Brain Storm

"Brain Storm" is the sixteenth episode of the fifth season of Stargate Atlantis.

Synopsis
Rodney reluctantly returns to Earth to witness the triumph of his rival Malcolm Tunney, but must help shut down a deadly weather device when the new technology goes horribly awry.

Plot
Dr. Rodney McKay is invited to a landmark scientific presentation by an old "friend" from his school days, or rival, Malcolm Tunney, who has gone on to great success, with public acclaim and lots of money. Rodney, meanwhile, hasn't published in years and can't tell anyone about what he really does for a living.

Bringing along Dr. Jennifer Keller as his date, McKay returns to Earth for the event. The two are brought to a secret desert facility by Tunney's private jet. There the test of an astonishing new technology is to take place, a demonstration that doubles as a high-society cocktail party for dozens of wealthy and important guests.

But McKay and the rest of the guests are unaware that some of Tunney's colleagues have warned about possible catastrophic consequences for what he is about to do. The device to be demonstrated activates, and it causes the temperature in the room to drop. It appears to be a weather-control device of some sort, an ingenious solution to global warming.

The crowd applauds... but Dr. Tunney is soon informed that his device cannot be shut down. Not only is Tunney's project in danger, but so are the lives of everyone in the facility.

It turns out Tunney built a matter bridge to channel heat into another reality. But like the one McKay and Jeannie created, there are problems and it can't be shut down. It just keeps drawing heat. Apparently Tunney managed to somehow get his hands on a paper McKay wrote about the matter bridge he created and disregarding the warnings in it about trying to make such a bridge, Tunney went ahead and created one. McKay and Tunney enlist the other scientists that are there for help, including Bill Nye. Keller takes a cell phone and tries to call the SGC for help, but is trapped when Freeze lightning freezes the door to the room she's in and causes freezing water to start to flood it. After an unsuccessful attempt to overload the bridge, McKay decides to open another one to starve the first one of power and cause them both to collapse. After finding out Keller's in trouble, he rushes off to help her and leaves Tunney and Bill Nye to finish the job. McKay successfully rescues Keller as Tunney and Bill Nye activate a second matter bridge, successfully blowing the power and collapsing both bridges. On the plane ride home Keller and McKay confess their feelings for each other.

Notable quotes
Receptionist: I'll just need you both to sign this non-disclosure and confidentiality agreement. (picks up two thick documents and gives places them before McKay and Keller)

McKay: Oh, you're not serious.

Receptionist: Is there a problem, sir?

McKay: This whole thing is a confidentiality agreement?!

Receptionist: Yes, sir.

McKay: What could he possibly be doing back there that needs to be kept two hundred pages secret?!

Receptionist: If you want to go inside, sir, you need to sign the agreement.

McKay: Dinosaurs?

Receptionist: Excuse me?

McKay: Do they have living dinosaurs back there? Because I'll sign this if he's brought dinosaurs back to life, but short of that he's out of his mind if he thinks I'm gonna pretend that whatever discovery he has made is so important and so secret that I have to sign the unabridged works of William Shakespeare here.

Keller: (holds up her pen) Just sign it.

McKay: Neil likes to steal things from me – things like women and theoretical physics ideas.

Tyson: Yeah, but who hasn't stolen an idea from the great Rodney McKay?!

McKay: Oh, so we admit it now!

Nye: See, back in the day whenever any one of these people came up with a new idea or published a new paper, Doctor McKay here would swear that he was already working on something very similar; just hadn't gotten around to publishing it yet.

Tyson: He'd say things like, "I was about to say that very same thing," or "I was just about to have that same idea"!

McKay: Hey, at least I didn't declassify Pluto from planet status. Way to make all the little kids cry, Neil. That make you feel like a big man?

Tunney: Yeah, but you have any idea how difficult it's going to be to configure the system to open two concurrent space-time bridges?

McKay: I never said it was going to be easy.

Tunney: It's going to be impossible.

McKay: I'm Dr. Rodney McKay, alright? Difficult takes a few seconds; impossible, a few minutes.

Background notes

 * Teyla Emmagan and Richard Woolsey do not appear in this episode.
 * When Jennifer says, "I love you, I have for some time now." she is mirroring what McKay told her on Day 6 of his recordings, after being infected by Second Childhood. A message he doesn't remember leaving for her.
 * Jennfer Keller mentions that an "uncle George" finds the term, "saving the planet" misleading, due to the fact that the planet is not under threat by global warming, life on it is. This could be a reference to stand-up comedian George Carlin, who often voiced a similar stance on the phrase.
 * In the first scene with Tunney after he presses a button before walking over to his colleague a beep can be heard coming from the computer. This beep is frequently used in Star Trek after a command has been put in the computer.
 * Tunney mentions CERN's LHC Particle Accelerator, to prove that the same way nothing went wrong with it on its activation, even though micro black holes and instantanious destruction of the earth was expected, nothing will go wrong when he activates the device. (The real-world LHC had not actually been activated yet at the time of filming, but was expected to have been by the time the episode was to be aired. However, mechanical problems caused the shutdown of the device before the stage of the activation that had many worried about doomsday scenarios, making Tunney's statement (partially) inaccurate at time of first airing, assuming the episode takes place before Summer 2009, the LHC's expected reactivation date.)
 * The discussion of strawberries between Keller and Mckay may be a reference to Jewel Staite's famous character from Firefly, Kaylee Frye, who had a known obsession for strawberries.

Production

 * This is the last script Martin Gero would write for the series, and his first full episode to direct.
 * The cast and crew were notified of the series' cancellation on the last day of filming this episode.
 * Three major guest stars appeared in the episode: Dave Foley, Bill Nye ("The Science Guy"), and real-life astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.