On Daniel, the Goa'uld, and the Tok'ra

[fignewton]

In the discussion on Dominion, I raised the objection that Daniel would never condone the deliberate implantation of a Goa’uld in anyone, even Adria. A lot of people made some very insightful comments in disagreeing with that statement. Since this is a little too long to go into a comment in reply, and the chance to write some long-held meta is always fun, I’m going to explain my reasoning here. While most of this is based on canon, some of it is based on how I interpret canon, which of course moves it into the realm of personal fanon. With that caveat, anyone is welcome to disagree, and discussions are always a good thing. 

Let’s set aside for the moment how Daniel perceives Adria in comparison to other corrupted children/innocents he has known in the past, as all of us agree that by this point Daniel sees her as irredeemable. The argument I’m making is that Daniel has such a visceral horror to the Goa’uld and what they represent that he would never advocate using a symbiote to control a host – even the Orici in such extreme circumstances. I could see Daniel protesting the idea, then reluctantly stepping aside when others insist; however, Dominion gives us Daniel actively promoting the concept, and that’s what I see as going against his nature.

It’s true that the Ori and the Goa’uld are after the same thing (the Goa’uld just did it with more style), as the characters themselves observe in Dominion. And much of what they represent – subjugation, the tyranny of forbidden education and technological advancements, the loss of freedom of religion – are equally abhorrent to Daniel, and he would do anything to prevent either one from coming into power. Both the Goa’uld and the Ori have made the battle personal for Daniel – Apophis by taking Sha’re, and Adria by targeting Daniel personally and the abduction and Priorization. Daniel also feels, whether or not he is right to do so, that he is responsible for unleashing both on Earth – the Goa’uld by his unlocking the secret of the Stargate, and the Ori by his accidental knocking on the Ori’s door and letting them know that humans exist in the Milky Way. Going by these criteria, we might say that Daniel sees both of them as evils that need to be stopped… and while it’s not something earlier seasons Daniel might advocate, isn’t it something that this wearier, more jaded Daniel might do?

I still say no. I maintain that to Daniel, the Goa’uld not only attacked him, but violated him deeply on a personal level far beyond anything the Ori have ever done.

Let’s start with the basics: unlike the Goa’uld, the Ori have never actually killed Daniel. (I take a moment to control my inevitable stupid grin at being so attached to a fandom where a statement like that is taken for granted.) Ra killed not only Daniel, but also Sha’uri. And when Daniel revived Sha’uri in the sarcophagus and tried to make it off the ship, Ra came within a hair of killing Daniel with the ribbon device – he was bleeding from the nose before he managed to escape. Apophis killed Daniel with a staff weapon, along with Jack and Sam; it’s only thanks to the Nox that Teal’c was saved, and the others revived.

That’s only a superficial look at things, though. (Controls the stupid grin again.) On a personal level, the Goa’uld have violated Daniel’s life’s work, his wife, his body and will, and his adopted planet.

Daniel has been called archeologist, anthropologist, Egyptologist, linguist… His official degrees notwithstanding, we can all agree that Daniel’s deepest academic roots are in Egypt. And the Goa’uld, by their very existence, have destroyed Daniel’s love and absorption in Egyptian culture, because everything about Egypt mythology and history is based on a lie. And while Daniel’s passion for the pursuit of knowledge and truth was what led him to question the assumptions of others in the first place, the discovery that everything about Egypt is based on the Goa’uld is a terrible blow. The subsequent realization that Goa’uld influence stretched across the planet makes it even worse. Daniel’s first love has been history and how cultures have been shaped and changed; his journeys through the Stargate force him to reevaluate every historical monument, every cherished artifact and shard of human history, as something corrupted by an alien presence determined to enslave humanity.

When Apophis abducted Sha’re, he didn’t just take Daniel’s wife. He took the woman who, in essence, instigated the revolt against Ra – she rebelled first by daring to draw symbols in the sand, then showed Daniel the drawings in the catacombs and helped him learn Abydonian, then dragged Skaara and the boys back to the catacombs to show them what she’d learned and convince them to help Daniel, Jack, and the others escape. Sha’re’s subjugation by Amaunet wasn’t just the suffering of a single woman; it represents the destruction of that first, glorious victory against Ra. And, of course, what it means to Daniel on a personal level – the woman he loves for all her fire and courage, reduced to a silent scream pounding impotently on the walls of her own pysche, raped by the man who took her. Daniel’s love for Sha’re was intense enough to allow him to deliver Apophis’ baby and love that child for Sha’re’s sake. The intensity of that love can be matched only by his anguish and his hatred for the creatures that stole him from her.

Then, considering that level of hatred – which is vividly illustrated by that intense scene in Bloodlines, when Daniel calmly destroys a tank of symbiotes without more than a sidelong glace at Sam in reaction – there is Hathor, who sapped him of his will and forced him to be her mindless slave. Beyond even the shame of rape (and I’m not suggesting that should be taken lightly; on the contrary), Hathor forced Daniel to help her produce more of his most hated enemy. That is a horror even beyond the abuse of body and will, and I think it’s something that Daniel has never truly moved past. I know a lot of people complained about the lack of follow-up to Hathor and what Daniel and Jack suffered (I agree with that), and that Daniel barely seemed to react when he met Hathor again in Out of Mind/Into the Fire; but I’d say that the “lack of reaction” was actually a forced layer of numbness that Daniel used to protect himself, because if he’d really allowed himself to react as he wanted, he would have been cowering in the corner of the Gate room, curled up in fetal ball and screaming on the top of his lungs. (I have no proof for that statement, I know. As I stated earlier, some of this is my personal interpretation.)

When it comes down to it, Daniel is fiercely loyal to those he loves, and can be downright scary when those people are threatened. Consider how, in crisis, he was able to use a staff weapon accurately enough to kill a Jaffa only a few feet away from Sam (in the Nox); his drive to save the planet from Apophis’ imminent invasion, and the personal aspect of the appeal in terms of those that he knew that were dead; his quietly-voiced threat to Apophis in Serpent’s Song, when he demanded that Apophis tell him where to find Sha’re or he would kill him right there, as he lay helpless in the infirmary; that pivotal moment in Beast of Burden, when, after seeing Jack tortured and the Unas killed, he is no longer asking Jack to find a peaceful solution; the underlying concept of Absolute Power, that a Daniel wanting to protect his planet and strongly convinced in his own moral certitude would be capable of ultimately destroying the Earth.  So while the show never bothered to show us what happened when Daniel discovered the destruction of Abydos, how do you think he would react? Sha’re’s grave gone. Skaara, Kasuf, the people that he helped liberate from millennia of slavery and taught and loved and lived with – all irrevocably gone, and all because of Anubis.

[Yes, there were other factors, not least of which was Daniel’s own actions and Oma and the Others. But I would strongly assert that the destruction of Abydos would drive Daniel’s hatred to the Goa’uld to even greater levels.]

So much for the Goa’uld. But the plan in Dominion wasn’t to deliberately implant Adria with a Goa’uld, right? Ba’al had already done that on his own. The plan was to bring in a Tok’ra symbiote – one who would temporarily override Adria’s control for the duration of the emergency, just long enough to order the Ori armies to stand down and leave the Milky Way. If my arguments have been against the Goa’uld, not against the Tok’ra, why do I feel that Daniel would disagree?

The truth is that I think it makes it even worse.

While Daniel has never shown any real discomfort in dealing with the Tok’ra – outside Anise, of course, and their initial meeting, when Garshaw asked if he would be willing to serve as a host – I have always believed that the Tok’ra make Daniel truly uncomfortable. Yes, they’ve done a lot for Earth (although much less after S3). Their intentions are admirable, true. But the methods the Tok’ra choose to use are a marvelous example of nature vs. nurture – and when philosophical beliefs are overridden, what’s left that makes a difference?

The Goa’uld are symbiotes – parasites, really – that infiltrate a person’s body, using that person’s thoughts and abilities for their own purposes. The Tok’ra depend mostly on infiltration – they plant spies within Goa’uld ships and powerbases, using what they find and the positions they gain to try and undermine them. Their regular dealings with the SGC in the later seasons, when they used the Tau’ri without offering much in return, fit the same pattern.

The Tok’ra are Goa’uld, but with the genetic memories of Egeria, herself a Goa’uld with a different philosophical view. And when that philosophical view is ignored? You get Sam, taken as a host without consent, by a Tok’ra who didn’t hesitate to ruthlessly manipulate Daniel’s emotions by offering to tell him where to find Sha’re in return for her freedom. And you get Jack, literally hijacked by Kanan to retrieve Ba’al’s lotar. Kanan never even bothered to tell Jack what he was doing; all Jack had were vague flashes of the lotar. And Daniel watched as Jack was tortured to death over and over again, because a Tok’ra betrayed its most basic belief – first by taking Jack on a suicidal rescue mission, and then by abandoning him to his death.

ETA: as aurora_novarum points out, we don't actually know that Daniel remembers what happened in Abyss. In fact, I've always assumed that he doesn't remember anything from his first ascension. OTOH, Daniel certainly read the mission reports enough to know the basic facts: that Jack agreed to take a symbiote to save his life, that Kanan skipped out with Jack on a suicidal rescue mission, that Kanan abandoned Jack on Ba'al's planet, and that Jack was subsequently tortured to death multiple times. That, I think, would be enough, even if he doesn't have the personal memory of having been there.

Coupled with Daniel’s fierce loyalty and love for his friends, and his deep, visceral hatred for the Goa’uld, I would strongly suggest that Daniel is even more repulsed by the idea of a Tok’ra acting Goa’uld-like than by the Goa’uld themselves. And if that is the case, I cannot see Daniel ever, under any circumstances, being comfortable enough with the idea of a forced Tok’ra implantation.

Would he step aside and let others argue for it? Yes, I can see that. But that’s not what we saw in Dominion – we saw him arguing in favor of the idea. That was what I saw as being too OOC for our Daniel. And even now, after all the choices he’s made and the new, unhappy cynicism of his S9-10 personality, I still like to think of him as our Daniel. :)

ETA: There's a rather long discussion in the comments that really takes the whole thing off-topic. I always welcome digressions and even civil rants, but I do want to emphasize that the point of this essay is not to suggest that Daniel can't work with the Tok'ra or has to struggle not to hate them; instead, I am suggesting that considering Daniel's history, his acceptance of the Tok'ra had to be a conscious effort, that he would feel doubly betrayed if they betray their own ethical stand, and that it's hugely OOC for Daniel to not only approve the suggestion, but to advocate it.