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

[green-grrl.livejournal.com]

Apparently one of the tie-in novels is an Aris Boch adventure, and I've heard it's pretty good. I'll have to check it out, because I love Aris! The guy had so much personality. And it was fun that he was a step or two ahead of our team, because our team is smart, and having such a worthy (and snarky) adversary was interesting. But if he'd leered all over Sam the way Vala did Daniel -- that would have been seriously skeevy.

A fic where Daniel hooks up with Vala after she's even worse than in canon? EEEeeeww! Back button! Apparently the Daniel/Vala ship started for a lot of people with PU, and just... NO.

Yeah, I won't spoil you for Unending, but the faster you can get over the moments of shock, the better you can enjoy what is good and fun in the ep.

I'll link you to the meta after you see the ep. I blather on for ages about Vala and about Daniel and about why hell no. ;-)

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

By tie-in novel, you mean Fandemonium? I've only read Julie's so far. (Yay for S1!) I've heard nice things about Sally Reeve's two books, but her name as a huge Sam/Jack writer has me a little wary. (To be fair, I've never read her fic, and she may keep it as perfectly within-regulations UST, and she might not have included it in the novels at all. So I might be doing her a disservice.)

But if he'd leered all over Sam the way Vala did Daniel -- that would have been seriously skeevy.

The funny thing is that he did leer just a little bit - at Daniel. :) And Daniel wasn't above using it - "We're sorry. Is the deal still on the table?" With Sam, though, he was pretty professional. Maybe that's why we all liked Boch so much - he broke so many of the stereotypes, even if he did dress too much like Boba Fett.

I look forward to the meta, even if you're making me kinda wary about Unending!

[green-grrl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Aris book (http://www.stargatenovels.com/sg1-sirensong.shtml) is a Fandemonium one. And I've heard that the S/J writer did a better job of keeping shippiness out of her books than another writer who went kind of overboard with it. I haven't read any of the tie-ins, but friends have.

And Daniel wasn't above using it - "We're sorry. Is the deal still on the table?"

You know, I'm all about innuendo, and I have never seen it in that scene. I see Daniel being very obviously sarcastic -- voice sarcastic and face squinched up in a broad parody of "niceness." But I see the "flirting" interpretation a lot, so maybe it's just me.

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

Okay, that strikes me as seriously funny - that me, the poster girl for gen, would see something like that, and you wouldn't! :)

I didn't see Daniel flirting, per se, as much as Aris being just a little bit overly friendly with Daniel. As I said in the original post, I assumed that the over-friendliness was probably due to the bounty hunter's interest in possibly separating Daniel from the others in order to claim that higher-than-everyone-else's bounty. But when Daniel said that line: "We're sorry, is the deal still on the table?" - he blinked at Boch very deliberately. Now, I don't see Daniel as a flirt, although Sam certainly does. :) But I did interpret that blinking as Daniel saying, "Aw, c'mon, you don't really want to hurt us, right? Right?"

YMMV, naturally, and apparently does. :)

[green-grrl.livejournal.com]

I'm laughing, too, because I see that interpretation a lot in slash fic! (Come to the dark side -- we have cookies! ;-)

Aris struck me as overly friendly, "ha ha" jolly with all of them, though he deliberately, I think, made sure he didn't do anything that could be taken as a pervy attack on Sam. He was almost gentlemanly, for a guy playing cat-and-mouse. Daniel's big "blink blink" was so overplayed, I saw it as Daniel doing it for sarcastic effect. Like, "I'm just pretending to be sweet and accomodating as part of the game. But we both know you're going to do what you want, and we'll fight you if we see an opening. In the meantime, maybe we can pretend to go along. So what's next?"

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

Daniel's big "blink blink" was so overplayed, I saw it as Daniel doing it for sarcastic effect. Like, "I'm just pretending to be sweet and accomodating as part of the game. But we both know you're going to do what you want, and we'll fight you if we see an opening. In the meantime, maybe we can pretend to go along. So what's next?"

Huh. That's exactly as I see it, too. Almost word for word, really. Except that I think he deliberately chose the blink-blink as sarcastic emphasis because of Boch's behavior - not so much as a deliberate flirt, but with the flavor to keep Boch in a good mood and hopefully amused enough not to take him wholly seriously. So I think we actually agree, here. :)

Daniel really does have that earnest appeal look down pat. I mean, he did it to Colonel Chekov in 48 Hours, too, and I really don't think anyone would suggest an element of flirting there! At least I hope not. ;)

[green-grrl.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay -- flirting in a completely non-sexual and ironic sense. Yes!

(And no, not even the slashers see Daniel/Chekov. Or if someone has, I don't want to know about it!)