I can has new pants?!!!!
So my new jeans to replace one pair have come and they are a little tighter than the pair I wore almost every day for 6 months but they are awesome enough to be worn on the plane tomorrow.
I leave tomorrow, get back the 20th, pack on the 21st and then go to school on the 22nd. So excited!
So before I leave I thought I would finally post a little tidbit of what I've been doing at school. My essay on John/Rodney and how it is totally canon and Rodney does not really like women. My teacher loved it. A lot of my evidence is taken from fics and other people's lj's, but it's all credited and cited in the essay. That is my disclaimer. I loved writing this essay and reading all the fic to write it and come up with evidence. And re-watching "The Last Man" like, a million times. I still love that episode, maybe even more now. So now for your reading pleasure while I am away,
Everybody Loves John Sheppard, But He Loves Rodney
The relationship between Rodney McKay and John Sheppard is one of the main relationships in the show “Stargate Atlantis.” As the show has continued, the relationship between Rodney and John has grown, so much so that they went from total strangers to best friends and teammates who would never think to leave the other behind. When the Genii kidnap Rodney, John does whatever it takes to get him back and make sure Rodney is safe, even if it means putting himself in danger and getting injured. No other episode epitomizes this relationship as much as the Season Four finale, “The Last Man,” wherein Sheppard gets sent into the future through a wormhole fluke and Rodney spends the rest of his life figuring out how to get John back. After John disappears the Atlantis expedition starts to fail and things go “from bad to worse.” Rodney leaves Atlantis and forms a relationship with a woman, but he never gives up on finding John. The relationship between John and Rodney is key to this episode and the lengths Rodney goes to rescue John shows just how much Rodney cares for John.
As Rodney says to John, “Things didn’t exactly go well for us after your disappearance.” But why is it that things deteriorated so much after John left? Atlantis survived after the loss of its first military commander and after the loss of Elizabeth, but once John is gone the expedition is in peril and eventually things fall apart completely. The fanfic “Missing” by Eildon Rhymer, suggests that this is because John is the heart of Atlantis and the most important of all its staff:
Did Atlantis have a heart?
Rodney might have thought it to be Elizabeth, once upon a time. She had led them with strength and compassion, had reined them in, had cared. She had known people's names long before Rodney had managed to learn even half of them. Take Elizabeth away, he might have thought sometimes, and the expedition would collapse.
…
Elizabeth had gone, and they had survived. Sam wasn't Elizabeth, and wasn't trying to be, but she brought her own brand of wisdom and compassion to the role. Half the people on the base had arrived after Carson's death, and more and more had never known Elizabeth.
Life went on. And then Teyla had been taken from them.
Was Teyla their heart? She brought empathy and understanding to the team, caring passionately about things that sometimes, even after all these years, those from Earth had not been able to fully understand at first. But she had been taken, and life had gone on. They had never given up hope - Sheppard had never given up hope - that they would find her, and everything would be well again.
And now Sheppard was gone. Lorne had assumed his duties, but he looked haunted by being the last person to see his commanding officer alive. The search for Teyla was falling apart, without Sheppard to give it drive and purpose. Even at the grimmest of times, Sheppard had been able to muster a smile, but now all smiles were gone.
This section of the fanfic “Missing” shows just how important to the mission John is. The author has a valid point. The mission goes on mostly unharmed when they lose other important personnel, but once they lose John, the expedition becomes doomed. Everyone that was lost has been replaced; Elizabeth by Samantha and then by Woolsey, Carson by Keller, and John by Lorne, but only the loss of John has a serious effect on the expedition. The livejournal user wraithfodder had this to say on the subject of the impact John’s loss had on the expedition, “This was the science fiction version of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, sorta. It shows the impact of one man's life on everyone around him, and apparently, Sheppard made a heckuva lot of difference since the universe sorta went to hell in a handbasket without him around.” This summarizes how it seems everyone felt about John’s loss, within the episode and outside of it. When John disappears, the expedition ceases to function properly and, with the addition of Woolsey, even its mission changes. It changes from one of good will and trading to one of self-preservation.
Even John knows that it is the loss of him that is the most devastating to the expedition. When Rodney tells him what happened after he disappeared he believes that if he were there things would not have gone so badly:
Rodney: It’s not your fault.
John: I should have been there
Rodney: And you will be. And knowing the address where we eventually found Teyla, you will be able to get there much quicker. You’ll save Teyla, save the baby, change the fate of the galaxy.
John blames things going bad on the lack of his presence, rather than on the circumstances. John feels that if he had been there, things would not have gone down the way they did, with or without the information future Rodney gives him. Not only does John emphasize the impact of his presence, Rodney does so as well. Rodney implies that it will be John who will save Teyla, not the team as a whole. Rodney places great value on John being there, not just getting the information about where they found Teyla to the past. To Rodney, it is all about getting John back, the information is merely incidental. Rodney only tells John about the crystal containing the information right before he goes into the stasis chamber. And though Rodney mentions that knowing the address where they found Teyla will make a lot of difference, he offers the crystal as almost an afterthought, not the main point of the whole project. This is because the point of the project is to get John back. The livejournal user x-parrot also points this out:
Here's the thing, though - [Rodney’s] idea hinges on saving John. Except...it doesn't have to be John.
…If Rodney figured out the flares that exactly - wouldn't it have been easier to find another one to send himself back? Or some newbie scientist or strapping young Marine he could persuade into it? He could have put himself/someone else into cold storage and waited (if necessary) several thousand years for the right flare to come around, and only be going back a fraction of the time.
Instead, Rodney puts everything on getting to Sheppard - on taking the risk that Atlantis would still be there after almost fifty millennia, on the risk that Sheppard would survive the trip - because John's loss was the first thing that went wrong, and if Rodney's going to fix something, he's going to fix it all. (“more thoughts on “Last Man”, redux!”)
In fact, when Rodney has his epiphany, he believes that if he can do it “Teyla won’t die,” meaning that he believes John was the key to why they did not find Teyla in time. Rodney places importance on John’s presence in the effort to save Teyla and believes that if John is there, Teyla will be saved and John will “make it so that none of this ever happened.”
It is obvious throughout this episode just how much Rodney cares about Sheppard, though how much Rodney means to Sheppard is much more subtle. Rodney spent twenty-five years working to get Sheppard back, which proves his devotion to John, while Sheppard has only himself and his reactions to Rodney’s actions to show how much he cares about Rodney. In the story “Missing” Rodney talks to the Beckett in stasis about how he is feeling with Sheppard missing and unable to figure out what happened to him:
It feels as if I'm losing… One by one, I'm losing everything that matters to me, everyone I care about - and I know what you're going to say: that it's not all about me. So I'm selfish. So sue me."
I wasn't going to say that, he imagined the answer. You said "care about".
"Care about," he said again, and there was no sense of epiphany there, for he had known this for months - no, for years. Carson and Sheppard, two friends for two different sides of him. Elizabeth. Teyla. Even Ronon.
But this isn't the Rodney I know, he thought he heard. Talking about feelings when you could be saving the day. Towards the end the mental voice shifted, moving from Scottish to an American drawl.
"No," he said, as he moved away from the chamber that held Carson's form. He had worked without sleep for two days, trying to work out where the wormhole had jumped, trying to find where Sheppard was. Sam had finally ordered him to stop - "There's a very capable team working on this, Rodney, and if you don't get some sleep, you'll start making mistakes."
"Well," he said awkwardly. "Good night. I'll see you tomorrow, unless I… uh… unless I'm too busy saving Sheppard. It must be my turn this time."
In this story Rodney feels that is it his duty to save Sheppard because of all that has transpired between them, as well as their friendship. Rodney is admitting to himself just how deeply he cares about John and his other co-workers. However, spending twenty-five years figuring out how to save someone you “care about” is a bit more extreme than just running into the heat of a battle and saving someone, like John usually does for Rodney. While this is a piece of fanfiction, and thus not cannon, the idea is still there in the series. There is a close bond between Rodney and his team, and this scene explores it further, while keeping Rodney in character. In the future timeline Rodney, in addition to spending twenty-five years figuring out how to save him, insists that “Sheppard is not dead!” when Woolsey tries to suggest otherwise. In response, Woolsey just emphasizes the fact that, dead or not, he is lost to them. But Rodney refuses to give up on John and the people that he cares about, so when John is the only one left he devotes his life to trying to get John back.
In the abandoned Atlantis of the future the relationship between Sheppard and McKay is very intense and is picked up on through verbal and facial cues in their reactions to each other and John’s reaction to learning about what happened to Rodney. When Rodney tells John where is he, John gets upset, but when he starts thinking about the implications of what it means in terms of Rodney and his friends, his voice goes soft, and when Rodney interrupts him by saying, “Dead. Dead and buried and turned to dust a long, long time ago” you can see a visible change in John’s face. Whereas before it was clear that John was thinking, even if he was speaking with a softer voice, immediately John’s face takes on a look as if he were a child and someone had just told him his puppy died. John looks shocked and sad and as Rodney keeps talking he looks more and more upset. Wolfen Moondaughter of pinkraygun.com describes the scene as such:
John (understandably) looks like he’s been sucker-punched as he stares hard at McKay. (*Squee!* Poor boy, realising that his best friend is long gone! Or, if you’re a McShepper like me, we can imagine that it’s even worse than just losing a friend … *Cough*) Rodney rambles on a bit in tones that are sad, resigned, and even a bit bored, about how everyone and everything John knew is gone. (Once again, much love to Flanigan for his facial expression; the look on John’s face is heart-wrenching. Mmmm, angst!) (“Stargate Atlantis: The Last Man”)
This scene helps viewers to see that John cares about Rodney just as much as Rodney cares about John. The pain is his face is due to realizing that Rodney is dead, not realizing that he is all alone. The initial reaction of sadness is to Rodney’s death, not to say, Teyla’s or Ronon’s, who are also dead, though he does not yet know the circumstances.
How Rodney reacts to seeing John again after all these years show how much he cares for John and how happy he is to see him, even though he tells John, “I wouldn’t go to all this trouble just so we could have a chat,” chat he does when he comes back into contact with John and despite the circumstances, he is happy to see John once more. When John is trying the radio and he finally connects to Rodney, Rodney’s voice over the radio is excited to be hearing from Sheppard, as well as amazed by what has happened and that his plan worked. When the Rodney hologram appears he says with a happy and wistful expression on his face, “God, it’s good to see you again.” He jokes around with Sheppard, but when it comes to talking to Sheppard, he is unsure what to say, “It’s funny, you know? I spent the last 25 years of my life trying to figure out how to make this work, and I never once thought what I was going to say to you when you got here.” Rodney is so overcome by the sight of John; it takes him a few moments to collect himself before he launches into the explanation John asks of him. John too, is taken aback by the sight of Rodney, who is “…different,” according to John. John is used to his own Rodney, so the sight of an older Rodney evokes a reaction from him.
Even though this Rodney is a hologram and often refers to himself as such, John treats him as if he were really Rodney. When John first comes face to face with the Rodney hologram he questions if he is a hologram and then puts his hand through it, as if to double check that it really was not Rodney, as he says that Rodney looks “different.” When John talks to the hologram he refers to the hologram as “you” or “McKay,” referring to the hologram itself, but when the hologram replies, he talks about the real Dr. McKay and himself as two separate entities. When John and Rodney are walking around Atlantis and John runs ahead of Rodney, instead of just reappearing where John is, Rodney follows him on foot, further adding to the illusion that Rodney is not a hologram. It is not until the hologram is unable to come up with a solution for a problem that Rodney would have been able to come up with a solution to that John finally realizes that the hologram is not truly Rodney. Since the hologram was not programmed for certain variables, such as the sand and the sun turning into a red giant, he is unable to come up with a solution, leaving John to come up with one, which he does. The other limitation that reminds John Rodney is only a hologram is when he wants to help John up after he comes in from the sandstorm and is lying on the ground, but reminds John by saying, “I’d help you up, but I’m…” and he trails off flapping his hands helplessly, upset that he cannot help John more. Though the hologram Rodney is not the real Rodney, he still has Rodney’s mannerisms, memories and feelings. The hologram wants to do everything he can for John and he has feelings towards John.
The hologram is worried about John when he goes out into the sandstorm. At first he tries to talk John out of it by saying, “Have you ever been in one of those?” meaning a sandstorm, to which John answers, “As a matter of fact, I have.” Even so, Rodney tries to convince John to wait out the storm, worried about his safety. When John finally gets Rodney to agree, Rodney tells John, “I can’t go outside, but I can stay in contact with you over the radio… I’ll be waiting for you [on the other side].” John then goes out into the storm and we see Rodney move, as only a hologram can move, to the other door and stand there looking worried and calling for Sheppard, looking more and more worried until Sheppard finally responds at which point Rodney is quick to reassure John, “I’m still here.” Rodney talks John through the sandstorm and checks up on him. When John fails to respond one can see the terror on Rodney’s face that something has happened to John. When John finally enters on the other side, he collapses through Rodney - another reminder that Rodney is a hologram - and Rodney looks terrified that John is going to die, crying out, “Your bio signature’s barely registering!” The terror on Rodney’s face makes one feel for him and hope that John will wake up soon so he will not be worried for too much longer. When we finally return to the scene and to John waking up, Rodney is hovering over his body, ready to help, but feeling ineffectual since he cannot touch John to help him up.
John feels for Rodney as well. In addition to the pain we see on John’s face when he realizes that Rodney is dead and that the hologram is not truly Rodney, he wants to know what happened to Rodney. He says to Rodney in a flirty tone, while leaning against the wall in a seductive manner, “You know, you never told me what happened to you.” John is giving Rodney his best “tell me everything look,” and pressing on even when Rodney looks down and makes shifty eyes, protesting, “You don’t want to hear about that.” But John does. And if the way John eyed Rodney up and down when the hologram first appeared has anything to do with their relationship, Rodney is right to be shifty-eyed and sheepish. After all, he ended up with Jennifer Keller, instead of the Air Force Colonel who eyed up a hologram of him as an old man. And even when Rodney tells John about what happened with him and Keller, John is encouraging because he wants to see Rodney happy and does not want to go back and change the timeline if it will ruin Rodney’s happiness, even if it means that his own happiness will be sacrificed.
Rodney and Jennifer Keller form a relationship while they are traveling back to Earth on the Daedalus, a relationship that David Hewlett, the actor who plays McKay, thought happened too fast. The way Rodney describes the relationship to John is that is just happened without much conscious thought:
We had three weeks on the Daedalus with nothing else to think about but everything that had happened. We went over it a thousand times, trying to imagine what we might have done differently. It was awful. Well, at least we had each other. By the time we got back to Earth, well, we weren’t just colleagues anymore.
Rodney describes the relationship as something that just happened, and the relationship seems as not only one of convenience, but also one without much passion. The episode shows what is supposed to be the first kiss between Rodney and Jennifer. It is not the most romantic of kisses and there does not seem to be much feeling behind it. To start off, the room in which they are standing in dark with all the lights off. They are looking at the Earth from space, which might be considered romantic, but the gloomy lighting seems to be killing the romantic mood. It is Jennifer who first turns to Rodney and puts her hand on his arm. Upon first viewing, it reads as a sad scene and it seems that Jennifer is merely comforting Rodney. It is Jennifer making all the moves in this scene. Not only does she first touch Rodney, but she also then turns towards him. When they lean in for the kiss they are barely touching. Rodney has turned towards Keller and put his hand on her arm, a touch even less intimate than the hand on his arm, if that is possible. When the director zooms in on the second kiss that Keller and Rodney share there is very little expression on Rodney and Jennifer’s faces. This kiss is nothing that could be described as passion or love. Fans describe this scene in many ways, but most of the descriptions are quite similar. The livejournal user naye says, “This reads more as a bone-deep, weary sadness shared than passion, to me.” Wolfen Moondaughter on pinkraygun.com says that the relationship between McKay and Keller is “a we’re one of the last two left sort of love, bonding over experiences that not many others can really share.” In the fanfic “A Mantra for These Times” by x-parrot, Rodney describes his relationship with Keller as “holding on.” No viewer reads the relationship between Rodney and Keller as one that would have happened naturally had John not disappeared and they left Atlantis at the same time, and they were only other person understanding what the other had been through. Even the scene where Jennifer starts coughing does not speak of passion and love. Rodney and Jennifer are walking along, looking happy, but their body language shows something different than the dialogue does. Rodney has both of his hands in his pockets while Jennifer is holding one of Rodney’s arms. When Jennifer leans over and coughs it takes Rodney a long time to react and take his hands out of his pockets and even then all he does is put one hand on her back. The scenes between Rodney and Keller do not read as people in a loving relationship, but as people who are clinging to each other since they have no one else left.
Jennifer falling ill is not Rodney’s main motivation to fix what went wrong; rather, it is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. One of the writers of the episode, Joe Mallozzi, writes in his blog:
Jennifer’s death isn’t the only reason Rodney decides to try to undo the timeline. But it is the final straw. Prior to that, he considered the possibility that he could actually come up with a solution next to impossible. But, with Jennifer dead, the last positive thing in his life died with her and he was finally able to wholly commit himself to the seemingly impossible task.
When Rodney has his epiphany about how to fix everything he abandons Jennifer to work on it and is gleeful on her deathbed. When he returns to her and she asks where he has been he responds, “I’ve been working.” Rather than spend time with the woman he supposedly loves while she is dying, he has been working. This does not speak to me as something a devoted partner would do, bringing even less credibility to their relationship. When Keller asks Rodney to elaborate about what he has been working on he responds:
The solution, to everything. Well, you, this, all of this. I mean, Atlantis, Pegasus, Michael, everything. … I’m going to change the timeline. I’m gonna make it so none of this ever happened. I mean, you won’t get sick, Teyla won’t die, Michael won’t complete his research, none of it.
When Keller tries to talk Rodney out of it, making it her dying wish, to a certain extent, that he not work on it, he completely ignores her saying that he will figure it out, “even if it takes the rest of [his] life.” Rodney is completely ignoring the woman he supposedly loves while she is on her deathbed in order to work on fixing everything, even though he knows it probably will take the rest of his life. And saving her, while he does mention it, is not even the point of why he wants to figure out how to fix things. X-parrot sums up the whole scene very well:
He's talking to her on her deathbed, telling her that what made "us" happen will never happen, and he looks thrilled. Yes, he's telling her that she'll live - as part of a list: "I'm going to make it so none of this ever happened - you won't get sick, Teyla won't die, Michael won't complete his research, none of it." Of course he mentions her first - she's on her deathbed! But saving Jennifer's life isn't the point, it's a happy byproduct (“more on “Last Man””).
Rodney knows that the universe he is now living in is not the right one and he decides to fix it, despite the woman that he is in a relationship in making it her dying wish that he not do so.
And Rodney does spend, if not the rest of his life working on it, then the next twenty-five years. Keller’s death that gives him the idea about how to fix what went wrong, but it is not something that he had not been thinking about. In fact, he and Keller had spent the three weeks on the Daedalus thinking about what they could have done differently. But is it John that Rodney is so eager to rescue that he works on it until he is an old man, which we see in a montage of shots wherein we see Rodney at first writing in a notepad, then on a dry board and finally we see a very old Rodney, the one we see as the hologram, working with a futuristic chalkboard/notepad hybrid controlled by his hands in gloves. Rodney gave up a job he loved and took a low-paying boring job so that he could spend all of his free time working on the problem. Rodney tells John all about how Jeannie tried to get him to stop, but when she could not, she helped him out until, “Eventually, even she got fed up.” But Rodney is quick to assure John that, “I never wavered.” Rodney feels that it is important for John to know how hard he tried and how much it mattered to him. X-parrot says:
It's one thing to give your life for your friend's in a brief, impulsive blaze of glory. It's another thing to live, alone and obsessed and never faltering, for over two decades - when everyone is telling you that what you're attempting is impossible; when, even if you succeed - you'll never actually know. Rodney's plan was such that he knew that he would never see John again himself - that the universe he was saving, he was saving for another Rodney in another timeline (“more on “Last Man”).
Rodney is making a sacrifice for John and he wants John to know that he made it willingly. Rodney is assuring John that he would not give up on him and when the episode cuts back to Rodney and John talking, John looks sad and then looks down, thinking about what he could possibly say to Rodney after Rodney has given up his life to get John to this point. John finally comes up with, “Well, I guess I’ve had a tough day, but you’ve had a tough 25 years.” Rodney’s response to this is typical of the Rodney that cares enough about John enough to work on saving him for twenty-five years, and that is to assure him, “I’ll be waiting right here when you come out.”
Though Rodney forms a relationship with someone other than John during the course of “The Last Man,” the writers for the episode, Joe Mallozzi and Paul Mullie, see the episode as a Sheppard/McKay story. The lengths that they go for each other are never seen as fully showcased as they are in this episode. Rodney spends twenty-five years working on getting John back. John is willing to let everyone else die and not go back to his own time, and thus die himself as well, if it means that Rodney will have been happy in the past. The lengths that Rodney and John are willing to go for each other go beyond normal friendship, which is why fans of the show and fanfiction writers have such a field day with episodes such as this. There is so much information about John and Rodney’s relationship in just their body language towards each other that is not said aloud. Body language and actions of friendship can sometimes say more about a relationship than words ever could. Even though John cannot touch the hologram and the hologram cannot touch John, they try to touch each other and lament at the impossibility. It is actions like this that show that there is more than just a co-workers and teammates relationship between John and Rodney. Actions are always said to speak louder than words and the body language in this episode screams about how deeply John and Rodney care for each other.
Sources used:
“The Last Man” Stargate Atlantis: Season Four. Writ. Joe Mallozzi and Paul Mullie Dir. Martin Wood. SciFi. 7 March. 2008. DVD. MGM.
Ajw “Awakening.” Online posting. October 08 2008. November 21 2008.
The formatting's a bit messed up, but hopefully it's still readable. And yes, it is totally a 5,000 plus word essay. Hope you enjoy it!
I leave tomorrow, get back the 20th, pack on the 21st and then go to school on the 22nd. So excited!
So before I leave I thought I would finally post a little tidbit of what I've been doing at school. My essay on John/Rodney and how it is totally canon and Rodney does not really like women. My teacher loved it. A lot of my evidence is taken from fics and other people's lj's, but it's all credited and cited in the essay. That is my disclaimer. I loved writing this essay and reading all the fic to write it and come up with evidence. And re-watching "The Last Man" like, a million times. I still love that episode, maybe even more now. So now for your reading pleasure while I am away,
Everybody Loves John Sheppard, But He Loves Rodney
The relationship between Rodney McKay and John Sheppard is one of the main relationships in the show “Stargate Atlantis.” As the show has continued, the relationship between Rodney and John has grown, so much so that they went from total strangers to best friends and teammates who would never think to leave the other behind. When the Genii kidnap Rodney, John does whatever it takes to get him back and make sure Rodney is safe, even if it means putting himself in danger and getting injured. No other episode epitomizes this relationship as much as the Season Four finale, “The Last Man,” wherein Sheppard gets sent into the future through a wormhole fluke and Rodney spends the rest of his life figuring out how to get John back. After John disappears the Atlantis expedition starts to fail and things go “from bad to worse.” Rodney leaves Atlantis and forms a relationship with a woman, but he never gives up on finding John. The relationship between John and Rodney is key to this episode and the lengths Rodney goes to rescue John shows just how much Rodney cares for John.
As Rodney says to John, “Things didn’t exactly go well for us after your disappearance.” But why is it that things deteriorated so much after John left? Atlantis survived after the loss of its first military commander and after the loss of Elizabeth, but once John is gone the expedition is in peril and eventually things fall apart completely. The fanfic “Missing” by Eildon Rhymer, suggests that this is because John is the heart of Atlantis and the most important of all its staff:
Did Atlantis have a heart?
Rodney might have thought it to be Elizabeth, once upon a time. She had led them with strength and compassion, had reined them in, had cared. She had known people's names long before Rodney had managed to learn even half of them. Take Elizabeth away, he might have thought sometimes, and the expedition would collapse.
…
Elizabeth had gone, and they had survived. Sam wasn't Elizabeth, and wasn't trying to be, but she brought her own brand of wisdom and compassion to the role. Half the people on the base had arrived after Carson's death, and more and more had never known Elizabeth.
Life went on. And then Teyla had been taken from them.
Was Teyla their heart? She brought empathy and understanding to the team, caring passionately about things that sometimes, even after all these years, those from Earth had not been able to fully understand at first. But she had been taken, and life had gone on. They had never given up hope - Sheppard had never given up hope - that they would find her, and everything would be well again.
And now Sheppard was gone. Lorne had assumed his duties, but he looked haunted by being the last person to see his commanding officer alive. The search for Teyla was falling apart, without Sheppard to give it drive and purpose. Even at the grimmest of times, Sheppard had been able to muster a smile, but now all smiles were gone.
This section of the fanfic “Missing” shows just how important to the mission John is. The author has a valid point. The mission goes on mostly unharmed when they lose other important personnel, but once they lose John, the expedition becomes doomed. Everyone that was lost has been replaced; Elizabeth by Samantha and then by Woolsey, Carson by Keller, and John by Lorne, but only the loss of John has a serious effect on the expedition. The livejournal user wraithfodder had this to say on the subject of the impact John’s loss had on the expedition, “This was the science fiction version of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, sorta. It shows the impact of one man's life on everyone around him, and apparently, Sheppard made a heckuva lot of difference since the universe sorta went to hell in a handbasket without him around.” This summarizes how it seems everyone felt about John’s loss, within the episode and outside of it. When John disappears, the expedition ceases to function properly and, with the addition of Woolsey, even its mission changes. It changes from one of good will and trading to one of self-preservation.
Even John knows that it is the loss of him that is the most devastating to the expedition. When Rodney tells him what happened after he disappeared he believes that if he were there things would not have gone so badly:
Rodney: It’s not your fault.
John: I should have been there
Rodney: And you will be. And knowing the address where we eventually found Teyla, you will be able to get there much quicker. You’ll save Teyla, save the baby, change the fate of the galaxy.
John blames things going bad on the lack of his presence, rather than on the circumstances. John feels that if he had been there, things would not have gone down the way they did, with or without the information future Rodney gives him. Not only does John emphasize the impact of his presence, Rodney does so as well. Rodney implies that it will be John who will save Teyla, not the team as a whole. Rodney places great value on John being there, not just getting the information about where they found Teyla to the past. To Rodney, it is all about getting John back, the information is merely incidental. Rodney only tells John about the crystal containing the information right before he goes into the stasis chamber. And though Rodney mentions that knowing the address where they found Teyla will make a lot of difference, he offers the crystal as almost an afterthought, not the main point of the whole project. This is because the point of the project is to get John back. The livejournal user x-parrot also points this out:
Here's the thing, though - [Rodney’s] idea hinges on saving John. Except...it doesn't have to be John.
…If Rodney figured out the flares that exactly - wouldn't it have been easier to find another one to send himself back? Or some newbie scientist or strapping young Marine he could persuade into it? He could have put himself/someone else into cold storage and waited (if necessary) several thousand years for the right flare to come around, and only be going back a fraction of the time.
Instead, Rodney puts everything on getting to Sheppard - on taking the risk that Atlantis would still be there after almost fifty millennia, on the risk that Sheppard would survive the trip - because John's loss was the first thing that went wrong, and if Rodney's going to fix something, he's going to fix it all. (“more thoughts on “Last Man”, redux!”)
In fact, when Rodney has his epiphany, he believes that if he can do it “Teyla won’t die,” meaning that he believes John was the key to why they did not find Teyla in time. Rodney places importance on John’s presence in the effort to save Teyla and believes that if John is there, Teyla will be saved and John will “make it so that none of this ever happened.”
It is obvious throughout this episode just how much Rodney cares about Sheppard, though how much Rodney means to Sheppard is much more subtle. Rodney spent twenty-five years working to get Sheppard back, which proves his devotion to John, while Sheppard has only himself and his reactions to Rodney’s actions to show how much he cares about Rodney. In the story “Missing” Rodney talks to the Beckett in stasis about how he is feeling with Sheppard missing and unable to figure out what happened to him:
It feels as if I'm losing… One by one, I'm losing everything that matters to me, everyone I care about - and I know what you're going to say: that it's not all about me. So I'm selfish. So sue me."
I wasn't going to say that, he imagined the answer. You said "care about".
"Care about," he said again, and there was no sense of epiphany there, for he had known this for months - no, for years. Carson and Sheppard, two friends for two different sides of him. Elizabeth. Teyla. Even Ronon.
But this isn't the Rodney I know, he thought he heard. Talking about feelings when you could be saving the day. Towards the end the mental voice shifted, moving from Scottish to an American drawl.
"No," he said, as he moved away from the chamber that held Carson's form. He had worked without sleep for two days, trying to work out where the wormhole had jumped, trying to find where Sheppard was. Sam had finally ordered him to stop - "There's a very capable team working on this, Rodney, and if you don't get some sleep, you'll start making mistakes."
"Well," he said awkwardly. "Good night. I'll see you tomorrow, unless I… uh… unless I'm too busy saving Sheppard. It must be my turn this time."
In this story Rodney feels that is it his duty to save Sheppard because of all that has transpired between them, as well as their friendship. Rodney is admitting to himself just how deeply he cares about John and his other co-workers. However, spending twenty-five years figuring out how to save someone you “care about” is a bit more extreme than just running into the heat of a battle and saving someone, like John usually does for Rodney. While this is a piece of fanfiction, and thus not cannon, the idea is still there in the series. There is a close bond between Rodney and his team, and this scene explores it further, while keeping Rodney in character. In the future timeline Rodney, in addition to spending twenty-five years figuring out how to save him, insists that “Sheppard is not dead!” when Woolsey tries to suggest otherwise. In response, Woolsey just emphasizes the fact that, dead or not, he is lost to them. But Rodney refuses to give up on John and the people that he cares about, so when John is the only one left he devotes his life to trying to get John back.
In the abandoned Atlantis of the future the relationship between Sheppard and McKay is very intense and is picked up on through verbal and facial cues in their reactions to each other and John’s reaction to learning about what happened to Rodney. When Rodney tells John where is he, John gets upset, but when he starts thinking about the implications of what it means in terms of Rodney and his friends, his voice goes soft, and when Rodney interrupts him by saying, “Dead. Dead and buried and turned to dust a long, long time ago” you can see a visible change in John’s face. Whereas before it was clear that John was thinking, even if he was speaking with a softer voice, immediately John’s face takes on a look as if he were a child and someone had just told him his puppy died. John looks shocked and sad and as Rodney keeps talking he looks more and more upset. Wolfen Moondaughter of pinkraygun.com describes the scene as such:
John (understandably) looks like he’s been sucker-punched as he stares hard at McKay. (*Squee!* Poor boy, realising that his best friend is long gone! Or, if you’re a McShepper like me, we can imagine that it’s even worse than just losing a friend … *Cough*) Rodney rambles on a bit in tones that are sad, resigned, and even a bit bored, about how everyone and everything John knew is gone. (Once again, much love to Flanigan for his facial expression; the look on John’s face is heart-wrenching. Mmmm, angst!) (“Stargate Atlantis: The Last Man”)
This scene helps viewers to see that John cares about Rodney just as much as Rodney cares about John. The pain is his face is due to realizing that Rodney is dead, not realizing that he is all alone. The initial reaction of sadness is to Rodney’s death, not to say, Teyla’s or Ronon’s, who are also dead, though he does not yet know the circumstances.
How Rodney reacts to seeing John again after all these years show how much he cares for John and how happy he is to see him, even though he tells John, “I wouldn’t go to all this trouble just so we could have a chat,” chat he does when he comes back into contact with John and despite the circumstances, he is happy to see John once more. When John is trying the radio and he finally connects to Rodney, Rodney’s voice over the radio is excited to be hearing from Sheppard, as well as amazed by what has happened and that his plan worked. When the Rodney hologram appears he says with a happy and wistful expression on his face, “God, it’s good to see you again.” He jokes around with Sheppard, but when it comes to talking to Sheppard, he is unsure what to say, “It’s funny, you know? I spent the last 25 years of my life trying to figure out how to make this work, and I never once thought what I was going to say to you when you got here.” Rodney is so overcome by the sight of John; it takes him a few moments to collect himself before he launches into the explanation John asks of him. John too, is taken aback by the sight of Rodney, who is “…different,” according to John. John is used to his own Rodney, so the sight of an older Rodney evokes a reaction from him.
Even though this Rodney is a hologram and often refers to himself as such, John treats him as if he were really Rodney. When John first comes face to face with the Rodney hologram he questions if he is a hologram and then puts his hand through it, as if to double check that it really was not Rodney, as he says that Rodney looks “different.” When John talks to the hologram he refers to the hologram as “you” or “McKay,” referring to the hologram itself, but when the hologram replies, he talks about the real Dr. McKay and himself as two separate entities. When John and Rodney are walking around Atlantis and John runs ahead of Rodney, instead of just reappearing where John is, Rodney follows him on foot, further adding to the illusion that Rodney is not a hologram. It is not until the hologram is unable to come up with a solution for a problem that Rodney would have been able to come up with a solution to that John finally realizes that the hologram is not truly Rodney. Since the hologram was not programmed for certain variables, such as the sand and the sun turning into a red giant, he is unable to come up with a solution, leaving John to come up with one, which he does. The other limitation that reminds John Rodney is only a hologram is when he wants to help John up after he comes in from the sandstorm and is lying on the ground, but reminds John by saying, “I’d help you up, but I’m…” and he trails off flapping his hands helplessly, upset that he cannot help John more. Though the hologram Rodney is not the real Rodney, he still has Rodney’s mannerisms, memories and feelings. The hologram wants to do everything he can for John and he has feelings towards John.
The hologram is worried about John when he goes out into the sandstorm. At first he tries to talk John out of it by saying, “Have you ever been in one of those?” meaning a sandstorm, to which John answers, “As a matter of fact, I have.” Even so, Rodney tries to convince John to wait out the storm, worried about his safety. When John finally gets Rodney to agree, Rodney tells John, “I can’t go outside, but I can stay in contact with you over the radio… I’ll be waiting for you [on the other side].” John then goes out into the storm and we see Rodney move, as only a hologram can move, to the other door and stand there looking worried and calling for Sheppard, looking more and more worried until Sheppard finally responds at which point Rodney is quick to reassure John, “I’m still here.” Rodney talks John through the sandstorm and checks up on him. When John fails to respond one can see the terror on Rodney’s face that something has happened to John. When John finally enters on the other side, he collapses through Rodney - another reminder that Rodney is a hologram - and Rodney looks terrified that John is going to die, crying out, “Your bio signature’s barely registering!” The terror on Rodney’s face makes one feel for him and hope that John will wake up soon so he will not be worried for too much longer. When we finally return to the scene and to John waking up, Rodney is hovering over his body, ready to help, but feeling ineffectual since he cannot touch John to help him up.
John feels for Rodney as well. In addition to the pain we see on John’s face when he realizes that Rodney is dead and that the hologram is not truly Rodney, he wants to know what happened to Rodney. He says to Rodney in a flirty tone, while leaning against the wall in a seductive manner, “You know, you never told me what happened to you.” John is giving Rodney his best “tell me everything look,” and pressing on even when Rodney looks down and makes shifty eyes, protesting, “You don’t want to hear about that.” But John does. And if the way John eyed Rodney up and down when the hologram first appeared has anything to do with their relationship, Rodney is right to be shifty-eyed and sheepish. After all, he ended up with Jennifer Keller, instead of the Air Force Colonel who eyed up a hologram of him as an old man. And even when Rodney tells John about what happened with him and Keller, John is encouraging because he wants to see Rodney happy and does not want to go back and change the timeline if it will ruin Rodney’s happiness, even if it means that his own happiness will be sacrificed.
Rodney and Jennifer Keller form a relationship while they are traveling back to Earth on the Daedalus, a relationship that David Hewlett, the actor who plays McKay, thought happened too fast. The way Rodney describes the relationship to John is that is just happened without much conscious thought:
We had three weeks on the Daedalus with nothing else to think about but everything that had happened. We went over it a thousand times, trying to imagine what we might have done differently. It was awful. Well, at least we had each other. By the time we got back to Earth, well, we weren’t just colleagues anymore.
Rodney describes the relationship as something that just happened, and the relationship seems as not only one of convenience, but also one without much passion. The episode shows what is supposed to be the first kiss between Rodney and Jennifer. It is not the most romantic of kisses and there does not seem to be much feeling behind it. To start off, the room in which they are standing in dark with all the lights off. They are looking at the Earth from space, which might be considered romantic, but the gloomy lighting seems to be killing the romantic mood. It is Jennifer who first turns to Rodney and puts her hand on his arm. Upon first viewing, it reads as a sad scene and it seems that Jennifer is merely comforting Rodney. It is Jennifer making all the moves in this scene. Not only does she first touch Rodney, but she also then turns towards him. When they lean in for the kiss they are barely touching. Rodney has turned towards Keller and put his hand on her arm, a touch even less intimate than the hand on his arm, if that is possible. When the director zooms in on the second kiss that Keller and Rodney share there is very little expression on Rodney and Jennifer’s faces. This kiss is nothing that could be described as passion or love. Fans describe this scene in many ways, but most of the descriptions are quite similar. The livejournal user naye says, “This reads more as a bone-deep, weary sadness shared than passion, to me.” Wolfen Moondaughter on pinkraygun.com says that the relationship between McKay and Keller is “a we’re one of the last two left sort of love, bonding over experiences that not many others can really share.” In the fanfic “A Mantra for These Times” by x-parrot, Rodney describes his relationship with Keller as “holding on.” No viewer reads the relationship between Rodney and Keller as one that would have happened naturally had John not disappeared and they left Atlantis at the same time, and they were only other person understanding what the other had been through. Even the scene where Jennifer starts coughing does not speak of passion and love. Rodney and Jennifer are walking along, looking happy, but their body language shows something different than the dialogue does. Rodney has both of his hands in his pockets while Jennifer is holding one of Rodney’s arms. When Jennifer leans over and coughs it takes Rodney a long time to react and take his hands out of his pockets and even then all he does is put one hand on her back. The scenes between Rodney and Keller do not read as people in a loving relationship, but as people who are clinging to each other since they have no one else left.
Jennifer falling ill is not Rodney’s main motivation to fix what went wrong; rather, it is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. One of the writers of the episode, Joe Mallozzi, writes in his blog:
Jennifer’s death isn’t the only reason Rodney decides to try to undo the timeline. But it is the final straw. Prior to that, he considered the possibility that he could actually come up with a solution next to impossible. But, with Jennifer dead, the last positive thing in his life died with her and he was finally able to wholly commit himself to the seemingly impossible task.
When Rodney has his epiphany about how to fix everything he abandons Jennifer to work on it and is gleeful on her deathbed. When he returns to her and she asks where he has been he responds, “I’ve been working.” Rather than spend time with the woman he supposedly loves while she is dying, he has been working. This does not speak to me as something a devoted partner would do, bringing even less credibility to their relationship. When Keller asks Rodney to elaborate about what he has been working on he responds:
The solution, to everything. Well, you, this, all of this. I mean, Atlantis, Pegasus, Michael, everything. … I’m going to change the timeline. I’m gonna make it so none of this ever happened. I mean, you won’t get sick, Teyla won’t die, Michael won’t complete his research, none of it.
When Keller tries to talk Rodney out of it, making it her dying wish, to a certain extent, that he not work on it, he completely ignores her saying that he will figure it out, “even if it takes the rest of [his] life.” Rodney is completely ignoring the woman he supposedly loves while she is on her deathbed in order to work on fixing everything, even though he knows it probably will take the rest of his life. And saving her, while he does mention it, is not even the point of why he wants to figure out how to fix things. X-parrot sums up the whole scene very well:
He's talking to her on her deathbed, telling her that what made "us" happen will never happen, and he looks thrilled. Yes, he's telling her that she'll live - as part of a list: "I'm going to make it so none of this ever happened - you won't get sick, Teyla won't die, Michael won't complete his research, none of it." Of course he mentions her first - she's on her deathbed! But saving Jennifer's life isn't the point, it's a happy byproduct (“more on “Last Man””).
Rodney knows that the universe he is now living in is not the right one and he decides to fix it, despite the woman that he is in a relationship in making it her dying wish that he not do so.
And Rodney does spend, if not the rest of his life working on it, then the next twenty-five years. Keller’s death that gives him the idea about how to fix what went wrong, but it is not something that he had not been thinking about. In fact, he and Keller had spent the three weeks on the Daedalus thinking about what they could have done differently. But is it John that Rodney is so eager to rescue that he works on it until he is an old man, which we see in a montage of shots wherein we see Rodney at first writing in a notepad, then on a dry board and finally we see a very old Rodney, the one we see as the hologram, working with a futuristic chalkboard/notepad hybrid controlled by his hands in gloves. Rodney gave up a job he loved and took a low-paying boring job so that he could spend all of his free time working on the problem. Rodney tells John all about how Jeannie tried to get him to stop, but when she could not, she helped him out until, “Eventually, even she got fed up.” But Rodney is quick to assure John that, “I never wavered.” Rodney feels that it is important for John to know how hard he tried and how much it mattered to him. X-parrot says:
It's one thing to give your life for your friend's in a brief, impulsive blaze of glory. It's another thing to live, alone and obsessed and never faltering, for over two decades - when everyone is telling you that what you're attempting is impossible; when, even if you succeed - you'll never actually know. Rodney's plan was such that he knew that he would never see John again himself - that the universe he was saving, he was saving for another Rodney in another timeline (“more on “Last Man”).
Rodney is making a sacrifice for John and he wants John to know that he made it willingly. Rodney is assuring John that he would not give up on him and when the episode cuts back to Rodney and John talking, John looks sad and then looks down, thinking about what he could possibly say to Rodney after Rodney has given up his life to get John to this point. John finally comes up with, “Well, I guess I’ve had a tough day, but you’ve had a tough 25 years.” Rodney’s response to this is typical of the Rodney that cares enough about John enough to work on saving him for twenty-five years, and that is to assure him, “I’ll be waiting right here when you come out.”
Though Rodney forms a relationship with someone other than John during the course of “The Last Man,” the writers for the episode, Joe Mallozzi and Paul Mullie, see the episode as a Sheppard/McKay story. The lengths that they go for each other are never seen as fully showcased as they are in this episode. Rodney spends twenty-five years working on getting John back. John is willing to let everyone else die and not go back to his own time, and thus die himself as well, if it means that Rodney will have been happy in the past. The lengths that Rodney and John are willing to go for each other go beyond normal friendship, which is why fans of the show and fanfiction writers have such a field day with episodes such as this. There is so much information about John and Rodney’s relationship in just their body language towards each other that is not said aloud. Body language and actions of friendship can sometimes say more about a relationship than words ever could. Even though John cannot touch the hologram and the hologram cannot touch John, they try to touch each other and lament at the impossibility. It is actions like this that show that there is more than just a co-workers and teammates relationship between John and Rodney. Actions are always said to speak louder than words and the body language in this episode screams about how deeply John and Rodney care for each other.
Sources used:
“The Last Man” Stargate Atlantis: Season Four. Writ. Joe Mallozzi and Paul Mullie Dir. Martin Wood. SciFi. 7 March. 2008. DVD. MGM.
Ajw “Awakening.” Online posting. October 08 2008. November 21 2008.
The formatting's a bit messed up, but hopefully it's still readable. And yes, it is totally a 5,000 plus word essay. Hope you enjoy it!