eregyrn | SciFi Friday: SG1, SGA, bonus (09-08-2006)

SG-1 10.08: Memento Mori

Oh, they’re back to using THIS framing device, are they? **sigh** On a happier note, it is nice to see that in this scene at least, they remembered that Vala is a kick-ass hand-to-hand fighter.

Being who I am (a strong J/D person), I feel unthreatened by the idea of Daniel taking Vala out to a swank restaurant. I can sit back and say generously, “… and the Daniel/Vala shippers go wild!”

A note for Daniel: if you **don’t** want your date to think you have taken her on a DATE, then you might start by taking her to a less upscale restaurant. Of course, this is Daniel we’re talking about. There’s no particular evidence that he was ever that practiced at his own society’s courting rituals. Dating Sarah in grad school doesn’t count, it was grad school, after all. And this is the man who met his wife when her father presented her to him as a GIFT.

Still, my point stands. If you don’t want Vala to think it’s a date, then good lord, make it a Team Night Out or something. Surely you’re allowed back into O’Malley’s at this point?

Also? Daniel? How can I put this… in the early days, you had the fashion sense of an academic nerd. Then you got over it, and actually bought some fairly nice suits. What do you call what you’re doing now, fashion-wise? And? What, in your anthropological “I notice the customs and appropriate behavior of societies” brain, made you think that wearing **that** particular shirt **untucked** over **JEANS**, whether or not it was under a suit-jacket, was appropriate attire for that particular restaurant?

Seriously. I hate to say this, because it is not a compliment, but **Jack** would have had a better sense of both dress and propriety than that. You were, in fact, **dressed** for O’Malley’s, so again, I’m not sure why you didn’t just go there. Imagine how much fun Vala would have if you taught her to play pool, particularly once she found out that people wager sums of money on the game.

While I’m being catty: I didn’t like Vala’s top. Is that, like, fashionable right now? Anywhere? Once again, I never thought I would be holding **Sam** up as the fashion example (based on some of her past mistakes in this area), but really – who helped Vala buy that outfit?

Okay. I’m done.

It was nice that the waiter had the presence of mind to say something to Daniel when he went back to deliver the drinks.

Annnnnnd… the Goa’uld Big Bad this ep will be… Athena?

This gave

telepresence and I pause – literally, we had to pause the TiVo and discuss this – because Athena seems an odd choice as a god who was a goa’uld. Furthermore, as nice as it was to see Daniel later doing his very Daniel-thing of delivering the folkloric exposition regarding this new player… sadly, that was poorly written and (unsurprisingly, I guess) not up to the standard of similar monologues he has given in the past.

To refer to Athena as a Greek goddess of war is… okay, look. Yes, she was, obviously, that’s what the helmet and the spear were all about. But I’d be willing to put money on the assertion that if you asked anybody who knew anything about Greek mythology to describe Athena, “goddess of war” is not the first thing they would say, let alone the ONLY thing they would say. Come on, folks. This is middle-school mythology stuff. Of the Greek gods, Athena was more complex than most. She was wisdom **and** war combined. She was a culture-giver, and she was a major patroness of Greek civilization – Athens, olive trees, hello?

As Telepresence summed it up: in the Greek pantheon, Athena wasn’t one of the Asshole Gods. She had her moments, of course, as they all did, but by and large she was better known for non-asshole qualities. The Greeks had Ares to embody the asshole qualities of war.

So it’s a little difficult to reconcile her non-asshole, wisdom-embodying, protector, civilizing qualities with the Goa’uld. Not impossible, perhaps – I guess the best parallel would be with Yu, and Daniel made sure to underscore the point that Yu was a culture-giver when he originally introduced **that** System Lord in a lecture.

Telepresence was also incensed by their description of Athena as a “minor player”. I do agree with him that if you’re going to do Athena, she really ought to kick ass. That’s why the abbreviated, simplified spiel on her really does a disservice to the idea of setting up the character as a good villain – she’s a more effective villain if you know that she has some complexity and unpredictability. Isn’t she scarier if you know that she was the goddess of wisdom? I.e. she might actually be, you know, **smart**, like Baal is?

I’m guessing they went with the “minor player” description for two reasons: one, to explain how it is that Athena survived when most of the bigger System Lords got gurked, and further, to explain why the heck we hadn’t heard of her in the least for 10 years. I’m thinking that may the writers think that if they don’t put in something like that, we’ll say, “well, if she was so gosh-darned important, how come this is the first we’ve heard of her?” But I think they’re over-thinking things.

Additionally, though, perhaps the thinking was that since she did embody a number of non-asshole qualities, she would naturally be secondary in power to Goa’ulds who had the identity of much more ruthless gods. I also suggested that it’s possible that Athena remained on Earth longer than some of the other System Lords (thus explaining her close, personal, and somewhat positive relationship with the Athenians), as a big fish in a small pond.

The saddest part is that at the end of the ep, there is every indication that Athena is still out there, doing her thing. She’s a card that the show dealt, and they leave her on the table, but now they'll never really get a chance to play her again. (I assume, anyway, that she is not going to figure in any of the remaining S10 storylines.) She’s a dangling potential, and that’s kind of a pity.

We commented at the time that it was fairly annoying for the show to employ the cliché dramatic device of intercutting shots of Our Heroes readying an assault on a warehouse with shots of the Bad Guys looking up and hearing noises – only to find that it’s a fake-out. So we were actually semi-impressed when it turned out to be only HALF a fake-out – yes, SG-1’s particular assault didn’t pan out, but one of the assaults did and the Bad Guys were truly discovered.

That has to be the most number of casualties for Our Guys that I ever remember seeing happen all at once, in a non-offword-battle situation. We were all, “WHOA! They killed the hell out of that guy! And those guys – YEEEG!” But the plot necessitated that none of the Good Guys be around so that Vala could get away, I guess. Bummer of an assignment.

We liked Sal, the guy who ran Sol’s Diner. We liked Det. Ryan a lot, too; he was cute, and pretty much not stupid. (We would like to see more of him, please.)

Here’s something I’d like to know, though. Vala is not exactly keeping a low profile at Sol’s. She’s WORKING there, she’s taking orders and everything. Hardly hiding. Furthermore – sorry, one more catty comment – nobody is going to be walking 20 miles in those boots she was wearing. Given that she was working at Sol’s for a good two weeks before the SGC found her because of the check on her identity that the police were running, um… I just want to know why it doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone to start at the warehouse where she went missing, and do a grid-search of the surrounding area with a photo of her in hand? Because the two options were that she was taken away by some surviving Trust agent in a car (bad) or she left on foot (better).

I’m sort of going to assume that the SGC has not taken the rather obvious step of establishing an identity for Vala in the Real World – which seems remarkably short-sighted of them, and in that case they should never let her off the base at all, for any reason. (Because not only could she be kidnapped, but just her and Daniel being in a very unfortunate car accident would have been complicated enormously by her having no ID and no official identity.)

The reason I’m assuming this, though, is that in addition to searching the area around the warehouse, there seemed to be no indication that the SGC had, like, notified the actual authorities about this Missing Person (the police? The FBI?), and had them help in the search. Why not? (Or did they and I missed them saying this?) Vala isn’t like Teal’c, her physiology doesn’t present an enormously difficult dilemma should she come into contact with people in the real world.

As it is, frankly, thank god Ryan decided to take her in to the police station – I assume, with the original intention of having her make a statement (I’m guessing that’s the least you have to do if you foil some robbers in the act) – and then got suspicious enough to run a check on her. I kind of felt for Vala at that point, since she was right, she hadn’t really done anything wrong, but she just wasn’t able to bluff her way around the things she didn’t know. And not being willing to give your full name to the police when they want to take your statement – again, I’m guessing they aren’t thrilled by that. (Although – I would like to know what rights a person in that situation has, since they **aren’t** being charged.) Nor would Ryan have been thrilled by her lack of ID.

(Random background note: the State of Colorado flag in Ryan’s office was a nice touch. Doesn’t make me forgive them for the Colorado plates in “Uninvited”, but…)

Anyway, one is left with the uncomfortable feeling that if that hadn’t happened, by chance, the SGC would never have actually found her, and they would have had to wait for her memory to come back on its own for her to come home. Which is a disconcerting notion. Seriously. You have a missing woman and you know her last known location and you’re pretty sure she got away on foot… and two weeks later you still haven’t found her? Man, so much for all those fanfics in which one of the team goes missing locally and the SGC cunningly moves heaven and earth until they are located and rescued.

(I realize I’m being a bit unfair – technically speaking, it **DID** find her once, and it was their rescue attempt that allowed her to get away from the Baddies. Still. Two weeks at Sol’s Diner, within walking distance of the warehouse she escaped from? Honestly.)

Nice staging on the moment when you get a glimpse of the people coming to pick Vala up at the police station, and we’ve been told it’ll be “Colonel Carter”, and for a second there it looks like it might be (“why the hell would Sam be wearing her class A’s on this errand?” I thought to myself), and **WHOA*!!! THAT’S NOT SAM! Ooooh, suck.

And now, for the first time in 10 years, SG-1 will do… a car chase, on the “freeway”. (Minor techincal question: do they call it the freeway in Colorado? Or the highway? It’s a fair question; say “freeway” and I tend to think of California, and certainly there are many places in the U.S. where that term isn’t used.) Oh, Cam, you cowboy, you. Of course, I would argue that there is a good reason why SG-1 never did a car chase before, and that is that with few exceptions, I think, car chases are filler material. It’s snarky to say, but it used to be that SG-1 needed all 42 minutes of its ep time to take care of the STORY, not waste however-many seconds/minutes on pointless action…

Ehn. But maybe everybody is sitting around figuring “it’ll be fun”, and I admit, both Telepresence and I laughed out loud at the cheesetastic-ness of it.

Similarly, you could also almost SEE the glee of everyone involved in that car’s spectacular roll-over, which was definitely one of the more violent I’ve seen. They could have just veered off the road and hit a tree, but noooooo – you can totally tell that they were all, “ooh, can we make it roll over? KEEN!”

To be honest, though, I am shocked that Vala walked away from that. (First, we were shocked that it didn’t then EXPLODE, the way most movie/tv cars do in that situation.) It kind of sounded like some of the others in the car were **killed**, later. The way that thing bounced, it’s nothing short of a miracle that she was able to get herself out of it, with no injuries at all, and that she was alert enough to take Cam prisoner and commandeer that other car.

I would also just like to say: Cam, you WUSS. You were shot in the ARM, why the hell are you writhing around on the ground all ineffectively? Later we will find out that the bullet only **creased** your bicep. Good lord, man. I mean, I’m all for realistic heroes who don’t just shrug off sucking chest wounds and all, but SERIOUSLY. BUCK UP.

However, this leads to a long sequence in which we get to ogle Cam shirtless (and possibly naked under the blanket), and darned if he isn’t pretty cute all handcuffed to the bed (thus were a hundred slashfics born). “Wow,” I said, “I didn’t know Ben Browder was that hairy. Was he always that hairy?” (What I meant was: did he shave/wax for FS, but they’re letting him be hairy now?) Telepresence: “I’m not sure, I don’t really remember. (Later, after

my_tallest got home, we asked HIM, because we knew HE would remember; and indeed, he was able to tell us about every single instance in which BB had his shirt off in “Farscape”. Apparently it’s tattooed on his frontal lobes or something.)

Cam was very Crichton in that scene, I thought (I mean that in a good way). Maybe it was a combination of the position he was in, and doing the scene with just Claudia. Whichever, it was reasonably cute, although one really has to wonder why Vala went to the trouble of bringing Cam along to the motel with her, instead of just leaving him whinging on the road while she took the car. It didn’t seem as if she was finding out much of use from him. I suppose it all worked out, since they had to have used his credit card to get the room and all – I would have liked to have seen her trying to suavely wrestle a complaining, handcuffed guy into the room, though. (But who knows? Maybe that particular motel was used to that sort of thing.)

(Have just realized: of course! Vala had to take Cam... to drive the car. Because we have no indication that Vala would have learned to drive prior to this. Okay, then.)

Even better was the scene of the rest of SG-1 finally breaking into the room and finding Cam, the rather unconcerned prisoner, armed with the TV remote (thoughtful of Vala) and surrounded by junk-food wrappers. Oh, Cam, honey – it may not be what it looks like, but nonetheless, what it really is doesn’t look GOOD. (He had one hand free the entire time, and he couldn’t get himself free?)

So, fine, pursuit, another warehouse (presumably), a firefight (boy, those Trust guys are on the ball), and a touching moment in which Daniel uses the full force of his intense blue eyes to talk Vala down, and whoopsy-daisy, we’re all done.

And now SG-1 is a five-person team, for real. Which it might as well be, since it was functioning that way lately anyway. Aww. And everybody is all, “Daniel, you DOG” and “he doth protest too much” – although, Landry’s “surprise” is a bit overplayed considering I imagine he had to authorize Daniel taking Vala off-base in the first place.

And Cam suggests going out for ribs – and, DUDE. Ribs, while you’re one-handed? That is a poor tactical decision. And writing-wise, I am quite surprised that they did not do the obvious thing and, you know, have Vala suggest that they all go to Sol’s Diner instead.

Next week: oh! I thought they had killed off that Lucian guy! I’m pretty glad that they didn’t, though. Huh.

SGA 3.08: McKay and Mrs. Miller

Will say up front that we enjoyed the hell out of this episode. The first act was a huge treat – noting all the ways in which it was totally obvious that Jeannie was indeed being played by DH’s sister, and admiring the quality of the writing of their exchanges. In particular, the whole sequence where Rodney visits her house and then gets her up to the Daedalus – we particularly admired that the writing for Rodney was so sharp, by which I mean, that he was such an unremitting JERK with just about every line/exchange he had. Ah, Rodney – don’t ever change. (This will be important later, obviously.)

I think that the most awesome moment was that one where Jeannie turns to him and says, “So basically, I solved your problem in my **spare time**. With **fingerpaints**.” (*finger-wiggle*) That was the moment we were all, OMG WE LOVE HER, CAN WE KEEP HER? (Alas, the answer to that is, no.) (Secondarily, we loved JF’s delivery on, “I was just **saying hello**!”, plus that Rodney made the “Kirk” jab canon.)

And then of course there was Sam’s utter inability to take in the fact that Rodney’s first name turns out to be “Meredith”. **First** name, no less – not middle. (“There’s a bomb launched into the middle of SGA fandom,” Telepresence commented.)

As for the actual plot? Ehn, blah blah technobabble-cakes. They’re going to do something with the something and we’re going to get something GREAT out of it – except you just know it’s too good to be true and it’ll all be going horribly wrong. I was impressed, though, by the fact that Zelenka and his staff managed to whip up that Big Circular Thing in only a few weeks.

So of course, the “astronomical chance” turns out to be “1-in-1”, and we wind up with… “Ace” McKay, or “Rod” as he is apparently known (**gag**), with the Spiky Hair of Cool. (Okay, am trying to be fair about that, but the only “Rod” I can think of is Rod Stewart, and… no, that’s not actually helping that much.)

For a second there, I almost thought they were going to go all the way, and let the other shoe drop to reveal that Rod’s AU’s Sheppard isn’t just a know-it-all, he’s actually the scientist guy, while Rod – who showed up wearing the pleather jacket that our Shep now favors – would turn out to be the soldier or something. But no; oh well. (Doubtless that fanfic has already been written.)

But the thing is – watching DH play Rod was kind of interesting, and yet… despite some of the jokes going on, I really found Rod a much less compelling character than Rodney. Not to mention, I totally made the “creepy” observation fairly early, myself. I believe it was during the golf scene. I half expected Rod to turn out to be a villain of some kind, he was so smooth and “perfect”. (Yet I’m glad he wasn’t, as that would probably have been too neat.)

The biggest problem I had with Rod was the blithe assumption that he was stuck on this side of the… thingie, and there seemed to be a good chance that they’d have to “keep” him, and… um? He’s from a “parallel universe”, which sounds a lot like an “alternate universe” to me, and… years of SG-1 continuity cemented this whole Entropic Cascade Failure thing, which I think Rodney would not have suffered but which would have meant death for Rod. Right?

Yet, everyone was so unconcerned about it – or, to be accurate, it was never even brought up as a problem to **be** concerned about – that I kind of wondered what I was missing in terms of how Rod’s situation was supposed to differ from alt!Sam’s in “Point of View”. Were the writers in fact conceiving of this “parallel universe” thing as being different from what we had seen before? Or maybe it’s the actual means of transport from one parallel/alternate to another? If you don’t use the Quantum Mirror, you avoid ECF somehow? Erg.

I confess freely that I didn’t discover the answer on my own. I happened to read in

miera_c’s post that SG-1 itself wanked a way around the ECF problem in “Ripple Effect” – which just goes to show you how good MY memory is for recent canon. (**hangs head in shame**)

LEE: Sixteen different SG-1s, sixteen different points of origin, but only one point of convergence, this universe. Now, given the fact that previous trips through this black hole didn't produce a rupture in the subspace structure…

CARTER: They may not have produced the rupture, but it is entirely possible that their repeated trips contributed to the deterioration of the space-time fabric that weakened, eventually ceded to the singularity, creating the bridge between the various realities.

LEE: (nodding to Carter) And I'm thinking that the proximity of these realities in relation to each other may account for the absence of the, uh, entropic cascade failure. But, that still doesn't help us with the main problem. How do we reverse the process?

CARTER: I don't have the answer to that. Because if I did, we all wouldn't be here.

There – did you blink? Did you miss it? Geez, guys – you know, if you’re going to overturn a huge point of previous continuity that has stood as established fact for your show’s universe for NINE YEARS, you could at least do so a little more noticeably than a throwaway line from a minor character at the start of a very distracting scene. (Because thinking back on it, I know darned well that what was happening while those lines were said was, we were gleefully looking at and identifying all of the multiple Carters in the room, and not listening all that closely.)

ALSO, if you are going to overturn continuity like that – could you come up with a better fanwank for it? Because, “the proximity of these realities in relation to each other”???? **LAME**. Oh, **SO** lame. It doesn’t… it doesn’t even make SENSE. How could any of these AU teams (some of which were kind of wacky) possibly be CLOSER to canon reality than the AU from “Point of View”? I ask you?

For comparison, let’s refer back to “Point of View”:

SAMANTHA: (to Carter) Not medical. Temporal. Entropic cascade failure.

CARTER: On the cellular level?

SAMANTHA: Yes. I thought it would take years, not days.

CARTER: So it's a side effect of travel through the quantum mirror.

KAWALSKY: Then why don't I have it?

CARTER: I'm guessing Dr. Carter has it because I'm here. The increased entropy generated by both of us existing in the same reality might…theoretically be causing a temporal distortion.

SAMANTHA: It's not theoretical anymore.

While at first the wording of this suggests that you could link it to **travel through the quantum mirror**, the explanation then really just says it’s two versions of the same person existing in the same reality that's the problem – which puts paid to the “means of travel” theory. Although honestly, if they had pulled that out of their butts as the explanation in “Ripple Effect” and in this ep, I would have been more willing to forgive it than I am willing to go with the “proximity” explanation.

Not least, because it ought to work in exactly the opposite manner -- **closer** versions ought to increase the danger, since the two versions should be **more** like each other; whereas, the less like each other the two versions were, then the less like “two of the same person existing in the same reality” it ought to be.

**sigh**

The sad part is that “Ripple Effect” would have been improved by being put on the clock like that (“figure out a solution before the 48 hours is up”), and by the pathos of the fact that all the alternates would be toast except for those few, like Janet and Martouf, who were already dead in canon’s reality.

Similarly, that clock and that pathos would have worked well for this SGA ep. It would have given even more weight to Rod’s act of sacrifice, and given a poignancy to his interactions with everyone, and made even more dramatic and generous the outcome of finding a way to get him home. Why did they sacrifice the extra dramatic jolt that the ECF/48-hour window concept once created? Especially since, in neither the SG-1 ep in which they did it, nor in this ep, did they need to. (In neither case did they have a dire need, as far as I could tell, to extend the elapsed time within the ep past 48 hours, for example.)

As well, I think it was a mistake on the show’s part not to MENTION it at all. Though, as far as I can tell, the concept causes the biggest problem for the SGA viewer who is familiar with SG-1 continuity, but nevertheless, not **THAT** familiar with recent continuity. I’m still watching SG-1 moderately closely, after all, yet I completely missed the reference in “Ripple Effect” – so if the writers of this ep were counting on our remembering that as a reason not to be worried about Rod possibly sticking around, well.. no. That doesn’t work. It certainly doesn’t work for SGA viewers who have stopped watching SG-1 altogether. (The only plus side I can think of is, those SGA viewers who have never seen SG-1 at all or who haven’t seen the AU Mirror eps, and so aren’t aware of the ECF concept. Possibly, too, this covers the casual viewer of one or both shows, who doesn’t necessarily remember the point of continuity from SG-1.)

But it’s still sloppy, especially as it could have been covered by a two-line exchange between a couple of characters like Jeannie and Zelenka.

I did like the fact that, in the end, they were willing to entirely drain the ZPM. That was a nice move, to set them back a bit and give them more dramatic possibility in eps to come – while, at the same time, it doesn’t **entirely** strand them. Sure, without it, they can’t dial Earth any more at **ALL**. But they still have the Daedalus, and they are working on that “Gate network” idea, as Rodney commented.

So, Jeannie, and her interactions with her brother, were more of a plus for me in this ep than the “duelling Rodneys” plotline, although even that, I pretty much liked as well. Thumbs-up for the performances.

Galactica 1980

my_tallest’s TiVo happened to have picked up the pilot ep of this show, and I had never seen it before. (I also had never seen the original BSG before about 5 years ago, when we watched it all from a friend of a friend’s tapes prior to the new mini-series coming out. And… wow. But, fun!)

**WOW** WAS THAT **BAD**!!!

In fact, the only proper thing to do would be to quote “Bloom County”:

"Galactica 1980 brought the word 'BAD' to new levels of badness. Bad acting. Bad effects. Bad everything. This film just oozed rottenness from every bad scene... Simply bad beyond all infinite dimensions of possible badness!"

"Well, maybe not that bad, but Lord, it wasn't good."

Bad acting: now, look, I have me some fondness for Kent McCord (and not from what you’re thinking; in truth, when I was very small, I was way into “Adam 12” reruns), and as a poor-man’s Starbuck, Barry Van Dyke could have been… worse, I suppose. He was good-looking in that late-70s way, at least, even if he had almost no pizazz whatsoever, but… oh, man. The bad writing. The bad, bad double-entendre jokes on the “you’re actually from outer space” theme. The bad, condescending “poor, primitive Earth” attitude. The bad "we don't understand your Earth ways" stuff. COUSIN OLIVER!!!! Aaaigh!

Bad effects: baaaaaaaaaaad greenscreens, or bluescreens or whatever the hell they were back at that point. In one sequence with the fleet, you could see the square matte lines where they had spliced in a new shuttle onto stock footage. And that’s the GOOD part, really, because the only good effects they HAD were when they would use stock footage from the original show. There was another bit where you could see the motion rods on some of the Cylon raiders swooping in for the attack. OH! And the way they would pull out of their ASSES stuff that the original show had **never had** (I mean, I know it was supposed to be 20 years after the original show’s time period, but still, man – the gun that FREEZES PEOPLE? Sheesh!)

And then: the flying motorcycles. 'Nuff said.

Bad fashions: well, okay, that’s a given. I mean, it’s 1980, after all, the last gasp of the late 70s in other words, just about to turn into the 80s. (This is the same year that “Xanadu” was made, for example.) Puffy jackets in earth-tones. **Humongous** glasses. Hairstyles, oh, the whole 9 yards. **shudder**

So, okay, I’ve seen it. I have finally managed to put another notch in my Pop Culture belt. I swear to god, if My Tallest’s TiVo picks up any more, I am NOT WATCHING.

Because the original BSG, when viewed today, had a certain gleeful 70s disco cheesiness to it, in addition to the rather blatant Spaaaaaace Mormons! thing that it had going on. I actually watched that and it made me feel rather cheerful. “Galactica 1980” did NOT make me feel cheerful.

Although I do admit, it made me laugh.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

cofax7

Doubtless that fanfic has already been written. Yup.

seperis has a series of stories about a Rodney from a universe where he was socially adept (if not a soldier) and "his" John was a very cranky and difficult but brilliant scientist (who hated Carter, heh). They're actually quite good.

Good call on the ECF stuff; I totally forgot that bit from Ripple Effect (if I ever noticed it).

I loved Jeannie too. She takes no shit from Rodney, and she's not wigged out by him, the way Carter sometimes is. I didn't like Rod much--they were really playing up the Perfect too much, and also I don't like Golf. *g*

From:

(the artist formerly known as orca_girl)

SciFi Friday: SG1, SGA, bonus (09-08-2006)

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