Stargate Atlantis/YMMV

• Acceptable Hard Luck Targets: Dr. McKay's allergies and hypoglycemia.
• Acceptable Targets: Sheppard frequently excuses Rodney to people because... "He's Canadian"
  • Kavanagh, described by the producers as the most irritating person in 3 galaxies.

Hermiod: Doctor Kavanagh?
Kavanagh: Yes?
Hermiod: Shut... up... please...

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • Jack O'Neill assures Dr. Weir that she and her team will remain in Atlantis as, in his words:

O'Neill: Since you saved Woolsey's ass, and you did a fair job on mine...

• • This exchange from 5.15 'Remnants', as Richard Woolsey sees that a women he's been flirting with found his balcony hang-out spot:

Woolsey: You’ve approached my private spot!
Woman: ...What?
Woolsey: I mean you’ve entered my little personal area.
[Beat]
Woolsey: ...This is where I come... to be alone with my thoughts.

• Alternative Character Interpretation: The main cast: big damn heroes adventuring and exploring new worlds while trying to make it in the Pegasus galaxy, malicious idiots that leave a trail of death, destruction and imminent doom everywhere they go or humanity's ruthless defense against a new intergalactic, genocidal threat?
  • Dr. Kavanaugh: Straw Man Has a Point or The Complainer Is Always Wrong?
• Ass Pull: The wormhole drive in the finale.
  • One of the producers commented that its use in the finale was meant to set up the viewers for its use in an upcoming Atlantis movie, meaning that the writing crew tried to pull a Chekhov's Gun out of their ass.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: From the season 2 episode "Critical Mass": "Beyond The Night". Oh, and that IS Rachel Luttrell.
• Damsel Scrappy: Dr Keller
• Designated Villain: Bates, Kavanaugh and Ellis tend to end up in this role. They usually have legitimate concerns or complaints, but because these are against the main cast of characters (Bates seeing Teyla as a security risk, Kavanaugh complaining to Weir about Weir degrading him in public, Ellis wanting McKay to cut the exposition and get to the point) the characters are presented as reactionary jerkasses. There is also a trend of portraying Kavanaugh, in his few appearances, as a coward even though every time he is up against a situation in which his fear is perfectly understandable.
• Die for Our Ship: Keller gets this a lot.
  • When fans are in a more forgiving mood, she often gets paired with Ronon.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Many people express their disapproval on how Michael is treated. All this "Kill almost everybody and turn the rest into unstoppable army of destruction" kinda slips their mind.
• Ensemble Darkhorse
  • Doctors Carson Beckett and Radek Zelenka!
  • Also Major Lorne and the gateroom tech. Fandom assigned first names to both of them (Evan or Nick -- usually the former -- for Lorne and Chuck Campbell for the tech), and the latter became a case of Ascended Fanon and made it onto the show.
  • Todd the Wraith.
• Genius Bonus: Genii is the plural form the Latin word "Genius" (no pun intended). Not only do the Genii think highly of themselves, it also indicates that they may have had some history with the Ancients.
• Growing the Beard: All the Badass characters either show up or are promoted in season 2: Ronon, Caldwell, Lorne, Sheppard, etc.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Rodney: "I don't have time to explain to Conan and Xena", referring to Ronon and Teyla. Jason Momoa has been since cast as Conan.
• Ho Yay: Lets see;
  • Sheppard and McKay are everyone's favorites with scenes that seems to back it up (the end of Irresistible for expamle).
  • Beckett and McKay are great friends and even kissed once while McKay was sharing a body with the mind of a female soldier.
  • A Foe Yay example is the relationship between John and Todd (the Wraith), especially when they formed the first human/Wraith alliance to escape a prison together. Though they're basically enemies and don't trust each other, they're friendly enough to work together in several episodes.
• Ho Yay Shipping: Most notably, John Sheppard and Rodney McKay. There are some people who watch the show specifically because of this.
• Idiot Plot: The whole Series Finale.
  • The entire retrovirus subplot in Season 2 & 3. First strike for carelessly leaving the unfinished formula out in the open for a scared little girl desperate for a cure to get ahold of. Then their experiment on a captured enemy Wraith backfires spectacularly and blows the expedition's cover. Then when aforementioned Wraith seems to put the incident behind him and offers himself as a potential ally, the team betrays him again. Unsurprisingly, it backfires just as badly as the first time, and they lose their own Hive ship for the effort.
• Jerkass Woobie: The Asurans. The Lanteans tried to wipe them out, and the Atlantis Expedition later tries exactly the same because they're dangerous. Its even noted at one point that the reason they're envious of Humanity is because they see us as the favourite son who recieved all father's attention.
  • Of course, the "jerkass" part comes into play because their plan to destroy the Wraith was to wipe out their food source; in other words, every single human in the Pegasus Galaxy.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: McKay.
• Magnificent Bastard: The Wraith "Todd" lives this as a matter of course; manipulating enemies with style is like breathing to him.
  • Major Sheppard also gets a moment like this every so often, including and especially at the end of the series, when he's trying to talk "Todd" into helping them fight another Wraith. "Todd" asks Sheppard why he should do it when it would leave "Todd" the prisoner of Atlantis and without any leverage.

Todd: Am I supposed to be enticed by this offer?
Sheppard: No. I'll probably kill you anyway. But don't forget, this Wraith betrayed you and got away with it. For no other reason, you might want to do it out of pure spite.
Todd: Youuuu know how to talk to me, John Sheppard! (evil laughter)

• Memetic Mutation: McKay's citrus allergy.
• Nightmare Fuel: The hallucinations in the season 1 episode "Hot Zone", caused by an Ancient nano-virus.
• Padding: Played straight and subverted in "Rising". A big deal is made out of dialing the 8th chevron to actually get to Atlantis. Later, McKay slips into Walter's old "Chevron One... Encoded" routine the first time the Atlantis gate is dialed and gets a dirty look from Weir. After that it's never done again, since the Atlantis gate can be dialed in a matter of seconds.
• Replacement Scrappy: Keller to a certain extent, partly because of what happened to Beckett.
• Shipping: A lot of it, with McKay×Keller now canon.
  • The shipping fandom generally started with Sheppard/Teyla, who was intended to be the canon alien Love Interest and Sheppard/Weir. With McKay/Sheppard as the typical sci-fi slash couple. The Sheppard/Teyla ship never really got out past the pilot due to crap writing. Shepard/Weir, despite their actors deliberately playing to that ship, never got recognised by the writing staff and then Weir got hit by bad writing. Barely anyone liked McKay with Keller, the show itself started going downhill, and the shipping in the fandom petered out.
  • The writers also Ship Teased Ronon/Keller before deciding to go the McKay/Keller route, which the fandom reacted much more positively to (it didn't interfere with shipping McKay/Sheppard, and Ronon was pretty popular so fans liked the idea of him getting to be with someone).
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Rodney McKay. He receives the most backstory and character development over the course of the series, including some backstory for his own sister, who appeared in several episodes. It makes everyone else look static and flat in comparison.
• Tear Jerker: "The Shrine". The whole episode will make you cry for so many different reasons.
  • Especially when the team pressure Woolsey to let them try to save McKay, and Ronon says that he could never understand. Woolsey then tells them of father's Alzheimer's, where his father didn't recognise him for months, before a moment of clarity where he was his old self... and then he was gone again.
  • "Sunday", if you please.

McKay: You were the closest thing to a best friend that I ever had.

• • Not quite on the same level, but a particularly heart-wrenching scenario occurred when Dr. Weir told her fiancé Simon not to wait for her. He didn't.
  • Perna's death scene in Poisoning the Well.
  • As big of a jerk as McKay was about the whole "destroying 4/5 of a galaxy thing", this troper still felt bad for him when Sheppard shut the transporter in his face, and really bad for him a few episodes later, when he asks Sheppard if he trusts him and Sheppard snaps back "No!"
• Unpopular Popular Character: Most of Atlantis treats Zelenka this way.
• Villain Decay: The Wraith seem to go through this, especially in the last couple of seasons, due to both Lowered Monster Difficulty and the story changing the emphasis from "the Wraith slowly wiping out all Pegasus humans" to battles against Eviler Than Thou enemies such as the Replicators and Michael.
• What Measure Is a Non-Badass?: Keller.
• The Woobie: Poor, poor Michael... at least in his first episode. After a while he's just a Jerkass.

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