While in the Antarctic outpost in the pilot episode "Rising", Dr. Rodney McKay forces Beckett to sit in an Ancient control chair. Beckett's Ancient gene causes him to accidentally activate a drone weapon zeroing on General O'Neill and Major Sheppard's helicopter, but he manages to stop it. After finding and arriving in the city of Atlantis, Beckett examines a severed Wraith arm that Major Sheppard brought back from the planet Athos. Beckett can provide the first information about Wraith physiology and becomes the chief medical officer in Atlantis. In "Hide and Seek", he creates a gene therapy that emulates the ATA gene in normal humans with a 48 percent success rate. In "Poisoning the Well", Beckett helps the Hoffans develop a drug that kills the Wraith who feed on humans, but the drug has the side effect of killing 50 percent of the human recipients as well. One of the casualties is Perna, a Hoffan woman he has grown attached to. Carson leaves in disgust when the Hoffans decide to disseminate the drug among their people at all costs. In "The Gift", he discovers that Teyla has Wraith DNA in her genetic makeup, which allows her to tap into the Wraith psychic network in this and future episodes. In the second season, Beckett takes up more offworld activities, including one mission where he removes a Wraith tracker from Ronon Dex's spine in "Runner".