SG-1 eps as SGA research - it's possible I'm a touch obsessed
Having already watched the SG-1 episodes involving main timeline McKay (and also "Road Not Taken" AU'verse, but not "Moebius" yet), and being on a bit of a Lorne kick lately, I tracked down "Enemy Mine", the SG-1 episode where he's introduced. (Lorne was also in "Road Not Taken", but of course that was AU'verse Colonel Lorne, leader of SG-1.)
Now, I'm an Anthropology major who has actually done some Archaeology, and I am 100% supportive of Daniel's reaction to the artifacts having been moved -- context is more important than the artifacts themselves in Archaeology! I'm sure that the standing orders to contact Daniel/the Archaeology Dept. when artifacts are found include the stipulation that this is to be done before anything is moved. You'd think that working at the SGC you'd hear enough horror stories about, say, face-grabbing artifacts that fry your brain and all the other dangerous crap they've run into that it would be a matter of basic self-preservation to have people who can tell you what you're looking at check stuff out. I'd also like to take Daniel's frustration over the Unas being perceived as/treated as animals and triple it. What the fuck? They're humanoids wearing clothes, making and using tools, and speaking their own language. This does not fall in the category of ANIMAL. *flails at stupidity*
Anyway. *deep breath* Back to Lorne. I gotta hand it to him, he kept his tone very even in the face of Daniel's anger -- but then he probably wasn't afraid of a mere archaeologist and knew his team leader would back him up. Hell, I wouldn't be terribly shocked if Lorne had informed Col. Edwards when the artifacts were discovered and been told to get them out of the way and that just saving them would be enough. Moving on to interactions with people who aren't Daniel Jackson.
There is an incredibly hyperactive geologist with SG-11 (Lorne's team), who's annoyingly earnest about saluting his boss and basically seems to be on speed. Lorne seems to look on him with eye-rolling amused tolerance and handles him well. He's clearly worried about the missing Lt. Ritter, and is the only one of SG-11 showing the search & rescue teams the area. Being 2IC under someone as intense as Edwards -- Lorne was probably the one handling the actual people skills end of things.
He's also the one who finds Ritter. Or rather, Ritter's corpse, strung up on an Unas construction. His face -- he's so clearly upset. And then when Teal'c gets there he swallows convulsively before stumbling away to retch. I wanted to hug him. I kinda wonder if he'd not seen a casualty before. I also wonder how long he'd been at the SGC.
In conclusion: Lorne already had several traits we see later in SGA: even-toned in the face of anger, loyal to and makes excuses for superiour officer, concerned about his men and manages people well. I suspect his experiences with with Unas may be part of why his team seem to do a fair bit of "blend in with the locals" missions among the populaces of Pegasus. They seem to be the go-to guys for First Contacts, at least some of the time. It's interesting. I wonder if SG-11 dealt with the Unas who were working the mine after this episode, and I suspect they did. (Of course I also like that Lorne's a talented painter, a sympathetic guy to stressed out pregnant telepaths, a ridiculously competitive trader when dealing with Zelenka, a good pilot, and a fond uncle. He has rich characterization and I'm glad he was added to the supporting cast in second season. Also he has a delightfully wry sense of humour and cute feet.)
eta: Ironically, after posting this, I found SF Universe's interview with Kavan Smith (who plays Lorne), which says in its intro: "He joined the show in 2005 after briefly playing a character with the same name (though not really the same guy) on Stargate SG-1." Obviously, I think he's the same guy. We have no reason at all to think he's not.
I also figured "hell with it" and watched both parts of "Lost City" (with original Weir) and then both parts of "New Order" (with usual Weir). These are awesome episodes. There are so many things which I liked -- points I thought were cool, points I laughed my ass off, points I was moved by -- that it would take a lot more than I'm prepared to type tonight to go over it all. I specifically watched these episodes to get a feel for Weir's pre-SGA appearances. I'd been under the impression that there was a gap between her leaving her position as head of the SGC and taking charge of the Atlantis project. Not so. In fact, at the end of "New Order" (a title which worked on at least four levels, which I love) she's packing up because she's off to Antarctica! And there ads for SGA's premiere flashing at the bottom of the screen. She really hadn't been aware of the whole Stargate thing at all for very long before she was making her way to another galaxy.
Mostly, I wanted to see the difference between the first and second Weirs. I mean, yes, given that these episodes are one after the other, obviously we're supposed to pretend there's nothing different. Except that we went from a blonde who wore pastels and just seemed more on-edge to, well, Torri, already dressed in suits that co-ordinate with her official SGA uniform. I found that, other than looks and the first one being a little more flaily and overwhelmed, Weir's characterization between "Lost City" and "New Order" are really not so different.
On the other hand, Weir's characterization between SG-1 and SGA... that's a different story. Daniel asks Weir about her background, about how someone who started as an anti-military activist ends up working for the government. Weir replies that she realized that the best way to end war was to keep it from starting in the first place. Hence, she's a negotiator who specializes in delicate, complicated international treaties and disarmament agreements. Honestly, I think they put her in the Stargate program to get her out of the way. (I certainly wouldn't put it past Kinsey. I did like President Hayes a little better here than in, say, Stargate: Continuum -- but even there, he's got guts. He's just a little too confident.)
This background doesn't jive well for me with things Elizabeth orders or agrees to in SGA. There've been things in the show that I found ethically questionable. This is part of the shows strength -- that likable, well-intentioned people do things that not only blow up in their faces but aren't really morally defensible in the first place, and then have to deal with it. It's not comfortable to see, for example, a sweetheart like Carson falling deeper and deeper into that whole "science because we can, regardless of whether we should" thing. He learned his lesson, but we're still seeing repercussions of that, and he's been dead for a while now. (And has a clone running around trying not to let his telemere problems kill him.) But Elizabeth let him do it. As the leader, she's ultimately responsible for the actions of her people -- but I'm more talking about things she sanctioned directly, sometimes even suggested. Actions that didn't sit well with me, attitudes that struck me as not being very appropriate for someone of her professional background in the first place, before I knew about her specific motivations.
It's something to chew on.
Now, I'm an Anthropology major who has actually done some Archaeology, and I am 100% supportive of Daniel's reaction to the artifacts having been moved -- context is more important than the artifacts themselves in Archaeology! I'm sure that the standing orders to contact Daniel/the Archaeology Dept. when artifacts are found include the stipulation that this is to be done before anything is moved. You'd think that working at the SGC you'd hear enough horror stories about, say, face-grabbing artifacts that fry your brain and all the other dangerous crap they've run into that it would be a matter of basic self-preservation to have people who can tell you what you're looking at check stuff out. I'd also like to take Daniel's frustration over the Unas being perceived as/treated as animals and triple it. What the fuck? They're humanoids wearing clothes, making and using tools, and speaking their own language. This does not fall in the category of ANIMAL. *flails at stupidity*
Anyway. *deep breath* Back to Lorne. I gotta hand it to him, he kept his tone very even in the face of Daniel's anger -- but then he probably wasn't afraid of a mere archaeologist and knew his team leader would back him up. Hell, I wouldn't be terribly shocked if Lorne had informed Col. Edwards when the artifacts were discovered and been told to get them out of the way and that just saving them would be enough. Moving on to interactions with people who aren't Daniel Jackson.
There is an incredibly hyperactive geologist with SG-11 (Lorne's team), who's annoyingly earnest about saluting his boss and basically seems to be on speed. Lorne seems to look on him with eye-rolling amused tolerance and handles him well. He's clearly worried about the missing Lt. Ritter, and is the only one of SG-11 showing the search & rescue teams the area. Being 2IC under someone as intense as Edwards -- Lorne was probably the one handling the actual people skills end of things.
He's also the one who finds Ritter. Or rather, Ritter's corpse, strung up on an Unas construction. His face -- he's so clearly upset. And then when Teal'c gets there he swallows convulsively before stumbling away to retch. I wanted to hug him. I kinda wonder if he'd not seen a casualty before. I also wonder how long he'd been at the SGC.
In conclusion: Lorne already had several traits we see later in SGA: even-toned in the face of anger, loyal to and makes excuses for superiour officer, concerned about his men and manages people well. I suspect his experiences with with Unas may be part of why his team seem to do a fair bit of "blend in with the locals" missions among the populaces of Pegasus. They seem to be the go-to guys for First Contacts, at least some of the time. It's interesting. I wonder if SG-11 dealt with the Unas who were working the mine after this episode, and I suspect they did. (Of course I also like that Lorne's a talented painter, a sympathetic guy to stressed out pregnant telepaths, a ridiculously competitive trader when dealing with Zelenka, a good pilot, and a fond uncle. He has rich characterization and I'm glad he was added to the supporting cast in second season. Also he has a delightfully wry sense of humour and cute feet.)
eta: Ironically, after posting this, I found SF Universe's interview with Kavan Smith (who plays Lorne), which says in its intro: "He joined the show in 2005 after briefly playing a character with the same name (though not really the same guy) on Stargate SG-1." Obviously, I think he's the same guy. We have no reason at all to think he's not.
I also figured "hell with it" and watched both parts of "Lost City" (with original Weir) and then both parts of "New Order" (with usual Weir). These are awesome episodes. There are so many things which I liked -- points I thought were cool, points I laughed my ass off, points I was moved by -- that it would take a lot more than I'm prepared to type tonight to go over it all. I specifically watched these episodes to get a feel for Weir's pre-SGA appearances. I'd been under the impression that there was a gap between her leaving her position as head of the SGC and taking charge of the Atlantis project. Not so. In fact, at the end of "New Order" (a title which worked on at least four levels, which I love) she's packing up because she's off to Antarctica! And there ads for SGA's premiere flashing at the bottom of the screen. She really hadn't been aware of the whole Stargate thing at all for very long before she was making her way to another galaxy.
Mostly, I wanted to see the difference between the first and second Weirs. I mean, yes, given that these episodes are one after the other, obviously we're supposed to pretend there's nothing different. Except that we went from a blonde who wore pastels and just seemed more on-edge to, well, Torri, already dressed in suits that co-ordinate with her official SGA uniform. I found that, other than looks and the first one being a little more flaily and overwhelmed, Weir's characterization between "Lost City" and "New Order" are really not so different.
On the other hand, Weir's characterization between SG-1 and SGA... that's a different story. Daniel asks Weir about her background, about how someone who started as an anti-military activist ends up working for the government. Weir replies that she realized that the best way to end war was to keep it from starting in the first place. Hence, she's a negotiator who specializes in delicate, complicated international treaties and disarmament agreements. Honestly, I think they put her in the Stargate program to get her out of the way. (I certainly wouldn't put it past Kinsey. I did like President Hayes a little better here than in, say, Stargate: Continuum -- but even there, he's got guts. He's just a little too confident.)
This background doesn't jive well for me with things Elizabeth orders or agrees to in SGA. There've been things in the show that I found ethically questionable. This is part of the shows strength -- that likable, well-intentioned people do things that not only blow up in their faces but aren't really morally defensible in the first place, and then have to deal with it. It's not comfortable to see, for example, a sweetheart like Carson falling deeper and deeper into that whole "science because we can, regardless of whether we should" thing. He learned his lesson, but we're still seeing repercussions of that, and he's been dead for a while now. (And has a clone running around trying not to let his telemere problems kill him.) But Elizabeth let him do it. As the leader, she's ultimately responsible for the actions of her people -- but I'm more talking about things she sanctioned directly, sometimes even suggested. Actions that didn't sit well with me, attitudes that struck me as not being very appropriate for someone of her professional background in the first place, before I knew about her specific motivations.
It's something to chew on.