Some random thoughts on Bloodlines

[fignewton]

Watched Bloodlines last night, as the recap goes up tonight for redial_the_gate. I'd forgotten how much I liked it.

Hammond is, as always, solid gold. Don't try to lie to him - like in COTG, he's perfectly willing to call his people's bluffs - but once he knows what's really at stake, and he has all the information he needs? He backs Teal'c all the way.

Interesting to see how stratified society is on Chulak, especially compared to what we see of the Hak'tyl in S8. Good thing Teal'c had eight years' worth of fighting side-by-side with Sam at that point, which allowed him to accept the concept of a female warrior.

Daniel shooting the symbiote tank will always and forever be one of my top five Daniel defining moments. Period.

On the lighter Daniel side: I noticed, for the first time, that when Daniel idly speculates about the need to feed their captured symbiote, it's because he's taken a bite out of a powerbar. And then the shooting starts, and he and Sam are dodging through the trees looking for shelter, and Daniel is still holding on to the silly thing until they finally take cover. Then he sort of gives the powerbar an incredulous look before tossing it onto the ground and drawing his weapon. I do love you, Daniel.

And again, when SG-1 says goodbye to Bra'tac after he singlehandedly gains access to the Gate: they stand framed by the active wormhole. Teal'c is at stiff attention; Sam and Jack snap off formal salutes. Daniel? Waves cheerfully. :)

When you think about it, the mission to Chulak had three objectives: obtain a symbiote for study, bring Teal'c's son and wife back to the safety of Earth, and make contact with those Jaffa who might be willing to join the fight against the Goa'uld. The first objective failed when they used their captured symbiote to save Teal'c's life; the second failed for reasons that are utterly beyond my comprehension, as I have no idea why Teal'c left Drey'auc and Ry'ac at the side of the path instead of bringing them back to Earth. But the third objective? That one was a spectacular success. They met Bra'tac, and impressed him enough (both with their willingness to fight for Teal'c and their unthinking audacity in robbing the temple) that he insinuated himself into Klorel's good graces in order to try and stop the invasion of Earth. The success of that mission - and again, the impressions he got of SG-1 and Hammond - were enough to put Bra'tac solidly on their side, causing a chain reaction that eventually led to the entire Jaffa rebellion and the eventual overthrow of the System Lords. So, yeah. I'd definitely call this one a success.

I hadn't planned on it, but I will definitely be writing some Bloodlines-inspired meta on Bra'tac and Daniel over the next day or so. redial_the_gate welcomes multiple meta posts on episodes, so I won't be stepping on dunv_i's toes. I'll wait until after her meta post, though, since she's officially signed up for it. I'll link back to it here when it gets posted... or, y'know, you could just go and add redial_the_gate to your watchlist. I think you'll find it well worth it. :)

Comments

[tejas.livejournal.com]

(Just stumbled on your LJ... friended! I love good meta.)

Daniel and Bra'tac were the best things about an otherwise lackluster episode. Leaving D&R on Chulak was incredibly stupid. It would have made more sense if D had been going to do something to provide cover. Waylay the oncoming guards or spin them a tale about something or other to slow them down. But no. "Yes, you showed up and had no real contribution to make to our lives, but I forgive you anyway and, oh, we'll just hang here. Buh-bye!"

But oh, the Daniel moment. *That* was terrific. Suddenly, the often passionate, occasionally absent-minded, Daniel allows his inner-action hero that we saw in the movie to surface. Some have tried to use that scene as evidence that Daniel's impulsive, but I didn't get that. I think he knew exactly what he was doing and didn't lose a moment's sleep over it.

As for the powerbar, I've always had the impression that the period between Daniel having a decent job and standing in the rain outside Catherine's car got to be a kinda hungry time. (Been there, done that - though never evicted, just broke enough to have been hungry from time to time.) It's amazing how long it can take before you take eating regularly for granted again. ;-);-);-) But the realization we see on his face that there's a time to eat and a time to shoot is pricelesss. :-)

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

Welcome! The more, the merrier!

While I love the Daniel and Bra'tac dynamic and how it evolved over the years, I don't think I agree that the ep was lackluster. Hammond, as I said, was superb. Teal'c learned that these people weren't just his teammates - they were friends who were willing to risk their own lives for him. And despite Drey'auc getting left behind here, I definitely developed some fondness for the woman who had no qualms about leaping on Teal'c's back and fighting against a guy who is at least twice her weight. Teal'c's fondness for her suddenly makes an awful lot of sense, doesn't it?

And I am so incredibly amused by Jack's ramble to Bra'tac about "who he serves" - "He's just a man. Bald. From Texas." And then, that moment in The Serpent's Lair when Bra'tac tentatively runs his hand over his own head as he identifies George! Hee hee.

How could anyone suggest that the shooting of the symbiote tank was impulsive? He stood there and looked at it. Took the safety off. Stared. Talked to Sam. And THEN fired. And, like you, I don't think he lost a moment's sleep over it.

Discussing the ethics of Sam's statement would make some very interesting meta, though, wouldn't it?

But the realization we see on his face that there's a time to eat and a time to shoot is priceless

Hah! Yes, that's it exactly!

[tejas.livejournal.com]

I guess I don't see it as being quite that important with regards to furthering Teal'c's understanding of his place in his teammates' hearts and minds. Granted, it's been a while since I saw it, and there's nothing like a bad plot to ruin my appreciation for an episode. This had a really bad plot.

You are right that Hammond did shine, but I never doubted that he would.

Bra'tac is one of the jewels of SG1 and I'm so glad they never killed him off. (I thought it fairly stupid that they killed off Jacob/Selmak, but given that they'd killed Janet, who knows what goes on in their heads.) I loved watching him bite Daniel. LOL!!! And his insistence on calling Jack "Human" for so long when you KNEW he was just yanking Jack's chain was perfect.

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

This had a really bad plot.

Plotholes, yes. Bad plot... I don't think so.

To be honest, this is one of those eps that always went into the "meh" category - I would watch it for the good bits, but I didn't care for it much overall. But it really clicked for me when I watched it last night. Maybe this redial_the_gate thing has gone to my head. :) But seeing the eps, week after week, in sequential order - it's making me overly fond of them for some odd reason. And I see no reason to dislike that turn of events. ;)

Oh, word on everything about Bra'tac! Such a superb character, and one of the few I genuinely worried about these last two seasons - I wouldn't put it past the writers to kill him for the sake of the uproar. Thankfully, like Walter and Reynolds, he made it through alive. Even TPTB are defeated by Bra'tac's absolutely awesomeness, apparently.

I loved watching him bite Daniel.

Heh. I could never make up my mind if he's threatening to bite Daniel or to snap his wrist. I guess you could take it either way. The main point, I think, was to demonstrate contempt - which was why Daniel's pointed, "I thought we were warriors of great strength and cunning" a few minutes later is even funnier.

Go and watch this one, when you have a chance. I think you'll be surpirsed at how much you find you like it.

[tejas.livejournal.com]

Agreed on Daniel's response to Bra'tac's contempt. :-)

And yes, I think it is time to dig out the DVDs and catch up here. Bloodlines has consistently been one I've watched or not as the mood took me, because I was watching for bits, not the whole thing. As for the 'bad plot vs. plot holes' argument - when you can't see the plot for the holes, y'gotta wonder if the problem is the basic concept rather than the execution. ;-)

S1 is such a mixed bag for me. And with First Commandment coming up, it's the beginning of the end for Carter's potential - A wasted and ruined character, sadly.

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

I think I do see a plot, though. You should go watch. Go on, doooo eeeet....

I agree that S1 is a bit of a mixed bag; most first seasons for most shows are, don't you think? S2 will always be my absolute favorite.

We're already past First Commandment, by the way. It was episode - six? Seven? Something like that. Next week is Fire and Water. Good time to join in, woo hoo!

As for Sam... well.

This LJ is most definitely a Sam-friendly zone. I strongly disagree that Sam is a "wasted and ruined" character, although I do think that the pushing of the Sam/Jack ship was an astonishingly bad move for an awful lot of reasons. But that wasn't a problem until S4; and even during the worst of those, Sam continued to shine in any scene that was not just her and Jack, or specifically aimed at her love life. (That drove me insane. Sam is about so much more that who her current boyfriend might be, and yet the writers insist on dwelling on it ad nauseum. But I blame that on the writers, not on Sam herself.) And after S8, of course, the problem is moot. I disliked most of S9-10, but a Sam without Jack around is a wonderful thing to behold. And (spoilers for S10!) I was utterly gleeful at the scene between Jack and Sam in The Shroud - private conversation. Utterly professional. Just the way it was supposed to be, yay!

But I adore Sam Carter with all her foibles and human failings, and I love the relationship between Sam and Daniel, and I'm quite fond of the way Sam and Teal'c interact, too. So by all means, you're entitled to your opinions - but most of the regular commenters here are definitely Sam fans. Myself included. :)

[tejas.livejournal.com]

I *want* to be a Sam fan, but when I stand back and take a good long look at what the writers did to her and try to see all of her as a piece, the result isn't pretty. There *are* Carter moments I *live* for (the best line in Space Race: "Well, what's a girl to do?" hehehehehe :-) and I think AT did a fantastic job with what she was given, but the writers failed her badly.

And you're right, that scene in the Shroud had me cheering. That was the Jack and Sam I loved. Working together, sharing a friendship but always professional.

[tejas.livejournal.com]

Discussing the ethics of Sam's statement would make some very interesting meta, though, wouldn't it?

Oh, yeah. How far can ethical considerations based on human actions/motiviations/potentials be stretched to include wholly alien life forms with entirely alien actions/motivations/potentials?

Our ethical and moral standpoints are based on the implicit concepts of expected and or anticipated human behavior. We determine that it's wrong to kill because humans have killed and the results were bad and to be avoided. We determine that it's wrong to steal for the same reason and so on and so forth. How will our ethics and morals be impacted when they butt up against beings for whom human actions and motivations have no meaning? Can we apply them at all? Sam, good soldier that she is, showed that she'd learned her military ethics well and was ready and willing to live with the resulting consequences. Daniel, having more first hand experience with the snakes, had already worked through this question and, apparently, come to the realization that it doesn't apply. I kinda agree with him. There *are* no innocent Goa'uld as they've been portrayed.

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

How will our ethics and morals be impacted when they butt up against beings for whom human actions and motivations have no meaning? Can we apply them at all?

Yeah. A nice, difficult gray area: one that SG-1 excels at, when the writers actually bother with it.

I like your suggestion that Sam is ingrained with the ethical view of her military training, while Daniel simply has the switch in his brain: These are Goa'ulds. These are Goa'lds with bullets in them. Any questions?

There *are* no innocent Goa'uld as they've been portrayed.

And yet, the Tok'ra, ambiguous as they are. As I said: gray area. And worth a lot of thought.

[tejas.livejournal.com]

Ah, but as the Tok'ra will be quick to tell you, they aren't Goa'uld. I use their definition of the terms.

I like your suggestion that Sam is ingrained with the ethical view of her military training,

It makes sense to me. The military definition of non-combatants includes children. Carter is trained to think in those terms. Carter is also... how to put this. In S1, she's portrayed as someone with some definite issues, but they're never really addressed later and that's too bad.

We see with her relationship with her father and Hanson that she has a tendency to step into subordinate roles, possibly it's an in-born personality trait or at least one drilled into her in childhood. In either event, it's one that will be tough to overcome. The closest we ever see her come to dealing with this is in her relationship with Martouf where she refuses to allow herself to be subordinate to Jolinar's memory. Even so, that's not nearly enough to have overcome a lifetime of conditioning (possibly on top of a natural tendency).

Her thinking tends to be fairly straightforward and conservative, as well. I'm sure it's fanon that she's *always* saying "but that's impossible" while watching whatever it is happening before her eyes... but she has done it a few times. To her credit, she generally comes around as soon as she's given more than just a seemingly impossible thing, but she's very linear in her thinking. Very conservative. Very *bound*.

The upshot to me is that especially in S1, Carter is going to be most comfortable in a role that gives her definite boundaries; that gives her structure. There's a touch of the rule-breaker evident in Cold Lazarus with the staff weapon in the gateroom (Ah, SGC Clue! :-). (Wait. Was that her idea or Daniel's? Even if it was his, she had no trouble going along with it.) She hasn't yet gotten to the point where she feels comfortable throwing off some of that structure when it no longer works. I don't think she ever got *too* comfortable with it.

And I had no idea this was going to poing off into a discussion of Carter's personality. :-)

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

Ah, but as the Tok'ra will be quick to tell you, they aren't Goa'uld. I use their definition of the terms.

Hm, fair enough. Although it fascinates me how Goa'uldish their strategies and attitudes tend to be. They infiltrate, just as a symbiote would. And they certainly share the Goa'uld's general contempt for non-blended humans. And that's all a long discussion for another time. :)

she has a tendency to step into subordinate roles

I'm not sure that's a fair statement. Her father is her father - and, once she joins the military, of superior rank. Jonas is also of superior rank (I'm pretty sure he's not just a captain).

Sam isn't so much conservative as much as married to a scientific way of thinking. If she was a true conservative, she'd toe the contemporary scientific line and wouldn't be assigned to research time travel possibilities in wormholes! I do think she needs logical proofs, but she definitely understands inspiration. As I've said before: Daniel thinks outside the box to create a solution; Sam then goes ahead and builds the box to make the solution into reality. (A perfect example of this is Failsafe, when Daniel's speculation on just how the Goa'uld got a naquadah asteroid into the solar system inspired Sam to hyperspace the asteroid straight through the Earth.)

Carter is going to be most comfortable in a role that gives her definite boundaries; that gives her structure.

I agree with this without reservation. But that's the military in her speaking, as well as her lack of experience. Give her time to relax into her position. Teal'c needed a little time to learn more than one facial expression, after all. :)

I never mind wandering threads of thought, so don't worry about that. As long as a discussion remains civil, I'm all for it.

[tejas.livejournal.com]

Jonas is also of superior rank (I'm pretty sure he's not just a captain).


I don't recall if he was or not, but her relationships with both of them were more than just dealing with position, IMO. To her credit, she did ditch Jonas when she realized just how controlling he was, but we never *saw* that she'd overcome the draw to controlling men. I think of the women I've known in my life who have the same kind of almost instinctive draw and it's a HUGE event to be able to outgrow that. That she let him control her again in First Commandment proved that she hadn't yet thrown off that particular tendency.

If she was a true conservative, she'd toe the contemporary scientific line and wouldn't be assigned to research time travel possibilities in wormholes!

Point. Though she still goes first for the conservative line and has to be 'bullied' (exaggeration ;-) to consider other ideas. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing for a scientist. And I will always give her credit for paying attention to what someone outside her field says even when it sounds off the wall (even if she rejects it at first sight). How many physicists would bother to consider an archeologist's hypothesis about planetary drift and alien technology? :-) But first and foremost, she clings to established thought, which, now that you've mentioned it, may well be her military training impacting her scientific self.

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree about this. Sam couldn't possibly survive as a member of the SGC - much less a member of SG-1 - if her thinking was as hidebound as you suggest. I'd say that she's suffering from a dual handicap: the astrophysicist need to translate the universe into numbers, irrational or not, and the military need to defer to rank and placement. But from the very beginning, when she told Daniel, "I knew I'd like you" - with inherent pleasure at being proven wrong, and the Wonder Twin spark of inspiration that had them bouncing phrases off one another - Sam has always been capable of seeing outside the boundaries... even if she sometimes needed a little help to get there.

"Anyway, I'm sorry, but that just happens to be how I feel about it. What do you think?"

[tejas.livejournal.com]

I think our opinions are closer than they first appear on the surface. One of these days, though, I'm going to have to sit down and make a list of all the times the writers had her being the "Oh No This Is Impossible" girl for seemingly no good reason. Who knows, it may be fewer times than I'm remembering. Maybe it's just she says it in some of my favorite eps and so it *seems* like it's happened more often than not just because I've watched them more.

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

Heh. Little do you know that making mild observations like that tends to lead to frenzied canon vs. fanon research! I've definitely added that one to my Sam list. It probably won't be for this coming edition, but it'll end up posted here. Eventually. :)

[tejas.livejournal.com]

Cool! One of the things I like about meta is that it often helps me redefine my own opinions. It's *SO* easy to be swayed by fanon if you read a lot of fic. While some fanon doesn't bother me (or is a guilty pleasure :-), I hate it when I can't remember if it's canon or not.

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

That's what started the canon vs. fanon posts, yes - the need to figure out how much canon was being overwhelmed by fanon. Fanon isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but when it starts to supercede canon, it's time to back off a bit. :)

[tejas.livejournal.com]

Yep! I'm reading the St. Daniel one right now. Fascinating, though I think I may have found an error (fairly minor), but I'll have to look it up before I say anything. I want to be able to provide references or discover if I'm misremembering before making a fool of myself. ;-);-)

[redbyrd-sgfic.livejournal.com]

Jonas is also of superior rank (I'm pretty sure he's not just a captain).

Ah, Jonas is a captain, actually. Which doesn't mean that he's not senior (he could have been promoted before Sam, and they might have been of different ranks when they were seeing each other). But they're both Captains in First Commandment.

*slinks back out of conversation*