SPN and SGA and DANIEL JACKSON!

[dragojustine]

I found a debate watch group to watch with last night. Yaay social interaction! With pretty Obama-voting boys. Also? I want that man to be president SO BADLY. Mental agility, clear intelligence, superb verbal skills, critical thinking, generosity and respect combined with firm and well-articulated differences of opinion grounded in fact! It's

Comments

[synecdochic]

Civilian base pay would probably be better (assuming they're carried at the appropriate GS levels -- it's debatable as to what GS levels the SGC would carry on paper, since it would be very odd for such a concentration of high-GS employees in one spot, but I'm pretty sure that anyone who goes through the Gate gets at least an extra GS level just, you know, out of hazard and responsibility), but military total pay, with all the adjustments, might be higher, depending on the rank in question. (And the SGC is unusually officer-heavy, but don't get me started on that.)

I speculated a while back, and people who have more experience than I do contributed in comments :)

[dragojustine]

Thanks for that link. And, uh, way to have a lot of time on your hands? Wow.

(And the SGC is unusually officer-heavy, but don't get me started on that.)

ALL military-influenced science fiction TV is unusually officer heavy. Always. Ever since Star Trek decided that the lowest-rank in the fleet was ensign (As for TOS, isn't yeoman generally a petty officer?). O'Brien is essentially the only NCO in the entire universe. No, really. Name another one. I dare you!

SG1 is actually better than most, though SGA then went back the other direction. (The new BSG gets a nod for this too) But... yes. Apparently once aliens get involved, all humans become officers. *sigh*

[synecdochic]

NCIS, on the other hand, is way more balanced -- Gibbs, for instance, was a Gunnery Sergeant (and to this day refuses to allow anyone to call him 'sir' -- "don't call me 'sir', I work for a living". *g*)

I was always amused that Star Trek only has like six ranks! Military: ur doin it rong.

[dragojustine]

Yes, but see, NCIS doesn't have aliens. It's the ALIENS who turn everybody into identically ranked officers! *nodnod*

[synecdochic]

You may be on to something. And it's mostly only TV sf that has the problem, too...

(As for the rest of it: yes, I do have way too much time on my hands. And yes, that is the kind of research I tend to do for just about everything I write.)

[dragojustine]

There are lots of ways that I find written SF to be better than TV/movie SF. But most of those ways are explainable by the limitations of filming: magical gravity generators everywhere, all planets have exactly the same gravity and atmosphere conditions, magical inertial dampeners, no intelligent consideration of inertia or g forces, tactically idiotic space battles, super-slow and magically visible energy beam weapons, fires and sound in space... yadda yadda. All explainable by limitations and expectations inherent to TV or movies.

But why the hell does the visual medium require everybody to be an officer?

(oh, look. My pet peeves! You have found them!)

[synecdochic]

Language. Don't get me started on language ...

[dragojustine]

You know, when miriad basically strapped me to her couch and forced me to watch the original Stargate movie, I said (well, FIRST I flailed and squealed and lost my shit over how hot James Spader was, but after that) I said "OMG! You mean this is a SF show that has a linguist because aliens don't speak english? And the probable language family and linguistic traits of the languages they do speak prove to be an important clue? And the aliens don't speak English?

I sort of flailed with joy, and then miriad had to go, "uh, well, ah, actually..."

[synecdochic]

I know. *mournful* Of all the things they changed between movie & tv show, that's the thing that annoyed me the most...