[HICHE] ADKoPD: Episode 17, Of Quartz You Can Help

This title has a rock pun in it. Three guesses who guest stars this episode, and none of them count because of course it’s Maud Pie. But she’s not all. Welcome, friends, to Episode 17 of “A Different Kind of Pegasus Device”.

[G-Docs Chapter Link – Of Quartz You Can Help]

We start off with the chapter “Scheduled Offworld Activation”, a joke for SG-1 fans, as Rainbow Dash returns to Gaia and runs into two guest stars who are heading to Atlantis, Lightning Dust and Maud Pie. Maud is here because of Pinkie’s message from last time asking for her to visit, but she’s puzzled why Pinkie didn’t wait until after the Wraith/Atlantis debacle, Rainbow realizing Pinkie is worried about things not ending well. You may notice this is a bit of a grim attitude to have shortly after stopping the Wraith before they reached Gaia. Yeah, this is a symptom of writing this stuff out of order, and this in-story mentality is from before I’d fully considered the implications of “Valley of Lost Dreams” and hangs around for a few more episodes. Hate to say it, but thwarting one Hive alliance wasn’t enough to save them from the Wraith as a whole, though I’m not sure how they’d figure this out. Well, I do have an idea, but it doesn’t happen until towards the finale. There are surprisingly few Wraith encounters in this part of the story to pin it on. This is a rather big plot hole as it affects the very reasoning for several of these episodes to exist, and I just recently realized it was here. Whoops on me. I guess I could always retcon in that Ribbon had seen into the Wraiths’ minds in “Lost Dreams” to realize that other alliances had already found out or were at least getting suspicious of these Hives’ activities, possibly because of a double agent, wouldn’t that be neat? It could also make Twilight’s relinquishing of Atlantis’ lone ZPM in “The Quest for Power” more impactful, knowing at the time that its power absolutely would be needed in the future. Hindsight, man, insert 2020 joke here.

Back to this episode, Lightning is here to earn back her reputation lost in “Wonderbolts Academy” and to ‘do things right this time’. Also in the Crystal Empire to join the Atlantis Expedition is Trixie, and I swear I came up with this cast long before Starlight became a main character and befriended most of them. So Lightning Dust, Maud Pie, and the Great and Powerful Trixie walk into a Puddle Jumper, insert punch line. After some banter, we cut to Atlantis as Zipzee finds Pinkie waiting for Maud to arrive, expecting a heart leap from her Pinkie Sense to alert her. The second Jumper to arrive is hers, and we have a funny Zipzee/Maud scene where the Breezie meets Boulder. Pinkie tries giving Maud a tour of Atlantis, but her attention is instead drawn to the naquadah samples (Stargate’s super-substance that is in large portion quartz-based, hence the title) that either last episode’s mission or the one that just arrived had brought back. I haven’t decided which (though the draft leans towards this episode’s), or if it even matters, but have no plan B for the purpose/result of the one that doesn’t get this role; maybe they both went in sequence, but that feels too crowded. Immediately enthralled, Maud is allowed to accompany the mission to find and retrieve more of the mineral from the same planet, joining a team already consisting of, you guessed it, Lightning and Trixie. Pinkie and Zipzee will tag along, too, to extend the visit.

We arrive on the planet in “The Singeing Sands”, a barren rocky desert world with a grounded Stargate and that’s dotted with caves; this planet is in a circumbinary system, orbiting two close stars at once instead of just one, and yes, this is a real thing. Because they’ll be in dire straits later (big surprise, right?) and need to be even more helpless, I considered not giving them a Jumper for this mission, but they may simply be caught too far away from it when things go wrong; Trixie’s the only member who could have the C-gene to fly it, though, so unless I decided she’s a natural expert like Rainbow, they probably don’t have one. Setting the scene, the naquadah was recovered from a cave that appeared suspiciously like an abandoned mine, though no nearby settlement was found that might have been using it. Trixie and Lightning aren’t getting along well, as you can imagine, also suspecting this ‘boring’ assignment was given to them because they were so late to join. I suppose they do their mission for a bit, but I skipped writing that part and instead cut to Pinkie dialing back for a check-in or something, but the Stargate just shuts off mid-dial. Uh-oh. When they’re overdue, Atlantis tries dialing them, but they can’t connect. Memories of Breezie Blossom resurface, but Vinyl concludes it’s a different problem, discovering that the receiving Gate isn’t missing but is instead blocking the connection to avoid interference with the wormhole by peak solar activity from the planet’s suns. SG-1 features at least a few times the team overrules their Gate’s safety precautions and accidentally causes the plot (“Red Sky”, et al.), but at least the Crystal Ponies were smart and put the receiving Gate in charge instead of the dialing Gates. Despite all this time, however, the Expedition still hasn’t figured out how to properly navigate the unforgiving user interface of the Atlantis computers, and keeps discovering new information that didn’t pop up when they first looked into the naquadah planet. For instance, this planet is in a circumbinary system, yes, but that pair is also co-orbiting with a gravity-linked cluster of three other stars (not sure if this is real too, though), making this planet over twice as hot as Tatooine and meaning that almost no part of it ever gets to cool down during any consistent night period. And now no one can dial in or out because the suns are getting even hotter. Fun times.

The chapter “Coronas of the Suns” takes us back to the planet as I reference “The Incredibles” and “Twilight Zone” to pass time. Then, Atlantis finds more new information (while I’d space out these discoveries to improve the pacing in a finished version, these small scenes are too trivial to fully discuss in a summary like this so it feels even more rushed). In classic Stargate fashion, after something gets bad, it has to get worse: when the Lanteans found it, this planet didn’t have an atmosphere, they put one here so they could mine, and it was never meant to last this long, its instability putting it at risk of being blown off by one of the massive solar flares these stars are prone to, the reason for the Gate’s preemptive shut off ability. This is another detail inspired by the earlier-referenced “Aurelia and Blue Moon” space documentary, though this situation is more directly familiar from the side-plot desert planet in the SG-1 episode “The Fifth Race” through the inability to dial out. Meanwhile, the team is alerted of the intense stellar activity, and probably an incoming solar flare (it’s coming, they just may or may not know about it), by Zipzee’s antennae, because I had nothing else to give that role to. Whether or not they have a Jumper waiting by the Gate, they’re too far away and seek shelter in a nearby cave, passing up another cave farther away that Boulder ‘says’ is better, but Lightning Dust’s ego isn’t about to listen to a rock when she’s saving everypony. As the sunlight begins to burn the land, Maud still insists they should be in the other cave, annoying Lightning to the point of swatting Boulder out of her hoof. He flies outside and splinters against the hard rocks. Yeah, I went there, Boulder’s dead now. Maud has to be restrained from going after him, getting her hoof burned as she reaches past the entrance. Their game of hide-and-seek will now go on forever.

Named after an unrelated SGA episode, the chapter “Hot Zone” leads the expedition deeper into the cave, only to discover a cavernous room with a glass ceiling Maud attributes to a previous solar flare scorching a layer of sand up on the surface, thereby making this entire cave into a greenhouse that would become an oven if another flare were to hit. This is why Boulder didn’t like this cave. And it’s at this point you’ll think you’re reading “Right Off the Bat” again, because I have no planned resolution to this episode, either. The solution is that they take shelter in the other cave, as it was lined with naquadah (accomplishing their mission of finding more), which lets the mineral absorb the energy from the solar flare without transferring it into the cave itself (a property canon naquadah might not have but might as well be given). As for how they get there, however, that’s the hole I’ve found myself written into. My clearest idea, Atlantis copying Rey’s ‘bypassing’ of the Millennium Falcon’s compressor to send a rescue Jumper, can’t work because it’s the planet’s Gate blocking the wormhole, not Atlantis’, and nothing can force a connection through that (or can it?…details next time). Otherwise, our options are Trixie spontaneously learning how to teleport (“All Bottled Up” hasn’t happened, remember), Maud finding a convenient connecting passage, or Lightning doing something to redeem herself. Heck, maybe Pinkie drills them there with her mane, who knows. Minor note, but this is also Zipzee’s final drafted appearance and she has no character arc to conclude, so…

One improvement over “Right Off the Bat” is that there is some post-mission content, with Pinkie explaining to Lightning how she’s overlooking the small but important parts of trying to be friends and Maud revealing to Twilight that she perfectly understood Pinkie’s reasoning for asking her here all along, but was surprised Pinkie was mature enough to think of it.

Spectacular until the end, right? Copy-paste every previous apology regarding this story being incomplete, etc. I’m rather disappointed I don’t know how it ends, either, it was going so well. Next time, the crystal ponies will deal with those awkward relatives we all have in “Crystals Are Denser Than Water”.