Stargate Atlantis

I watched Atlantis. Same problems as Stargate. Any time I've seen O'Neil, I've always understood his point of view. He's the main character. Why put in any effort? He knows he's going to win in the end. There's really no need to work for it. It's going to happen one way or the other.

The view of advanced technology portrayed here is ridiculous. The Wraith should be embarrassed by their poor development of technology. You're telling my that if the gate builders had "portable life detectors" that the Wraith don't have any integrated into their defense system? They don't have a computer watching for unpredicted life signs? How about video surveillance? Maybe face recognition is a really hard problem, say harder than creating wormholes, but can't the Wraith's computers tell the difference between Wraith faces and human faces? Oh, maybe the Wraith have a strong sense of personal privacy and can't tolerate the invasion of personal privacy that would result from have cameras in the corridors. Yeah, they seemed like the sensitive sort.

How about simple strategy? Surely during their defeat of the gate builders, the Wraith must have developed some basic tactical doctrines about dealing with Stargates. Why did the Wraith even allow the Puddle Jumper into their system? Why don't they have a shield over the gate?

How about when the Puddle Jumper is trying to escape. Why would the Wraith allow them to fly through the gate? Even if they didn't have control of a shield over the opening , and they couldn't prevent the ship from flying through, shouldn't they have just flow through once the gate was open? Why wait until after the ship went through? Oh right, so they could fly into the shield at the other end and get squashed.

So, humans show up with Atlantean technology. That's obvious right? The Wraith must have scanned the Puddle Jumper. Their AI system must have said, "That's a Class B Atlantean Light Troop Transport." Wouldn't someone would have to wonder, "Gee, where might someone get that kind of technology?" Oh, how about Atlantis? So, now we have to assume that the Wraith don't know where Atlantis is. If they knew, they'd scout it out and annihilate the human infestation there. In fact, if they know where Atlantis is, why didn't they obliterate it long ago? Obviously the shield wasn't up over the gate or the power would have failed. If the Wraith don't know where Atlantis is, why was it necessary to create the shield? I guess I've got to suspend my disbelief by assuming that the Wraith know where Atlantis is, but don't know the Stargate Code to get there. They have some FTL technology that allows them to get there without the code, but it takes a significant amount of time to get there that way. That's the only way the human colony survives until episode two.

Or maybe the Wraith aren't the race that defeated the gate builders. We could hold out that hope. Although unless the Wraith are a particularly stupid species who have inherited their technology from their betters, I think we should expect better from them.