SGA 4x6 Tabula Rasa (***)

[zelempa]

• We open with Rodney sweat-bathed and tied to a desk--just the way I like him. Forced to look at the stuff in front of him instead of randomly flitting about panicking, he sees a console with a post-it, "PRESS HERE." He gets a video of himself telling himself to "focus," and we get an adorable shot of him sort of moving his lips to agree with himself--yeah, focus, okay, doing that. Video Rodney tells Panicking Rodney the explanation is "too long and you wouldn't remember it anyway"--Mememto Episode! Rodney tells himself to find a certain woman or hundreds of people will die, and leaves him with a still image of Teyla reading "THIS IS TEYLA. FIND HER." Wow, Rodney's even forgotten who Teyla is. I hope he's forgotten that he and John are supposed to keep things professional.
  
  
• 14 Hours Earlier. Rodney goes to see Katie in her botany lab. She found a bristly, fluffy-topped cactus "hiding" in some shrubbery, and she shyly tells Rodney she's naming it "Rodneyana Velosa." The fact that the cactus looks exactly like Rodney is just funny. Katie herself is almost adorable enough for me to forgive her not being John, in a slightly awkward, adoring-from-afar, early-semi-pre-dating-crush kind of way, which, when you think about it, at this point, is kind of... strange.
  
  
• Katie's feeling woozy so Rodney takes her to the infirmary even though, as Katie says, "I know how you hate being around sick people." Dr. Keller assumes they're there for Rodney, cutely suggesting that Katie is taking Rodney to the infirmary all the time for imaginary ailments. The plot is that there is a flu-like bug going around Atlantis.
  
  
• Present. Creeping around the darkened base, Rodney runs into Zelenka, poised to hit him with a metal pipe. Seeing his uniform, Zelenka tells Rodney to follow him, and hisses paranoid ramblings about the soldiers being out to get them and shoot them and take them away, which, while disturbing, is also kind of great. Rodney insists on looking for Teyla instead of going where Zelenka wants him to so Zelenka tells him "Fine, I don't care" and stalks away, swearing. Sometimes I think Zelenka is more like Rodney than Rodney.
  
  
• Ten Hours Earlier. The disease is wider spread than anyone thought! Katie wakes up from a nap to find Rodney eating dinner by her bedside. Aw, he's a good boyfriend, even if he has a boyfriend. Katie is disoriented. "Where am I?" "You're in the infirmary. I brought you here, remember?" "Who are you?" Rodney looks disturbastated.
  
  
• Present. A team of soldiers led by Lorne shoot Rodney and take him away--Zelenka was right! Rodney's console is abandoned. Oh no!
  
  
• 8 hours earlier, John and Sam decide to make the mess hall into a temporary ward for the sick, and in the present we see that Rodney has been brought there and locked in with the rest of the scientists on base. Ha! The soldiers, lacking memory or reason but knowing only their mission, are randomly bringing people back to the mess hall even though it doesn't really make sense anymore. Thanks, John and Sam.
  
  
• Off Rodney's "Does anyone know Teyla?" we cut to Ronon in the present day, helping John move beds into the mess. He's bitching. John starts to get dizzy (or bored) and wanders off as Teyla comes up, totally checks out John's ass, and has a conversation with Ronon about how they both feel fine. "Perhaps you should make Dr. Keller aware of this," she says. Yes, Ronon, you should. Maybe while you're in there, you could casually let slip how much you really respect and admire the doctoring profession and how you are free Saturday? Ronon doesn't need much convincing--he immediately gos and tells Keller he thinks he's immune. Keller asks to take blood. "Take as much as you need," said Ronon badassly.
  
  
• Present day. Rodney writing notes on himself like Memento Guy. Sam emerges from the crowd and, incited by Rodney's ramblings, starts to take charge. Natural leader, that one. Where the hell is John?
  
  
• Back in the... past... sometime. No "X hours earlier" card this time. John and Rodney walk together and compare symptoms. Rodney wants to bet that John loses his memories first. But how will he remember the bet?
  
  
• Ronon goes to check on his blood test and Keller doesn't remember taking it. A guy starts convulsing and she can barely remember what to give him. It was supposed to be episodic memory that was affected, she should still be able to doctor! Oh well, maybe she was wrong. Random guy dies.
  
  
• Present. Lorne's team goes to open the door, and the scientists pour out. They can't contain them all! Some are shot, but Rodney and Sam slip away. "We'll just have to search room by room. How big could this place possibly be?" They wander out onto a balcony and see the skyline. Nice. It's kind of cool when facts we already know provide the big reveal.
  
  
• Past. John forgets the way to the mess hall. No, John! Your memories of the layout of Atlantis should be deeply ingrained. (cries)
  
  
• La la la plot. Keller figures out the disease is similar to a childhood disease common among the Athosians and Satedans; Teyla knows a plant cure, but she and Ronon can't go get some since Sam ordered Zelenka to disable the gate and nobody remembers where he put the crystal.
  
  
• John radios Zelenka unsuccessfully and then radios Lorne: "Have you seen Zelenka?" Lorne, suggestively: "As a matter of fact, I have." Nice, that'll keep that pairing going for another good three or four months.
  
  
• Ronon and his awesome coat set out with John to find the plant on the mainland. "You can fly this thing," Ronon assures John. "It's in your blood." Okay, that was sweet and kind of makes up for the lost-in-Atlantis thing.
  
  
• Teyla is very patient with Rodney, helpfully rattling off the technobabble for what he's doing at any given moment, and assuring him as he frets ("I had a really bad memory to start with! I once forgot Mother's Day five years in a row!"), "You are a scientist. That is what you care about; that is what you will hold onto the longest." Rodney wonders if this makes him a bad person. Not the time or place, Rodney! Besides, it really only makes you a T person. I don't think that's bad.
  
  
• Meanwhile, when John hesitates coming out of the jumper, asking where they are and why and not wanting to continue until he knows what's going on, Ronon just shoots him. Ha. "Never gets old," Ronon mutters with satisfaction, and then ties John up. Just the way he likes him???
  
  
• Teyla leaves Rodney to check on a noise and is accosted by Lorne's team in the hall. She fights them off and runs, but is eventually shot and taken away. Unable to find her, Rodney records his video.
  
  
• Lorne interrogates Teyla in a cell. He's popping pills like Dr. House, stimulants Keller gave everyone earlier to stave off the memory loss. He's freaking out paranoid style when he's shot from behind. It's Rodney, Sam, and Zelenka--hey, we made it seamlessly back to the present day!
  
  
• Ronon makes it back to the jumper with big bags of plant and John is missing. While Ronon is looking around John appears behind him with a gun. Ronon gets to make an as-impassioned-as-Ronon-ever-gets speech: "We're friends. The things we've been through together, I don't care what anyone says, no disease can wipe that away. Not completely. Okay? Deep down, you know I'm telling the truth." Hilariously, that doesn't work on John, but cold hard logic ("Fine, then shoot me. You'll be all alone with no idea who you are or what you're going to do next. How could I possibly make it any worse?") does the trick. Oh John. Such a T person.
  
  
• Teyla assures Rodney he can finish his program--he said he was almost done--but Rodney has zero confidence in himself. Trembling, wildly uncertain, he presses "enter." A window pops up: "Program complete." Rodney marvels, "I wasn't kidding!"
  
  
• Lorne's team accosts Ronon and Sheppard as they return and Ronon tells Lorne to look in his pocket. We get another Memento reference as Lorne pulls out a snapshot of John reading "Lt. Col. John Sheppard - He is your commanding officer - Trust him!" "That's right," says John, unconvincing and queenish, "I am your commanding officer, so, just do what I say!"
  
  
• John wakes up in a hospital bed. Ronon and Teyla come to visit him. Blah blah we won good thinking about the photo. "If the treatment had been delayed any longer, many more people would have died." John, suddenly serious: "What do you mean?--Where's McKay?" BWAHA. JOHN. I LOVE YOU.
  
  
• Rodney's slumped over Katie's bedside. Keller comes up and tells him to get some sleep. Rodney lifts his head: "I'm fine." He wants to stay until she wakes up. Ohhh, Rodney. Alive but straight. Poor John.
  
  
• Katie wakes up and says, "Rodney?" Okay, that's sweet, but would that it had been John! At least they threw us a bone with "Where's McKay?" Also, Katie and Rodney don't kiss or even embrace. So there is that. Also. Weird.
  
  
• Bottom line: The memory loss episode is a good chance for wacky interpersonal hijinks and wrong assumptions about relationships (see the Buffy episode of the same name or any amnesiafic ever), which I feel were overlooked here, but the way they did it--a sort of Out-of-Gas-style present-day-suspense-adventure interspersed with flashbacks, with people and aspects of the city we're familiar with as assets being turned against the heroes--was pretty good too. Too bad about the heterosexuality.