Todd the Wraith: Enemy, Ally, and Master Manipulator
Todd entered Atlantis custody near the end of the Pegasus campaign carrying intelligence no one could safely ignore. A rival Wraith faction had powered a hive ship with a zero-point module, transforming an already dangerous vessel into something far faster, stronger, and harder to destroy. The warning was genuine. The missing detail was that Todd had secretly taken more zero-point modules from Asuras than he had previously admitted and had given one to his own scientists. The super-hive threatening Earth was partly the consequence of a program he had concealed. Todd had arrived as informant, accomplice, victim, and architect of the crisis at the same time.
That combination explains why the usual categories never fit him comfortably. Todd was an enemy because he remained a Wraith commander committed to the survival and power of his own kind. He was an ally because several threats endangered Wraith and humans together, making cooperation strategically rational. He was a manipulator because he understood that information had greater value when released in carefully measured portions. Todd rarely needed to invent the central danger. He controlled the timing, withheld the inconvenient part, and let Atlantis discover that the bargain contained another clause after everyone had already signed it with their lives.
Todd was not his Wraith name. John Sheppard later supplied the human nickname because Atlantis needed something convenient to call him. His original identity, age, hive affiliation, and early career were never established in the surviving screen record. What can be reconstructed begins after years of Genii imprisonment. That gap matters. Todd entered the historical record already stripped of his command position, separated from his followers, and kept hungry enough to be used as an instrument. The commander Atlantis later negotiated with was rebuilding status that captivity had nearly erased, and nearly every alliance he formed also helped restore his influence among the Wraith.
Commander Acastus Kolya kept Todd in a prison facility and used him to torture Sheppard. At controlled intervals, Todd was ordered to feed from the captive officer while Atlantis watched the effects through a transmitted signal. Kolya believed hunger made the Wraith obedient and Sheppard’s suffering made Elizabeth Weir negotiable. The arrangement treated both prisoners as equipment. Todd understood that Kolya would eventually kill him when his usefulness ended. Sheppard understood that survival depended on cooperating with the creature draining his life. Their first alliance was not built on sympathy. It was built inside the same cell by two captives facing the same jailer.
Todd helped Sheppard escape, fought Genii guards, and guided him through the prison complex. Sheppard returned the assistance rather than abandoning him once the immediate danger passed. When Todd had an opportunity to feed again, he restored the life he had taken from Sheppard instead. He described the act as a rare repayment normally reserved for those the Wraith regarded with exceptional loyalty. The exchange established the moral language Todd would use thereafter. He did not become humanely reformed. He acknowledged debt. Sheppard had helped return his freedom, so Todd returned what he had taken. Balance, not friendship, closed the account.
Sheppard then honored his own promise. He did not execute Todd after the escape. He stunned him and left him on another world, free to recover and rejoin his species. Each man had reason to expect future conflict, yet both completed the limited agreement. This became the foundation of their later dealings. Todd learned that Sheppard might keep a difficult bargain even when killing him would be safer. Sheppard learned that Todd could reciprocate when the obligation was explicit. Neither lesson justified trust. It created something more useful in Pegasus: a record of performance under conditions where every participant expected the relationship to remain temporary.
Todd returned to Wraith society at a disadvantage. Long imprisonment had cost him position, followers, and credibility. Wraith politics were divided among hives, queens, commanders, and shifting alliances rather than controlled by one central government. A male commander could exercise substantial operational authority, but legitimacy and reproduction remained closely tied to queens. Todd therefore needed more than a ship. He needed information, technology, and victories that other Wraith could not obtain without him. Contact with Atlantis offered all three. The humans represented a military threat, but they also possessed scientists, Asgard systems, and access to Ancient knowledge that could restore his relevance.
His strategic strength was translation. Todd understood Wraith biology and hive politics, but he also understood enough of human behavior to predict which arguments Atlantis would hear. He knew that appeals to Wraith survival would not be persuasive by themselves. He framed proposals around shared threats, endangered human worlds, or technologies that could reduce feeding. He could work directly with Rodney McKay on Asuran programming and explain ancient Wraith countermeasures in technical rather than ceremonial terms. Todd did not merely carry messages between enemies. He converted one side’s problem into language the other side could use without accepting the other side’s values.
The Asuran campaign gave him the first major opportunity. After Atlantis restored the Asurans’ directive to attack the Wraith, the machine civilization began destroying human settlements to eliminate the Wraith food supply. Todd contacted Atlantis because the policy threatened both species. He explained that the Wraith had once disabled the attack command with a computer virus and proposed rebuilding that capability with McKay. The warning was accurate, and the need was immediate. Asuran warships were killing Wraith and humans alike. Todd had found the kind of crisis in which cooperation did not require either side to forgive the other.
He still protected himself inside the partnership. Todd withheld portions of the old Wraith program, explaining that he could not know whether Atlantis would take the completed weapon and turn it against him. From his perspective, full disclosure would have surrendered the only leverage keeping him alive. From Atlantis’s perspective, the omission made technical failure indistinguishable from sabotage. A rival hive then tracked his isolated ship to the meeting area, and the two Wraith vessels destroyed one another while Atlantis remained concealed. Todd survived the collapse of his own operation and ended up in Atlantis custody, still the only available source who could help McKay continue the work.
The attempt to rewrite the Asuran code failed, but Todd remained useful. He helped Atlantis understand how the Wraith had defeated the original directive and why the old method no longer worked. When the strategy changed from computer intrusion to destroying Asuras itself, Todd became the coalition broker. He carried the proposal to other hives and persuaded seven to participate. Some factions refused because the risk was too high or their losses could not be replaced. Todd could not command the species. He could assemble enough separate interests to make one operation possible, which was a more accurate measure of Wraith political power.
At Asuras, the Wraith contribution was essential. Seven hive ships and their Darts helped contain close to thirty Asuran warships while Earth and Traveler vessels attacked hyperdrives and prevented escape. Todd commanded one of the participating hives and accepted losses alongside forces he normally considered enemies. The coalition held long enough for McKay’s nanite-attraction plan to pull Asuran crews from their ships and destroy the planet. Todd had not joined a moral crusade. The Asurans were starving the Wraith by exterminating humans. His hives fought to preserve their species and feeding base. Their motive did not make their military contribution less real.
Todd used the same battle to pursue a second objective. While the nanites collapsed toward the surface, Wraith Darts entered the Asuran city and removed several zero-point modules with their culling beams. His hive delayed departure until the Darts returned, then left without appearing at the coalition rendezvous. Atlantis believed the common operation had ended with the destruction of Asuras. Todd had treated the final minutes as a recovery mission. He had helped eliminate one enemy while quietly collecting the power source required to dominate the civil war that would resume when the alliance dissolved.
The stolen modules were intended for an ancient Wraith cloning facility. During the war with the Lanteans, the Wraith had used such installations to produce warriors at extraordinary speed, provided enough energy was available. Todd planned to reactivate one, create an army, and overwhelm rival hives. The objective was rational within the civil war and disastrous for everyone else. A new mass of Wraith soldiers would require command, ships, and eventually food. The technology that helped defeat the Ancients had not become less dangerous simply because one faction promised to use it against other Wraith first.
Todd’s own subordinates moved before he could complete the plan. A rival commander seized the facility, imprisoned him, and took control of the cloning program. Atlantis rescued Todd because both sides needed the installation destroyed before it produced a new army. Once again, his hidden project created a crisis that made him useful in solving it. The pattern was not evidence that Todd controlled every outcome. He repeatedly lost ships, followers, and authority to Wraith rivals. His manipulation worked best at creating leverage across factions. It was less reliable at creating durable loyalty inside his own command.
Other exchanges followed the same structure. When Michael’s modified Hoffan drug began poisoning feeding grounds, Todd possessed information about the renegade Wraith that Atlantis could not easily collect elsewhere. Atlantis considered trading research on the Hoffan protein in return for help locating Michael and understanding the new campaign. The bargain was uncomfortable for both sides. Wraith access to the research might produce a countermeasure or another weapon. Atlantis needed intelligence before more human worlds were infected. Todd received a means of protecting Wraith interests, while Atlantis gained leverage against a mutual enemy. These were transactions, not conversions of principle.
The most ambitious partnership concerned Jennifer Keller’s gene therapy. The treatment attempted to remove the Wraith need to feed on human beings, which could alter the biological foundation of the Pegasus war. Todd recognized both the opportunity and the political danger. Feeding was not only nutrition. It shaped Wraith identity, hierarchy, fear, and control over human populations. A treatment might free the species from dependence while undermining the order queens and commanders understood. Todd nevertheless supported continued research because a Wraith civilization no longer limited by human supply would possess a strategic future no culling cycle could guarantee.
Scientific feasibility was only one obstacle. Todd’s faction lacked a queen with enough authority to commit a broader alliance to the program. Another queen, known as the Primary, controlled the coalition whose support was required. Todd proposed using Teyla’s inherited Wraith traits and surgery to transform her appearance so she could impersonate a rival queen. The stated mission was negotiation. Teyla would present the treatment, demonstrate strength, and secure permission to proceed. The plan already depended on extraordinary deception. Todd had concealed the most important part even from the person expected to perform it.
When the Primary challenged Teyla’s authority, Todd killed the queen without warning and placed the weapon in Teyla’s hand. He forced her to claim responsibility because Wraith power could pass through a successful act of dominance in a way no scientific briefing could accomplish. Teyla then had to command the dead queen’s followers convincingly or be killed with everyone supporting the deception. Todd’s coup succeeded because he understood Wraith legitimacy more accurately than Atlantis did. It was also his clearest betrayal of an ally’s consent. He did not falsify the strategic objective. He concealed the act required to reach it because Teyla would never have agreed beforehand.
The episode showed why calling Todd merely dishonest misses the danger. He often told the truth at the level of the mission. The alliance did need a queen. The Primary did oppose the therapy. Removing her did give Teyla control of the faction. What Todd withheld was the method, the timing, and who would bear the immediate risk. His manipulation converted allies into participants before they understood the decision already made on their behalf. He did not persuade Teyla to conduct a coup. He created a moment in which refusing to complete the coup meant death.
The Attero crisis revealed the other side of that calculation. Two hives supporting Todd were destroyed when they entered hyperspace. The cause was an Ancient device reactivated by the Asgard exiles in Pegasus, but Todd initially had no reason to know that. From his perspective, Wraith ships cooperating with Atlantis had been annihilated by an effect associated with Ancient technology. He assumed betrayal, activated a concealed stun device, and seized the Daedalus. The move looked like confirmation that no agreement with him could survive pressure. It was also a rapid response to what appeared to be a strategic attack on his faction.
Todd knew the Attero device from Wraith history. It destabilized Wraith hyperdrives, but it also caused active Stargates across Pegasus to overload and explode. That made the system dangerous to hives, human settlements, Atlantis, and any civilization dependent on the gate network. Todd demanded its destruction and held the Daedalus crew as leverage. When control of the ship began slipping away, he programmed it to collide with the facility and escaped with his Wraith in smaller craft. The Travelers saved the Daedalus, while the device was shut down and the facility destroyed. Todd’s methods were coercive. His threat assessment was correct.
This was the recurring problem for Atlantis. Todd could hijack an Earth battlecruiser and still be the participant most committed to eliminating a weapon capable of killing millions. Shared interest did not make his conduct acceptable, and ruthless conduct did not make his intelligence false. He was willing to sacrifice Woolsey, the Daedalus crew, and anyone at the facility if that ensured the device could never be used again. The distinction between enemy and ally depended on which action was being measured. During the same operation, Todd could be both.
The gene-therapy trial later proved that Todd did not reserve every biological risk for subordinates. He underwent the treatment himself along with members of his hive. The immediate result appeared promising because the Wraith no longer needed to feed. Then the therapy produced a catastrophic illness. The crew deteriorated, some became feral, and the organic hive ship shared enough biological material with its inhabitants that the vessel itself began to fail. A strategic cure had become a combined medical, command, and engineering emergency inside one living platform.
Todd brought the infected hive to Atlantis because Keller and her colleagues offered the only realistic chance of reversing the damage. The decision placed vulnerable Wraith near a human city and forced Atlantis to consider whether saving them would strengthen a future enemy. The treatment had failed, but the experiment was not a fraud. Todd had exposed himself to it and nearly died. That willingness complicates the image of a commander who only manipulates others into danger. He was prepared to accept extreme personal risk when the reward could transform Wraith survival. He was simply unwilling to surrender control of the political consequences.
Atlantis eventually restored Todd sufficiently for him to return to Wraith society. His renewed leadership did not remain secure. An underling seized the experimental zero-point-powered hive and turned it into a super-hive. Todd then warned Atlantis, submitted to custody, and explained that the vessel was still growing. Only afterward did he acknowledge that he had taken more modules from Asuras than he had disclosed and that his scientists had spent more than a year integrating one into organic Wraith technology. The latest shared threat was genuine. So was Todd’s responsibility for making it possible.
The super-hive eventually obtained Earth’s location from a signal originating in an alternate reality and crossed the intergalactic distance to attack. Atlantis pursued and destroyed it near Earth. Todd’s intelligence helped identify the danger before the vessel reached its full potential, while his concealed research had produced the danger in the first place. Prime screen continuity ended with Todd held in Atlantis after the city landed on Earth. His long-term fate was not resolved. The last image of his political career was therefore appropriately uncertain: a Wraith commander inside the city he had repeatedly saved, threatened, deceived, and needed.
Atlantis continued answering Todd because dismissing him would have been strategically irresponsible. He could contact hives Earth could not reach, explain Wraith biology, interpret queen politics, work on Asuran code, identify ancient weapons, and recognize threats hidden inside Wraith technology. His reports often arrived when no alternative source existed. The price was that every disclosure served a second purpose, even when that purpose was only preserving his future bargaining position. Sheppard’s recurring suspicion was justified. There was usually another detail. There was also usually a real emergency on the other side of it.
Todd’s greatest limitation was the political order he was trying to master. He could build temporary coalitions through intelligence and technical advantage, but he could not create stable authority without a queen, loyal followers, or continuing success. Subordinates betrayed him. Rival hives attacked him. Allies accepted his plans only while their immediate interests overlapped. His secrecy preserved leverage while weakening the trust needed for longer cooperation. The more valuable Todd made himself personally, the more his faction depended on one commander whose capture or removal could collapse the arrangement.
Todd was enemy, ally, and master manipulator because Wraith survival strategy did not treat those roles as mutually exclusive. He honored explicit debts, exploited everything left unspecified, and cooperated whenever cooperation improved his faction’s position. He could risk his life for a cure and condemn an ally to complete a coup without consent. Atlantis’s safest policy was neither trust nor automatic rejection. It was to verify the threat, define the bargain narrowly, secure against the missing detail, and remember who would benefit after victory. Todd usually kept the agreement. He also made certain he controlled what the agreement meant.
