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So, Unending. Not just the season finale, but the series finale. What would you want, if you could choose what the final episode would be like? I would want adventures through the Stargate, and triumph, and teamy goodness, and an affectionate tribute to the show and characters that we’ve loved for the past decade.
Instead, we got about five minutes of loveliness and over half an hour of travesty.
In the immortal words of Charlie Brown: AUGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
Let’s cover the five minutes of loveliness first.
I was quite amused by Daniel and Vala at the beginning:
“I told you to bring something to amuse yourself. I didn’t mean me or the crew.”
“The last time I was this bored, I took hostages!”
“I was there!”
The Asgard again! Whee! And the in-joke about Daniel explaining to Vala how to tell the Asgard apart – “It’s the voice” – is exactly the kind of in-joke I love. Those fans who know that Michael Shanks does Thor’s voice will be amused; those who don’t will take the words at face value, with no harm done. Very nice.
Affirmation of the Tau’ri as the Fifth Race – all together now! – Awwwwww. :)
Leapfrogging to the time bubble: Daniel arguing to preserve the legacy of the Asgard, and spending as much time as he could learning about that legacy: very Daniel. But Torment of Tantalus all over again, that he could learn so much and never share that knowledge with others.
Sam playing the cello was bittersweet and very, very Sam, to use her rest-breaks to learn a new talent and create a different kind of beauty, something beyond the exact, clean numbers and vectors of science.
Thor reduced to the equivalent of that really annoying paper clip from Microsoft Word was so ridiculous that it was actually funny – especially when Sam turned him off. :)
Mitchell going stir-crazy, literally, and trashing his room. And sitting in that cockpit, frozen in inaction and utterly lost. A marvelous flash of characterization.
Wee little snippets of teamy goodness: the salt-shaker with napkin as Superman. Mistletoe. Teal’c comforting Sam after Landry’s death.
Teal’c being awesome, as usual. You can never go wrong with Teal’c!
Then another leap to the ending, which, if you ignore the entire episode that led up to it, was just wonderful. Walter counting off the chevrons, one by one, as SG-1 wait in the Gateroom, talking together with humor and friendship. The chorus of “Indeed,” and “Good luck, SG-
So much for what I liked.
Okay, the ships. One of the greatest charms of Stargate has always been that even though it’s sci-fi, it’s taking place now, and not in the future. I’ve muttered about this before. The more ships that are integrated into the show, the less “now” vibe it has. So whose brilliant idea was it to make the very last episode of the series take place without a Stargate until the very last two minutes of the show?
Why drag Landry along? The idea of the CO of the SGC leaving the facility is so wrong. The idea of saying goodbye to the Asgard without Jack is even more wrong. And if they couldn’t get RDA, why not Hammond? I didn’t care in the slightest that Landry died, except that it made Sam feel like a failure. If that had been George, now, I would have been in real tears together with Sam.
Wiping out the Asgard? Say WHAT? No. sense. whatsoever. We have never been given even the slightest impression that suicide is part of the Asgard mindset; and the reasons given are ridiculous. They can’t ascend? So what? Why would they want to ascend? If there’s some stupid reason why the writers need to make sure the Asgard aren’t around to help in the upcoming movies, why not put them into stasis until such a time as the Tau’ri discover some way to help them? Millennia wouldn’t matter, as we learned in Revelations. We know the Asgard have little regard for their physical bodies, as long as their consciousnesses are preserved. So why not preserve those minds? Because an explosion would look cool?
And truly, why this insane need on the part of the writers to destroy every ally the Tau’ri have? The Asgard, while not always around when we need them, have been a genuine force for good for thousands of years – the only one of the Four Races who took a true interest in preserving humanity, even if they tended to look down on humans as being “much too young.” Now, we’ve been kickstarted decades or centuries into the future, technology wise, which harkens back to my complaint about dragging SG-1 away from the “now” charm of its original setting. Bad, bad idea all around.
What are the Ori doing in the Asgard galaxy? How do they even know the Asgard exist, much less where they live?
The Asgard’s decision to press the big red button without first zapping the three Ori ships in orbit, instead of merely allowing two of them to accidently get caught in the explosion, makes no sense. The ability of the Ori to pursue the ship so promptly and accurately through hyperspace, without even losing seconds in their effort to track them, makes no sense. The idea that the Asgard would only give the Tau’ri a single copy of their collective knowledge, without even an effort at a back-up of some kind, makes no sense. The inability of the ship – or, should I say, the people in charge of the ship – to be ready to shoot the second the Ori appeared and then flee again into hyperspace, makes no sense. The idea that they had enough time to beam people down to safety, but not to shoot at their pursuers or come up with some intelligent evasive action, makes no sense. Sam’s failure to consider getting the shields back to maximum, dropping the bubble to wipe out the Ori ship, and then returning to the time bubble, if necessary, to figure out how to fix anything else, makes no sense. In fact, I can only conclude that they wanted a fifty-year time bubble and didn’t care how many plotholes would be sucked into the bubble together with the team.
At the briefing, they calmly speculated about the Ori tipping off the Priors, and that the Ancients in the Milky Way might not stop the Ori from using their powers. Er, excuse me? Didn’t we say the Ori are… y’know… dead? Or was Ba’al really lying after all? And why isn’t anyone reacting with a little more alarm to the discovery that the Ori are still around, and that Daniel went though all that, and they opened the Supergate for more invasions, for absolutely nothing?
WHY WAS SAM WORKING ALONE? This was the part I actually hated most of all. There was no teamy goodness, other than taking meals together. Except for a single scene when Vala helped her, we saw Sam doing everything herself. Where were the scenes of the team working together, that I would expect in these circumstances? Fifty years was more than enough time for Sam to teach the others enough to work alongside her. Even if Daniel doesn’t remember all the details, Teal’c will certainly remember the lessons of Window of Opportunity, when he and Jack sat down and slogged through Daniel’s Latin lessons until they’d learned so much that they were able to correct Daniel themselves while he and they worked at translating. Mitchell should have been there, all enthusiastic with ideas, with Sam patiently explaining, over and over again, that no, there are no real short-cuts. Daniel should have been there, reveling in the opportunity to get the equivalent of his fourth Ph.D, with literally all the time in the world for it, especially when he couldn’t help Sam in 100 Days, the last time she needed to pull a science miracle out of her brain. Vala, with her lateral, non-Tau’ri thinking, should have been there to bounce ideas off of Sam and irritate her enough to inspire her further – we got it once. Why not more? And Teal’c should have been there, with his century of wisdom and sheer force of will, to encourage her and ask the questions that would lead her along the right path.
Instead? Instead we get Teal’c stacking boxes and occasionally sparring with Mitchell; and Mitchell going insane with boredom and the inability to do anything (when he could have been helping Sam); and Landry tending his plants, which I didn’t care about, since I don’t care about Landry at all; and Daniel and Vala making me want to scream at the screen.
Yeah. You knew that was coming, didn’t you? :)
Any time the writers decided to make the Sam/Jack fans happy, they made sure it wasn’t our Sam and Jack (thank goodness). It was two different universes, and a different timeline, and a deliberate hallucination. The Sam/Jack fans got the squee and the clips for music vids, and the non-shippers got the satisfaction of knowing it wasn’t our Sam and Jack.
Here? Despite the reset button, this was our Daniel and Vala. And we are supposed to accept, from that last scene before they hit the reset button, that this is a realistic choice for our Daniel and Vala to take, despite Vala’s blithe query to Teal’c, in the aftermath, about everyone except Daniel.
No. No. The Daniel I know would never, ever spew with such venom at a person he even pretended to care about. And while I am the very first to say that he has never been even remotely Saint Daniel, such cruelty and self-centeredness is utterly beyond his nature. The only way I could even remotely accept his reaction is if he genuinely doesn’t care about her; he’s reacting to be treated as a toy and as a diversion, whereas he believes in love and commitment – all those years of looking after Sha’re, and finally beginning to get over her, as he says here. Daniel has been used by women looking for a diversion before. If he’s reacting to Vala on the level of Hathor and Shyla, then, well… But we’re expected to accept that Daniel would reel off a rant of utter vitriol, and then turn around and confess to loving her? Are we supposed to believe that Daniel’s rant is actually a mask for his fear that Vala sees him as a plaything, but her tears convince him that she really means it, and that’s what he’s wanted all along? Because that’s just… ugh. That’s just sick.
Then there’s Vala. The Vala I know would never, ever just sit there and take it; she’d turn on him, wipe the floor (and possibly ceiling) with him, and stalk out with her head held high, leaving him a huddled mass of blood and bruises. Didn’t we just get that exchange at the beginning of the ep – not to mention “I’m going to go crazy, and I’m taking you with me” – which confirmed that Vala sees Daniel as a source of amusement, not as someone that she actually loves? Vala openly says that there’s no one else around to entertain her. Vala has, in fact, used Daniel as a source of entertainment from the moment they met. Where, in those tears of hers, is there any indication that this time is anything different?
If they really wanted to push the Daniel/Vala ship, why in such an utterly bizarre matter? Why not build it up slowly, during that montage (which, annoying music aside, had some very nice points)? As far as I can tell, though, the ship served two purposes: to make the Daniel/Vala shippers happy, and to utterly destroy any chance of teaminess, because it split Daniel and Vala off from the rest of the group.
[And on a completely shallow tangent, I was distracted during his awful rant by his long sleeves. We haven’t seen Daniel in a long-sleeved T-shirt for a long, long time. I would assume that they were conserving energy by lowering temperatures on the ship; but only Daniel and Mitchell are wearing long sleeves, and why should they have to do that if they have a Trek-like replicator at their disposal?]
Why fifty years, anyway? Why not ten, or twenty? Teal’c after fifty years would not look like himself with some pretty gray streaks in his hair. Fifty years makes him twenty years older than Bra’tac. Would he still be in good shape? Most probably. But he would also look old.
Sam could replicate oxygen and food and water and even tretonin, but she couldn’t manage a simple pair of scissors? Why wouldn’t the men cut their hair? I can understand the women preferring the simplicity of a ponytail – which they didn’t bother with, actually – but there was no excuse for that appalling straggly hair of Daniel, Mitchell, and Landry. And anyway, Daniel is supposed to go bald when he gets old. So there.
We’ve gone a decade without playing whatever song is currently popular in the U.S.; we’ve gotten some really beautiful instrumental music, which is ever so much nicer. Why the change now, at the last moment? It doesn’t bode well for the movies.
Teal’c’s offer to be the one who retained the fifty years made sense, technically, with the caveat that, as I mentioned earlier, he should look more like Bra’tac than himself with some gray streaks. But why, why, why do we torture Teal’c like this? The sheer loneliness and huge weight of that burden makes my heart ache. And can we hope, at least, that the crystal he carried contained all the breakthroughs Sam made during those five decades, instead of only the immediate info they needed to break free of the trap?
Sigh.
Bottom line: I hated this ep. I did. But I love, love, love SG-1, and my dislike for this episode – as well as most of the last two seasons, if I’m going to be really honest – doesn’t change that. So thanks, guys – the actors, the directors, the producers, the guys who did all the massive grunt work behind the scenes that never get thanked, that adorable white-haired woman who is (I think) in charge of costumes – thank you for a wonderful show, a wonderful universe, and a wonderful playground that I hope will never, ever grow stale.
Looking forward to redialling the Gate again, and starting from the very beginning… :)
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And as for: And anyway, Daniel is supposed to go bald when he gets old. So there.
I think Cassie may have been messing with him...
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I had a conversation over at
But, yeah, what drove me INSANE was the complete lack of teaminess. SG-1's biggest strength is that they are a team. When faced with a seemingly insurmountable problem, they come together, work together to solve the problem and support each other. Even though they were stuck together forever it was "Hey, Sam, you go work on getting us out of this, we're gonna go mess around and occasionally snipe at you for not fixing it yet."
What was up with Cam? I get that he might go stir crazy, but this is the guy who never, ever, ever gives up. This is the guy who learns what he needs, who thinks outsie the box, who comes up with new ideas and tries and tries again. And he gave up almost right away? He's pretty smart, why wasn't he there working with Sam and encouraging her?
Once we saw Vala try to help, but it didn't appear to be common and it took long enough. I think, maybe, Daniel studying the database was also trying to help Sam - see if he could learn something useful, and I firmly believe Teal'c was backing her up but WE DIDN'T SEE THAT!
*flails*
And the scene with Sam and Daniel when they were old - I loved that they got a scene but I flipped out at it. In my eyes, those two have shared a pretty deep understanding from the first time they met. Sam was THERE at Heliopolis. So why is she even asking Daniel why he's spent all that time studying the Asgard database? It is EXACTLY what Daniel would do in that situation. And when Sam said she gave up? I might have gotten cranky at that too...
Okay. Maybe I do need to write up my own reactions....Though I will say you said almost exactly what I expected from you. (When Mitchell pointed to the stargate and commented that that was how they were supposed to travel through space, I thought of you)
(I've seen other people say it too - why do we know Daniel would go bald?)
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Aaaand, I think that's the crux of it all right there. I read somewhere that the show's producers were sort of giddy with glee at how they'd given the fans what they want: "The team together alone at the end, finally!"
Well, yes, but we sort of wanted them to INTERACT WITH EACH OTHER!
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YES YES OMG YES!
*jumps up and down*
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The rest I could kind of... not think about, try to ignore the lack of teamy-ness and focus on the (few) good character moments we got instead, but that was in-my-face painful.
Perhaps I'll have less of a reaction to it when I watch again, I don't know.
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While I would have loved the opportunity to see Hammond once more, I think the writers would have had to have gone to an even bigger "How Come?" room for that. Since Jack was promoted to head of homeworld security, it's been really unclear what Hammond's capacity with the Stargate program is, whereas Landry is still directly involved and in charge.
As for the Asgard mass suicide, if they had gone into stasis, what? Earth would have been spread over three galaxies as they defend the incapacitated Asgard? What would be stopping the Ori from waking them up and getting the all the knowledge through nefarious means? And if they couldn't figure it out, they'd still probably blow up the planet so the Asgard would never be a threat, even if the Tauri were able to do what the Asgard couldn't over all that time (unless it really is just a matter of accomplishing more by virtue of being dumber :)
I do agree that it's absolutely silly that the Asgard apparently have weapons that can take out Ori ships in all of three or four shots and they didn't do anything to help with that first batch of ships, or even apparently tell anyone what the weapons were capable of before blowing up their planet. And yeah, the whole instantaneous tracking was just dumb. Why wouldn't the Ori have discovered the Asgard a long time ago, then?
I also agree with the whole bit about Sam not just fixing the shields, going out of the bubble, and then dealing with things after that. That was just one massive plot contrivance.
I don't think it's really fair to compare Jack and Teal'c's time loop learning to this, though. They mostly just had to memorize things. I don't think they were really learning latin and correcting Daniel(despite Jack's leafing through the book...he's Jack, he's got to have things to mess with) so much as, if Daniel spends a whole loop on one passage, they can pick it up after that on the next loop, and if a few loops down the line they realize there was a mistake up top, they'd be able to fix that the next time. This would be learning a whole new science, which I don't think Daniel would be as enthused about, given the entire Asgard legacy at his fingertips. But, yeah, it would have been great if everyone were bouncing ideas around here and there, instead of Vala saying one or two things and Cam's incessant whining.
Regarding your comments about Daniel's blowup, I think toy treatment for Vala's amusement is exactly how he felt, and he doesn't have to not care about her at all, in any way, to get that angry. I don't think it was based on fear of being her plaything, but straight-out annoyance and anger, because casual just isn't what Daniel does. And as for Vala's reaction...I think in her own, weird, Vala way she really did love Daniel or the idea of Daniel, but she's not the type to get all schmoopy. The way she acted is just her way that makes no sense to the rest of the universe. If it were grade school she'd be knocking him down and pulling his hair. (Except, I do freely admit that the behavior didn't line up with her behavior around Tomin, but I see it as more a defense mechanism.) I think there comes a time when not everyone can always be a strong as they were in the past, because they just hurt too much. So, I guess I'm not opposed to the idea of them getting together over 50 years, but I will say it was definitely, definitely too quick in this case.
I wondered about Bra'tac's age, but I just couldn't remember it. And yes, that was some truly god-awful hair on the men. But Salt Shaker Superman was made of awesome.
Overall, I wasn't as happy with the whole of the episode as I was with a lot of the individual parts, but I didn't hate it.
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ugh!
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Why, yes, thank you, I will. :)
And anyway, Daniel is supposed to go bald when he gets old. So there.
I think Cassie may have been messing with him...
Possibly, yes. But it was an odd venue for it - Cassie is expressing delight at seeing them again, especially so young. Throwing in a joke at that point would have been a little off-character.
On the other hand, maybe she meant long, floppy hair vs. short cut. Or even hair vs glowy tentacles, who knows? :)
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I'll check out Courser's LJ. Thanks for the heads-up.
SG-1's biggest strength is that they are a team.
Yes, exactly! And instead we got Sam working working working working. Thank goodness she took time off to learn the cello, because she dserved it.
I never thought of Mitchell as an "outside-the-box" guy, but I do agree that it's strange that he, of all people, should be the first to lose his optimism. But I saw his losing it as a reflection of his feeling adrift at forced inaction, moreso than actual despair.
I like your suggestion that Daniel made an effort to search the database for something that might help Sam, and that Teal'c backed her up, and so on... but as you say, WE DIDN'T SEE THAT! Argh.
n my eyes, those two have shared a pretty deep understanding from the first time they met. Sam was THERE at Heliopolis. So why is she even asking Daniel why he's spent all that time studying the Asgard database? It is EXACTLY what Daniel would do in that situation.
Yes, I wondered about it, too. It was the part of their time in the bubble that they got most right, I think - that even after he's concluded that the Asgard caused their own fate, he still kept learning, and mastering their legacy. So why would Sam, of all people, find it bewildering?
Regarding Daniel going bald: as
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Heh. Little minor detail that slipped their minds, apparently!
Team TOGETHER, boys. Not just alone.
::hugs team::
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And then
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I can totally understand your POV of the half-and-half Vala motivation thing. I might even feel a smidgen of it myself. But to go from that sheer poison of a speech into "Oh, I love you, as long as this is serious," is just too whiplashy for words.
There were a few good character moments. But they were too few, and... waaahh!! I wanted my team!
Three cheers for fanfic, at least. :)
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Why do character development if you're just going to throw it out the window at the end?
Because that would involve actually remembering how you've developed the characters?
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I tried about twice yesterday and got too cranky and gave up (and preferred the happier stuff I linked to). I did however get halfway through a Teal'c ep-tag so...we'll see :) Maybe write it up later but, for now, I need to run off and go strawberry picking.
I did love Sam and her cello - I just still don't get why the rest weren't helping - none of them are stupid and they had time to learn. Mitchell isn't as outside the box as, say, Daniel or Vala, but he's had creative-ish solutions in the past and, yeah, stuck with forced inaction would drive him nuts, but I think he would feel better if he was actually doing something to get them out. (and I spent the whole episode wondering why nobody suggested just fixing the shields....)
Yes, I wondered about it, too. It was the part of their time in the bubble that they got most right, I think - that even after he's concluded that the Asgard caused their own fate, he still kept learning, and mastering their legacy. So why would Sam, of all people, find it bewildering?
Exactly. Other people LOVED they got a scene together - and I did too - right up until both of them felt WRONG to me. (I admit...I felt oddly selfish about that because people had said my "Preserve your memories" fic reminded them of "Unending" and so I was really curious watching the episode to see why and that Sam and Daniel scene had such wildly different characterization than the Sam and Daniel in my story and I think mine is more accurate and I got stupidly cranky at the tv about it).
But, yes, of course Daniel would do what he did and I could see Vala not understanding, Mitchell not understanding, maybe even Teal'c not understanding. Sam? No chance in hell. I don't know that he was specifically doing it to help Sam, but I think he hoped he'd find something and I like the idea of him occasionally bringing tidbits to her. (I also like the idea of Sam replicating Daniel a piano and them playing duets...)
Maybe 1969 was just preparing the viewers for the shock of seeing the results of Hathor's Jaffa attacking Daniel's head with a weed-whacker? while drunk?
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I agree with you that whatever we may think of this final episode (and I've thought very little of the last two seasons), SG1 is a wonderful show overall, and we have at least 8 good seasons there to truly enjoy watching over as many times as we like. We owe all those who made that happen a big Thank You!
Melissa M.
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Oh, let's be fair now. Everyone is less annoying when they're not teenagers. :)