DVD review (region 2)
Directed by Martin Wood
Starring Joe Flanigan, Amanda Tapping, David Hewlett
Release date Out now (region 1 and 2)

Atlantis's war against the Wraith plays second fiddle to more intimate, character-led adventures, before the return of an old enemy threatens to shift the balance of power forever in the Pegasus galaxy...

It's a tale of two discs as Season 4 shudders then crashes to a halt. The stalled engines are thanks to the four episodes in Volume 4 of the spin-off series, which is the much weaker of the two discs covered here. Bringing together Quarantine, Harmony, Outcast and Trio, it consists of not one but two episodes of trapped team members; a Rodney-hates-kids comedy tale and an Earth-based story unnecessarily continued from a previous adventure.

Compare that to the opening slice of action that kicks off Volume 5. Midway sees Teal’c (Christopher Judge) pay Ronon Dex (Jason Momoa) a visit and ends with this army of two taking on a full-scale Wraith assault. Meanwhile, The Kindred double-parter offers a long-awaited return for a popular character killed off in Season 3. That's all thanks to Star Trek: Enterprise's Connor Trinneer, who also makes a reappearance as half-Wraith/half-human bad guy Michael. A constant thorn in Atlantis's side, Michael seems intent on taking control of the entire galaxy, using kidnap, murder and even planet-wide genocide along the way.

As for the all-action finale we've come to expect from Stargate Atlantis...? The Last Man takes a different tack, showing a readiness to embrace more time-travel based plots in the same way that the SG-1 movie Continuum did. While this does provide a way to give characters that are unlikely to die a chance for heroic endings, the cliffhanger falls a little flat compared with previous seasons.

The usual extras are all present and correct, including a great deleted scene that ribs Battlestar. However, while it might seem unfair to cuss a disc where seven of the eight episodes offer a commentary, these aren’t very well targeted. When cast members do participate they tend to not be those people who were the focus of the episode. This is particularly noticeable as the returning character is nowhere to be seen or heard in the extras, and even SG-1 fave Judge doesn't get a look in on Midway. Matt Chapman

VERDICT
Volume 4: 4/10
Volume 5: 8/10
One of the weakest offerings for those collecting the set disc-by-disc is trounced by much stronger, action-based episodes that end the series with a bang.

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