walking out in the open on the CG city more than once every other year, and to have long, lingering views out the windows onto the cityscape whenever their in someone's quarters or office (which they actually do make use of quite a bit, but for some reason it's so subtle that I pretty much have to be told it's there to look for it), but that's money taken away from making the planet-of-the-week or the latest space battle.

The same thing happened on Babylon 5. They had plenty of scenes on the Core Shuttle in season one, but I think it was only used once in season 2 (when it exploded), and never again after that. The zen garden and other "outdoor" locations on the station were also used far, far less as time went on and the show broadened its scope.

The thing is, they do not have create a CG city for large windows. They would simply use a matte painting (hopefully a painting better than the god awful one in Sheridan's office on B5...I pent years trying toconvince people that that was supposed to be a window) or a 2/3d lighted model. SG-1 used that pretty regularly. In fact, most TV shows with standing sets with windows manage to convey being in a urban environment without always resorting to CGI vistas.

They just really needed to do more to open up the city. I've seen more windows on the Enterprise and it was just a starship.

 

[Kpnuts]

DWF, and yet jumpers left the city, flew up ahead and cleared a path for it through the asteroids.

Bottom line, no, the city wasn't going too fast for jumpers to be of any use.

 

[Harvey]

Wouldn't the jumpers be moving at the same speed as the city, since they were stationary on the thing while it was moving?

 

[DWF]

Wouldn't the jumpers be moving at the same speed as the city, since they were stationary on the thing while it was moving?

Once they leave a moving object they start slowing down in relative position to the moviing city, the crewmen might have a few minutes of air left to them leaving them little time to rescue them. And of course there's the matter of screen time and added visual effects to the ep. It's a scene that might be done in a movie where they have more time but in the end it takes away from the main storyline.

 

[David cgc]

Once they leave a moving object they start slowing down in relative position to the moviing city,

No, they don't. They're in space. The city may be moving too fast relative to the galaxy as a whole for the stargate to work, but that doesn't change the fact that as far as a jumper (or anything else) inside Atlantis is concerned, the city is standing still.

What you're suggesting is akin to saying that if you jumped up, you'd fly off into space because the earth is rotating away at 1000 miles an hour.

It's all moot, anyway, since they actually did launch jumpers in that episode to clear the asteroid field, and they had no trouble keeping up with or overtaking the city, nor did they have a problem retrieving Zelenka and Shepard from the edge of the city by jumper.