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aurora_novarum would be disappointed if I didn't do this... :)
This week, in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
redial_the_gate, we finish Season One with the cliffhanger: Within the Serpent's Grasp.
Such an utterly fantastic episode! Off to save the world and seeing Skaara and discovering the zats! ("Zatnikatels." "Let's call them zat guns." And later, in S3: "They are intar." "What's that short for?" "Intar.") SG-1 in their cool black outfits (ninjas, hee!) and headgear! Daniel shooting two pistols at once, and being on target! Jack getting through to Skaara, and Skaara managing to influence Klorel! SGC looking after their own and Hammond going all general! Sam bringing up all the objections and then throwing them all away to go with her team!
Love it.
On Hammond.
Hammond is just incredible here. He's tried so hard to keep the SGC going, to the lengths of being thrown out of Kinsey's office for persistence. The conversation with Ferretti (who, I think, we sadly never see again). His "official orders" to SG-2 and the quietly added, "Bring them home." And his stoic acceptance of what's happening: "Guess Doctor Jackson is lucky.... This is Major General Hammond. Let me speak to the President." (Red phone bonus!)
While I was watching this, I was thinking back (or forward, heh) to 1969. When we did COTG some five months ago, we discussed how much of Hammond's decisions were framed by his experiences as a lieutenant back in '69 when he met SG-1. Now, though, Hammond doesn't have as much to go on as he did back then. All he knows is that he hasn't yet written that note, but SG-1 is already in existence. How much is he depending on that past/future here? Does he believe the attack won't succeed, because SG-1 still hasn't gone back in time yet? Or has he read enough of Sam's research to know that there's no guarantee that the events of 1969 will actually take place? Does Daniel's experiences with an alternate reality cast even more doubt in Hammond's mind, that maybe the SG-1 he met were actually from an alternate reality in the first place?
On the other hand, it makes Hammond's actions in Into the Fire even more amazing - it's the first time he's operating without even the vaguest assurances of a possible future, and he still goes all out for SG-1.
Really, Hammond rocks. That sums it all up. :)
On Daniel.
All those fanfic writers that automatically assume that pacifist Daniel is always placed in the middle of SG-1's formation for protection must not have watched this ep very closely. Half the time, as they sneak through the ship, Daniel is on their six. When Sam suggests they plant C4 on the death gliders, and she's thinking out loud, it's Daniel who finishes the statement: "...if we blow up one, we'll probably start a chain reaction." Sam looks at him sideways for a moment, then slowly says, "Right." Surprise that Daniel knows enough chemistry/physics to make that conclusion? Startlement that Daniel is being so cold-blooded about the suicidal mission? Take your pick. And later, after Teal'c and Jack are captured, it's Daniel who argues that succesfully blowing up the ship has to come before rescue. Sam has to offer a compromise to get him to agree to go after them.
What's with the absence of glasses, though? He considers pulling them out at one point, but doesn't. Afraid of reflection from the lenses? Going into a commando raid half-blind doesn't make much sense. Shooting two-handed and squinting for the win!
What interests me is Daniel's initial appeal at the start of the episode: "By the time I left, Sara was dead. Carter, your whole family was dead..." I can read that two different ways, each one intriguing on its own. Either General Jack and Doctor Carter did talk to Daniel off-screen, so that he was able to learn those details. This would support the suggestion that Daniel did enough investigating and research in the alternate reality to come to a reasonable conclusion that his own reality was equally at risk. Conversely, Daniel didn't actually have that information, but he shamelessly invented/extrapolated it to add pressure to Jack and Sam. I really can see Daniel doing that, actually. And it further suggets that Daniel and Jack, and Daniel and Sam, have had a lot of personal conversations - Daniel knows that Jack still cares about Sara, and that Sam has a family to lose.
I think the writers misstepped by having Jack so intense about Skaara without having Daniel equally as worried/concerned. Yes, Skaara and Jack bonded, and Skaara is, to Jack, the child he managed to save when he couldn't save Charlie. But Daniel is Skaara's good brother, to use Abydon nomenclature. They had a year together. Whether or not Daniel really did Skaara how to make moonshine (and get drunk), we know they were close, simply from the scenes in COTG - both those on Abydos and on Chulak. Yet except for Skaara screaming, "Sha'uri! Danyel!" when he first gets zatted, there's nothing. We do see Daniel reacting to Skaara, but Skaara for Daniel? Nada. The horror of watching Skaara nearly kill Daniel is exponentially greater when their own emotional bond is factored into the equation, but we have to fill it in ourselves, and that's the waste of a golden opportunity.
As a little aside: Sam and Daniel, ninja commandos! They are just so cute together. Yay!
On Teal'c.
It's interesting to see how little Teal'c knows, here in this first season. How long was he First Prime, if he's only qualified to fly death gliders? How much have the Goa'uld changed and modified their technology in the wake of Ra's death and the Tau'ri's resurgence in the galaxy? I think it wasredbyrd_sgfic who first suggested that Ra had been hoarding a lot of the best technology for himself, and in the wake of Ra's death, the Goa'uld were able to scavenge a lot of goodies and suddenly upgrade their own fleets. That would fit nicely here - with Teal'c suggesting that the ship can only fly ten times the speed of light, for example, and his general ignorance of many of the workings on the ship. (C'mon, he can't even find the door?)
Interesting that Apophis didn't know how Cronus killed Teal'c's father (and how Tanith will later kill Shau'nac - he says that removing Junior is the most painful death, not killing the symbiote within the pouch. But where did the priests come from, with the seriously wicked-looking knife? Was there an alcove just outside the Gateroom, with priests waiting there to kill random Jaffa?
On zats and ribbon devices.
I've floated this theory before, but I think it's time to give it status as part of my personal canon: if a person is getting his mind fried by the ribbon device, and someone zats the Goa'uld that's doing the ribboning, the zat blast will travel along the energy stream of the ribbon device and prove fatal to the ribboning victim. As proof, I offer the following screen caps. My apologies for not being very good at this.
Here is Teal'c in Within the Serpent's Grasp:
"O'Neill! You must take action!" Panicky Teal'c here, knowing that Daniel will be dead within seconds. He's aiming a zat when he shouts at Jack, yet he doesn't fire himself. Why?
And here is Teal'c again, in Forever in a Day, in two separate images. The first is just as Jack orders Teal'c to follow Daniel, who has gone to confront Amaunet. The staff weapon blocks it slightly, but you can definitely see the zat strapped to his leg. The scenes in the tent were too dark for me to find a decent screencap, but here is Teal'c just as he fires the fatal blast. Note, again, the zat clearly strapped to his leg.
So, Teal'c didn't dare to stop Skaara in Within the Serpent's Grasp, and he used his staff weapon instead of the zat to stop Amaunet from killing Daniel in Forever in a Day, even though he would have given anything to avoid having to kill Sha're. In both cases, the zat was available, but Teal'c didn't use it. I maintain that Teal'c didn't use the zat because he knew that in both cases, it would have been fatal to Daniel: somehow, a zat blast in conjunction with a ribboning is absolutely deadly.
"Anyway, I'm sorry, but that just happens to be how I feel about it. What do you think?"
Aurora will be doing the offical recap atredial_the_gate tomorrow, and then we go on season hiatus until the first week of January, when we start Season Two. But the comm will definitely keep busy in the interim! Why not wander over there and check it out for yourself? :)
aurora_novarum would be disappointed if I didn't do this... :)This week, in
redial_the_gate, we finish Season One with the cliffhanger: Within the Serpent's Grasp.Such an utterly fantastic episode! Off to save the world and seeing Skaara and discovering the zats! ("Zatnikatels." "Let's call them zat guns." And later, in S3: "They are intar." "What's that short for?" "Intar.") SG-1 in their cool black outfits (ninjas, hee!) and headgear! Daniel shooting two pistols at once, and being on target! Jack getting through to Skaara, and Skaara managing to influence Klorel! SGC looking after their own and Hammond going all general! Sam bringing up all the objections and then throwing them all away to go with her team!
Love it.
On Hammond.
Hammond is just incredible here. He's tried so hard to keep the SGC going, to the lengths of being thrown out of Kinsey's office for persistence. The conversation with Ferretti (who, I think, we sadly never see again). His "official orders" to SG-2 and the quietly added, "Bring them home." And his stoic acceptance of what's happening: "Guess Doctor Jackson is lucky.... This is Major General Hammond. Let me speak to the President." (Red phone bonus!)
While I was watching this, I was thinking back (or forward, heh) to 1969. When we did COTG some five months ago, we discussed how much of Hammond's decisions were framed by his experiences as a lieutenant back in '69 when he met SG-1. Now, though, Hammond doesn't have as much to go on as he did back then. All he knows is that he hasn't yet written that note, but SG-1 is already in existence. How much is he depending on that past/future here? Does he believe the attack won't succeed, because SG-1 still hasn't gone back in time yet? Or has he read enough of Sam's research to know that there's no guarantee that the events of 1969 will actually take place? Does Daniel's experiences with an alternate reality cast even more doubt in Hammond's mind, that maybe the SG-1 he met were actually from an alternate reality in the first place?
On the other hand, it makes Hammond's actions in Into the Fire even more amazing - it's the first time he's operating without even the vaguest assurances of a possible future, and he still goes all out for SG-1.
Really, Hammond rocks. That sums it all up. :)
On Daniel.
All those fanfic writers that automatically assume that pacifist Daniel is always placed in the middle of SG-1's formation for protection must not have watched this ep very closely. Half the time, as they sneak through the ship, Daniel is on their six. When Sam suggests they plant C4 on the death gliders, and she's thinking out loud, it's Daniel who finishes the statement: "...if we blow up one, we'll probably start a chain reaction." Sam looks at him sideways for a moment, then slowly says, "Right." Surprise that Daniel knows enough chemistry/physics to make that conclusion? Startlement that Daniel is being so cold-blooded about the suicidal mission? Take your pick. And later, after Teal'c and Jack are captured, it's Daniel who argues that succesfully blowing up the ship has to come before rescue. Sam has to offer a compromise to get him to agree to go after them.
What's with the absence of glasses, though? He considers pulling them out at one point, but doesn't. Afraid of reflection from the lenses? Going into a commando raid half-blind doesn't make much sense. Shooting two-handed and squinting for the win!
What interests me is Daniel's initial appeal at the start of the episode: "By the time I left, Sara was dead. Carter, your whole family was dead..." I can read that two different ways, each one intriguing on its own. Either General Jack and Doctor Carter did talk to Daniel off-screen, so that he was able to learn those details. This would support the suggestion that Daniel did enough investigating and research in the alternate reality to come to a reasonable conclusion that his own reality was equally at risk. Conversely, Daniel didn't actually have that information, but he shamelessly invented/extrapolated it to add pressure to Jack and Sam. I really can see Daniel doing that, actually. And it further suggets that Daniel and Jack, and Daniel and Sam, have had a lot of personal conversations - Daniel knows that Jack still cares about Sara, and that Sam has a family to lose.
I think the writers misstepped by having Jack so intense about Skaara without having Daniel equally as worried/concerned. Yes, Skaara and Jack bonded, and Skaara is, to Jack, the child he managed to save when he couldn't save Charlie. But Daniel is Skaara's good brother, to use Abydon nomenclature. They had a year together. Whether or not Daniel really did Skaara how to make moonshine (and get drunk), we know they were close, simply from the scenes in COTG - both those on Abydos and on Chulak. Yet except for Skaara screaming, "Sha'uri! Danyel!" when he first gets zatted, there's nothing. We do see Daniel reacting to Skaara, but Skaara for Daniel? Nada. The horror of watching Skaara nearly kill Daniel is exponentially greater when their own emotional bond is factored into the equation, but we have to fill it in ourselves, and that's the waste of a golden opportunity.
As a little aside: Sam and Daniel, ninja commandos! They are just so cute together. Yay!
On Teal'c.
It's interesting to see how little Teal'c knows, here in this first season. How long was he First Prime, if he's only qualified to fly death gliders? How much have the Goa'uld changed and modified their technology in the wake of Ra's death and the Tau'ri's resurgence in the galaxy? I think it was
redbyrd_sgfic who first suggested that Ra had been hoarding a lot of the best technology for himself, and in the wake of Ra's death, the Goa'uld were able to scavenge a lot of goodies and suddenly upgrade their own fleets. That would fit nicely here - with Teal'c suggesting that the ship can only fly ten times the speed of light, for example, and his general ignorance of many of the workings on the ship. (C'mon, he can't even find the door?)Interesting that Apophis didn't know how Cronus killed Teal'c's father (and how Tanith will later kill Shau'nac - he says that removing Junior is the most painful death, not killing the symbiote within the pouch. But where did the priests come from, with the seriously wicked-looking knife? Was there an alcove just outside the Gateroom, with priests waiting there to kill random Jaffa?
On zats and ribbon devices.
I've floated this theory before, but I think it's time to give it status as part of my personal canon: if a person is getting his mind fried by the ribbon device, and someone zats the Goa'uld that's doing the ribboning, the zat blast will travel along the energy stream of the ribbon device and prove fatal to the ribboning victim. As proof, I offer the following screen caps. My apologies for not being very good at this.
Here is Teal'c in Within the Serpent's Grasp:
"O'Neill! You must take action!" Panicky Teal'c here, knowing that Daniel will be dead within seconds. He's aiming a zat when he shouts at Jack, yet he doesn't fire himself. Why?
And here is Teal'c again, in Forever in a Day, in two separate images. The first is just as Jack orders Teal'c to follow Daniel, who has gone to confront Amaunet. The staff weapon blocks it slightly, but you can definitely see the zat strapped to his leg. The scenes in the tent were too dark for me to find a decent screencap, but here is Teal'c just as he fires the fatal blast. Note, again, the zat clearly strapped to his leg.
So, Teal'c didn't dare to stop Skaara in Within the Serpent's Grasp, and he used his staff weapon instead of the zat to stop Amaunet from killing Daniel in Forever in a Day, even though he would have given anything to avoid having to kill Sha're. In both cases, the zat was available, but Teal'c didn't use it. I maintain that Teal'c didn't use the zat because he knew that in both cases, it would have been fatal to Daniel: somehow, a zat blast in conjunction with a ribboning is absolutely deadly.
"Anyway, I'm sorry, but that just happens to be how I feel about it. What do you think?"
Aurora will be doing the offical recap at
redial_the_gate tomorrow, and then we go on season hiatus until the first week of January, when we start Season Two. But the comm will definitely keep busy in the interim! Why not wander over there and check it out for yourself? :)
no subject
I know! I always wonder, when Jack charges in so insistent, if he really things Hammond is just taking this sitting down. Because, I know it's early, but I think even that early Jack knows better than that.
What's with the absence of glasses, though? He considers pulling them out at one point, but doesn't. Afraid of reflection from the lenses? Going into a commando raid half-blind doesn't make much sense.
And this drives me NUTS every single time I watch this episode. It makes NO sense at all.
And it further suggets that Daniel and Jack, and Daniel and Sam, have had a lot of personal conversations - Daniel knows that Jack still cares about Sara, and that Sam has a family to lose.
But look at "Cold Lazarus." I think that episode, without a doubt, showed the entire team that Jack still cares about Sara. And we also hear Sam admit to being an aunt, so having family. And considering what he did see in the AU - how many cities were taken out - it's a pretty safe extrapolation that their family members had died, I think. I mean, of all the logic leaps he made about that AU, that seems the most likely. I'm betting it's the second - that he knows they're probably dead and it's safe to say so, and it's not like they'll go back to check.
Good point about the relationship between Daniel and Skaara. I guess they wanted to pull Jack's heartstrings more this episode or something - but you'd think they should care more.
Sam and Daniel, ninja commandos! They are just so cute together. Yay!
YES :)
Point about Teal'c - it does seem strange how little he knows. And yay for your ribboning "proof." I'm not sure how much sense it makes, but it's certainly the best handwave to a poor plot occurrence.
no subject
I see what you mean re Cold Lazarus, but two things: first, Daniel wasn't there when Sam babbled to Jack about Mark and the kids in the locker room, yet he knows about her family. Second, they were a bit distracted in the hospital. :)
I personally think that Daniel was hitting hard, and below the belt, for the sole reason of jolting them into action. So yes, extrapolation - but at the same time, he must have been pretty sure of his target to play those cards. (And I'm mixing my metaphors horribly, aren't I?)
Daniel and Skaara - the writers seem to make it Daniel looking for Sha're, and Jack looking for Skaara. And I just don't buy it. Daniel would be just as frantic to find his little good brother as he is to find his wife. And while Jack doesn't have the emotional connection with Sha're himself, he does have the emotional connection with Daniel and Skaara and... yeah.
Handwaving is all about fixing bad plot lines! :)
no subject
I see what you mean re Cold Lazarus, but two things: first, Daniel wasn't there when Sam babbled to Jack about Mark and the kids in the locker room, yet he knows about her family. Second, they were a bit distracted in the hospital. :)
Oh, point, for some reason...oh, yes, because Daniel walks in AFTER and tells Sam Charlie is dead. I wouldn't be surprised if Sam had mentioned her nieces? nephews? by then at some point - maybe going to visit them for a weekend (I don't think canon can decide how estranged Sam was/is from Mark). And, yeah, they were distracted in the hospital, but Jack's actions in general (jumping up for the phone) imply he very much still cares about Sara.
It's true - Jack and Daniel should BOTH care about both Sha're and Skaara. I guess the show didn't think viewers could handle anything that emotionally complicated? :)
no subject
It says YOOHOO, REDBYRD! HERE'S ANOTHER PLOTBUNNY FOR YOU!!! :)
Oh, I wasn't trying to imply that Sam and Jack are hiding the fact that they care for their families. But I do think it suggests that Daniel knows than better than they might realize.
And yes, the writers don't seem to have the most complimentary views towards the fans' intelligence. :p
no subject
And this drives me NUTS every single time I watch this episode. It makes NO sense at all.
Maybe he put contacts in specially for the commando raid, and then forgot about them and almost put his glasses on over them? (God knows I have from time to time thought, "I really should put my glasses on for this..." and then realised I was already wearing them.)
no subject
...Yeah. I got nothin'.
no subject
obviously.
*nods*
no subject
(and he brought the glasses along because, um... because! Yeah, that'll do it.)
no subject
And contacts...if so, wouldn't we see them more often (because the one and only time we see them is when he goes undercover in Summit and they make a point of showing him put them in).
I mean, I usually handwave that his eyesight isn't very bad - possibly only an astigmatism so he just likes to see the world clearly - and sometimes I'm pretty sure he's just far-sighted (only, really, they just aren't consistent). *sigh*
I mean, personally, I own a pair of glasses I only need if I'm sitting in the back of a large lecture hall, so I can't really identify too much with what it's like to really need them...but, just, you need to see to shoot the JAffa!