Redial the Gate: The Sentinel and things not quite in place

[fignewton]

kalquessa recaps The Sentinel in redial_the_gate later today, and I am looking forward to a typically entertaining entry from our favorite cheese elf (complete with Little Bear contributing typos as she's forced to type one-handed). In the meantime, though, some thoughts of my own on Daniel's final normal mission, and why some parts of it feel like it's not quite in place.

I give major props to the show for cleverly reworking "previouslies" from Shades of Grey to include the two characters we see here, so that they're retconned as part of the team that was off-world. It might've been more interesting to use the two characters that we met as speaking parts in SoG, but presumably they weren't available. But the person I'd really liked to have seen as the one they had to bring to fix the Sentinel, and the one who sacrfices himself?

Makepeace.

Those of you who've been around long enough have certainly heard this rant before :) but I've always maintained that Makepeace was what most people try to make Maybourne (gag) to be: a guy who truly cared about protecting the planet, who did his best for the SGC, but made the wrong choices for the right reasons. His sudden revelation as a traitor was out of left field - there was never any indication, ever, that he was a bad guy. A bit abrasive and bristling with extra testosterone, yes. :) But he'd been leading SG-3 and saving SG-1 since Broca Divide, including the volunteer mission to save them from Hathor (remember him bolting for the stairs to tell Hammond they'd gotten news from the Tok'ra?) He would've unquestionably done the honorable thing here, even if he might've done much of the same snarking at Daniel in the process. And if anyone deserves redemption from the SoG crowd, it's Makepeace.

And speaking of snarking at Daniel... While I love Daniel's bright innocent "Which end do the bullets go in, again?" and enjoy the cool way he ignored the constant jibes and disbelief in his skills, the entire confrontation does feel very off to me, because it's too late in the series. I mean, really? After five years on SG-1, do people who actually know of Daniel Jackson's work in the SGC imagine that he can't pull his own weight? We never get that implication from anyone, ever, after the first few episodes.

...Except Kinsey. And Maybourne. And possibly even Makepeace, who had little patience for Daniel in Into the Fire. Which leads me to some interesting speculation.

It's clear that many of the scientists/military working at Area 51 have great admiration for the SGC and the work they do; think of Reynolds when he was young and fanboying the team when they came and discovered the false Stargate back in S2. At the same time, people who are actively working to decieve others tend to hold their victims in sneering contempt. So if we assume that many of the people working at Area 51 had only second- or third-hand knowledge of the SGC - and some of those were certainly getting their information from Maybourne or Kinsey or even Makepeace, especially those that were involved with the illegal off-world thefts - is it reasonable to postulate that their view of the SG teams might very well be warped and perverted? Maybe they think they're all a bunch of feeble wusses who can't get the job done. Maybe they're just laughing up their sleeves at how easily they're duped. If their knowledge of Daniel and the others are all gleaned through twisted lenses, might that explain the reactions that Daniel gets in the Sentinel?

(For Kinsey, I think it feeds on itself: warped perceptions that he convinces himself are true, and then he carries his paranoia - and his automatic imposition of how he would behave if he had access to the power of the Stargate onto the people who dislikes - and allows it to grow worse and worse.)

It's an interesting idea, I think, and one that I would like to see explored in fanfic some day... especially as a legitimate alternative to the rather tired idea of the Marines sneering at Daniel. :)

Still, whether it's true or not, the reactions Daniel gets do seem a little unrealistic for the timeframe. And something else that bothers me is setting this episode right between Menace and Meridian.

At the end of Menace, Daniel is so broken - and not just his wrist. He has tried and tried and put his integrity and beyond on the line, and his "other way" utterly failed. For me, Daniel's character arc fits so perfectly with going straight from Reese to Kelowna. The interposing of The Sentinel seems jarring, almost unreal to me.

I suppose I could see it as a means of showing us that it's not Daniel vs. the team or even Daniel vs. Jack that leads to "I'm ready to go with you" - it's Daniel vs. himself, feeling bereft of purpose and desperate for a new path where he can do "more good." But since I've personally never had trouble with seeing that in the first place, it doesn't help me too much!

So. Does Sentinel as a late S3 episode, with Makepeace as the former bad guy, strike anyone as a better feel for the ep? And what do you think of the warped-perception-of-SGC theory? I await your responses with interest. :)

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