Stargate Atlantis: was Wraith ally Todd ever on Atlantis' side?

Todd kills the most powerful queen in his alliance and hands the knife to a queen who isn't a Wraith at all. She's Teyla from the Atlantis team, changed by a medical procedure so she could pass as one. She came along as his ally, and he never told her this was the plan. For three seasons Todd was the one Wraith Atlantis could work with. Every time he helped them, though, he walked away with something, and most of what he wanted was power over other Wraith. My verdict: Todd never joined Atlantis' war. He got Atlantis to fight his.

Stargate Atlantis (2004) starred Joe Flanigan, Rachel Luttrell and David Hewlett. I'm going through every deal the expedition made with Todd and checking who came out ahead. Many of Todd's plans blow up in his face, and where something is my read rather than the show's, I'll say so.

Why Wraith hunger explains everything Todd does

The Wraith feed on human life force and treat the humans of the Pegasus galaxy as food. Every hive answers to a queen, and the hives fight each other, especially when food runs short. By season 4, Sheppard sums it up: too many Wraith, not enough humans to feed on. Almost everything Todd does comes back to that.

Across seasons 3 to 5, Todd is a hive commander, and Todd isn't even his name. He never gives one. In Spoils of War, Sheppard picks it, saying it belonged to a guy he knew in college who was very pale. McKay answers that Todd's a terrible name. So the most important alliance Atlantis ever had runs through a guy named after someone Sheppard knew in college, which sets the tone well.

Common Ground: Todd treats saving Sheppard as a debt repaid

It starts in Common Ground, season 3. Kolya, a military leader of the Genii, a human faction in Pegasus that once tried to seize Atlantis, has captured Sheppard and wants a trade. To make his point, he lets a starving Wraith prisoner feed on Sheppard a few years of his life at a time, on a live feed to Atlantis itself. That Wraith is Todd. When their chance comes, Sheppard throws him the keys to his chains, hands him a gun, and they run. Sheppard sets the terms: they need each other until the Stargate, then they go their separate ways. Todd asks what happens if they meet again. Sheppard says all bets are off.

Out in the woods, Todd is shot and starving. When the Genii find them, he feeds on Sheppard until he's close to a skeleton, gets his strength back, and takes out the whole search party. Then he walks back to the man he drained and gives back every year he took. "Sheppard gave me back my life. I merely repaid the debt." By McKay's count, Sheppard comes out looking younger than he went in.

That's the best card Todd has, and I want to give it its full weight, because nobody could have made him do it. But look at the word he picks: debt. Sheppard gave him his life, he gave it back, and the account is square. Todd admits he didn't truly expect Sheppard to honor their deal, and at the gate Sheppard repeats that all bets are off. My read is that even if the mercy was real, Todd walks away knowing John Sheppard keeps his word and is very hard to kill. That's a useful human to keep alive, and Todd will need him again. That word, debt, comes back at the end, running the other way.

Todd's Replicator alliance and the ZPMs he kept quiet about

In season 4, the Replicators, which is what the expedition calls the Asurans, the killer nanites the Ancients built, start wiping out the human worlds the Wraith feed on to starve them out. Todd comes to Atlantis with an offer to team up. In fairness to Todd, the Replicators were only hunting Wraith because the expedition had switched their attack command back on, so part of this mess was Atlantis's own. From his side, the only people who can save his food supply are his food supply.

In Be All My Sins Remembered, seven hive ships he talked into it fight beside the Earth ships Daedalus and Apollo, and the Replicator homeworld is destroyed. McKay later calls Todd the Wraith who got them all the hive ships. That's a real alliance, and he deserves credit for it.

Then look at the opening of Spoils of War, the last minutes of that same battle. The planet is about to blow, his crew wants to jump to hyperspace, and Todd says, "Not until I get what I came for." What he came for was ZPMs. A zero point module is the Ancients' power source and about the most valuable thing you can carry in Pegasus. Todd holds one up and says they now have what they need to complete their mission. Earth ships helped kill the biggest threat to the Wraith food supply, and Todd quietly flew off with the Ancients' best batteries without mentioning it to anybody. Atlantis fought the battle, and Todd went home with the loot.

Spoils of War: the cloning army and the friends Todd would leave behind

A week later, Todd's old tracking signal turns up from a crippled hive ship. Sheppard's team follows his attackers to a Wraith outpost and breaks Todd out of a cell right before his execution. He says he wasn't sure they'd come, and Sheppard replies, what are friends for? I'm choosing to read that as sarcasm, and I can't see how you could read it any other way.

The outpost is a cloning facility, where a queen's handful of warriors get copied thousands of times over. When Sheppard asks why anyone would need that now, Todd admits he acquired a few ZPMs before the Replicator planet was destroyed, intending to create an army to wipe out the other Wraith, until one of his crew betrayed him. So those ZPMs from the battle Atlantis helped win were always meant for this, and the only thing that stopped him was his own crew tipping off a rival hive. He even pitches the rescue to the people holding the guns as being in their best interest.

Then Sheppard, McKay and Ronon get stunned and captured, and Todd gets away to his damaged ship, where Teyla and Major Lorne are waiting. When Lorne asks how he managed to get away, Todd says he was lucky, which is the Wraith version of my dog ate it. When Lorne wants to go back for his people, Todd refuses and tells him there's no way to help his friends right now. With a rival hive closing in, the tactical read isn't crazy. Teyla, who has a bit of Wraith DNA, gets inside the rival queen's head and saves them anyway, and even with the team on its way back under fire, Todd is still pushing to leave. My read is that this was the first time staying with Atlantis cost Todd something, and he was ready to leave Atlantis's people behind. His plan fails anyway: Sheppard crashes Todd's own hive ship into the cloning facility, the army never happens, and Todd, in Sheppard's words, took a dart.

How Todd used Teyla to take control of the Wraith alliance

By season 5, Todd is part of an alliance of hives, and Atlantis brings him Dr. Keller's gene therapy, which could end a Wraith's need to feed on humans. McKay predicts this is the part where they get double crossed and taken prisoner. Todd greets them with fruit he hopes proves as delicious as the farmers who grew it, which is a very Wraith idea of hospitality. Teyla pitches the therapy as a significant advantage over other hives, and Todd is in fast. Sheppard doesn't trust it.

It turns out Todd may have, in his words, exaggerated his position within the alliance, which is the kind of thing you usually hear in a job interview that's going badly. The alliance answers to one queen, the primary, who only talks to other queens, and Todd's queen is dead, though the primary doesn't know it. So the plan becomes Teyla. Her Wraith DNA lets her pass as a queen, Keller says the procedure can be reversed, and Teyla agrees.

Then comes the meeting where Todd kills the primary. His reasoning afterward is fair on its own terms: if he'd taken the blame, he'd be dead and she'd be a prisoner. He adds that he doubts she'd have gone through with it had she known, and that she's now effectively in control of the alliance. With the alliance in hand, he stalls the therapy, saying pushing it so soon after the change in leadership may invite unwelcome questions. Teyla warns that if he steps out of line she'll come back and have him removed, permanently. Todd stands there clenching his fists, which is the most honest reaction he has all episode. Two weeks later, Sheppard hears Todd has solidified his position as a leader of the alliance. Teyla has doubts about that.

First Contact: Todd accuses Atlantis and leaves with the formula

In First Contact, Richard Woolsey, now running Atlantis, takes Keller out on the Daedalus to test the therapy with Todd. Woolsey acknowledges they let Todd use Teyla to take control of an alliance of Wraith hives, and Sheppard's worry is that Todd has got what he wants. Woolsey opens the meeting by quoting a 13th century English bishop to a Wraith, and Todd cuts him off to get started. I'm a little on Todd's side there.

In the lab, Todd is open about his doubts, asking what his people would do and who they would be if they stopped feeding. Then two of his cruisers jump to hyperspace and blow apart. Todd accuses Woolsey: "This was your plan all along." He announces they've been betrayed and that he's taking the ship. Atlantis had nothing to do with it. Someone else had switched on an old Ancient weapon, the Attero device, which tears apart Wraith ships as they jump to hyperspace.

Todd's accusation is wrong, but watch his sleeves. He came to a medical meeting on an allied ship with stun weapons already up, both of them. Nobody packs that for a meeting they expect to go well. He doesn't keep the Daedalus, but he doesn't leave empty handed either. He later admits he acquired some of the formulation while his crew was occupying the ship.

Infection: the best case for Todd as a real ally

I've been hard on Todd, so here's his best shot, because the show gives him a real one. In Infection, his hive ship shows up over Atlantis, dying. He gave the formula to his whole crew, and it worked, but then it started killing them. Even dying, he negotiates, warning that if they die, any hope of distributing the treatment dies with them.

Todd has a point, because Atlantis isn't spotless. Woolsey wants the data, whether for perfecting the formula as a treatment or as a weapon. So when Todd says the disease is their responsibility, he's not entirely wrong. Sheppard fires back that he'd be more charitable if Todd hadn't tried to kill half his people the last time they trusted each other. Todd answers that Sheppard owes him. Now Todd is the one calling in the debt, and Sheppard says he doesn't owe him anything.

When the hive starts falling with Sheppard's team aboard, Sheppard offers a deal: get the ship on the ground, and he'll take Todd to the planet where Todd hopes an old Wraith cure can save him. Todd fires the thrusters and helps land the wreck. The same Sheppard who started the episode wanting to fire drones and close the file calls him the best ally they've had against the Wraith. Woolsey replies that Todd is also the reason they were in danger in the first place. In the finale, Enemy at the Gate, Todd warns Atlantis about a new super hive. And who would we be is not a line anyone writes for a cardboard villain. That's a real argument.

What each of Todd's good deeds got him

Where I'd hold the line is on what each of these moments got him. Common Ground settled a debt and ended the all bets are off. Landing the wreck saved his own life and bought his way out the gate. When Todd thanks Sheppard for letting him go and says he will remember this, Sheppard answers, deal's a deal, which is not how you talk to a friend. As for the finale warning, the show never turns it into a scheme, so I won't either.

Respecting Sheppard and using Atlantis aren't opposites. Todd can mean "I will remember this, John Sheppard" and still treat the expedition as a tool. I think he does both.

The scorecard: Todd used Atlantis but never beat them

Side by side: Atlantis gave him his freedom, and he squared the debt. Atlantis fought the Replicators, and he left with the ZPMs. Atlantis broke him out of a cell, and he was ready to leave them in one. Atlantis lent him Teyla, and he got the alliance. Atlantis brought him aboard the Daedalus, and he left with the formula.

To be straight, he didn't win much of it. His army never got built, the Daedalus stayed Earth's, and the formula killed his crew. For a master schemer, his follow through is rough. He used Atlantis; he didn't beat them. Two weeks after the queen, Teyla asks Sheppard whether it isn't strange that Todd now personally controls that entire alliance, and admits it had crossed her mind that this was his plan all along. Sheppard thinks they're better off than before regardless, and Teyla doesn't look convinced. The show never rules on it, and I won't either. But Atlantis trusted one Wraith, and every deal they made with him paid Todd first.