Moebius: How to be cruel to your team

[fignewton]

redial_the_gate goes live today with Moebius, part 2, drawing S8 to a close. It's been a wonderful ride since Abyssis first proposed Redial, and it's hard to believe there are only two seasons left (plus two movies) before we've redialed the Gate from start to finish!

In the meantime, a few random thoughts on Meobius and the sheer cruelty of it all...

In some ways, it feels like the writers went out of their way to be as cruel as possible to the characters we love before hitting that reset button. (I'll save the question of whether it's "reset" or "step sideways" for the comm, because I know it will be discussed there.) But consider:

Sam, Jack, and Teal'c died in a rebellion, leaving Daniel alone, in his past, afraid to do too much and afraid not to do enough. Daniel is very good at walking away from people but so good at having them walk away from him. Living under Ra and knowing that Sha're's people are going to be suffering in slavery, and he can't stop it. (It makes you wonder, doesn't it, if the Ra of '95 somehow recognized the Daniel in Ancient Egypt...?)

It would've destroyed Jack to leave Daniel behind like that, not to mention that I have always believed that Jack was the one who pushed for them to start the rebellion in the first place. Daniel hates hardest, but Jack would never be able to quietly bear tyranny. And the children there would've pushed his Charlie and his Skaara buttons very painfully.

Speaking of destroying, consider Sam: to see the primitive conditions of life there and not help, to be constrained not only by her knowledge of the tampering in the past, but also by the complete lack of any of her tools and no way to properly utilize her skills. Sam has her training and her years of missions to teach her how to cope, but Sam has never been about just coping. And now she can't do anything, and all her skills and knowledge have no application.

And Teal'c! How much comfort can you take in an abstract? How could he watch Jaffa in blind submission and fight against the desperate urge to kickstart the Jaffa rebellion a few millennia early? How much did it hurt, knowing that in many ways he wasn't going to die free?

And then we're supposed to say YAY SG-1 2.0! Or 1.75, since poor Daniel dies again. (I am amused at how very conveniently they managed to make sure that at least one or another version of each person was dead, so they didn't have to deal with doubles). And now Daniel deals with people who wear the faces and voices of the people he loves but are not them.

Let's also remember that Sam and Jack and Teal'c never had a real choice here, and now they are going to die in a past that essentially wipes out their futures completely. This Teal'c doesn't even have the comfort of a remembered freedom to assuage his dying, and this Sam has no experience in living in hardship, and this Jack is an utter mess. We tend to focus on how much it hurt Daniel, but it was no picnic for these three, either.

And despite all this, we're supposed to squee at the teamy goodness of the final scene on the lake with the fish that are close enough. Sigh.

As I said, just rambling here. But I welcome your thoughts. :)

Comments

[green_grrl]

YES to all of the above—OW OW OW!

Even worse, there's the PTB's light-hearted "this is a humor episode" pasted over the ow. It's not at all presented with the angsty depth that would flow from your—very accurate—description. (I also LOATHE the bad time-travel ficcage of Sam2 not being in the Air Force and the dorkverse team being especially played for "laughs"—for values of "laughs" that equal 3rd grade humor. There's a reason why You Can't Always Get What You Want is my favorite Moebius fic.)

But bless fanfic. Moebius fics tend to be the angstiest of the bunch, because fanficcers get it.

[fignewton]

"light-hearted pasted over the ow" - yes, EXACTLY. Same thing with Window of Opportunity, although in that case they allowed the angst to bleed through when it was appropriate.

Regarding the bizarreness of the dork-verse and Sam not joining the Air Force, did you ever read Once Upon a Time in Egypt by ljs_lj? Gorgeous ripple effect there.

This may seem funny coming from a gen girl like me :) but I would've actually liked to see AU Sam/AU Daniel in Moebius. I loved the way they stuck together when they were being crowded out. I loved the hidden depths of both of them - Daniel resisting Apophis to Teal'c's disbelief, Sam liking things that go boom after all. It felt... oh, I don't know. Tired, I guess, that they put Sam and Jack together again in the alt timeline. I'm for all for giving Sam/Jack fans their squee as long as it's not OUR Sam and Jack, but surely there can be SOME other choice, sometime?

But speaking of fanfic, no one has posted any fanworks links yet! Okay, I have. :) But we need non-gen stuff there too!

[green_grrl]

Okay, I got the slash-y fics recced!

I'm for all for giving Sam/Jack fans their squee as long as it's not OUR Sam and Jack, but surely there can be SOME other choice, sometime?

I know! I so appreciated that Ripple Effect was Sam/Martouf! Really, really appreciated. (I miss Martouf!)

[fignewton]

Thanks for linking all of those! Now we need the Sam/Jack ones...

Yes, I appreciated the Sam/Martouf nod too. And hey, Road Not Taken gave us Sam/McKay, come to think of it. I do wish RE would've given us that missing Daniel/Sha're scene, though, rather than giving us so many Sam/insert-name-here variations!