Carl Binder wrote Phantoms that first aired on 15 September, 2006.

Hallucinations seem to be running rampant through offworld teams. What’s causing them? What are they? Can it be stopped?

Sheppard (Joe Flanigan) leads his team, along with Dr. Beckett (Paul McGillion) to follow up on a team that has missed its check-in. But things aren’t going to be easy. They find a number of desiccated bodies that have been there for months, not their team, that have all apparently died at one another’s hands.

McKay (David Hewlett) finds a strange organic device but Sheppard elects to remind them that they need to find the missing team and get them home first.

They are able to recover their team, alive, but injured and unconscious. As they are making for the stargate, Ronon (Jason Momoa) spots something.

And things go sideways very quickly from there. The dial home device explodes, they fall under attack, and have to fall back to the strange Wraith-designed device.

As Beckett and McKay try to figure out the device, the rest of the team begin to suffer from crippling hallucinations. Hallucinations that may in the end cost them their lives.

Can McKay figure things out in time? Will Sheppard lose his mind in a flashback? Who will save the day in the end?

There’s some great stuff with Beckett and McKay. The episode was well done, and surprisingly three seasons in, there’s some nice new character stuff added to our heroes. It layers everything in nicely.

The Return: Part 1 is the mid-season finale. It was written by Martin Gero.

The Atlantis Expedition is preparing to deal with the attempted invasion of the Asurans, the evolved form of the Replicators. Things are looking pretty dire, and they may need some help. Who ya gonna call?

The episode opens with some testing of the McKay-Carter bridge, the interconnected wormholes that will connect Earth in the Milky Way galaxy to Atlantis in the Pegasus Galaxy.

Sheppard tests the puddle jumper with the Daedalus watching from the mid-point station. At Stargate Command, Landry (Beau Bridges) and O’Neill (Richard Dean Anderson) are waiting for him.

Can you guess who the help is to deal with the Asurans?

Not only is there some help from O’Neill, and questionably, Woolsey (Robert Picardo), there is a Lantean warship as well, captained by Samantha Mulder… I mean Helia (Megan Leitch). Helia wants the city back for her people. Which means the Expedition will have to leave. Now.

So to deal with that issue, O’Neill and Woolsey come to Atlantis to speak with Helia. All the pieces are on the board, even if they don’t get along. The packing up begins, and the Ancients/Lanteans agree to one person being left behind as an ambassador. The government wants Woolsey.

Everyone goes back to Earth, Sheppard gets assigned a SG team, Ronon and Teyla (Rachel Luttrell) find themselves canvassed by the Genii’s Ladon (Ryan Robbins) and life goes on until…

The Asurans/Replicators take a run at Atlantis. And the Lanteans are shocked to find their defenses don’t work against them, as the Replicators were able to rewrite their base code.

Landry orders a nuclear strike. They can’t risk the possibility that these Replicators find their way to Earth.

So Sheppard, Weir (Torri Higginson), McKay and Beckett head to the Pegasus Galaxy to help save the day… if they can. They grab some weapons, steal a puddle jumper and take off through the gate bridge. They recruit Teyla and Ronon and off they go, right to a To Be Continued tag.