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So, the tenth season premiere, Flesh and Blood. I'm afraid my comments on it aren't anything so coherent as an essay, but rather random thoughts and musings.
I spent the first fifteen minutes of the show worrying, not about Daniel (sacrilege!), but about Chekov. Apparently, with good reason. So yet again, TPTB have allowed another good recurring character - one that has been around for five years - to bite the dust. Yes, I suppose he could technically have been one of the six who managed to beam out, but I find it highly unlikely; he was surely still in the center seat when it blew. Sigh.
They missed a golden opportunity with that frantic flashback to the Korelev. The crewmember and Chekov should have been speaking Russian, with subtitles. Daniel could have chimed in, with a nice and painless opportunity to remind us of his skills as a linguist. They could even have made him speak ungrammatically in his haste, as a lighter nod towards Full Alert.
Sam was wonderful. Really, really great. Floating helplessly in the middle of the Supergate, then babbling with anxiety as they finally mounted the rescue, then working hard on the beam technology (and not succeeding immediately!) - pure Samness. The Daniel worry, and the Teal'c worry, from both Sam and Mitchell were fantastic. Loved Sam's line: "You don't know Daniel like we do." Oh yeah, knows that Daniel won't give up until he's dead... and sometimes, not even then. And I especially liked her dialogue in the final scene of the show, when she compared their apparently hopeless situation to their similar sense of being overwhelmed by the Goa'uld way back in S1. If we'd had that comparison at the beginning of last year's season, maybe so many of us wouldn't have yawned at the Priors all through S9.
Mitchell was much better than he's been of late. I enjoyed the bright-eyed fanboy of the first half of S9 and hated the reckless, I'll-do-what-I-want-and-the-rest-of-the-team-will-come-rescue-me guy of the second half. In this episode, he was capable, forward thinking, and competent. Without touching on Bra'tac's own behavior, I was quite pleased with his backup plan to prevent the pointless death of one of Earth's most valued allies.
I didn't mind Teal'c getting zatted by the Lucian guys; they lost as badly as anyone else, and they're entitled to be seriously irritated. The torture thing? That just made me yawn. I did like the ruthlessness shown by their destroying their own ship, although second thoughts suggest that they quite possibly beamed the crew aboard the working hatak vessels first. I personally prefer my own initial theory: that the other Lucian guys took a golden opportunity to earn some illicit promotions and kill off their leader. Honor among thieves, and all that. Time will tell which theory is correct.
That allows for the perfect segue into one of my biggest problems, and that's Vala.
Was the Vala in this episode someone who might possibly somehow be trusted to guard 's six? I'd give that a reluctant maybe.
Was the Vala in this episode the same person how we first met in Prometheus Unbound and the first few eps of S9? I'd give that an emphatic no way.
Spoiler in the next paragraph, I think; not sure if Vala's future status on the show is considered a spoiler.
I liked Vala as an antagonist. As a protagonist, not so much. Because she's done nothing, nothing, to deserve being on SG-1; and unless the following ep somehow has her answer and apologize for what she did to Daniel, both in S8 and S9, then I do not understand how she can possibly be trusted.
Here is the woman who hijacked Earth's only space-going vessel, left all its members to die on a crippled al-kesh, and captured and tortured Daniel. This is the woman who subsequently puts Daniel's life at risk for nothing more than her own greed when she slaps that bracelet on his wrist.
Why didn't they test every single item she carried through the Gate to see if it would somehow deactivate the bracelets? Why was she allowed any freedom whatsoever? Where has she earned trust? As far as I can see, she hadn't. Then, with Crusade, TPTB expect us to forget everything we knew about Vala; she's suddenly SGC's agent, doing her best on their behalf, deserving their solid support. Except for her shameless opportunism of sneaking into the men's locker room when she's in Daniel's body in order to ogle the guys coming out of the showers, there was nothing of the previous Vala at all in her characterization. Who is this woman, and what did she do with the real Vala?
If we'd been introduced to Vala as someone who accidentally got attached to Daniel at the beginning of S9, who subsequently accompanied them on their various missions and ended up in the Ori galaxy in Beachhead, then came back as she is now, I might find her a sympathetic character who deserved her upcoming assignment. (Imagine if Jonas had been introduced gradually over several episodes of S5, instead of being directly implicated in Daniel's death and leapfrogged into his slot on SG-1 within two eps.) But by grafting this new Vala onto the old Vala - and the only glimpse of the old Vala in Flesh and Blood was her cheerful explanation that, contrary to her claims to the Orici kid, "Adria" was her witch of a stepmother - she's a character that I can't accept as real and that I really can't bring myself to like.
Moving on to Teal'c and Bra'tac - I already observed that Teal'c eps offscreen) torture did little more than make me yawn. But their reactions over Chulak were very very interesting.
First of all, three cheers for Bra'tac when he strides into the SGC, exchanges a few brief words with Landry, then goes off to Dakara to get help. Great scene when he literally rides to the rescue. Let's hope that TPTB have enough sense to leave us with at least one recurring character without succumbing to this frantic urge to kill everyone off who isn't actually featured in the title credits.
While I'm not sure Bra'tac would be so willing to die in a kamikaze strike on the Ori ship, I can easily understand the "Jaffa revenge thing." Bra'tac is furious that Chulak is the first target and that the ships and loyal Jaffa he brought with him are destroyed. Teal'c, I noticed, understood completely, and Sam, who has had nine years' exposure to Teal'c and his obsessions eps (Cronus and Tanith, anyone?) isn't protesting too loudly, either. It's Mitchell who doesn't comprehend, and thankfully, it's Mitchell who gets our favorite old codger out of trouble this time.
Now for Daniel. Hoo boy.
There's something rather ugly about the two members of SG-1 managing to save themselves on the Korelev while everyone else dies. I understand that, with the ship literally exploding around them, there wasn't time to do very much. But would it have killed the writers to give Daniel a single line there: yelling, "Get into the rings!" to the techs were were working on the nuke before he dived inside himself? Yes, a frantic huddle like that might mean one of them fatally only part way inside; and Daniel, from his experience in the movie, knows of that possible danger. But since when does Daniel think so selflishly? And then there is nothing, nothing, to indicate that Daniel feels any distress or grief over all the lives that have been lost. We saw the same thing happen in Camelot, when Daniel's distress over the archivist's death was apparently limited to the new restriction against going into Merlin's library. Where is the Daniel I loved for so many years, who agonized over lives lost and whether or not the SGC was doing the right thing?
There's no explanation of how he managed to get the disguise on the Ori ship or how he managed to find Vala's rooms. Not sure why he wasn't wearing his glasses then, either; when he was out in the corridors, it made sense, but why in private?
Then there's Daniel and his reaction to Adria. I don't mean his aiming a gun at her as a bluff; I mean when he actually tried to shoot.
Let's take a moment to consider Daniel's experiences with advanced, genetically altered, accelerated aging human/alien hybrids. First, and most painful, there's Shifu: the little boy that he couldn't help but love because he was Sha're's, but represented his wife's abduction and rape by his most hated enemy as well as Daniel's failure to save her. Daniel was forced to leave Shifu behind with Oma and then, however good Shifu's intentions were, subsequently suffered mental assault by the kid when he reluctantly asked about his knowledge as Harcesis. Daniel knows, because of that vision, exactly what a human/Goa'uld hybrid can do. His experience with Anna in S8 hammered this home even further.
(We might even factor in his experience with Reese, although that one's a bit more ambivalent. At the very least, Daniel is all too aware that just because the enemy is in the body of a young woman, that doesn't mean the enemy is helpless.)
Then there was Khalek in Prototype. Daniel's forceful suggestion that Khalek should be killed was so powerful to us because it was such an anti-Daniel suggestion to make in the first place. It was the Daniel who remembered Shifu and Anna, the Daniel who watched Abydos destroyed because Anubis had put himself outside the rulebook, who understood how deadly Khalek should be. And it's that same Daniel who recognizes the deadly potential of Adria, but hesitates that final moment because, for the next several hours, she's still in the body of a child.
Or is it? That's the problem, and it's a serious one. The writers have been undercutting Daniel's humanity too much lately. His willingness to kill Adria isn't the shock of Prototype, a Daniel reluctantly recognizing that Khalek is too deadly to be allowed to ascend; it's the shock of Daniel turning cold, of choosing pragmatism over idealism. If this trend continues, my true reason for loving Stargate will have died a chilly, ignoble death.
Some final questions:
Do we really need the Ori version of the zat? "It stuns, but if you hit someone enough times it will kill." Oh yeah, they'll be playing with that little detail to add some are-they-dead-or-not artificial suspense during the coming season.
Soooo, what happened to Sam and Kvasir's plan to dial the Supergate out? Why can't they keep it dialing out indefinitely and prevent any more ships from arriving? Sam managed to reprogram it; the only thing that stopped it from working was the dialing in before they could get it running. So why not dial out now, and keep it that way?
Let Mitchell starting calling Daniel by his first name. The "Jackson" thing just grates. Ugh. No one calls him just "Jackson"; he's either "Doctor Jackson" or "Daniel."
And most importantly: can we please, please, please get our own Stargate effect back? I hate the tunnel effect from Atlantis. I want the mind-bending one we enjoyed for eight seasons.
Whew! Sorry for the ridiculously long length of this. :)
I spent the first fifteen minutes of the show worrying, not about Daniel (sacrilege!), but about Chekov. Apparently, with good reason. So yet again, TPTB have allowed another good recurring character - one that has been around for five years - to bite the dust. Yes, I suppose he could technically have been one of the six who managed to beam out, but I find it highly unlikely; he was surely still in the center seat when it blew. Sigh.
They missed a golden opportunity with that frantic flashback to the Korelev. The crewmember and Chekov should have been speaking Russian, with subtitles. Daniel could have chimed in, with a nice and painless opportunity to remind us of his skills as a linguist. They could even have made him speak ungrammatically in his haste, as a lighter nod towards Full Alert.
Sam was wonderful. Really, really great. Floating helplessly in the middle of the Supergate, then babbling with anxiety as they finally mounted the rescue, then working hard on the beam technology (and not succeeding immediately!) - pure Samness. The Daniel worry, and the Teal'c worry, from both Sam and Mitchell were fantastic. Loved Sam's line: "You don't know Daniel like we do." Oh yeah, knows that Daniel won't give up until he's dead... and sometimes, not even then. And I especially liked her dialogue in the final scene of the show, when she compared their apparently hopeless situation to their similar sense of being overwhelmed by the Goa'uld way back in S1. If we'd had that comparison at the beginning of last year's season, maybe so many of us wouldn't have yawned at the Priors all through S9.
Mitchell was much better than he's been of late. I enjoyed the bright-eyed fanboy of the first half of S9 and hated the reckless, I'll-do-what-I-want-and-the-rest-of-the-team-will-come-rescue-me guy of the second half. In this episode, he was capable, forward thinking, and competent. Without touching on Bra'tac's own behavior, I was quite pleased with his backup plan to prevent the pointless death of one of Earth's most valued allies.
I didn't mind Teal'c getting zatted by the Lucian guys; they lost as badly as anyone else, and they're entitled to be seriously irritated. The torture thing? That just made me yawn. I did like the ruthlessness shown by their destroying their own ship, although second thoughts suggest that they quite possibly beamed the crew aboard the working hatak vessels first. I personally prefer my own initial theory: that the other Lucian guys took a golden opportunity to earn some illicit promotions and kill off their leader. Honor among thieves, and all that. Time will tell which theory is correct.
That allows for the perfect segue into one of my biggest problems, and that's Vala.
Was the Vala in this episode someone who might possibly somehow be trusted to guard 's six? I'd give that a reluctant maybe.
Was the Vala in this episode the same person how we first met in Prometheus Unbound and the first few eps of S9? I'd give that an emphatic no way.
Spoiler in the next paragraph, I think; not sure if Vala's future status on the show is considered a spoiler.
I liked Vala as an antagonist. As a protagonist, not so much. Because she's done nothing, nothing, to deserve being on SG-1; and unless the following ep somehow has her answer and apologize for what she did to Daniel, both in S8 and S9, then I do not understand how she can possibly be trusted.
Here is the woman who hijacked Earth's only space-going vessel, left all its members to die on a crippled al-kesh, and captured and tortured Daniel. This is the woman who subsequently puts Daniel's life at risk for nothing more than her own greed when she slaps that bracelet on his wrist.
Why didn't they test every single item she carried through the Gate to see if it would somehow deactivate the bracelets? Why was she allowed any freedom whatsoever? Where has she earned trust? As far as I can see, she hadn't. Then, with Crusade, TPTB expect us to forget everything we knew about Vala; she's suddenly SGC's agent, doing her best on their behalf, deserving their solid support. Except for her shameless opportunism of sneaking into the men's locker room when she's in Daniel's body in order to ogle the guys coming out of the showers, there was nothing of the previous Vala at all in her characterization. Who is this woman, and what did she do with the real Vala?
If we'd been introduced to Vala as someone who accidentally got attached to Daniel at the beginning of S9, who subsequently accompanied them on their various missions and ended up in the Ori galaxy in Beachhead, then came back as she is now, I might find her a sympathetic character who deserved her upcoming assignment. (Imagine if Jonas had been introduced gradually over several episodes of S5, instead of being directly implicated in Daniel's death and leapfrogged into his slot on SG-1 within two eps.) But by grafting this new Vala onto the old Vala - and the only glimpse of the old Vala in Flesh and Blood was her cheerful explanation that, contrary to her claims to the Orici kid, "Adria" was her witch of a stepmother - she's a character that I can't accept as real and that I really can't bring myself to like.
Moving on to Teal'c and Bra'tac - I already observed that Teal'c eps offscreen) torture did little more than make me yawn. But their reactions over Chulak were very very interesting.
First of all, three cheers for Bra'tac when he strides into the SGC, exchanges a few brief words with Landry, then goes off to Dakara to get help. Great scene when he literally rides to the rescue. Let's hope that TPTB have enough sense to leave us with at least one recurring character without succumbing to this frantic urge to kill everyone off who isn't actually featured in the title credits.
While I'm not sure Bra'tac would be so willing to die in a kamikaze strike on the Ori ship, I can easily understand the "Jaffa revenge thing." Bra'tac is furious that Chulak is the first target and that the ships and loyal Jaffa he brought with him are destroyed. Teal'c, I noticed, understood completely, and Sam, who has had nine years' exposure to Teal'c and his obsessions eps (Cronus and Tanith, anyone?) isn't protesting too loudly, either. It's Mitchell who doesn't comprehend, and thankfully, it's Mitchell who gets our favorite old codger out of trouble this time.
Now for Daniel. Hoo boy.
There's something rather ugly about the two members of SG-1 managing to save themselves on the Korelev while everyone else dies. I understand that, with the ship literally exploding around them, there wasn't time to do very much. But would it have killed the writers to give Daniel a single line there: yelling, "Get into the rings!" to the techs were were working on the nuke before he dived inside himself? Yes, a frantic huddle like that might mean one of them fatally only part way inside; and Daniel, from his experience in the movie, knows of that possible danger. But since when does Daniel think so selflishly? And then there is nothing, nothing, to indicate that Daniel feels any distress or grief over all the lives that have been lost. We saw the same thing happen in Camelot, when Daniel's distress over the archivist's death was apparently limited to the new restriction against going into Merlin's library. Where is the Daniel I loved for so many years, who agonized over lives lost and whether or not the SGC was doing the right thing?
There's no explanation of how he managed to get the disguise on the Ori ship or how he managed to find Vala's rooms. Not sure why he wasn't wearing his glasses then, either; when he was out in the corridors, it made sense, but why in private?
Then there's Daniel and his reaction to Adria. I don't mean his aiming a gun at her as a bluff; I mean when he actually tried to shoot.
Let's take a moment to consider Daniel's experiences with advanced, genetically altered, accelerated aging human/alien hybrids. First, and most painful, there's Shifu: the little boy that he couldn't help but love because he was Sha're's, but represented his wife's abduction and rape by his most hated enemy as well as Daniel's failure to save her. Daniel was forced to leave Shifu behind with Oma and then, however good Shifu's intentions were, subsequently suffered mental assault by the kid when he reluctantly asked about his knowledge as Harcesis. Daniel knows, because of that vision, exactly what a human/Goa'uld hybrid can do. His experience with Anna in S8 hammered this home even further.
(We might even factor in his experience with Reese, although that one's a bit more ambivalent. At the very least, Daniel is all too aware that just because the enemy is in the body of a young woman, that doesn't mean the enemy is helpless.)
Then there was Khalek in Prototype. Daniel's forceful suggestion that Khalek should be killed was so powerful to us because it was such an anti-Daniel suggestion to make in the first place. It was the Daniel who remembered Shifu and Anna, the Daniel who watched Abydos destroyed because Anubis had put himself outside the rulebook, who understood how deadly Khalek should be. And it's that same Daniel who recognizes the deadly potential of Adria, but hesitates that final moment because, for the next several hours, she's still in the body of a child.
Or is it? That's the problem, and it's a serious one. The writers have been undercutting Daniel's humanity too much lately. His willingness to kill Adria isn't the shock of Prototype, a Daniel reluctantly recognizing that Khalek is too deadly to be allowed to ascend; it's the shock of Daniel turning cold, of choosing pragmatism over idealism. If this trend continues, my true reason for loving Stargate will have died a chilly, ignoble death.
Some final questions:
Do we really need the Ori version of the zat? "It stuns, but if you hit someone enough times it will kill." Oh yeah, they'll be playing with that little detail to add some are-they-dead-or-not artificial suspense during the coming season.
Soooo, what happened to Sam and Kvasir's plan to dial the Supergate out? Why can't they keep it dialing out indefinitely and prevent any more ships from arriving? Sam managed to reprogram it; the only thing that stopped it from working was the dialing in before they could get it running. So why not dial out now, and keep it that way?
Let Mitchell starting calling Daniel by his first name. The "Jackson" thing just grates. Ugh. No one calls him just "Jackson"; he's either "Doctor Jackson" or "Daniel."
And most importantly: can we please, please, please get our own Stargate effect back? I hate the tunnel effect from Atlantis. I want the mind-bending one we enjoyed for eight seasons.
Whew! Sorry for the ridiculously long length of this. :)
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