On rewatching SG-1 episodes 107 and 108, "The Nox" and "Brief Candle"
These were meant to be abbreviated remarks. Erm, not so much.
Abbreviated comments on "The Nox" and "Brief Candle":
-- I hadn't realized the political pressure had started so early in the program. Produce, produce, or your funding will be cut! Oh, this is so familiar. I do think it would be wise to have a team of scientists and analysts sit down with Teal'c for a solid week of debriefing, to identify promising avenues of research both military and technological. What the SGC clearly doesn't have at the moment is a structure plan to address their needs: they're just flailing around trying every address as it pops out of Sam's computer.
-- They've only been to 19 different planets so far (not counting Abydos?). So cute!
-- First use of "Daniel, you're with me." Hee.
-- OK, in a galaxy the size of the Milky Way, with thousands upon thousands of planets, what are the chances that Apophis would be on the same planet at the same time as SG-1? I mean, really?
-- Apophis would go to an alien planet to hunt an invisible monster with only 3-4 Jaffa accompanying him? Isn't that a slight to his divinity, even if he does have a personal shield?
-- Also, taking on 3-4 Jaffa and a Goa'uld with only four people, only three of whom are skilled with weapons, and not enough of those weapons anyway, is a BAD PLAN people.
-- And SEE? BAD PLAN. (Let us not mention the way Sam gets herself killed by jumping out of cover when Jack gets shot, and the way Jack gets shot because Teal'c never mentioned the personal force field--okay, to be fair, apparently Teal'c never saw one before, which wtf really?)
-- That said, the moment where Teal'c stands facing Apophis, and looks at SG-1 all dead and broken, is just heart-wrenching. He gave up everything for the chance to fight the Goa'uld and free his people, and he'd barely gotten started and now it's ALL ROOONED. Poor Teal'c!
-- Someone should write an AU in which Apophis grabs Teal'c here and takes him away and SG-1 gets revived and has to go rescue him again. Yes.
-- SG-1 dies and revived for the first time! \o/ Okay, for Daniel it's death #2, of course.
-- OMG Sam grinning at the little boy when they exchange names is the CUTEST THING EVER. Good lord, she's adorable.
-- Jack is remarkably skilled, to have created a bow, arrows, and a quiver all within a matter of a few hours. Daniel, on the other hand, is reduced to sharpening spearpoints in the fire. Realistically, given Daniel's background in archaeology, it ought to be the other way around.
-- All these Jaffa running around have gold sigils. Woops.
-- Skipping along: Jack shows how smart he is by noting that slow-moving objects can pass through Apophis' shield. Well, that or he'd read Dune once upon a time...
-- ... and they march through the Gate without using their GDOs. Ah, well. I blame the editing.
-- In what becomes standard protocol, no immediate follow-up on the political discussion with SecDef (I assume) that started the episode.
***
"Brief Candle"! In Which Jack Learns to Watch What He Eats and Where He Sticks Things. (Happily, he only has to learn this once.)
-- Vee used to joke about how one of these days a gate team would walk out into a museum full of screaming visitors. This may be as close as we get to that until "Bad Guys" in season 10.
-- Jack, when people give you strangely intense looks and then offer only you a piece of cake, Things Are Not As They Seem.
-- I do love the way the others mock him, though.
-- Oooh, more shirtless!Jack! In... a gold lame kilt. Oh, that's just darling. Photographs of this would be good blackmail material for decades.
-- "From now on we stick to rations." Ya think?
-- Linear A! Woot! Linear A is an obscure Goa'uld dialect! Hey, is this the first time we have proof that Teal'c is literate? Because I have the suspicion that a lot of Jaffa are not.
-- And the truth comes out about the mayfly lives of the Chosen, and Jack looks like he's swallowed a mayfly. Because what kind of cradle-robbery is sleeping with a girl who is 31 days old? Yikes.
-- The scene where everyone falls to the ground and passes out at sunset? Would be more convincing if their shadows weren't short and right underneath them like they are at midday. IJS.
-- I am occasionally startled by how much time has passed since SG-1 first went on the air. For instance, Janet is showing Sam some lab results; so she hands her a floppy disk. ::grins::
-- The other amusing thing is that because SG-1 was on the air for so long, we have a pretty good idea of what Jack O'Neill looks like as he ages. As a result, the aging makeup job they did on RDA for this episode is laughably off.
-- Jack's all "I don't want anyone to see me looking bad/dying, so I'm sending you away." He's like an aging animal crawling into the woods to die alone. Aww, Jack, your team wants to save you!
-- Sam's going on about studying nanotech at the Pentagon. Here's the thing: the Pentagon doesn't do that; the Pentagon is policy stuff and administration, not research & development. I think Sam worked at DARPA. Which the old X-Philes must know about; DARPA is the group that holds the robot car races out in the California desert every few years, and does a lot of interesting military-related scientific work.
-- Oh, Jack. Marriage cake. LOL.
-- Jack is 40? Or... not. I believe canon is inconsistent on this issue.
-- Ack Jack is writing a farewell note to Sara! Or not. I am amused that somehow accelerated aging requires his hair to grow long and raggedy.
-- While certainly Jack doesn't give a damn about the Prime Directive, encouraging the Chosen to revolt against Pelops seems a bit like asking for trouble if you don't know how long it's been since Pelops has stopped by to check on the status of his experiment. And what if there was something else hidden in the statue?
-- Which there was, ta da!
-- I have to say that I'm really glad the show didn't do much more of the relationship-of-the-week business for Jack; when they did do it, they spread it around a bit more. And despite all the warm words he has for Kynthia at the end of the episode (it's actually more affectionate language than he uses for anyone in the entire rest of the series), they never mention her or the Argosians again.
ETA 0830 Tues: It occurred to me rather belatedly (I blame the cold meds) that this is only the first instance of canonical dub-con for the show. Jack would not have had sex with Kynthia unless she'd roofied him first, and the rest of SG-1 failed their duty to him pretty grossly by not taking action to protect him once they realized what was happening.
Anyway, by the end of the show's run, the only member of SG-1 who avoids any implication of rape is Teal'c, and I could make an argument for that as well.
End edit.
And now on to "Thor's Hammer".
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments; comment here or there.
Abbreviated comments on "The Nox" and "Brief Candle":
-- I hadn't realized the political pressure had started so early in the program. Produce, produce, or your funding will be cut! Oh, this is so familiar. I do think it would be wise to have a team of scientists and analysts sit down with Teal'c for a solid week of debriefing, to identify promising avenues of research both military and technological. What the SGC clearly doesn't have at the moment is a structure plan to address their needs: they're just flailing around trying every address as it pops out of Sam's computer.
-- They've only been to 19 different planets so far (not counting Abydos?). So cute!
-- First use of "Daniel, you're with me." Hee.
-- OK, in a galaxy the size of the Milky Way, with thousands upon thousands of planets, what are the chances that Apophis would be on the same planet at the same time as SG-1? I mean, really?
-- Apophis would go to an alien planet to hunt an invisible monster with only 3-4 Jaffa accompanying him? Isn't that a slight to his divinity, even if he does have a personal shield?
-- Also, taking on 3-4 Jaffa and a Goa'uld with only four people, only three of whom are skilled with weapons, and not enough of those weapons anyway, is a BAD PLAN people.
-- And SEE? BAD PLAN. (Let us not mention the way Sam gets herself killed by jumping out of cover when Jack gets shot, and the way Jack gets shot because Teal'c never mentioned the personal force field--okay, to be fair, apparently Teal'c never saw one before, which wtf really?)
-- That said, the moment where Teal'c stands facing Apophis, and looks at SG-1 all dead and broken, is just heart-wrenching. He gave up everything for the chance to fight the Goa'uld and free his people, and he'd barely gotten started and now it's ALL ROOONED. Poor Teal'c!
-- Someone should write an AU in which Apophis grabs Teal'c here and takes him away and SG-1 gets revived and has to go rescue him again. Yes.
-- SG-1 dies and revived for the first time! \o/ Okay, for Daniel it's death #2, of course.
-- OMG Sam grinning at the little boy when they exchange names is the CUTEST THING EVER. Good lord, she's adorable.
-- Jack is remarkably skilled, to have created a bow, arrows, and a quiver all within a matter of a few hours. Daniel, on the other hand, is reduced to sharpening spearpoints in the fire. Realistically, given Daniel's background in archaeology, it ought to be the other way around.
-- All these Jaffa running around have gold sigils. Woops.
-- Skipping along: Jack shows how smart he is by noting that slow-moving objects can pass through Apophis' shield. Well, that or he'd read Dune once upon a time...
-- ... and they march through the Gate without using their GDOs. Ah, well. I blame the editing.
-- In what becomes standard protocol, no immediate follow-up on the political discussion with SecDef (I assume) that started the episode.
***
"Brief Candle"! In Which Jack Learns to Watch What He Eats and Where He Sticks Things. (Happily, he only has to learn this once.)
-- Vee used to joke about how one of these days a gate team would walk out into a museum full of screaming visitors. This may be as close as we get to that until "Bad Guys" in season 10.
-- Jack, when people give you strangely intense looks and then offer only you a piece of cake, Things Are Not As They Seem.
-- I do love the way the others mock him, though.
-- Oooh, more shirtless!Jack! In... a gold lame kilt. Oh, that's just darling. Photographs of this would be good blackmail material for decades.
-- "From now on we stick to rations." Ya think?
-- Linear A! Woot! Linear A is an obscure Goa'uld dialect! Hey, is this the first time we have proof that Teal'c is literate? Because I have the suspicion that a lot of Jaffa are not.
-- And the truth comes out about the mayfly lives of the Chosen, and Jack looks like he's swallowed a mayfly. Because what kind of cradle-robbery is sleeping with a girl who is 31 days old? Yikes.
-- The scene where everyone falls to the ground and passes out at sunset? Would be more convincing if their shadows weren't short and right underneath them like they are at midday. IJS.
-- I am occasionally startled by how much time has passed since SG-1 first went on the air. For instance, Janet is showing Sam some lab results; so she hands her a floppy disk. ::grins::
-- The other amusing thing is that because SG-1 was on the air for so long, we have a pretty good idea of what Jack O'Neill looks like as he ages. As a result, the aging makeup job they did on RDA for this episode is laughably off.
-- Jack's all "I don't want anyone to see me looking bad/dying, so I'm sending you away." He's like an aging animal crawling into the woods to die alone. Aww, Jack, your team wants to save you!
-- Sam's going on about studying nanotech at the Pentagon. Here's the thing: the Pentagon doesn't do that; the Pentagon is policy stuff and administration, not research & development. I think Sam worked at DARPA. Which the old X-Philes must know about; DARPA is the group that holds the robot car races out in the California desert every few years, and does a lot of interesting military-related scientific work.
-- Oh, Jack. Marriage cake. LOL.
-- Jack is 40? Or... not. I believe canon is inconsistent on this issue.
-- Ack Jack is writing a farewell note to Sara! Or not. I am amused that somehow accelerated aging requires his hair to grow long and raggedy.
-- While certainly Jack doesn't give a damn about the Prime Directive, encouraging the Chosen to revolt against Pelops seems a bit like asking for trouble if you don't know how long it's been since Pelops has stopped by to check on the status of his experiment. And what if there was something else hidden in the statue?
-- Which there was, ta da!
-- I have to say that I'm really glad the show didn't do much more of the relationship-of-the-week business for Jack; when they did do it, they spread it around a bit more. And despite all the warm words he has for Kynthia at the end of the episode (it's actually more affectionate language than he uses for anyone in the entire rest of the series), they never mention her or the Argosians again.
ETA 0830 Tues: It occurred to me rather belatedly (I blame the cold meds) that this is only the first instance of canonical dub-con for the show. Jack would not have had sex with Kynthia unless she'd roofied him first, and the rest of SG-1 failed their duty to him pretty grossly by not taking action to protect him once they realized what was happening.
Anyway, by the end of the show's run, the only member of SG-1 who avoids any implication of rape is Teal'c, and I could make an argument for that as well.
End edit.
And now on to "Thor's Hammer".
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments; comment here or there.