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Some random thoughts on Enigma, because ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
redial_the_gate goes live with the recap sometime tonight:
"No argument from me - wait, what's that?" <= Please note Daniel's idea of "no argument."
"This one's had it!" Ah, Sam, that's the sensitive cultural expert speaking... :)
Such love for early SG-1, when Hammond proudly compliments SG-1 for doing nothing more than saving people. Happy sigh.
I adore Omoc. He's unquestionably a good guy, but largely unlikeable with no social graces whatsoever. In short, he's real.
Daniel drinks more coffee in this episode than any other. Tollans, evidently, make him thirsty.
The female SF from Hathor is quite prominent in this one! Sadly, I don't think we ever see her again. ::mutters:: Bet Maybourne fired her, the rat.
Love the Sam and Daniel banter in the Gateroom. "New toy?" "One of them keeps asking a lot of questions about you." And the control room later, heh. "Whoops."
I loved Sam and Jack and Hammond honoring Tuplo by wearing their dress blues. And Tuplo took Omoc's rudeness with remarkable graciousness, which just goes to show that primitives are capable of class. In fact, we got a lot of dress blues this episode. Bonus!
Considering the VIP room that Hathor got, couldn't they find something a little nice than metal bunks for the Tollan?
I have an incredible fondness for young!Walter with hair.
Maybourne is a sleaze. I do not comprehend why so many people like him, I really don't. Yes, I very much enjoy the sheer antagnosim between Jack and Maybourne, and it's right up front from the very beginning - but like Maybourne? No way.
Hammond, on the other hand, rocks. And his ploy with the quarantine is exactly the kind of thing we should have seen from the entire SGC during Chain Reaction, but sadly didn't.
I love Teal'c's passion on behalf of the Tollan. He's been there. He suffered with Kennedy. He knows exactly what the NID are capable of doing.
"You know, the Pentagon, Intelligence, that I can understand. But the President? I voted for him!" Hee! Daniel's righteous indignation makes me giggle. This is the only kind of politics that gets a pass in my personal fandom, thank you.
Daniel the civilian as secret weapon. Oh, I love it. His ability to inspire trust is one of his absolute greatest assets. Omoc was actually willing to explain something to him, even if it was totally over Daniel's head.
Narim is one of the nicest guys that fell for Sam, isn't he? Although the slightly stalkerish thing in S5 about using her voice for his home's audio system makes it kinda borderline.
Daniel and Teal'c, civilians, defying the NID. Oh, I love them. Daniel snarking wordlessly at Maybourne - huh? what'd you say? - is absolutely squeeful, every time.
I love Lya. I love her face when she sees Daniel, and Daniel's when he greets her. In fact, Daniel is particularly beautiful in this episode. I just think that needed to be said.
Maybourne ordered the SFs to fire after the Tollan had already disappeared. In short, he was essentially telling the men to fire at Daniel and Teal'c, although admittedly Teal'c wasn't actually standing in the line of fire the way that Daniel was. Tell me again why people like him?
And now I want someone to write me the AU where the soldiers did fire before Lya vanished their weapons, and both Teal'c and Daniel are hurt or killed, and Lya spirits them away with her to the Nox planet to heal them, and Teal'c and Daniel have all sorts of adventures together before they finally make it back to Earth just in time to rescue Sam and Jack in Antarctica.
Yes. Someone write that. Please? :)
Jack: "I love those people." See? See? It's not just the Asgard! Jack likes Good Guys, that's all.
Jack, again: "You did good, Daniel." All together, now: Awwwww. :)
I always did wonder, though, why all four of them were staring at an inactive Stargate at the end.
redial_the_gate goes live with the recap sometime tonight:"No argument from me - wait, what's that?" <= Please note Daniel's idea of "no argument."
"This one's had it!" Ah, Sam, that's the sensitive cultural expert speaking... :)
Such love for early SG-1, when Hammond proudly compliments SG-1 for doing nothing more than saving people. Happy sigh.
I adore Omoc. He's unquestionably a good guy, but largely unlikeable with no social graces whatsoever. In short, he's real.
Daniel drinks more coffee in this episode than any other. Tollans, evidently, make him thirsty.
The female SF from Hathor is quite prominent in this one! Sadly, I don't think we ever see her again. ::mutters:: Bet Maybourne fired her, the rat.
Love the Sam and Daniel banter in the Gateroom. "New toy?" "One of them keeps asking a lot of questions about you." And the control room later, heh. "Whoops."
I loved Sam and Jack and Hammond honoring Tuplo by wearing their dress blues. And Tuplo took Omoc's rudeness with remarkable graciousness, which just goes to show that primitives are capable of class. In fact, we got a lot of dress blues this episode. Bonus!
Considering the VIP room that Hathor got, couldn't they find something a little nice than metal bunks for the Tollan?
I have an incredible fondness for young!Walter with hair.
Maybourne is a sleaze. I do not comprehend why so many people like him, I really don't. Yes, I very much enjoy the sheer antagnosim between Jack and Maybourne, and it's right up front from the very beginning - but like Maybourne? No way.
Hammond, on the other hand, rocks. And his ploy with the quarantine is exactly the kind of thing we should have seen from the entire SGC during Chain Reaction, but sadly didn't.
I love Teal'c's passion on behalf of the Tollan. He's been there. He suffered with Kennedy. He knows exactly what the NID are capable of doing.
"You know, the Pentagon, Intelligence, that I can understand. But the President? I voted for him!" Hee! Daniel's righteous indignation makes me giggle. This is the only kind of politics that gets a pass in my personal fandom, thank you.
Daniel the civilian as secret weapon. Oh, I love it. His ability to inspire trust is one of his absolute greatest assets. Omoc was actually willing to explain something to him, even if it was totally over Daniel's head.
Narim is one of the nicest guys that fell for Sam, isn't he? Although the slightly stalkerish thing in S5 about using her voice for his home's audio system makes it kinda borderline.
Daniel and Teal'c, civilians, defying the NID. Oh, I love them. Daniel snarking wordlessly at Maybourne - huh? what'd you say? - is absolutely squeeful, every time.
I love Lya. I love her face when she sees Daniel, and Daniel's when he greets her. In fact, Daniel is particularly beautiful in this episode. I just think that needed to be said.
Maybourne ordered the SFs to fire after the Tollan had already disappeared. In short, he was essentially telling the men to fire at Daniel and Teal'c, although admittedly Teal'c wasn't actually standing in the line of fire the way that Daniel was. Tell me again why people like him?
And now I want someone to write me the AU where the soldiers did fire before Lya vanished their weapons, and both Teal'c and Daniel are hurt or killed, and Lya spirits them away with her to the Nox planet to heal them, and Teal'c and Daniel have all sorts of adventures together before they finally make it back to Earth just in time to rescue Sam and Jack in Antarctica.
Yes. Someone write that. Please? :)
Jack: "I love those people." See? See? It's not just the Asgard! Jack likes Good Guys, that's all.
Jack, again: "You did good, Daniel." All together, now: Awwwww. :)
I always did wonder, though, why all four of them were staring at an inactive Stargate at the end.
Tags:
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Love Omoc. Hate that they killed him.
Why were they all staring at the gate at the end? Cheap team moment? Cheap as in, "OMG, it's midnight and we've STILL got to finishing filming this one!" :-) I have no idea, other than a way to get the whole team in for the shot and that's the set that would be available for the time they'd set aside to film it? It was an odd choice... except that it allowed them to flow right from the last interaction with the Nox.
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Hee! Yeah. Stay far far away.
Oh, I hated what they did to the Tollan. HATED it. Travell was so OOC in Between Two Fires that it was absolutely appalling. Chalk it up to the writers' appalling habit of taking every victory, starting from the movie, and destroying it.
And yes, I will write that meta. One day. :)
And LOL, yes, I thought of adding "Besides being a nice end shot?" as a coda. I would have loved it, though, if we would've gotten the team walking off together, possibly arm in arm, like Han and Luke and Leia at the end of ANH. Would've positively melted from that. :)
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Showing the Tollan were completely human (up to and including the willingness to murder and circumvent their own ethics) was fine, but damn what a waste! Yes, yes, hubris kills, we get it. Put the sledgehammer away.
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I need to write a mockscript of this ep. I tried yesterday, but ran out of time. Maybe this morning...
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It always stays loathing for me. Period.
And write us a mockscript, yes! You've got all week. :)
(I've got that icon of yours on my GJ, btw. Alas for only 15 icons here...)
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Ugh, if my stupid job would just stop giving me work to do, I could write a mockscript. Tsk.
Stupid icon limit. I've never been able to come to terms with the fact that I shell out real dollars once a year to have extra-extra icons. But I do. Because if didn't, I would be sad. My priorities are askew.
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I have my hands full enough with Stargate fandom; I don't have time for any others! :)
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Now, see, I could understand Makepeace, just a little. Because he actually is what many people try to make Maybourne be: a good guy who makes the wrong choices for the right reasons. Makepeace put his life on the line time after time for the SGC, starting way back in Broca Divide. Remember how he came dashing up the steps to tell Hammond that they had a lead to SG-1 in Into the Fire? And he led the volunteers to go and get SG-1 back. His failure doesn't take that heroism away.
Do I think he was deep undercover? No way. :) But I do think he's infinitely more honorable than Maybourne, and that he genuinely believed that he was doing his best for the planet.
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But that's not what happened in Shades of Grey. I see Makepeace as misunderstanding what it means to be a hero. He's a soldier gone bad. But he's a baddie all the same. (And yes, definitely more honorable than Maybourne).
Kavanaugh reminds me too much of someone I know in real life. **shudders** Even I have my limits on how to view someone.
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But people don't like early Maybourne. I've only discovered people starting to like him in Season 4. Before then he was just too slimy. Maybourne is a character I grow to like to hate. The rogue you never trust but makes a cool quasi-adversary for SG-1.
Oh, and I figure for that many Tollan, they didn't have enough VIP rooms, and all the kids wanted to stay together. :-)
Were they by the gate so they could have a conversation away from any Maybourne goons listening? I don't know. It is a pretty teamshot though.
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I know people don't like Maybourne until S4, but I found him just as slimy then. And I must say that I can't disassociate the guy who would have let Teal'c metamorphose to death with the guy who had multiple wives in S8. It's the same reason, I guess, that I can't truly like Vala - once backstory is canon, I base my judgment on the whole story, not just what the character is doing right now.
It's not so much a question of what they were doing in the Gateroom, no. It's more like why Daniel chose to stare dreamily at the Gate for long minutes after it shut down, and why the rest of the team joined him in it... and I think Random's answer below gets the gold star. :)
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It's funny, because I relate Vala to Maybourne in many, many ways. :-)
Oh, and yes. Daniel staring wins the gold star. :-)
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Honestly, I don't see which lines he won't cross.
I relate Vala to Maybourne in many, many ways.
Yes, so do I. Some people apparently say that Vala takes Jack's place in Daniel's life because she "keeps him on his toes," and that frankly makes me gag. But Vala as playing the same role for Daniel as Maybourne plays for Jack...? Yes. That I can accept more easily.
...Which may explain why I dislike Vala so much, but more power to those that like her, I suppose. :)
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As for lines not crossed, hmm. Well that season 5 episode where Sam got kidnapped. He won't shoot the guy helping him (Jack), but he'll escape custody. For that matter, the fact that he brought information to Jack. He has a kind of warped "owe someone a favor" thing going on with him or something. And he actively worked with Jack to help Hammond rather than just escaping right away. Does this erase his sins? No! But it makes him a character you can expect unexpected things from, and I find that makes him intriguing.
Personally, I find Kinsey very entertaining. I love to hate him, especially when he gets a comeuppance. Yes, when he goes off on his...pomposity, it grates. However it makes other times like "...supreme commander" that much sweeter.
Yes, so do I. Some people apparently say that Vala takes Jack's place in Daniel's life because she "keeps him on his toes," and that frankly makes me gag. But Vala as playing the same role for Daniel as Maybourne plays for Jack...? Yes. That I can accept more easily.
Yes, I agree with you. I asked Joe Mallozzi one time about this comparison of Maybourne to Jack as Vala is to Daniel and he found it a particularly apt analogy.
I had wished they had kept Vala as this unpredictable recurring rogue character throughout S9 (it's not like they film in order anyway) rather than always there in early season 9. But the more toned down presence in Season 10 for Vala grew on me more than it did for you. :-)
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Yes, definitely. I'll grant that one, too. I agree that he makes a great antagonist. It's the fangirling of him that leaves me utterly baffled, though, and infuriated.
Just... ugh. He may be entertaining sleaze, but he's still scummy and slimy.
(and hey! Kudos to the actor for making me so annoyed. If he can make me care so much, he's doing a good job.)
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Tragic backstories don't excuse appalling behavior. And while Jack's frustration with Maybourne is fun to watch, Daniel's discomfort at Vala only makes me cringe. So the parallels don't work entirely for me, either, but it's for a different reason than yours. :)
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Walter: Strange, isn't it, sir?
Hammond: That a Goa'uld super-soldier would go to all this trouble to keep us alive?
I figure she knew she'd taken a competent crew and expected that they'd be able to keep themselves alive--but that they wouldn't be able to pursue her.
Yes, Vala's behavior is sometimes appalling--and yet she has a good side to her. No, I don't like a lot of remarks she makes to Daniel. Yet, except for parts of PU where she's in control, I think it really doesn't rise to the level of sexual harrassment, because that implies a level of power she doesn't have. (She makes a hash of the bracelets; she has no more power over Daniel than he has over her. "Let's make babies!" is, I think, an attempt to cover over her own failure, which nearly killed them both.) Aside from kissing Daniel, she does not act on the many sexual things she says, and I don't think there's really much of a threat that she will. I think--though I'm pretty sure you don't agree--that Claudia Black does a fantastic job, and it's evident the potty mouth is covering for other things: first among them, a deeply damaged personality trying to recover from years of abuse of all kinds by Q'etesh, in terribly inappropriate ways, and she has to overcome that behavior. I think that she has also found keeping people off-balance has been a very effective weapon over the years, and her outrageous talk does that very well.
I don't like some of Vala's behaviors at all! Yet I do excuse them to some extent, on the grounds that this woman has been through incredible suffering. I think she makes up for it later in many ways. Remember Teal'c is responsible for the deaths of hundreds or thousands, for great suffering, and he chose that of his own deluded but arguably free will. Teal'c's own behavior includes worse things than stealing the Prometheus, and he offered far less mercy in his time as First Prime. Both Teal'c and Vala have a lot to make up for. I know they're very different characters, and I'm not simply equating them, but offering a parallel that works in some ways and in other ways doesn't. If we can forgive Teal'c, why can we not forgive Vala?
don't tell me the entire fandom wouldn't have stampeded Bridge Studios if a guy named Valar told a woman named Danielle that he'd chained to him, "Yeah! Let's make babies!"
Is this the same fandom that thinks "Hathor" is a pretty cool episode, where the only reaction we get to a woman raping Daniel is "Ewww"? I'm glad that many people are as appalled as I am at this casual brushing aside of sexual violation, but I'm not at all sure that's the majority opinion!
Is this the same fandom where people argued with me at length on the SciFi bulletin board that Lucius does nothing wrong in sleeping with multiple women who would never have slept with him if he weren't using chemicals? I call that rape as well! (That exchange is one reason I do not visit the SciFi board much anymore.)
I could go on; I think if genders had been reversed, there might have been no more people upset than there already are. A lot of people dislike Vala for reasons very similar to yours. I wish that Hathor and Lucius had confined their misdeeds to talk, or to a kiss; I'd be a lot less upset about their episodes if they had!
I know I won't have persuaded you, but I'm not ignoring Vala's wrongs to come to a different conclusion than you do. (Sorry for the length; I can't find a shorter way to explain.) I don't think her offenses are as serious as you think they are, and I do think Vala is unbalanced, which mitigates her misdeeds. Her journey on the show is towards finding trust and being worthy of it. I wish sometimes they had written it better, but for the most part, I like Vala, and I love Claudia Black.
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And, yeah, Hathor is....complicated. There are parts of the episode I like, but Daniel and Hathor (for that matter, Jack and Kynthia in Brief Candle) is just wrong - not so much it happening (which is wrong, sure) but how easily it's blown off.
Also, I definitely agree with you on Vala - that's how I see her a lot too. But she also grew on me WAY more than I thought she would.
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Yes, "Hathor" had some good possibilities, but, oh, man! How could they ignore what happened to Daniel, or play it for a laugh? If they'd just taken it seriously, it could have been a thought-provoking episode. Only fanfic writers seem to have taken the rape seriously, however.
I think Kynthia and Jack had a total misunderstanding. She assumed Jack knew what the cake represented, and that it was also a drug, because she'd never met anyone who didn't know; unlike Lucius, I don't think she intended to take advantage of the person she drugged. She assumed Jack's consumption of the cake meant he accepted her and was willing to use the drug. Jack, of course, had no way of understanding, so it is most certainly not his fault. It's an awful miscommunication, but Kynthia's intent was not bad (as far as I recall; it has been a while!).
I was already disposed to like Vala, because Claudia was so great on Farscape.
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Stargate does that a lot though - not really dealing with the emotional ramifications of what the characters go through (Jack and Ba'al, Sam and Fifth, Teal'c and Apophis, Daniel and Hathor, etc, etc).
Someday I really, really want to write something exploring Sha're and Apophis vs. Daniel and Hathor but I really don't think I'm smart enough or brave enough to actually pull it off.
Point about Kynthia. She didn't intend to take advantage of him, and I do think intent mattered. At the same time, he was drugged in a way that let down his inhibitions and then had sex, so, intent was less of a big deal, but there still could have been ramifications (can you imagine if he'd fathered a child? given how soon this was after Charlie? and given that the people on that planet must be MUCH more likely to conceive if they're going to have their people survive with such short life spans?)
I didn't start watching Farscape until after I'd seen Vala but, yes, that makes TONS of sense :)
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Now there I disagree with you. :) I thought we got a lot of Teal'c and Apophis reaction. Serpent's Song. The whole backstory in Threshold. The amazing creepiness of Apophis in Changeling. And, of course, Apophis and his obsession with sholva Teal'c, to the point where he outfitted every single death glider in his possession on the off-chance that it would somehow capture Teal'c.
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I think my brain was thinking more specifics (like we don't really see specific impact of "Serent's Venom" but, yeah, overall we do get to see Teal'c deal with things more than the others (I think Sam is next in seeing repercussions. Not sure if Daniel or Jack is worst.)
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So, horrible misunderstanding, yes. Deliberate rape, no. Consider how kindly Jack acts towards her afterwards, and how Kynthia is still quite affectionate.
And yes, I do wish Daniel's rape had gotten proper treatment. OTOH, I always supposed that's why he was so spaced out in Into the Fire - he knew that if he didn't keep it all solidly locked down, he'd be curled in a fetal ball, screaming.
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Everything is viewed through the lens of our perspective. You saw it as Vala giving them a fighting chance; I saw it as Vala not being willing to kill in cold blood, but having no qualms about letting people die a slow, suffocating death when the power eventually ran out. I'm not quite sure how you could translate the ease with which Vala took them down as anywhere near competency, but chalk that up to the attempt of the writers to be funnier than they are. ;)
I should clarify that I actually liked Vala in PU, even though the comedy ran over-broad. I liked her quite a lot as an antagonist. It's the shoehorning of that past with her new role as protagonist that I have the most difficulty accepting. (I don't know if you were around at the time, but I have a meta post, around the time that Line in the Sand aired in the US, explaining why I find Vala so frustrating.)
She makes a hash of the bracelets; she has no more power over Daniel than he has over her.
Vala slapped that bracelet on Daniel's wrist, knowing it would kill him if he got too far away from each other. She had no way of knowing if she would be informed, say, before he went off-world. All it would have taken was a tiny little twist of events for that to prove unquestionably fatal.
She didn't know it would affect her? True enough. But Vala did always have the power to stop it, because Vala always had the ability to deactivate the bracelets. She chose NOT to do so, and why in the world the SGC didn't impound her luggage and try gadget after trinket is utterly beyond me.
I'll be honest with you - I hate it when people try to compare Teal'c and Vala. Teal'c was choiceless. Vala was not. Teal'c did what he could to minimize atrocities. Vala willfully chose piracy. Teal'c came to the SGC after having turned on Apophis and saving SG-1. Vala came to the SGC with the deliberate plan of chaining Daniel to her will and getting her hands on some treasure.
As I said before, Vala has no monopoly on a tragic background. Sam's loss of her mother as a teenager is the least traumatic past from any member of SG-1.
Re Hathor: y'know, I've heard a lot of people say that there are fans who think Hathor was "cool" or "sexy," or that Daniel was "lucky" (gag). But I have never, not once, seen an actual citation. That's not to suggest that there aren't idiots out there who think that way, but I have never actually met a fan who does. I do wonder if the notion is as widespread as so many people think.
If you're referring to the reactions on the show itself, then, yes. Although Daniel himself might not have remembered much, and the others (outside Sam, who saw him catatonic) might not realize how the DNA was obtained or how unwilling Daniel was at the time. But the show definitely loses lots of points for not showing the repercussions. That isn't exactly news, though, is it? :)
(Can't help with Lucius. Never heard of him. Something from SGA? Because I'm thinking Harry Potter again... ::g::)
I agree that Vala isn't quite sane. That doesn't excuse her misdeeds, although it might explain why SG-1 forgives them. Doesn't explain why she's part of the team, though!
I love Claudia Black.
Yes, well, I hope I have never given the impression that my dislike for the character translates to the actress! Claudia is marvelous onscreen, and I love that she's beautiful without being sterotypically pretty. I personally think she's got oodles of chemistry with everyone on SG-1 except Daniel, but that's another story entirely. :)
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I can't give you citations without digging through the Sci Fi SG-1 board, and I don't have time to do that now. I have seen lots of comments from, at the very least, several different people--not so much men who think Daniel's "lucky," but women who say things like "I wish was Hathor"! That board is also where I've seen the most strenuous defenses of Lucius, who is an indeed an SGA character (and came up in the context of Hathor). I've seen it occasionally in fic, but it's the sort of thing that makes me stop reading an author entirely, so I can't dig those stories up. I guess you have to take my word for it, but when I got into the fandom, I was outraged that people didn't see a problem with rape.
No, you hadn't ever made me think you didn't like Claudia; I just wanted to explain that I was predisposed to like the character, and I'm aware that some of my defense of her comes from simply wanting to like both actress and character. You like the actress and are frustrated with the character (I'll have to look for your "Line in the Sand" comments sometime): I get that.
My original point was that I think Maybourne is rotten to the core, and he doesn't have a tortured past and perhaps even some lack of sanity to explain his behavior.
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Hm, yes, Teal'c isn't blameless. He is, however, essentially a slave, whether or not he chooses to rebel against his master.
Whew. Never visited the Sci-Fi SG-1 board, and hoo boy am I glad about that now. That's just incredibly... sick. I will definitely take your word for it!
I think Maybourne is rotten to the core
Heh. On that, at least, we are in most emphatic agreement. :)
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I only go to the Sci Fi board occasionally now to see how a few friends are doing. Here's the good thing about the board: even though there are plenty of nuts and occasional trolls, I met
Sadly, the combination of trolls, nutcases, and technical problems have caused most of those people to flee (there are a few good people left, though). I was very happy when I finally got to LJ to find so many of the people I'd missed on the board! And now I've met a number of great new friends! The sort who let you run off at the fingertips on their LJ and then say they like item drift!
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Because small fandoms I can handle, but this one can be a little bit scary. :)
So run off your fingertips to your heart's content! It's all good from here.
staring
Well, Daniel was staring at the 'gate--pretty well not so much staring as thinking--so I think the rest of SG-1 has just gotten used to staring at stuff to see what the heck Daniel is seeing. Notice how they go from staring at the non-working 'gate to Daniel watching in there.
Re: staring
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I think my thing with Maybourne is...I don't like him in the sense of wanting to get to know him or thinking anyone should ever turn their backs on him or anything. But I do think that of the Earth characters of his type (Simmons, Kinsey, Maybourne, um, others?) he's the most interesting. Though, I will also admit I started finding him interesting in "Shades of Grey" and he didn't start really growing on me as a character-of-interest until after he got put in jail for the Russian thing.
I think he's...more faceted than the other characters (of his type) and almost as likely to do something to help someone as he is to not and I think he did get to evolve and change and learn (some) and I like seeing that - seeing a character learn and develop and be impacted by those around him. I admit I also am one of those who enjoys the Maybourne-Jack banter.
In a lot of ways he is doing what he thinks he has to in order to protect Earth (and, after "Shades of Grey," himself) and it's an interesting contrast to the near-altruism we get of the team.
Am I making any sense? I shouldn't be trying to explain this stuff this much past my bedtime.
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a lot of ways he is doing what he thinks he has to in order to protect Earth (and, after "Shades of Grey," himself)
It's all himself once he goes rogue, which is more or less after Touchstone. By SoG, he's running his own operation, and he's in it exclusively for himself.
And that backsplashes onto his motives from before. If this is what he turned out to be when he had sufficient power, why did he really order those solidiers to fire on an unarmed civilian and plan to let Teal'c die in agony?
Can't. stand. him.
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In my mind, this makes him more likeable than the others, who seem to exist purely to get in SG-1 and SGC's way as much as possible.
I agree Maybourne, at times, went too far, but I do think he's learned and stepped back a bit and, well, I have to give him credit for that.
I didn't get the impression that his SoG operation was for himself. I saw it as protecting Earth the way he thought it needed protecting.
But you're free to not stand him. I agree he's reprehensible, I just like him best of the Earth villains we're given. (sortof like Apophis being an interesting villain to watch and the six-pack of Ba'als being annoying)
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The actor is unquestionably good. I wouldn't seethe so much if he didn't play the part so well. :)
I just like him best of the Earth villains we're given.
Fair enough. I wish we didn't have Earth villains, per se, but that's another issue entirely.
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I'm interested by this: once he goes rogue, which is more or less after Touchstone
Huh. Let me run something by you- I've always had the impression that Maybourne doesn't go rogue until after Watergate. No, no..wait for it.
See, my theory is, after he gets outed in Shades of Grey, he's no longer *officially* NID, moreover the NID is stuck without a Stargate, quite possibly with people still offworld (it's never addressed). But I think Maybourne continues to work for the black ops wing of the NID. The part of the NID that operates in cells and communicates by online bulletin boards (as we hear in Chain Reaction), not the kind with DC offices, like Barrett.
When the Russians retrieve the Stargate in early S4, now all of a sudden, the NID has a way to get back in the game. So Maybourne 'sells' them the secrets of how to use the gate, and enough information to get them going, and who knows, maybe some of the 'Russian' teams are NID? Or at least the NID has access to offworld sources of information, and can keep trying to get access to offworld tech.
But then there's Watergate, and Maybourne winds up arrested, and instead of getting him out (which they surely could have done) the NID leaves him holding the bag. Maybourne is convicted of treason, sent to prison and facing the death penalty. And maybe the NID figures that it's safer that way, that Maybourne has screwed up and it's better he die. And Maybourne is kind of pissed about that.
But he doesn't get executed for treason, thanks to Jack getting him out in Chain Reaction. And Maybourne (not entirely altruistically) helps Jack get the information he needs to blackmail Kinsey and put Jack and Hammond back in charge of the SGC, as well as blackmail Kinsey into getting Maybourne transferred to a place he can escape from. But after this, Maybourne is rogue for real.
Anyway- that's my working theory (and mostly peripheral to the story).. but, o keen observer of canon- can you poke any holes in this? Anything I've overlooked that shoots my theory down in a shower of purple sparks?
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I have no trouble with the timeline as you present it, because, my definition of "rogue" is your definition of "shadow NID." Whether he still wears the mask of legitimacy or not, Maybourne is out of the light once he's part of a faction that goes against the rules.
Understand that one of the reasons the character bothers me so much is that I despise the running storyline of conspiracy and everyone-but-the-SGC-itself-are-bad-guys. I loved enthusiastic Reynolds in Area 51 in Touchstone - that's what the NID should have been. Reducing the NID to cutout "we'll do what we want and we've above the law" was so stupid.
So, and so. The storyline in Touchstone suggests that Maybourne had direct orders to go ahead with explorations off-world. Once that got shut down, though, a faction of the NID, headed by Maybourne or not, decided it wasn't fair that they didn't get to play with the cool toys with impunity any more, and they were going to get hold of stuff no matter what. That's my definition of rogue here, and whether or not Maybourne had official unofficial :) backing from the shadow NID or not, he was going against official orders and working behind the backs of those who had the right to give the orders in the first place.
The NID became such a caricature that we're expected to believe that there's ONE decent guy working there by S6. I mean, I like Barrett and all, but come on. And, of course, the writers were so enamored of having their conspiracy bad guys that they had to go and invent the Trust, which also seemed able to operate with unlimited funds and impunity.
Come to think of it, a lot of my dislike for Maybourne comes from what he represents. Not all of it, though. Bane and Enigma, and IGTBK and even Paradise Lost and every other ep he shows up in put him solidly in the "slimeball" category for me. :)
I'll say again that it's not dislike for the actor, because anyone who can bother me so much has got to be good at what he's doing! But the character? Seriously. Can't stand him.
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(And did you notice that the Alt-Maybourne died horribly in Rearranging Fate, and pretty much no one cared...? *g*)
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I hate that, because it just turns what ought to be a fascinating, legitimate sidestory into a tiresome, one-note conspiracy plot. (Perhaps I should mention that the X-Files never ever remotely interested me...) If Area 51 would have been what we saw hints of in Touchstone - a place where off-world tech was studied and refined, a place where the medicines and plants the teams brought from off-world were examined for on-world applications, a place that could have been the source for new gadgets intead of making poor Sam suddenly acquire expertise in every single technological field - that would've been fantastic. Sadly, it would also have required intelligent writing.
I wish I could help you find some consistency in Maybourne's actions, other than "I'll do whatever is most advantageous to me personally." I do agree that Maybourne has charm when he bothers to turn it on, but it's the kind of charm that's smarmy (not in the fanfic definition, but the dictionary one). Sorry, haven't read Flashman. You did enough to get me utterly hooked on Jasper Fforde. :)
Oh, I noticed AU-Maybourne dying. I was highly amused, in fact. Couldn't happen to a better guy. ;)
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When *I'm* world dictator....! *g* Actually in my universe, that's exactly what they're doing, most of the time.
(This turns out to be a longish digression;)
I *used* the Area 51 as R&D center quite early-on to fix an egregious canon bloophole pointed out to me by a reader- that Message in a Bottle has a *huge* factual error in it. Which is that we have SG-1 strolling around on the surface of a planet in what looks like standard NASA spacesuits, and then walking back out of the gate in them. When actually, the real thing weighs about 300 lbs, and astronauts *can't move* in them except in zero g. (Something curiously enough, that they fix in the S10 ep when Sam lands in the docking bay of the Odyssey in a spacesuit and collapses, and people come running over to help her out of the suit.)
See, they way I figured it- the big problem with spacesuits is power. You need a lot of it- batteries to run all the pumps and cooling and stuff. OTOH, with a surfeit of power in a compact form, a ton of those problems go away- you can use the power to not only scrub the CO2, but to split off the carbon and return it to the suit as pure oxygen, which would extend the range of the suits *enormously* (hence 'rebreathing airpacks' in my fanon) - your heating and cooling issues get a lot more tractable...modern or fictional materials can also make the suits lighter.
So- my theory is that they find a couple of worlds where the gates are in vacuum quite early, and since they don't actually have any suits suitable for use in gravity, they turn on Area 51 to do the development. They cannibalize a few staff weapons for the power sources, and SG-1 has to do a bunch of astronaut training to learn to use the new and improved suits... the new suits probably still weigh a hundred pounds or so, but that's actually relatively manageable in normal or lighter gravity. Medieval armor weighs 60-70 lbs, but the way it distributes the weight over the body makes it much easier to move in than you'd expect for the weight.
Really- there is just a ton of background that needs to happen in order to justify some of the stuff we see on screen.
Oh, and you probably would not like the Flashman books. The main character is a scoundrel who lies, cheats, steals and womanizes his way through most of the history of the nineteenth century, somehow managing to come out ahead despite his massive lack of character. It's extremely well written (and quite popular), but I find a little of it goes a long way- I much prefer to read about characters that I can like.
Ah, you've been sucked in by the Fforde? Well, there are worse things. For one thing, he's only written what, seven? books so far. Much worse (or better, depending on your POV) is getting sucked in to an author who's already 50 books ahead of you. :) Or (to choose a non-random example) marrying a guy who has just as many books as you do, only you haven't *read* a lot of them... (Our library catalog is up to over 3900 books, and I've still got three or four bookcases to enter. About half of the library is SF and fantasy.)
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I have a great icon for fanfic fixing canon, but it's over at my IJ which has more than 15 icons ::sigh:: Here, by
A good Area 51 would have filled so many holes. As it is, the eeeevil Area 51 was just the same tiresome plot recycled over and over again.
Love your references to the spacesuits! That never would have occurred to me. It never ceases to amuse me how much research we all do when we're writing fanfic. :)
Oh, I like discovering past prolific authors - it's trying to catch up to prolific current ones that can be alarming!