SG1, SGA, BSG 01-20-06
Jan. 21st, 2006 10:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eregyrnLJ has 9.2 million registered accounts? Geez. No wonder it's so difficult to find a username that hasn't been registered.
SG1: Ripple Effect
This was a fun episode. I'm always a complete sucker for AUs. And this was, arguably, the AU Extravaganza that fans of AUs have been wanting to see since the AU concept was first introduced.
I enjoyed it a hell of a lot, so did![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
telepresence. Afterwards, practically our only substantive comments on it went along the lines of, "It would have been even cooler, if..." -- but we knew that wasn't a fair criticism. We recognized that the Ultimate AU Episode would [a] have to be longer, and more importantly, [b] have a humongous budget and an ability to actually get any and every guest-star you could name, which obviously is flatly impossible.
A few nits, nonetheless:
The first few minutes BUGGED THE HELL out of us. Why? The moment the black-clad SG1 said that Selmak and Jacob were still very much alive, Landry should have initiated a bunch of common-sense responses. For example: LOCK THEM UP AND HAVE SECURITY HOLD GUNS ON THEM. Whichever way you slice it, they are NOT *your* SG1. You don't know what they are. Therefore, it makes NO SENSE that you let them stand in a row behind you, completely unsecured (presumably devoid of their weapons, like that matters), in the control room, while you direct security to train all its guns on the SG1 arriving at the *correct* time. Sheesh. *bangs head against wall* Also -- is there no-one who *noticed* that SG1 wore the green BDUs on this away mission, not the black ones? I know that the show lately has been a trifle laissez-faire about when they wear the black as opposed to when they wear the other stuff. But still, it's a visible difference. Hello?
One of the things I used to like that the show did was how the characters would show they could learn, and how they would have an immediate, practical, and cautious reaction to a problem. If Jack cuts his arm open and bleeds white, you call in security and train guns on all of SG1, even when Jack is shouting personal information at you that only the "real" Jack could have. SG1 comes back through the Gate talking about leaving behind Jack and some team-member nobody has ever heard of? Lock 'em up right away. Here I just couldn't help but feel that Hammond would have reacted more quickly and more cautiously, instead of treating the black-clad team as the "real" SG1, or at least, as a "harmless" SG1 even if their "reality" was in doubt. It ought to be pretty simple at the SGC by now. A team comes back and there is the slightest weirdism to them? (Like talking about people as alive who YOU know are dead.) Lock 'em up and start sorting them out, but for the love of god, at least treat them as a potential threat!
Maybe it's just that Landry and Lam are new. As Telepresence said, as the credits rolled, "Don't you WATCH this show?" And I pointed out, heh, no, Landry hasn't been watching it for 8 seasons, he's catching up. The discussion between Lam and Landry also made us a bit annoyed because they were focusing way too hard on the cloning thing. Look, I know that the Baal clones was the MOST RECENT example of duplicates. But have you people READ the SGC mission reports overview? Surely there is a cliff-notes version. Say it along with me, everyone: "Robots; quantum-mirror; alien chameleon/mind-reading tech; shape-shifting aliens; time-travelling..." (Jeopardy answer: "What are various weird things over the past 8 years that have caused duplicates of people to appear in the SGC?") For the record: the show exhibited this same problem back in S6's "Smoke & Mirrors", in which everyone was sitting around trying to figure out how someone who looked exactly like Jack had shot Sen. Kinsey, and the scene in which they did so would have been a lot more "realistic" if they'd only gone around the table and had each person offer one example from their past of how they've gotten duplicates. But they didn't, and missed a great opportunity to demonstrate that they remember their own show. *sigh*
Here, they *sort* of do it again. I mean, THANK GOD, by the time we get to the briefing table, and Sam *finally* freakin' mentions the quantum mirror. (There was also a lovely name-check later for the Gate doing time-travel even though it's not supposed to.) Still, if the question on the table is, "How can we have duplicates of SG1?", there's more than one viable answer just within what the show has *seen*, let alone what new wacky stuff could come up. However, if you're talking about an SG1 that thinks Jacob/Selmak's alive -- dude. "Cloning" and "they just forgot/didn't know that Jacob/Selmak died" is a STUPID answer, in comparison with the others, especially with the AU answer being the most probable.
But, fine... they got themselves out of that pretty quickly. As I say, perhaps Landry and Lam should be forgiven for focusing on the most recently seen possibility, the one they *personally* have seen, rather than on the historic possibilities. Good for the older members of SG1 that they got on the right track so quickly.
Beyond the lack of common-sense demonstrated by Landry in the opening, and the lack of institutional knowledge... the rest of the ep was done quite well, and was a peck o' fun. I thought they did a really nice job, given production and time constraints, of alluding to a breadth of weird possibilities, and I thought they overall did a nice job putting in background touches. After the ep, Telepresence and I brainstormed a few weirder ideas that they could easily have done, that would have been fun (the SG1 that comes through *all* wearing Jaffa armor: *snerk*; the SG-1 that comes through where all but Teal'c are wearing original Tok'ra uniforms, and all their eyes flash on the ramp; etc.). But still, a nice range displayed.
It was strangely coincidental how ALL of the SG1s they happened to have were teams led by Mitchell. At least they allowed for more possibility when they said later that many more SG1s were turned away... Of course, none of the SG1s could have been led by Jack, for obvious production reasons. But it probably would have been nice to show the arrival of at least one SG1 that didn't include Mitchell, and was led by someone else (Sam, perhaps, with another random 4th, which would be easiest to do with the guest-stars they had; or someone more outre).
The scene with the billions of Sams in the room -- that was neat. A pity, of course, that they all had to have the same haircut, but there's certain details that you can't expect the production team to worry about. Loved the Geek!Sam, in glasses, who showed up talking to another in the background. My only criticism of that scene, basically, was the extent to which the other Sams weren't vocal or even all that reactive -- shouldn't ALL of them (or at least a good percentage of them) have reacted to Martouf's arrival? And how did Martouf know to concentrate on "our" Sam as the one with whom he should have been interacting? By which I mean -- what made "our" Sam more significant to *him* than any of the other Sams? (Nothing, unless he himself was interested in the Sam whose universe it actually was; which is a reasonable distinction to make, I just... I don't know, would have liked to see him a bit confused before he settled on that. He slid into addressing her and only her pretty quickly.)
Yes, by the way -- both Telepresence and I *groaned* every time they referred COYLY to Sam having gotten married, being pregnant, etc. In the usual SG way, they assiduously avoided giving *any* hint as to who her partner was -- so, could be Jack, could be Pete, hell, could be Narim, could be Agent Barrett (*waves* I'll get to YOU in a moment, Malcolm!). But this is a tease to the fans that I could just do without, at this point. Mostly, I could do without Sam's character being defined by the romance/marriage thing. Which I suppose is hypocritical to say, in an episode in which I quite enjoyed her interaction with Martouf. (I always liked Martouf. Telepresence personally always rooted for Narim.)
At any rate... also enjoyed some glimpses of the other AU SG1s -- liked the ones in the weird grey-cammo uniforms (but WHAT was their Teal'c wearing on his head??? though, nice shout-out, with them arming him with the salvaged gun from the death-glider that he used briefly in S5). And especially -- the team of four muscle-guys that Mitchell led out of the elevator, who were all wearing the Atanik armbands (from S4's "Upgrades"); really nice little detail there guys.
But then, of course -- Martouf and Janet. JANET!!!!!!!! AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!! (And yes, it was nice to see you too, Martouf.)
One thing disoriented me about them, and that was that we didn't get to see the rest of their SG1 until the end. I realize that we didn't "need" to, per se, but it made me feel as if they weren't part of another "team" as such. It was odd. Anyway. In the midst of the glee over Janet? Both Telepresence and I thought that Landry's manner in springing her on Daniel and Teal'c was really... damn. Cold. It was, in fact, exemplary of things that I just sort of don't like about Landry -- it came across to me as a bit smug, and too careless in tone for what an emotional shock it should really have been to Daniel and Teal'c -- Daniel especially. Yeah, I know, Landry never knew Janet, he wasn't around at the time of her death. But he must know how she died (again, read the Mission Cliff Notes). He was a bit too jolly, for my tastes, about springing his "surprise" on Daniel and Teal'c. Um, dude? This isn't amusing. This is a gut-punch, and at best it's poignant. Have *some* concern for the feelings of others, can't you?
Telepresence remarked afterwards that for him, the ideal AU episode would focus on the emotional/psychological reaction of the characters to the appearence of (or news of) people, close friends and family, who've been dead for years. While I agree... look, I know my show. On SG1 you're damned lucky to get ANY emotional-depth moments, whatsoever. And therefore, as far as I was concerned, the scenes we got between Sam and Martouf, and Daniel, Teal'c and Janet, were very welcome. Those did have real emotional depth, and they directly addressed the characters' reactions to each other. For SG1? It was pretty huge. So I'm grateful they did that much.
As for the rest of the plot... blah-blah technobabble whatever...
Here's the thing that occured to me right away. From a certain point of view, if you are handling the AU story very well, you need to acknowledge that all of the other SG1s must regard themselves as the stars of *their* show. So I liked it when I got a hint that the black-clad SG1 was doing just that. It was a neat POV moment, to me. Because we were still looking at them as the interlopers. But they were proceeding as if they were the real SG1 in an episode in which SG-1 becomes stranded (or... not) in some other AU. It was a cool acknowledgement that if the situations were reversed, we would expect "our" SG1 to do what the black-clad SG1 was doing, in order to get home.
That being the case, I *wanted* black-clad SG1 not to be "evil!SG1". They don't need to be evil. They just need to believe that they are of paramount importance... which is what "our" SG-1 would do if they were stuck in an AU. For that reason, the ongoing bit of business with that Teal'c roughing up our Mitchell... ehn. The rest of the black-clad team didn't really give any indication that they were "bad". I didn't need them to, for this plot to work. Indeed it would have worked best if I could have seen them as *just like* our SG1. So I didn't *get* the whole thing with Teal'c roughing up Mitchell. And I didn't like it.
The wrinkle that they weren't "stuck", this was a deliberate mission... I liked that, in one way. I liked the ruthless pragmatism about it, in the argument between the Mitchells. I thought it was an interesting and largely plausible idea. (They should have bet on being locked up, and possibly bet that they wouldn't have been able to get into the SGC's confidence enough to pull this off. I mean -- why take THAT particular team with the real SG1 on the Prometheus, and nobody else? Ugh.) I also of course liked the "SG1 vs. SG1" idea -- that was *fun*. But there's also that moral ambiguity underlying it all. Would "our" SG1 have decided that their Earth's need was worth putting an alternate-universe Atlantis at risk, like that? I'm not sure that they would have -- at least I'm not sure they would have gone to *steal* the ZPM. I could certainly see "our" SG1 arguing passionately to be allowed to take it, but not *steal* it.
But... fine. Even if it wasn't quite the approach that I had flashed on and assumed they were taking, it was still a pretty neat, plausible AU story.
In the end, too, I would perhaps have wished that the SG1 with Janet and Martouf could have been the AU SG1 on the Prometheus. Just because I would have gotten more out of seeing our SG1 having to deal with a more different SG1. You would still have had the fact that half the team were identical to half our team, so you could do that whole "we think like them" thing. Plus the fake-out. (I admit, I was totally taken in by the "false" Mitchell in green BDUs.) But then you could also have had the moral ambiguity of our Sam and Daniel and Teal'c being taken in because of their nostalgic trust for Martouf and Janet -- whose deaths Sam and Daniel respectively blame themselves for. But mostly because, I just would have liked to see as much more of Martouf and Janet as we could have gotten.
All in all, then -- good SG1 episode. Fun. Good story. Let us roll around in AUs to our heart's content, though in a way, also only whet our appetites for all the other neat possibilities that the show couldn't do.
SGA: Critical Mass
Just as it was pretty cool to hear SG1 talking about the Atlantis expedition on that show, it was *really* cool to see the crossover with the SGC on SGA. And Agent Barrett! Hi! Great to see you! I've always liked Agent Barrett. It's really nice to see him pop back in from time to time.
I thought they were a bit too transparently wanting to have their cake and eat it too, with the heavy references to the moral dilemma of how to get information out of Kavanaugh and then out of the Caldwell goa'uld. Also, of course, it was a ticking-time-bomb scenario, which is almost NEVER actually the case with torture situations in the real-world. Finally, they didn't even acknowledge the central problem pointed to by the anti-torture position, which isn't a moral one but a practical one: you can't trust the information you get. I think that this is especially problematic on a show like these, where the heroes are tortured by the villains from time to time, but they hold out... heroically. The bottom line is that if your good-guys "know"/trust that they themselves would never break, then they should hesitate to assume that their opponents will break, either, even if the chips are down. And yeah, I know that Kavanaugh is a weenie, but still...
Anyway... when they were all so seriously alluding to the idea of torturing Kavanaugh, I *knew* even then that they were going to dodge it somehow. I wasn't sure how. Ronon's "he fainted before I even touched him" was about what I was expecting, though. (Actually, I was *most* expecting a form of good-cop/bad-cop. Plus, I also "knew" that Kavanaugh wasn't the real bad-guy. They telegraphed that quite well.) (Speaking of telegraphed -- Rodney's suspicion of Cadman was just... lame. It never came across as a plausibly worrisome possibility.)
And then with Caldwell -- and may I just say, I was surprised by him turning out to be the goa'uld -- they kind of get out of it by twisting it around so that torturing the Caldwell-goa'uld results in the suppression of the evil goa'uld so that the victimized Caldwell can surface for a moment and defy the goa'uld and be helpful. So it turns the torture into an almost merciful gesture. Yeah. Way to muddy the moral point *there*, guys. (Also, may I say -- it was stupid to have the Caldwell goa'uld be all, "I'm much stronger, as a goa'uld", and then for him to not give either Ronon or John a run for their money in the fight?)
Basically, I didn't like them even appearing to address the very serious issue of torture by the "good guys", when all they were going to do was let themselves off the hook for it in both cases. I realize that by Weir's reaction at the end, she didn't feel let off the hook. But *I* felt she was, dramatically. I realize too that this show isn't BSG. But that's my point. If you're not actually going to deal with a gritty dilemma that doesn't have an easy answer, then just, *don't*.
Finally, and how could I forget except that we FF'ed through it? -- the singing, OH MY GOD THE SINGING.
I am quite sure that out there somewhere, perhaps on my flist at this very moment, there are people for whom Teyla's Enya impression, and the use of her singing and the music as background for the remainder of the ep, worked. But that would not be me or Telepresence. AAAAIIIEEEEE!!!! I'm sorry, but I Could. Not. Deal. My ears. My ears. To say that I hated that would be a vast, vast understatement. I'll be interested to see what the other reactions are, but... *damn*. *Cringe*.
Mind you, I can't exactly explain why that kind of thing in just about any TV show, or indeed in most films, makes me cringe. It just really, REALLY does.
To end on a happier note, though? And a complete shout-out tobarkley on the question of geeks in the USAF -- LOVED the bit where poor Dr. Lee is trying to make an analogy to the Twilight Bark (yes, sadly, I got what he meant immediately), and then when he abandons that and says, "Lord of the Rings -- you know, where they light all the signal fires..." -- and everyone around the table, including *both* the civilian scientists and the guys in military uniform, start smiling and nodding at each other in recognition. That was great.
BSG: Epiphanies
As usual, I have the least to say about BSG. I think that mostly what I have to say is: less grim than I expected, because with this show, I honestly thought there was a real chance they'd abort Sharon's baby. Also: as whacked-out, far-fetched, 11th-hour, medical miracles pulled out of the ass fixes for cancer go? I'm fine with that. I'm just glad they've finally resolved Roslyn's cancer storyline. I didn't really care how they'd do it. I was prepared to accept pretty much anything, with the exception of "Roslyn actually dies", which... given this show, again, I thought was always an outside possibility. (Okay, I would have been pretty annoyed if Roslyn had turned out to be a Cylon. But other than *that*...)
SG1: Ripple Effect
This was a fun episode. I'm always a complete sucker for AUs. And this was, arguably, the AU Extravaganza that fans of AUs have been wanting to see since the AU concept was first introduced.
I enjoyed it a hell of a lot, so did
telepresence. Afterwards, practically our only substantive comments on it went along the lines of, "It would have been even cooler, if..." -- but we knew that wasn't a fair criticism. We recognized that the Ultimate AU Episode would [a] have to be longer, and more importantly, [b] have a humongous budget and an ability to actually get any and every guest-star you could name, which obviously is flatly impossible.A few nits, nonetheless:
The first few minutes BUGGED THE HELL out of us. Why? The moment the black-clad SG1 said that Selmak and Jacob were still very much alive, Landry should have initiated a bunch of common-sense responses. For example: LOCK THEM UP AND HAVE SECURITY HOLD GUNS ON THEM. Whichever way you slice it, they are NOT *your* SG1. You don't know what they are. Therefore, it makes NO SENSE that you let them stand in a row behind you, completely unsecured (presumably devoid of their weapons, like that matters), in the control room, while you direct security to train all its guns on the SG1 arriving at the *correct* time. Sheesh. *bangs head against wall* Also -- is there no-one who *noticed* that SG1 wore the green BDUs on this away mission, not the black ones? I know that the show lately has been a trifle laissez-faire about when they wear the black as opposed to when they wear the other stuff. But still, it's a visible difference. Hello?
One of the things I used to like that the show did was how the characters would show they could learn, and how they would have an immediate, practical, and cautious reaction to a problem. If Jack cuts his arm open and bleeds white, you call in security and train guns on all of SG1, even when Jack is shouting personal information at you that only the "real" Jack could have. SG1 comes back through the Gate talking about leaving behind Jack and some team-member nobody has ever heard of? Lock 'em up right away. Here I just couldn't help but feel that Hammond would have reacted more quickly and more cautiously, instead of treating the black-clad team as the "real" SG1, or at least, as a "harmless" SG1 even if their "reality" was in doubt. It ought to be pretty simple at the SGC by now. A team comes back and there is the slightest weirdism to them? (Like talking about people as alive who YOU know are dead.) Lock 'em up and start sorting them out, but for the love of god, at least treat them as a potential threat!
Maybe it's just that Landry and Lam are new. As Telepresence said, as the credits rolled, "Don't you WATCH this show?" And I pointed out, heh, no, Landry hasn't been watching it for 8 seasons, he's catching up. The discussion between Lam and Landry also made us a bit annoyed because they were focusing way too hard on the cloning thing. Look, I know that the Baal clones was the MOST RECENT example of duplicates. But have you people READ the SGC mission reports overview? Surely there is a cliff-notes version. Say it along with me, everyone: "Robots; quantum-mirror; alien chameleon/mind-reading tech; shape-shifting aliens; time-travelling..." (Jeopardy answer: "What are various weird things over the past 8 years that have caused duplicates of people to appear in the SGC?") For the record: the show exhibited this same problem back in S6's "Smoke & Mirrors", in which everyone was sitting around trying to figure out how someone who looked exactly like Jack had shot Sen. Kinsey, and the scene in which they did so would have been a lot more "realistic" if they'd only gone around the table and had each person offer one example from their past of how they've gotten duplicates. But they didn't, and missed a great opportunity to demonstrate that they remember their own show. *sigh*
Here, they *sort* of do it again. I mean, THANK GOD, by the time we get to the briefing table, and Sam *finally* freakin' mentions the quantum mirror. (There was also a lovely name-check later for the Gate doing time-travel even though it's not supposed to.) Still, if the question on the table is, "How can we have duplicates of SG1?", there's more than one viable answer just within what the show has *seen*, let alone what new wacky stuff could come up. However, if you're talking about an SG1 that thinks Jacob/Selmak's alive -- dude. "Cloning" and "they just forgot/didn't know that Jacob/Selmak died" is a STUPID answer, in comparison with the others, especially with the AU answer being the most probable.
But, fine... they got themselves out of that pretty quickly. As I say, perhaps Landry and Lam should be forgiven for focusing on the most recently seen possibility, the one they *personally* have seen, rather than on the historic possibilities. Good for the older members of SG1 that they got on the right track so quickly.
Beyond the lack of common-sense demonstrated by Landry in the opening, and the lack of institutional knowledge... the rest of the ep was done quite well, and was a peck o' fun. I thought they did a really nice job, given production and time constraints, of alluding to a breadth of weird possibilities, and I thought they overall did a nice job putting in background touches. After the ep, Telepresence and I brainstormed a few weirder ideas that they could easily have done, that would have been fun (the SG1 that comes through *all* wearing Jaffa armor: *snerk*; the SG-1 that comes through where all but Teal'c are wearing original Tok'ra uniforms, and all their eyes flash on the ramp; etc.). But still, a nice range displayed.
It was strangely coincidental how ALL of the SG1s they happened to have were teams led by Mitchell. At least they allowed for more possibility when they said later that many more SG1s were turned away... Of course, none of the SG1s could have been led by Jack, for obvious production reasons. But it probably would have been nice to show the arrival of at least one SG1 that didn't include Mitchell, and was led by someone else (Sam, perhaps, with another random 4th, which would be easiest to do with the guest-stars they had; or someone more outre).
The scene with the billions of Sams in the room -- that was neat. A pity, of course, that they all had to have the same haircut, but there's certain details that you can't expect the production team to worry about. Loved the Geek!Sam, in glasses, who showed up talking to another in the background. My only criticism of that scene, basically, was the extent to which the other Sams weren't vocal or even all that reactive -- shouldn't ALL of them (or at least a good percentage of them) have reacted to Martouf's arrival? And how did Martouf know to concentrate on "our" Sam as the one with whom he should have been interacting? By which I mean -- what made "our" Sam more significant to *him* than any of the other Sams? (Nothing, unless he himself was interested in the Sam whose universe it actually was; which is a reasonable distinction to make, I just... I don't know, would have liked to see him a bit confused before he settled on that. He slid into addressing her and only her pretty quickly.)
Yes, by the way -- both Telepresence and I *groaned* every time they referred COYLY to Sam having gotten married, being pregnant, etc. In the usual SG way, they assiduously avoided giving *any* hint as to who her partner was -- so, could be Jack, could be Pete, hell, could be Narim, could be Agent Barrett (*waves* I'll get to YOU in a moment, Malcolm!). But this is a tease to the fans that I could just do without, at this point. Mostly, I could do without Sam's character being defined by the romance/marriage thing. Which I suppose is hypocritical to say, in an episode in which I quite enjoyed her interaction with Martouf. (I always liked Martouf. Telepresence personally always rooted for Narim.)
At any rate... also enjoyed some glimpses of the other AU SG1s -- liked the ones in the weird grey-cammo uniforms (but WHAT was their Teal'c wearing on his head??? though, nice shout-out, with them arming him with the salvaged gun from the death-glider that he used briefly in S5). And especially -- the team of four muscle-guys that Mitchell led out of the elevator, who were all wearing the Atanik armbands (from S4's "Upgrades"); really nice little detail there guys.
But then, of course -- Martouf and Janet. JANET!!!!!!!! AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!! (And yes, it was nice to see you too, Martouf.)
One thing disoriented me about them, and that was that we didn't get to see the rest of their SG1 until the end. I realize that we didn't "need" to, per se, but it made me feel as if they weren't part of another "team" as such. It was odd. Anyway. In the midst of the glee over Janet? Both Telepresence and I thought that Landry's manner in springing her on Daniel and Teal'c was really... damn. Cold. It was, in fact, exemplary of things that I just sort of don't like about Landry -- it came across to me as a bit smug, and too careless in tone for what an emotional shock it should really have been to Daniel and Teal'c -- Daniel especially. Yeah, I know, Landry never knew Janet, he wasn't around at the time of her death. But he must know how she died (again, read the Mission Cliff Notes). He was a bit too jolly, for my tastes, about springing his "surprise" on Daniel and Teal'c. Um, dude? This isn't amusing. This is a gut-punch, and at best it's poignant. Have *some* concern for the feelings of others, can't you?
Telepresence remarked afterwards that for him, the ideal AU episode would focus on the emotional/psychological reaction of the characters to the appearence of (or news of) people, close friends and family, who've been dead for years. While I agree... look, I know my show. On SG1 you're damned lucky to get ANY emotional-depth moments, whatsoever. And therefore, as far as I was concerned, the scenes we got between Sam and Martouf, and Daniel, Teal'c and Janet, were very welcome. Those did have real emotional depth, and they directly addressed the characters' reactions to each other. For SG1? It was pretty huge. So I'm grateful they did that much.
As for the rest of the plot... blah-blah technobabble whatever...
Here's the thing that occured to me right away. From a certain point of view, if you are handling the AU story very well, you need to acknowledge that all of the other SG1s must regard themselves as the stars of *their* show. So I liked it when I got a hint that the black-clad SG1 was doing just that. It was a neat POV moment, to me. Because we were still looking at them as the interlopers. But they were proceeding as if they were the real SG1 in an episode in which SG-1 becomes stranded (or... not) in some other AU. It was a cool acknowledgement that if the situations were reversed, we would expect "our" SG1 to do what the black-clad SG1 was doing, in order to get home.
That being the case, I *wanted* black-clad SG1 not to be "evil!SG1". They don't need to be evil. They just need to believe that they are of paramount importance... which is what "our" SG-1 would do if they were stuck in an AU. For that reason, the ongoing bit of business with that Teal'c roughing up our Mitchell... ehn. The rest of the black-clad team didn't really give any indication that they were "bad". I didn't need them to, for this plot to work. Indeed it would have worked best if I could have seen them as *just like* our SG1. So I didn't *get* the whole thing with Teal'c roughing up Mitchell. And I didn't like it.
The wrinkle that they weren't "stuck", this was a deliberate mission... I liked that, in one way. I liked the ruthless pragmatism about it, in the argument between the Mitchells. I thought it was an interesting and largely plausible idea. (They should have bet on being locked up, and possibly bet that they wouldn't have been able to get into the SGC's confidence enough to pull this off. I mean -- why take THAT particular team with the real SG1 on the Prometheus, and nobody else? Ugh.) I also of course liked the "SG1 vs. SG1" idea -- that was *fun*. But there's also that moral ambiguity underlying it all. Would "our" SG1 have decided that their Earth's need was worth putting an alternate-universe Atlantis at risk, like that? I'm not sure that they would have -- at least I'm not sure they would have gone to *steal* the ZPM. I could certainly see "our" SG1 arguing passionately to be allowed to take it, but not *steal* it.
But... fine. Even if it wasn't quite the approach that I had flashed on and assumed they were taking, it was still a pretty neat, plausible AU story.
In the end, too, I would perhaps have wished that the SG1 with Janet and Martouf could have been the AU SG1 on the Prometheus. Just because I would have gotten more out of seeing our SG1 having to deal with a more different SG1. You would still have had the fact that half the team were identical to half our team, so you could do that whole "we think like them" thing. Plus the fake-out. (I admit, I was totally taken in by the "false" Mitchell in green BDUs.) But then you could also have had the moral ambiguity of our Sam and Daniel and Teal'c being taken in because of their nostalgic trust for Martouf and Janet -- whose deaths Sam and Daniel respectively blame themselves for. But mostly because, I just would have liked to see as much more of Martouf and Janet as we could have gotten.
All in all, then -- good SG1 episode. Fun. Good story. Let us roll around in AUs to our heart's content, though in a way, also only whet our appetites for all the other neat possibilities that the show couldn't do.
SGA: Critical Mass
Just as it was pretty cool to hear SG1 talking about the Atlantis expedition on that show, it was *really* cool to see the crossover with the SGC on SGA. And Agent Barrett! Hi! Great to see you! I've always liked Agent Barrett. It's really nice to see him pop back in from time to time.
I thought they were a bit too transparently wanting to have their cake and eat it too, with the heavy references to the moral dilemma of how to get information out of Kavanaugh and then out of the Caldwell goa'uld. Also, of course, it was a ticking-time-bomb scenario, which is almost NEVER actually the case with torture situations in the real-world. Finally, they didn't even acknowledge the central problem pointed to by the anti-torture position, which isn't a moral one but a practical one: you can't trust the information you get. I think that this is especially problematic on a show like these, where the heroes are tortured by the villains from time to time, but they hold out... heroically. The bottom line is that if your good-guys "know"/trust that they themselves would never break, then they should hesitate to assume that their opponents will break, either, even if the chips are down. And yeah, I know that Kavanaugh is a weenie, but still...
Anyway... when they were all so seriously alluding to the idea of torturing Kavanaugh, I *knew* even then that they were going to dodge it somehow. I wasn't sure how. Ronon's "he fainted before I even touched him" was about what I was expecting, though. (Actually, I was *most* expecting a form of good-cop/bad-cop. Plus, I also "knew" that Kavanaugh wasn't the real bad-guy. They telegraphed that quite well.) (Speaking of telegraphed -- Rodney's suspicion of Cadman was just... lame. It never came across as a plausibly worrisome possibility.)
And then with Caldwell -- and may I just say, I was surprised by him turning out to be the goa'uld -- they kind of get out of it by twisting it around so that torturing the Caldwell-goa'uld results in the suppression of the evil goa'uld so that the victimized Caldwell can surface for a moment and defy the goa'uld and be helpful. So it turns the torture into an almost merciful gesture. Yeah. Way to muddy the moral point *there*, guys. (Also, may I say -- it was stupid to have the Caldwell goa'uld be all, "I'm much stronger, as a goa'uld", and then for him to not give either Ronon or John a run for their money in the fight?)
Basically, I didn't like them even appearing to address the very serious issue of torture by the "good guys", when all they were going to do was let themselves off the hook for it in both cases. I realize that by Weir's reaction at the end, she didn't feel let off the hook. But *I* felt she was, dramatically. I realize too that this show isn't BSG. But that's my point. If you're not actually going to deal with a gritty dilemma that doesn't have an easy answer, then just, *don't*.
Finally, and how could I forget except that we FF'ed through it? -- the singing, OH MY GOD THE SINGING.
I am quite sure that out there somewhere, perhaps on my flist at this very moment, there are people for whom Teyla's Enya impression, and the use of her singing and the music as background for the remainder of the ep, worked. But that would not be me or Telepresence. AAAAIIIEEEEE!!!! I'm sorry, but I Could. Not. Deal. My ears. My ears. To say that I hated that would be a vast, vast understatement. I'll be interested to see what the other reactions are, but... *damn*. *Cringe*.
Mind you, I can't exactly explain why that kind of thing in just about any TV show, or indeed in most films, makes me cringe. It just really, REALLY does.
To end on a happier note, though? And a complete shout-out to
barkley on the question of geeks in the USAF -- LOVED the bit where poor Dr. Lee is trying to make an analogy to the Twilight Bark (yes, sadly, I got what he meant immediately), and then when he abandons that and says, "Lord of the Rings -- you know, where they light all the signal fires..." -- and everyone around the table, including *both* the civilian scientists and the guys in military uniform, start smiling and nodding at each other in recognition. That was great.BSG: Epiphanies
As usual, I have the least to say about BSG. I think that mostly what I have to say is: less grim than I expected, because with this show, I honestly thought there was a real chance they'd abort Sharon's baby. Also: as whacked-out, far-fetched, 11th-hour, medical miracles pulled out of the ass fixes for cancer go? I'm fine with that. I'm just glad they've finally resolved Roslyn's cancer storyline. I didn't really care how they'd do it. I was prepared to accept pretty much anything, with the exception of "Roslyn actually dies", which... given this show, again, I thought was always an outside possibility. (Okay, I would have been pretty annoyed if Roslyn had turned out to be a Cylon. But other than *that*...)
