Deconstructing the Goa'uld: Why Ba'al doesn't work

[fignewton]

From the very beginning, the SGC had three goals: defending the Earth from the Goa’uld; taking the war to the Goa’uld in the galaxy at large, to destroy them before they could make it to Earth; and learning, through their exploration of cultures through the Stargates, a little bit more about themselves and where they were headed.

After eight years, the Tau’ri and their allies – the Free Jaffa, the Tok’ra, and one or two Helpful Ascended Beings – succeeded, with the inadvertant help of the Replicators, in destroying the Goa’uld. What next, then? Time for a new enemy, in the form of the Ori? Reasonable enough approach, even if (like me) you don’t like the storyline. Time to utterly retcon who and what the Goa’uld are and were, so we’re left wondering why the SGC didn’t destroy them in the first ten minutes of the first episode of the first season? Not so reasonable at all.

I’m going to use Ba’al, mostly, to illustrate my point, because in these last two seasons, he has essentially become the Goa’uld. And what he’s become is, to put it bluntly, absolutely pathetic.

This post includes spoilers through The Quest, part 2.

In the beginning, the Goa’uld were presented as a truly terrifying enemy. They had the power to steal your body, your knowledge, and your will; they possessed technologies far beyond any of Earth’s capabilities; they were backed by armies of millions of Jaffa, who were indoctrinated from birth into believing the Goa’uld were their gods, and who themselves were possessed of superior strength and stamina. The Jaffa weren’t necessarily skillful, although all the First Primes seemed to be; they were essentially a tool of terror, firing a weapon designed to destory and maim.

The Goa’uld were more or less immortal. They had superhuman strength and the ability to heal from almost any wound. Ra’s death in the movie, when we thought he was the only one, was possible only because of an armed nuclear warhead, some Jack and Daniel in-tandem thinking, and an amazing amount of luck and good timing. (And a group of Abydonians willing to rebel despite five thousand years of oppression and indoctrination…) Their eyes and their voices were otherworldly, inhuman, and extra ammunition for fear.

They considered humans to be slaves, or cannon fodder. They were ruthless, power-hungry egomaniacs. Worst of all, we were fighting the battle by ourselves, without any help. Under those circumstances, the Goa’uld’s tendencies towards gaudy, tasteless costumes didn’t matter; if you’re the owner of a fleet of vessels capable of obliterating a planet’s cities from orbit, no one is going to argue about the tacky gold wallpaper you insist on putting in all the ships’ corridors.

As time passed, familiarity bled some of that visceral terror away. Watching the death of Apophis, even with the knowledge that Sokar would bring him back to life, was huge. We watched Apophis die more than once; we saw Hathor die, we saw Seth die, we saw Sokar die, we saw Cronus die. Those were the big names, the ones taken from the Egyptian and Greek pantheons. We knew there were still more Goa’uld out there, of course; but there was hope where once there had been none, and the anticipation that just maybe, we could get rid of them permanently. We were cutting off their armies through Teal’c and Bra’tac inspiring their fellow Jaffa to revolt; we were rescuing victims of the Goa’uld and relocating them on planets where they could live out their lives in safety; we were making allies that would help us in our battle, or at least drop hints on occasion. There were setbacks, too; every victory seemed to allow another Goa’uld to take the loser’s place, somehow even more powerful than before. Allies were lost, or overwhelmed. Nevertheless, the future looked less bleak. None of this, however, took away the essential menace of what the Goa’uld were. Despite Apophis’ and Zipacna’s silly headpieces, despite their decadance and indulgences, the Goa’uld were still a dangerous, ominous enemy.

Let’s consider our first introduction to Ba’al: in Summit/Last Stand, as one of the System Lords who had gathered for the meeting which Daniel infiltrated. We don’t hear him speak much; he’s really one of the crowd, at that point. But even then, there’s something about him that exudes more menace than many of the others. Daniel, in his rundown of the characters with Lord Yu, observes that Ba’al “wiped out the inhabitants of two star systems, sixty million lives, rather than lose them to Sokar in a territorial dispute.”

We meet him next under truly terrifying circumstances: Abyss. We watch him casually torturing Jack to death, over and over again, with deliberate precision and maximum cruelty. Ba’al is clearly portrayed as a powerful, frightening force.

Over the course of S7, we watch Ba’al maneuvering his way through Goa’uld politics: He joins temporary forces with Yu to destroy Anubis’ forces over Kelowna; he takes charge of Erebus; he tries to get hold of naquadria; he takes Felger’s computer virus and deliberately corrupts the entire Stargate network. When Anubis’ physical form is destroyed in The Lost City, Ba’al steps into the vaccuum and claims his territories, his Jaffa, and his Kull warriors (aka supersoldiers) as his own, making him one of the most powerful System Lords of all.

He shows up first in S8 in Zero Hour, when he lies about taking SG-1 captive and Jack is forced to speculate on his own team being tortured by the same Goa’uld who killed him over and over again. By the end of S8, he has allied himself with Anubis, although he also recognizes him for insane and actually goes to the Tau’ri – first to appeal to them for help, and then to hold off on destroying the Free Jaffa and actually helping Selmac/Jacob and Sam reconfigure the device on Dakara to destroy the Replicators. The Jaffa try to take him captive, but he is wily enough to escape; and even though his power base is mostly destroyed, he is still the arrogant, powerful Goa’uld who has acted as Jack’s personal nemisis for three years.

…Right?

Ba’al still has all the arrogance and pretentiousness he possessed from the beginning. But that’s all he has, now. There’s no menace; no evil; nothing but a smirk, an accent, and better fashion sense than most Goa’uld. Like all the other Goa’uld in Seasons 9-10, he no longer bothers to phlange his voice. There’s no indication of the strength he is supposed to have, no drive to be worshipped, no need for power.

Can you suggest a single thing Ba’al does in these last two seasons that is even slightly reminsicent of the Goa’ulds’ usual motives and methods?

This was why I had such a tremendous problem with last year’s episode in which Ba’al created multiple clones of himself. Aside from the sheer ridiculous of the premise – How can he clone a parasite and its host body? Did he clone twenty separate symbiotes and implant them in twenty identical hosts? – it goes against everything that a Goa’uld is. The real Ba’al would never, ever dream of sharing his power with anybody, not even a clone of himself. And the real Ba’al would not have the slightest interest in becoming the next top guy in Fortune 500.

Things get even worse in Stronghold, when Ba’al confronts Teal’c and drops the phlanged voice, speaking normally as he tells him that of course the Goa’uld never bought into their own propaganda; it was just a shtick to make life easier for them to easily recruit the Jaffa and bamboozle the slave populations. No. No. Did I say “no”? That was one of the most terrifying things about the Goa’uld: that they’d bought into their own delusion, and had that crave to be worshipped at all costs. Until that moment, there was never, in eight seasons, even the faintest hint of suggestion that the Goa’uld were only putting on an act. Remember Klorel’s fury at Bra’tac, in The Serpent’s Lair?

It is incredible that Ba’al and Athena are reduced to arranging corporate takeovers. Nerus is a bumbling glutton who would sell his soul for a piece of apple pie. And these were the enemies we feared and fought for all these years?

Now, let’s consider Ba’al in The Quest. We don’t hear the phlanged voice; we see no sign of his strength; he talks, he sneers, but he doesn’t actually do anything that reminds us that he’s a Goa’uld at all. He's as affected by the cold as the humans, perhaps more. He whines instead of looming. And when he started using idioms from Earth – “his drawbridge doesn’t go across the moat,” “it’s like comparing a laptop to a supercomputer” – I came close to cringing. No. No. Did I say “no”?

We got one glimpse at the menace of Ba’al in the first part of The Quest, when they found his knife and he claimed that it was of “sentimental value.” I didn’t get it at first viewing, but the implication that he treasures that knife as one of the knives he used on Jack, back in Abyss, is deliciously creepy. But it’s a single moment in one and a half seasons, and it’s contradicted by all the other ridiculous behavior. This is NOT a Goa’uld; this is a smarmy businessman scrambling and lying to keep up with his rivals.

Even SG-1 doesn’t take him seriously any longer. They have no trouble turning their back on him, even when they're walking straight into danger. Evidently, they’ve forgotten that a Goa’uld is perfectly capable of snapping their necks in seconds. Ba’al apparently has forgotten this as well. redbyrd_sgfic pointed out, in the comments section of my review of The Quest, part 2, that Sam should not have been able to deck a Goa’uld. That statement carries weight, although a well-placed blow could knock any person down, if he or she is not expecting it. But the Ba’al we’ve been watching? The Ba’al who doesn’t seem to have superior strength, much less the genetic memory and superior menace of the Goa’uld? I have no problem with Sam knocking him down, and it was frankly a true pleasure to watch.

Ding dong, a Ba’al is dead… Or isn’t. Frankly, at this point, who cares any longer?

(ETA: I must include aurora_novarum's hilarious phrase: "six-pack of Ba'al." Utterly perfect. Especially because he may look great, but he's not exactly filling any more.)

 

I have no objection to creating new enemies for SG-1, even if I would have liked a different choice. But there was no reason whatsoever to reduce the former enemies to posturing parodies. It cheapens our victories, it ruins some wonderful villains, and it gains us absolutely nothing.

Comments

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

I can easily accept the theory that the Ba'als don't have access to a sarcophagus on Earth. Maybe even those off-world have lost access to one - the one they had destroyed in various battles, or lost when they had to flee various strongholds, and so forth. But there's a huge difference between OTT behavior and OOC behavior, and what I'm personally seeing, these last two seasons, is definitely the latter.

Use of the sarcophagus doesn't make one more cunning. If anything, avoiding the sarcophagus should, in the short term, make Ba'al even more formidable - no withdrawal symptoms because of the symbiote, probably, but also more stable brain chemistry and a clearer mind. So I would expect him to be even more cunning and devious and intelligent - as you say, avoiding tactical errors. This does not explain the lack of drive, the overindulgence in Tau'ri-isms, the lack of strength. The only thing I could accept it affecting is his own belief in his divinity, and even that would be a stretch.

If anyone could come up with a theory other than "the writers recognize that Ba'al is a favorite, so make sure the actor often guest-stars, but have forgotten how they're supposed to write the Goa'uld," I would be deeply grateful. :)

[green-grrl.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I think it does demonstrate intelligence that Ba'al's dropping the god act with the Tau'ri. He knows the goa'uld are 10,000 years too late to be pulling that crap on Earth anymore, and there's no point pretending with SG-1, who have actually personally killed/de-goa'ulded various "gods."

And he has shown various attempts to take over in the power vacuum, though he's had to fend off Replicators, the jaffa rebellion and the Ori to do so -- far more than any previous goa'uld ever had to fight.

I do agree that the whole "leave me alone to be a good little CEO" story was OOC; but I think it was only a huge feint, anyway, to cover for the activity of the clones out in the galaxy still. The lack of physical strength is bad writing, for sure. And I miss the voice. *sigh*