Continuity complications: Vala and more

[fignewton]

After watching The Quest, part 2 and Line in the Sand, I find myself very, very frustrated with the subject of Vala. No real spoilers for those two episodes ahead, but please be careful anyway.

I watched the Vala of this episode. And I remembered the Vala of last episode. And it bothers me to no end that I want to like this Vala, and I can’t. Because the writers insisted on grafting this likeable Vala to the woman who stole the Prometheus for her own profit and left Hammond and Walter and SG-3 to die. Quite frankly, I really don’t know why Vala wasn’t thrown in a jail cell the second she came flouncing through the Gate, way back in Avalon. And when she did come to Earth, she slapped a bracelet on Daniel that she knew might kill him. And she has never, ever shown the slightest bit of remorse for those actions, or apologized.

While we’re at it, how about the constant harassment? Switch it around for a moment. Make it Valan constantly needling Danielle, including the bright, smarmy suggestion, “Yeah, let’s make babies!” Would anyone find it even remotely funny?

The Vala of Prometheus Unbound and the first episodes of S9 was not someone I wanted around my team. And the forced grafting – on her part with her personality and motivations, and on SG-1’s part with her acceptance of her – is grating, nonsensical, and utterly out of character.

Let’s suggest a different scenario, just as an hypothesis. A woman – in tight leather, why not? – meets up with an SG team off-world somewhere. She’s heard about the famous Tau’ri; she’s even heard about the famous SG-1 and Dr. Daniel Jackson, who is supposed to know more about the Ancients than just about anyone. She shows the SG team a tablet, tells them that it’s supposed to lead to a vast, buried treasure, and offers to share the profits with the Tau’ri if their Daniel Jackson will help her figure it out.

Meanwhile, Daniel is set to go to Atlantis. Word of the puzzle reaches him, and he agrees to rendezvous with this woman (off-world, thank you!) in the short time he has before the ship leaves. Somehow, by accident, they get linked together, and they’re going to have to find the treasure cache in order to get the key to release them from the bond.

We can continue from there in pretty much the same vein as the show, without even having to change Vala’s personality. She can still be devious and bright and funny and have a shady past. Daniel can still be frustrated by her personality. Vala can still be largely selfish, but ultimately sacrifice herself to stop the forming of the first Supergate, and so forth. But there wouldn’t be any of this awful baggage that makes it truly impossible to like her.

It seems that if I’m going to want to enjoy these last episodes of SG-1 at all, I’m going to have to shut off my brain from anything that took place in the first eight seasons of the show. I have to forget what the Goa’uld used to be (see previous mutterings); I have to forget what Vala used to be. Daniel’s characterization has moved forward in ways that can be extrapolated from his experiences, but that deeply disappoint me. (Not The Quest. I mean his general characterization in seasons 9-10.) Teal’c’s beautiful journey to lead the Jaffa has bogged down in inconsistencies, bureaucratic nonsense that shouldn’t rear its ugly head until a lot further down the line in their development of a free society, and the Jaffa Nation’s atrocious lack of gratitude to not only the Tau’ri, but also to Bra’tac and Teal’c. The only character who seems to have grown is Sam; and I attribute that to Jack’s absence, and the inability of the writers to overwhelm her personality and character arc for the sake of being The Girl ™.

It comes down to this: the last two seasons seems to not only include new characters, but to have made new character out of the characters, and new backstories for the old storylines. The Goa'uld are now laughable; the Tok'ra don't seem to exist; the Asgard are there mostly for comedy; and the characters seem to have little or no recall of anything that happened in the eight years before S9 began. I know there are exceptions, yes. But those are far and few between.

I believe I've seen references to an initial proposal to change the name of the show from "Stargate: SG-1" to "Stargate Command" for S9 and onwards. Might that have helped? Maybe. But I'm still bothered by the way that so much wonderful backstory was abandoned, or retconned at will, to suit the current storylines. It cheapens the show.

As I say on my profile page, I don't much care for these last two seasons, but I'm willing to keep an open mind. And I've been trying. But it doesn't seem to be working very well.

I want to enjoy this last half of the season. And the Vala of now is someone I could like, if her backstory wasn’t such a sickening one. So does anyone have any suggestions for a truly realistic way to marry S8-9 Vala with S10 Vala so that I can just accept her presence and move forward?

Comments

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

Oh, I enjoyed Vala in PU, too. But then she was purely antagonist. We were supposed to be amused by her, assume that 90% (at least) of what she said was untrue, and applaud Daniel's final use of the zat. :)

Someone made a comment about how she didn't really belong on SG-1, she would be better as Daniel's 'Maybourne', and I really agreed with that.

Huh. That is a very astute observation. Especially since I find the Maybourne love so prevalent in the fandom to be absolutely incomprehensible - as far as I can tell, it's because so many people enjoy the chemistry (not that way!) of the two actors onscreen. Vala does spark off Daniel, it's true. Then again, she sparks off just about everybody, and I really prefer her sparkage with everyone else besides Daniel.

Isn't it sad that we have to be resigned to a character, instead of enjoying that character? Yes, she's here to stay, and I do have to find some way to get around my dislike if I'm going to enjoy the rest of the show. And I do want to enjoy it - as you say, these last two eps were much better than most of last year's and a lot of the first half of S10, and if the show is ending, I'd rather it ended with a bang.

It's not just Vala that's the new shiny, though. It's Mitchell, who I'm really only starting to like now; and Landry, who I can't seem to like, much less respect; and Lam, who is more or less still in the category of "vanilla pudding." Pretty vanilla pudding, of course, but that's not quite enough. And while there's nothing wrong with "Oooh! Shiny!", there is something wrong when the New Shiny takes away from the regular character we love.