Home

"Home" is the ninth episode of the first season of Stargate: Atlantis.

Synopsis
After exploring M5S-224, Dr. Rodney McKay discovers the mist is giving off power every time the Stargate is dialed out. This presents the team an opportunity to get back to Earth.

Plot
Upon exploring the planet M5S-224, Dr. Rodney McKay discovers that the Stargate draws its energy from the atmosphere, and believes that this would be enough energy to power up a wormhole to Earth. After consulting Dr. Elizabeth Weir, the team decides to dismantle the Control crystal in Atlantis and transport it to the planet in order to dial an eight chevron to the Milky Way galaxy. The wormhole connects, and Stargate Command tells them that it is alright to travel back to Earth since the Prometheus is capable of reaching the Pegasus Galaxy in a couple of months thanks to the installation of Asgard hyperdrives. Upon returning to Earth, they find out that the Prometheus has had an accident and is not capable of transporting them back to Atlantis.

Each team member slowly begins to realize that things are not as they seem. Major John Sheppard sees friends that had previously died in Afghanistan when he was serving with them, Weir is told by Major General George S. Hammond that Atlantis will now become a full military and Sheppard is strangely in support of this. In his own reality, McKay notices that his scientific results are coming out as gibberish. As each team member comes to the realization that this Earth is not real, they find themselves in the Embarkation room at Stargate Command with Hammond. But it is not the real Hammond, but rather a being of the original planet, which McKay mistook for highly charged mist.

Mist-Hammond tells them that he had to create hallucinations for each team member to stop them from dialing the Stargate and currently they are unconscious. Since Teyla Emmagan had no memories of Earth, she had to share Sheppard's memory. For many years, travelers had come through the Stargate and the use of the gate killed mist beings, Mist-Hammond explains that a connection to earth would kill millions, implying that the power the gate could draw from the mist was the hazard to these beings, rather than the vortex, which would be to physical beings. McKay realizes if they are unconscious, without food or water, they would eventually die. Mist-Hammond suggested that they return to their fantasies. Weir convinces him that they will not dial Earth, but head back to Atlantis instead and they are released from the hallucinations.

Notable Quotes
Ford: I've never seen so much nothing.

Sheppard: And I've never walked so far to see it.

Sheppard: How much power are we talking about here?

McKay: In terms of joules or ergs?

Sheppard: In terms of lots.

McKay: Well, lots and lots. Enough to dial back to Earth.

McKay: Let me see if I can make you understand, okay? these results don't just say the ZPM won't work, they say this reality isn't governed by any natural laws. It's like looking through a microscope at a cell culture and seeing a thousand dancing hamsters. It's impossible!

Weir: Rodney, you need to calm down.

McKay: No, no, what I need to do now is get very agitated because what I'm realizing is all this is a lie!

McKay: Atlantis can't afford to lose me. I'm their foremost expert in gate theory and wormhole physics, and a myriad of other sciences too numerous to mention yet too important to ignore.

Ford: So what you're saying is you're invaluable everywhere.

McKay: So none of this is real? (truth dawns) The cute brunette, of course! I should have known! How do you go from, "You're a pig, but I like your cat," to "I missed you"?

McKay: An hour ago it hit me. Like Archimedes in the bathtub, Eureka! Except, I wasn't in the bathtub. I was on the couch watching a very strange 'Outer Limits' episode...

(Sheppard has figured out that his welcome-home party is just a figment of his imagination)

Sheppard :You guys have been dead for years. Now, don't get me wrong, it's really nice seeing you. (points to a middle-aged woman) You too, Miss Watson.

Ford: Sir—

Sheppard: (to Ford) She was my sixth grade teacher. (points to a young blonde) And I don't even remember your name, but I remember you wouldn't even date me!

Weir: War and Peace. Mmm some heavy reading.

Sheppard: Yeah. Well back on Earth when I was getting ready for this mission I realized there was a good chance I might be here for a while so I figured 'why not bring along a book that takes a while to read.'

Weir: Page 17.

Sheppard: I'm right on schedule.

Alien Lifeform: Major Sheppard seemed uniquely capable of manipulating his own fabricated reality.

Sheppard: If I think about the scenarios I could've thought up, I'd kick myself... The dead people were a dead giveaway.

McKay: Dead people? What were you doing?!

Goofs

 * It is decided by the team to send a message, or one person. Yet, in the illusory world none of them is surprised to see non of the other team members. When all of them appear with `General Hammond' and before he tells them they were never sent, none is surprised that all are there.
 * Illusion or not, it's highly unlikely that McKay would be allowed out of Cheyenne Mountain, let alone Stargate Command, wearing his Atlantis uniform complete with mission patches.
 * Though this is possibly another clue that it is not real.
 * The mist entity stated toward the end of the episode that a wormhole hadn't been connected. If that was the case, then how did the entity know that the Prometheus was being fitted with Asgard technology that none of the team themselves knew about?
 * This is wrong because the mist created an illusion. So the entity did not need to know; it was most likely only correct through coincidence.

In other languages

 * German: Zurück auf die Erde (Back to Earth)
 * Polish: Dom
 * Portuguese: Casa
 * French: Retour sur Terre (Back on Earth)
 * Italian: Casa (Home)
 * Spanish: Casa (Home)
 * Czech: Domov (Home)
 * Russian: Дом (Home)