Stargate Atlantis: The Complete Series Collection

I had never watched this series in its original broadcast run. After completing SG-1 on dvd, I purchased this set. I'm glad I did.First, the product itself: The packaging of the set is attractive but not great, with the discs held in place in a less than ideal way. It's nowhere near as horrible as the disastrous SG-1 complete series disc arrangement, but it would have been preferable for the discs not to have to slide and overlap as they do. Fortunately, I did not have any damaged discs.The set is loaded with commentaries by the executive producers, writers, and others. There isn't much cast participation, but the producers and showrunners provide often interesting insights, and - though I'm not the type who generally feels compelled to listen to commentaries - I did find myself checking a lot of them out. Warning, though: if you haven't seen the series before, they do tend to reveal spoilers randomly in commentaries. If, like me, you hate spoilers, wait until after finishing the series to listen to the commentaries.As I watched, I jotted down some notes for this review, so the following thoughts on the series might be a little disconnected. Spoilers follow as I look at the show season by season:Season One:Not very good. Especially the first half, before the show found its footing. I felt they set up the Wraith as the bad guys too quickly. Similarly, Teyla's joining the team was rushed, and it felt like they had an idea about what the thrust of the show would be but were not patient in building the foundations.The Ford character was awful. I think he was supposed to be an audience surrogate in disparaging McKay, but McKay is actually more relatable and far more interesting. Bad acting plus poor character development meant writing Ford off for season two was a great move, probably the single best casting change in a show that saw numerous shifts in its five-year run.Season Two:Much improved.Ronon was a good addition. Jason Momoa is not an amazing actor, but he had something very important that Rainbow Francks lacked as Ford: charisma. He was a better fit for the team than Ford, but again, like Teyla, joined the team a bit too easily. He's trusted too quickly, and they should have done more to develop him and his backstory in season two.The team itself doesn't quite make sense to me. Clearly Dr. Weir isn't qualified to lead in the face of the military threat of the Wraith. Then there is only one actual military person on the Stargate team. I found myself wondering, why would McKay be sent on missions? He's totally vital back on Atlantis, so sending him out to random planets seems like a risk that should not have been taken. For the dramatic purposes of the television series, it's fine, but it was a thought that got in my head and stuck.Interestingly, our people make some rather stunning moral/ethical decisions at times, e.g. experimenting with converting Wraiths to humans and thinking that Wraithness is an "unnatural" state. This experimentation of the Wraith was where the show started to really find some depth.Season Three:Four episodes in, we finally get a Ronon story.At this point, the show is definitely in its groove. It had a move-like double-episode, featuring Richard Dean Anderson, which was great. Many other episodes were the best in the series, like the powerful, gut-wrenching "Sunday."The Wraith finally get really interesting this season. The best one, Christopher Heyerdahl's "Todd" added a great wild card element to every episode he was in.Season Four:This season saw the addition of Amanda Tapping to the cast and the subtraction of Tori Higginson, who had acquitted herself okay but had become a dead end. Higginson had improved over the years, and Weir had some good episodes in the third season, but I was happy to see her go. But then there were a surprising number of episodes without Amanda Tapping. She was definitely underutilized, and of course she would leave for Sanctuary at the end of the fourth season, so an opportunity was, if not entirely wasted, not taken full advantage of.I wish David Nykel's Dr. Zelenka could have been in even more episodes. He should have been a full cast member.By season four, it's firmly "The Dr. McKay Show" or "The McKay and Sheppard Show." Rodney McKay, played by the outstanding David Hewlett is the character that gets the most development and most interesting stories.The show slips a little with episodes like "Harmony." More episodes this season feature fewer characters.Season Five:Great special effect to open the fifth season. No more Amanda Tapping. She moved on to Sanctuary.Jewel Staite finally earned her spot in the opening credits. Robert Picardo joined the full-time cast, too. Picardo's a fine actor, but he was wrong for this series. His role was limited, for good reason, though he was finally coming into his own by the end of the season.Paul McGillion was better after his original character had been killed off than when he was a regular. I think it's notable that this was true of Francks and Higginson, too. Both of their characters were better in their returns than when they were there each week. McGillion's appearances in particular were well done and always welcome.It was great to see a Daniel Jackson two-parter.I love the Sheppard calls Ronon "Chewy," as Sheppard definitely has a Han Solo vibe and Ronon a Chewbacca one. I think it's great that they acknowledge this in a small, funny way.Eight episodes from the end, they did a clip show. That should not be allowed to happen in a modern television show.Stargate Atlantis was prematurely cancelled. The bonus features highlight the surprise of all involved. It's also clear that they expected to make annual tv movies, which, unfortunately, have not happened and likely never will. There should have been a season six. Though the show has a good finale, it deserved another year or two. McKay in particular, but Sheppard, "Todd," and the others, too, had a lot of depth, and the Pegasus galaxy held the promise of many more story options. The series stands tall, and wonderfully complements SG-1, as a must-see science fiction series, along with Battlestar Galactica, Farscape, Babylon 5, and the (first three) Star Trek series. Atlantis's humor, willingness to explore different ideas, and memorable characters qualify it as a top-tier show in my book.

I watched on tv. Decided I was going to get on dvd. The series is great and the dvds were in great shape. Still watch them.

I really enjoyed this series despite having the same formula as the first. When I saw pieces of Atlantis and its characters on the first SG, I was taken aback and did not want to see Atlantis (the sets looked corny and I found the characters, such as Weir and McKay, annoyed me). Nothing could top the first series, right? Wrong. It took me years after seeing the first to get to this one, but I finally did after a friend's recommendation. This show has the same renegade off the cuff against impossible odds leave no man behind everybody speaks English formula, yet it has something that pushes aside the cheese: the characters. It took me a while, but I actually liked the characters of Atlantis far more than SG1, especially Rodney, which I completely unexpected. The SG1 characters seem rather two dimensional now. What seemed like cheap knock offs of the original characters turned out to be an improved second generation product (think SG 2.0).Seasons 1 through 4 had good cliff hangers and multi part episodes, while season 5 just kind of ended with no build up at all. The commentaries showed that they had no idea that the show was ending until they were at the last episode or two, but I think they knew something because they were not building up to the typical season end cliff hanger. Unfortunately, they were not building up to a particularly satisfying resolution either, however, my favourite episode is the second to last episode (Vegas), which was a great character piece, and the very last episode itself was satisfying enough.The series itself gets five stars. The extras are a fine bonus and I looked at some, but I am not a huge extras person so I have no rating. The DVDs and packaging are a three because 1) the paper case is not good for protection 2) my player had trouble reading some of the discs despite no scratches 3) two or three of the seasons have a navigation design issue of which I cannot recall details.

La première saison son est en anglais seulement et dans la saison 3 j'ai un dvd qui saute difficulté à voir un épisode sinon je suis Comptant. La série est arriver dans un délais raisonable

The series was great but some of the dvds in this series froze and skipped which was very disapointing,i have found this with the last two series i bought from Amazon.

Its the complete series with the extended episodes included.

Couldn't be happier.

Ich bin schon seit meiner Jugend ein absoluter Stargate-Fan (und Nerd ...), hatte aber bis neulich immer nur SG-1 geschaut, in der Überzeugung, das wäre die einzige wahre Form der Serie ... ein schwerer Fehler! Hatte vor vielen Jahren, als es noch ganz neu war, im Fernsehen ein paar Folgen Atlantis gesehen, das Ganze aber für überhaupt nicht spannend befunden. Auch das war ein schwerer Fehler wie ich jetzt im Nachhinein feststelle. Vor einiger Zeit dachte ich mir also - ok, ich hol mir jetzt die Box und geb SGA noch mal eine Chance. Das Resultat? Jetzt bin ich neben SG-1 auch ein SGA - Suchti. Hab die Box innerhalb von zwei Wochen durch gehabt und fange gerade noch einmal von vorne an.An der Qualität der DVDs / Verpackung gibts nichts zu mäkeln, sieht alles großartig aus. Einzig und allein das System, bei dem man die obere DVD herausnehmen muss um an die zweite darunter zu kommen war ein wenig gewöhnungsbedürftig. Ansonsten Top!