Y'Know, Doctor Who's Sutekh Would Eat This Guy For Breakfast.
And it's another SG-1 post! On to season three, episode 2...
Seth:
I'd call this a middling episode, at most, but it does feature Jacob & Selmak, who I always love, and it's got a few good character bits.
I especially like Teal'c telling the Jaffa joke that nobody thinks is hysterically funny but him, and then later sharing his parenting opinions with Jacob. And not just because they're good character moments for him, either, or because the former is really funny (although they are and it is). Whenever you're dealing with an alien character among humans, there tends to be a lot of "Ha, ha, he does not get our humor or understand our ways and our idioms" combined with a fair dollop of "now he will learn to be human in every sense of the word and thus become a better person." There's usually a strong sense of the person in question being out of place, but very little sense of them having a full-fledged culture of their own that is just as real to them and just as alien to us. So it's wonderful to me to see that Teal'c has a sense of humor humans don't understand, just as humans have humor he doesn't understand, and that he thinks perhaps we don't love our children as much as we ought to (and possibly has a point). More of that sort of thing, please.
Speaking of Teal'c and children, I also liked the mention of Ry'ak. I'd been wondering where he was and how he was doing. I was beginning to think they'd forgotten about him. The retcon about how the electrical shock managed to snap him out of his brainwashedness was pretty awkward and provided a plot device for this episode that was more than a little too convenient, but I don't think I'm going to object to it very much, as I found the whole electroshock therapy thing difficult to swallow, anyway.
And speaking of sons -- see how smooth I am with the segues? -- do they ever tell us exactly why Sam's brother stopped talking to his family? I'm vaguely curious.
I was a little confused, by the way, because I remember a previous mention of a Goa'uld called Sokar, although not exactly what was said about him, and I thought that was actually the same god as Set/Seth/Sutekh in Egyptian mythology. Apparently this wasn't the same guy, though. Right?
Oh, and Daniel's hair is starting to grow out a little. Hooray!
Seth:
I'd call this a middling episode, at most, but it does feature Jacob & Selmak, who I always love, and it's got a few good character bits.
I especially like Teal'c telling the Jaffa joke that nobody thinks is hysterically funny but him, and then later sharing his parenting opinions with Jacob. And not just because they're good character moments for him, either, or because the former is really funny (although they are and it is). Whenever you're dealing with an alien character among humans, there tends to be a lot of "Ha, ha, he does not get our humor or understand our ways and our idioms" combined with a fair dollop of "now he will learn to be human in every sense of the word and thus become a better person." There's usually a strong sense of the person in question being out of place, but very little sense of them having a full-fledged culture of their own that is just as real to them and just as alien to us. So it's wonderful to me to see that Teal'c has a sense of humor humans don't understand, just as humans have humor he doesn't understand, and that he thinks perhaps we don't love our children as much as we ought to (and possibly has a point). More of that sort of thing, please.
Speaking of Teal'c and children, I also liked the mention of Ry'ak. I'd been wondering where he was and how he was doing. I was beginning to think they'd forgotten about him. The retcon about how the electrical shock managed to snap him out of his brainwashedness was pretty awkward and provided a plot device for this episode that was more than a little too convenient, but I don't think I'm going to object to it very much, as I found the whole electroshock therapy thing difficult to swallow, anyway.
And speaking of sons -- see how smooth I am with the segues? -- do they ever tell us exactly why Sam's brother stopped talking to his family? I'm vaguely curious.
I was a little confused, by the way, because I remember a previous mention of a Goa'uld called Sokar, although not exactly what was said about him, and I thought that was actually the same god as Set/Seth/Sutekh in Egyptian mythology. Apparently this wasn't the same guy, though. Right?
Oh, and Daniel's hair is starting to grow out a little. Hooray!