Long time coming, and I can't imagine why anyone would see this as a surprise. It's sad to see it go, but ultimately, the show ended when the Wraith was no longer a threat. Michael just dragged it out, and was the absolute end of the Wraith threat -- and thus the series. The replicators were just a distraction.

Stargate Atlantis died quickly for several reasons. First, there was no sense of discovery whatsoever except for the first few episodes when the team got to Atlantis. They already had the greatest technology ever built by mankind, so the reasons left to go outside Atlantis were just not interesting. Which were, for example, to get food, to establish friendships with other people, and to get ZPMs to power Atlantis. Those were all just excuses in order to fill episodes not pushing the storyline forward, however. As you recall from SG-1, the only reason they continued to explore new planets was simply because of the prospect of finding new technology they could use -- military technology preferred, of course. Unfortunately, Atlantis provided all the technology they would ever need.

Another reason that Atlantis failed was because there was absolutely no chain of command. They could do whatever they wanted, and wherever they wanted. The only thing restricting them were their own values, which as a team was very balanced. The base leader had no practical use in the show. All the decisions were already made by Shepperd and the others, and then approved -- sometimes after some deliberation and time -- by the leader. Can you recall any instance where Sam decided something that the others didn't approve of? The SG-1 team's restriction in this sense made the watchers dislike characters and start to like other characters. Sometimes SG-1 had to break these boundaries because the stakes were just too high. These were some of the best moments of that show.

So to summarize, all the things that made SG-1 so great didn't exist at all in Atlantis. And because it was structured in much the same way as SG-1, you could easily predict what would happen next, or even what would happen in the big picture; you knew the Wraith was never going to take over Atlantis, for instance, or reach Earth. And most prominently, you knew that the Wraith was eventually going to die as a threat, just like the Goa'uld. That really made the show feel like a bad SG-1 rip-off -- which it was.

I like Atlantis though, as I mentioned in the beginning of the post. I've watched every episode of it, and I love some of the characters. I'm certainly not saying that SG-1 didn't have any flaws, because it did. One thing that annoyed me particularly about it was that every civilization that was a big part of the series and technologically stronger than Stargate Command died. Remember: The Tollans, The Asgaard, etc. And in this regard Atlantis was better; at least there, the civilizations that died out didn't have technology superior to the Atlantean.

I just can't wait for Stargate Universe. I hope it will be better than Atlantis, and honestly I really think it will be. And so far, I'm suspecting it will be of a different form than SG-1 or Atlantis. I don't think there will be a military restricting the team's actions. Of course, we don't know yet if there will be a same kind of team. I do think however that it will be more free-form, like Firefly, but focusing more on exploration. Imagine the first SG-1 episodes (such as the mongolian one), but the team had a ship instead and just explored, made money, and so on. That would really rock! The reason I think they will change the format of the series is that they have realized that if they would copy SG-1's and Atlantis's format, it would be just that, a copy, and they will have ruined the franchise if they went with another rip-off.