Fictional Crushes
I've been thinking some more about the fictional characters on whom I've had crushes. Phileas Fogg and Sherlock Holmes vied with D'Artagnan and Donny Osmond in my pre-teen fantasy life.
There's one very interesting one to me, though, partially because it's an adult "crush" and partially because the character was neither a real person nor particularly literary and that's Daniel Jackson of Stargate and its later iteration, Stargate SG-1. He even, eventually, made it to the Pegasus Galaxy.
I saw the original movie on its opening weekend with my sister down in Orlando, FL. Sis didn't enjoy the film as much as I did. For her, it was more a "two hours off the tour" movie than a cool mix of old serial sci-fi and archaeology by way of Caesar's Palace. (Seriously, some of those costumes would make Liberace go "It's a little much, don't you think?")
Not only did I come out of the theater with a smile on my face, I'd fallen for Daniel Jackson. He exchanged gifts with the natives, in his case a 5th Avenue candy bar that he'd had in his pack. Unlike the TV series (most of the time), there was a real effort to make the linguistic side of his knowledge important, and, as someone who's been known to translate languages I don't know, I found that thrilling. He taught the natives how to read the inscriptions around them. He died. He resurrected and figured out another way to destroy Ra without destroying the people. And he opened the Stargate because he was able to make a connection no one else had. It's one of the very rare portrayals of a particular type of genius -- non-mathematical, non-hard science, deeply intuitive -- that, other than the instance on his allergies, didn't make the "geek" selfish, a coward, or completely out of touch with the rest of humanity.
But the real cherry on top of this lovely banana split is that I really, really cannot stand James Spader as an actor. There is not a single other role I like him in. I usually find him wooden and detached. And yet, I fell in love with Daniel Jackson.
SG-1 had been on for over four years when I saw my first episode (a season 4 episode in repeats prepatory to season 6 being shown). The first one I saw (Window of Opportunity) wasn't that great, but SciFi (before it became SyFy) was showing the series in four hour blocks, and the next one (Watergate) wasn't much better. The evening ended with The First Ones, an episode highlighting Daniel Jackson's linguistic ability ("Now, don't say 'ka' till you've tried it."), his anthropological background, and even a bit of archaeology at the very beginning. And I remembered sitting in a theater near Disney in Orlando that was packed to the gills with a smile on my face.
There's one very interesting one to me, though, partially because it's an adult "crush" and partially because the character was neither a real person nor particularly literary and that's Daniel Jackson of Stargate and its later iteration, Stargate SG-1. He even, eventually, made it to the Pegasus Galaxy.
I saw the original movie on its opening weekend with my sister down in Orlando, FL. Sis didn't enjoy the film as much as I did. For her, it was more a "two hours off the tour" movie than a cool mix of old serial sci-fi and archaeology by way of Caesar's Palace. (Seriously, some of those costumes would make Liberace go "It's a little much, don't you think?")
Not only did I come out of the theater with a smile on my face, I'd fallen for Daniel Jackson. He exchanged gifts with the natives, in his case a 5th Avenue candy bar that he'd had in his pack. Unlike the TV series (most of the time), there was a real effort to make the linguistic side of his knowledge important, and, as someone who's been known to translate languages I don't know, I found that thrilling. He taught the natives how to read the inscriptions around them. He died. He resurrected and figured out another way to destroy Ra without destroying the people. And he opened the Stargate because he was able to make a connection no one else had. It's one of the very rare portrayals of a particular type of genius -- non-mathematical, non-hard science, deeply intuitive -- that, other than the instance on his allergies, didn't make the "geek" selfish, a coward, or completely out of touch with the rest of humanity.
But the real cherry on top of this lovely banana split is that I really, really cannot stand James Spader as an actor. There is not a single other role I like him in. I usually find him wooden and detached. And yet, I fell in love with Daniel Jackson.
SG-1 had been on for over four years when I saw my first episode (a season 4 episode in repeats prepatory to season 6 being shown). The first one I saw (Window of Opportunity) wasn't that great, but SciFi (before it became SyFy) was showing the series in four hour blocks, and the next one (Watergate) wasn't much better. The evening ended with The First Ones, an episode highlighting Daniel Jackson's linguistic ability ("Now, don't say 'ka' till you've tried it."), his anthropological background, and even a bit of archaeology at the very beginning. And I remembered sitting in a theater near Disney in Orlando that was packed to the gills with a smile on my face.