Redial the Gate squee: Enigma

[fignewton]

Some random thoughts on Enigma, because 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.

Comments

[aelfgyfu_mead]

Hmm. I never like Maybourne (yes, I do not find multiple wives, especially acquired by abusing power, funny). Yet I do like Vala, though she certainly never takes Jack's place for me. I don't see a lot of similarity between Maybourne and Vala: he's a ruthless killer who wants to experiment on Teal'c and shoot Daniel in retaliation. Vala does bad things, but I'd say they're nowhere near as bad, and I can understand her motivations much better.

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

I don't want to rain on anyone's squee, and I'm happy for you that you like Vala, but... she left Hammond and SG-3 and the rest of the crew on a dying al'kesh with no other motivation than making a profit. She sexually harrassed Daniel repeatedly. (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!")

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. :)

[aelfgyfu_mead]

And yet Walter and Hammond have this exchange:
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.

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I've seen plenty of Atlantis fans seethe at Lucius and how much it was handwaved (and I'm a little ashamed that at first my brain glossed over that aspect of that SGA episode, though I have potential excuses for why).

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.

[aelfgyfu_mead]

Yes, I've seen some seething too about Lucius, and I can even understand if that aspect didn't hit people at first. (The first time I read Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale, I'd forgotten by the end that the main character starts as a rapist! I couldn't believe it when I reread the Tale!) What appalls me most are the people who actively defend Lucius! There are, of course, people in this world who use alcohol and, far worse, GHB, to achieve some of the ends Lucius did.

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.

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

Okay, yeah, not okay. I don't seem to hate the Lucius episodes as much as most of fandom but I absolutely do not condone or defend his actions at all. To be fair, the characters were pretty unimpressed with what Lucius had done, just possibly not as revolted as they could/should have been maybe?

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 :)

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

Teal'c and Apophis

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.

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

Okay, yes, point.

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.)

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's exactly how I see Kynthia. She offers the marriage cake; Jack accepts it. She might not have even realized there was a drug involved. Pylops (I think he's called) could have given them the recipe to ensure there would be more generations for experimentation.

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.

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

I am enormously amused that a discussion about a S1 ep turned into an analysis of Vala.

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. :)

[aelfgyfu_mead]

Sorry! I didn't mean to hijack your thread! I objected to the equation of Maybourne with Vala, much as you object to the equation of Teal'c and Vala--and, as I said, my comparison of the two only works so far. I do, however, think Teal'c is not choiceless. Teal'c did terrible things, but he could have chosen not to do them--and ultimately, that's the choice he does make. He could have done it sooner, perhaps with less positive effect, but he does have a choice, as he later admits in "Cor-Ai."

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.

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

There is no such think as hijacking threads on my LJ. I love this kind of drift.

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. :)

[aelfgyfu_mead]

I'm glad you like drift! I think I might be annoyed if, say, someone put huge responses defending Maybourne or SGA's Lucius in my item. (Hard to say. My items don't drift. I just don't seem to have that many people reading them! Or maybe my own posts are too narrow.)

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 daniel4ever, delphia2000, gatechic, and or_mabinogi there! I think I met abyssinia4077, lunachickk, and nialla42 there (I just can't remember now; some in both groups had different names on the Sci Fi board). At one time, there were a lot of great people there! (Sorry if I've forgotten any of my LJ friends whom I first me there, or if I've put somebody on the list that I didn't meet there; the mind is the first thing to go, they say!)

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!

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

I've never been there so I doubt you met me there....probably ran into me at Fig's journal. Not that it matters.

[sg-fignewton.livejournal.com]

I very much doubt I would have ever become active in the fandom if LJ hadn't been so tailor-made to help me find just the right niche.

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.