The first details have arrived at GateWorld for “Progeny,” an early episode of Stargate Atlantis‘s upcoming third season. Written by Carl Binder and directed by Andy Mikita, the episode is the first half of an early-season two-parter, and revisits a very significant loose thread from the show’s first season — and from Stargate SG-1‘s own past.Beware of big spoilers for the episode below!After discovering an Ancient outpost with the gate address in its database, Elizabeth Weir joins Colonel Sheppard’s team on a mission to Asuras, a world inhabited by a society of millions. They are an advanced people, and it doesn’t take the team long to conclude that they are (unascended) Ancients. Their home is very much Lantian in design. Their leader is Oberoth, a fit and powerful man in his 50s who has a certain arrogant intenseness about him.They also meet a more quiet, sensitive Asuran leader named Niam, who brings the team before the Asuran High Council. There Oberoth explains that they are an off-shoot from the Ancients who long ago inhabited Atlantis. Though their race was once united, the Asurans left when the Lantians did not heed their council during the war with the Wraith. The Asurans resettled on this world thousands of years ago.Weir and Sheppard challenge Oberoth about the persistent threat of the Wraith, and are amazed to hear that the Asurans have a plan to completely eradicate them from the Pegasus Galaxy. But he will not share the details with them.Oberoth is intensely curious when he learns that Weir’s team has set up a base of operations in a Lantian city, though she is careful not to reveal that it is Atlantis itself. She hopes the Asurans might spare some Zero Point Modules in trade, since they are able to make them and have an abundance of them.When the team is ready to depart through the gate, Oberoth reveals his true colors. He orders his security guards to seize them. The team is restrained as the Asurans begin to probe their minds for information, learning all about Atlantis’s survival during the Wraith siege 10,000 years ago, and that the expedition from Earth now occupies it.When the team awakens, Niam reveals that they are in space. The Asuran city is an Ancient city ship, like Atlantis, and with their wealth of Z.P.M.s they are able to make it fly. The ship enters hyperspace. It’s destination: Atlantis. They will finish what they started, destroying the original home of their creators.The Asurans, as Niam reveals to Dr. Weir, are not biologically Lantian. They are artificial lifeforms that evolved from a Lantian experiment to create powerful and aggressive nanites to attack the Wraith on a cellular level (“Hot Zone”). But the microscopic creatures came together to form increasingly larger and more complex organisms, eventually imitating their creators to become human in appearance. When the Lantians realized their experiment had gotten out of hand, they attacked this new race with their fleet of warships and nearly wiped them out.Weir is stunned, and suspects that the Ancient experiment may have been the genesis of the Replicators that SG-1 battled in our own galaxy. Those mechanical beings were created by an android that was invented by a mysterious scientist (SG-1: “Menace”) — possibly one of the Lantians who resettled in the Milky Way galaxy after the war was lost. These Replicators later evolved into human forms, made up of billions of nanites (SG-1: “Unnatural Selection”). Weir also feels compassion for them, despite what they truly are.But Niam is not like Oberoth. He is one of a few among them who still wishes to imitate his creators, to reach ascension, as they did, and so equal them and join them. Killing the inhabitants of Atlantis surely cannot help them reach enlightenment. In fact, Niam believes that the only way it is possible is for Dr. McKay to do what they themselves are unable to do, and which the Lantians long ago refused to do: rewrite their aggressive nature out of their base code. He wishes to quell a rage that is built into his very nature.Guest stars include Oberoth, Niam, and Arria, another member of the Asuran High Council who sympathizes with Niam.”Progeny” goes before cameras at the end of March, and will air this summer on The SCI FI Channel in the U.S. The story will continue in part two, currently titled “The Real World.” Remember that as this episode is still in production, all info is subject to change.Learn more about Season Three in GateWorld’s episode guide!