John Sheppard (Stargate: Atlantis)
Title: We Can Name it Later
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Character: John Sheppard
Author: _medley_
Spoilers for: Pretty much all of seasons one and two
Notes: Quotes are from the transcripts on www.twiztv.com/scripts/atlantis
The appeal of John Sheppard, for me, is that he can be heroic and competent one minute, and then be the biggest dork in two galaxies the next. The dorkiness keeps him human rather than a cardboard cutout hero and makes him seem more approachable. I like that he's very protective of his people, and determined to leave no one behind. He's the kind of commander who wouldn't ask the people under his command to do anything he's not willing to do himself, and in fact, he frequently risks his own life rather than send someone else. This could get annoyingly heroic if he wasn't a big doofus at the same time.
From the beginning:
When I started watching SGA, Sci-Fi was on about its third repeat of the first season, and the first episode I happened to see was The Storm. As weird as I find this now, I wrote in my LJ that I wanted to like Sheppard, really, but that the actor spent the first half of the episode looking bewildered, and the second half looking angry and bewildered. I was not overly impressed, although I liked the character from fanfiction, and certainly liked the show enough to keep watching. Then the next week, Sci-Fi in its infinite wisdom aired some kind of monster movie marathon instead of airing the second half, The Eye, so the second episode I actually saw was The Defiant One. That was pretty much all it took. John and Rodney collaborating to convince Elizabeth that they really needed to check out that downed alien spacecraft, their nervous conversation about whether or not any of the Wraith could have survived this long, John's subsequent battle with the Superwraith, Rodney coming to help; all of it cemented my love for the John and Rodney show.
Then the pilot came out on DVD, and that pretty much settled Sheppard as my favorite character, although I still love him best when he and Rodney are onscreen together. Rising has elements of the hero's journey, following John Sheppard's progression from skilled-pilot-in-exile to the military leader of the Atlantis expedition. He discovers, practically accidentally, that he possesses the rare gene that allows a person to activate Ancient technology. In fact, Dr. Weir tells Jack O'Neill that, while others with the gene can activate the tech with practice, Sheppard can use it on an instinctive level. He's a natural. There's a fairy tale quality to that that I love, as predictable as it is. I'm a sucker for people finding somewhere they belong, and John Sheppard belongs in Atlantis. More so than he does on Earth, where he has been relegated literally to the ends of the Earth following an incident where he disobeyed orders while attempting to rescue his people.
I like that he's not really gung-ho about going to a new galaxy at first. He needs to come to terms with nearly being shot down by an alien missle and with his own "mutant" gene, as he calls it. He flips a coin. Gotta love a guy who flips a coin to decide whether to make a potentially one-way trip to a distant galaxy. He steps through the gate with his eyes closed, but once in Atlantis, the "oh, cool" factor kicks in as he and McKay explore a bit, and later on he's entirely sold once he sees that Atlantis has spaceships, which he calls "Puddlejumpers," because they're not big enough to be called "Gateships," in his opinion, even though Ford and McKay point out that they are, indeed, ships that go through the gate.
The pilot shows us other things about Sheppard, as well: he's clever, he's capable of a certain level of disarming charm when meeting new people, or at least new people who are not his superior officer, and he's still determined not to leave people behind.
The first Pegasus galaxy natives the members of the expedition meet are the Athosians, who are understandably a bit wary of armed strangers who claim that they are there to trade. This leads to the following conversation:
TEYLA: We do not trade with strangers.
SUMNER: Is that a fact.
SHEPPARD: well then we'll just… we'll have to get to know each other. Me, I like Ferris wheels, college football, and anything that goes more than 200 miles per hour.
FORD: (whisper) Sir, that’s not going to mean anything to them.
SHEPPARD: (whisper) feel free to speak up. I’m just trying to break the ice.
SUMNER: (whisper) if these people can't help us I'd rather not waste my time
TEYLA: Each morning before dawn our people drink a stout tea to brace us for the coming day. Will you join us?
SHEPPARD: *steps forward* I love a good cup of tea. Now there's another thing you know about me. We're practically friends already.
Sheppard is sort of dorkily charming here, coming across as a bit flirtatious with Teyla, but trying to put her at ease and distract her from Sumner’s no-nonsense attitude. Later, when Teyla comments that Sumner looks through her as though she isn’t there, he asks, “Do I?” He sounds like he genuinely wants to know, and that he cares if she feels he’s dismissing her; she assures him that he doesn’t act that way.
When the Wraith attack the Athosian settlement, he brings the survivors back to Atlantis and immediately wants to track the Wraith to get his people and the captured Athosians back. Insists on it, in fact, despite Dr. Weir’s objections and McKay’s initial denial that it’s even possible. “You don’t leave people in the hands of the enemy,” he shouts at Weir, and it stands out not because of the words (again fairly standard hero material) but for its very vehemence from a man who has been laid-back and generally calm until then.
In rescuing most of the people the Wraith took, he does two things that have implications for the series and for his character: he is forced to shoot his commanding officer, and in killing the Wraith queen, he wakes all the hibernating Wraith. This leads the Wraith to begin culling the people of the Pegasus galaxy in numbers unheard of in many generations, which tends to make Our Heroes really popular with the Pegasus natives as they look for allies. It’s a mixed ending, with the celebration of their survival tempered by Sheppard’s regret at what he has done.
John Sheppard’s strengths and weaknesses:
To me, John’s strengths are his willingness to do what he has to do to protect Atlantis and his people, his goofy charm, and his ability to be reasonably calm in a crisis. He gets bonus points from me for his ability to snark in dangerous situations.
John's even protective of his people when he's not in his right mind. In Conversion, as his control is slipping away, he is aware of it and tries to protect others. When he becomes uncharacteralistically enraged and smashes a glass door, he immediately agrees to return to the infirmary. When he is confined to quarters, he tells Elizabeth to double the guard on his door. When he awakens in the infirmary after his escape attempt, his first question is, "Did I hurt anybody?" In The Long Goodbye, the alien who has taken over John's body has tricked Ronon by playing on his trust of John, and used him for bait. Ronon's been shot, and the alien says about John, "He's screaming in my head like you wouldn't believe." It isn't hard to imagine that this scene is one of John's personal nightmares -- his teammate is hurt through trust placed in him and he can do nothing to help.
In some cases, he seems to trust too easily, but often that's only the appearance of trust and he has a contingency plan. The exceptions are Teyla and Ronon. Sheppard seemed to trust Teyla immediately, and he defended her several times throughout the first season when others were suspicious of her. He was right about her, but he really had no way of knowing that. Similarly, he asked Ronon to be on his team despite knowing very little about the man. Ronon's been extremely loyal to him, but again, John had no way of knowing that beforehand.
Usually, though, he has a plan in case supposed allies turn out to be untrustworthy. In Underground, for example, he is prepared for Cowan's attempted double-cross. In Home, he is constantly testing things and manipulating the illusion until he is sure it's not real. In The Hive, he's onto the Wraith collaborator and doesn't tell her anything useful. He brings Chaya to Atlantis in Sanctuary, which Rodney points out isn't the brightest idea from a security standpoint, but at the end he returns to Proculus in order to get answers, not because he is trying to help her people. He tells her he's there to help defend her people, but before he left Atlantis, when Elizabeth says that he can't possibly defend Proculus with one ship, he says, "I don't think I'll have to," because he knows Chaya is capable of destroying the Wraith darts. His cards are not always on the table, and as the military leader of Atlantis, they shouldn't be.
Negotiation, though...he's just no good at it. So bad it's funny, actually. Teyla tries, bless her heart, but it's an uphill battle between John agreeing to things he shouldn't (C4 for the Genii), Rodney's mouth, and Ronon's hostility. All in all, they're better off leaving the negotiation to Elizabeth. And don't even get me started on the bad flirting John was doing in an attempt to get out of the cell in Aurora.
A more serious problem turned up in Hot Zone, when the scientists were trapped in the viral lab, dying one by one from a nanovirus with Atlantis in lockdown mode. John was stuck in the gym with Teyla, unable to do anything to help. Instead of staying put and letting Dr. Beckett handle it, he orders Bates to override the gym doors against Dr. Weir's orders so that he can stop one of the infected scientists who panicked and broke quarantine. Inadvertantly, he allows the man to escape into the mess hall, where many more people are then infected. John ends up risking his own life in order to destroy the nanovirus, and is successful, but if he hadn't been, many people would've died. On the one hand, I understand that he couldn't stand helplessly by while people he felt responsible for were dying, and I admire that. On the other, he was wrong to force Bates to go against Weir's orders, and he was wrong to break quarantine. To his credit, he seems to understand this by the end of the episode, and I don't remember him going against her orders so blatantly again.
Character Evolution:
Of history, we know very little of John Sheppard. He served in Afghanistan. He lost some friends there, presumably the same people he was attempting to rescue against orders, but not necessarily. The Sci-Fi Channel site's bio of him states that he is the son of a Cold War colonel, but there's been nothing on the show about his family except for one ambiguous line in Letters from Pegasus. He's recording a message for Colonel Sumner's family, and he says, "I’m not sure he even has a family back there - not all of us do." In Intruder, he says nobody expected him to make it past Captain, much less all the way to Lieutenant Colonel. He's very proud of that promotion and works it into conversation several times in early season two. Which likely means that the guy who acted as if he could care less what his superior officers thought of him really did care, on some level.
As far as character development goes, he goes from being unsure of all this alien galaxy stuff to being willing to sacrifice himself to save the city and his people over the course of the first season. He and Dr. Weir seem to come to a deeper understanding, and he comes to accept her authority with more maturity than he showed with Sumner. He and McKay go from somewhat adversarial to, well, adversarial in the way that friends can be. Over the course of the second season, we saw him react proudly to his promotion, freak out somewhat over being stranded in Epiphany, and gradually get more willing to consider extreme options to protect Atlantis and his people.
Relationships:
Rodney: By far my favorite relationship on the show is the one between John Sheppard and Rodney McKay. Whether it's testing out Ancient personal shields in ways that nearly give Dr. Weir a heart attack, trying to talk her into letting them check out crashed alien spaceships, or sniping at each other as the Genii hold them at gunpoint, they're just fun to watch. They argue over whose fault it was that they died in an alternate timeline. They look to each other when they get stuck trying to persuade Elizabeth or the aliens of the week of something. They give synchronized power point presentations. (OK, it was some Ancient version of power point, but still. There were synchronized hands on hips.) They take turns saving each other's lives. John calms Rodney down when he panics. John trusts Rodney to fix absolutely anything, even if Rodney thinks it can't be fixed. They have this down to such an art form that by Inferno it's all by the numbers, and they both know it:
SHEPPARD: How are those engines coming?
McKAY: I'm not even close.
SHEPPARD: Well, then, I guess we're all gonna die.
McKAY: Oh, you're doing that on purpose!
Teyla: John seemed to like and trust Teyla from the very beginning, and his trust in her has never wavered, even when others were suspicious of her, and even when it was revealed that she has Wraith DNA. He seemed a little bit flirtatious with her in the pilot, but that passed quickly. He respects her. He listens to her when she tells him what she knows of the people in the Pegasus galaxy. She trusts him as well, and seems to respect him, despite some eye-rolling over his and McKay's antics.
Ford: And then there's Aiden Ford. Formerly Lieutenant Ford, now...well, who knows. He looked up to John a great deal and was willing to give John a chance even in the pilot, when it was clear Sumner didn't like him. And then John couldn't save him, couldn't stop him from leaving. Sheppard endangers his team twice to try to get Ford back, but is ultimately unsuccessful. The fact that he's willing to risk not only his life, but his team's, is telling. Sheppard's conversation with Ford's cousin back on Earth is painful to watch because it's clear that he blames himself and does wonder if Ford's trust in him was misplaced.
Ronon: John trusted Ronon quickly, although he kept a guard on him for a while just in case. Ronon's been very loyal to Sheppard, following his orders, watching his back, and helping protect the rest of the team and Atlantis. One of my favorite exchanges between John and Ronon, though, happens in Condemned on Ronon's first offworld mission with John, Teyla, and Rodney, before the chain of command is entirely established:
SHEPPARD: Now listen to me. When you get free, you get *us* free and we all get out of here. Let `em find out we're gone *after* we're gone.
DEX: You're expecting me to let them get away with this?
SHEPPARD: The operative words are "get away".
DEX: After I kill them.
SHEPPARD: That type of thinking will get *us* killed.
DEX: Well, if you had returned fire ...
SHEPPARD: The weapons systems were damaged.
DEX: If you say so.
SHEPPARD: I *do* say so, and right now I'm saying knock it off.
DEX: Is that an order, Sheppard?
SHEPPARD (laughing ruefully): I am beat up, tied up, and couldn't order a *pizza* right now if I wanted to. But if you need it to be, yeah - it's an order.
DEX: OK.
And that's good enough, as far as Ronon's concerned.
Elizabeth: There has been a growing respect between them as the series has progressed. She worries when he and his team are late coming back from a mission. John perches on her desk and they talk about ethics and what they are willing to do to protect their people. Sometimes there seems to be a "mama hen" vibe there, sometimes a brother-sister thing, and sometimes a spark of something else in their teasing. Caldwell's a little concerned that they're too close, but I think that concern is misplaced.
Enemies: The Wraith, The Genii: John may be goofy and charming, but when his people are threatened, Sheppard can be absolutely deadly. There can be no negotiation with the Wraith, and Sheppard is willing to do whatever it takes to eliminate the threat they pose to his people and the rest of the Pegasus galaxy. Whatever it takes, including killing prisoners and, for lack of a better term, trying to brainwash them.
It's a scary side of him, and there are people who have said that this is the real John Sheppard, that the charm and goofiness are a cover. While I think some of the charm he exudes upon meeting people is an act, it's mostly a way of setting people at ease, of calming a tense situation down. I also think it's practically automatic, but not really fake. As pentapus says, he's "playing harmless." If they underestimate him a little because of it, that's good too.
The Genii are almost as immune to the John Sheppard charm as the Wraith. Sheppard seems to have slightly different rules for them, however. If they're not a direct threat, he leaves them alone, possibly because he hopes that they'll be of some help against the Wraith one day. When the Genii strike force tries to take Atlantis, holding Elizabeth and Rodney hostage, Sheppard is quite willing to kill them, and quite efficient at it as well. In The Brotherhood, however, he leaves Kolya alive. In Coup, he tells Cowan about the supposed coup, but he seems to be trying to get information at the same time.
What Keeps Me Watching:
-The hope of backstory one day, although the mystery is appealing, too, and leaves plenty of room for fanfiction.
-The banter between John and Rodney, and the humor, although I like the darker John, too, if it's tied in with his protectiveness of his people.
-What remains of the gee-whiz-we're-on-Atlantis mentality of the first season.
-I also just want to know what they're going to do next. The last half of the second season took a darker tone, and I'm very interested in the repercussions for all the characters, not just John.
-Finally, of course, there is the sheer hotness of the guy. When I saw that most of the essays in this community did not include pictures, I wondered how in the world I was going to be able to write an entire essay on John Sheppard without pictures. In the end, I kind of made it a challenge, and I hope I succeeded. There are pictures in the links, though, never fear!
Links:
Here is the definitive explanation of why John Sheppard is not Kirk, by mecurtin
Here is a (non-shippy) analysis of John's relationship with Teyla, by harriet_spy
Before Post Secret was cool, there was This Sheppard postcard by tayawulf. Excellent characterization, in very few words.
For lots of pictures, advent_atlantis has had a Many Faces of Sheppard, and a Goofy Sheppard Week. It's also a fun place to distract ourselves until July.
The master list of SGA communities, by spikedluv, which is a labor of love, considering the sheer number of communities in the SGA fandom.
There are communities, in fact, for just about every pairing imaginable. Here are several involving John: mckay_sheppard, john_elizabeth, sheppard_dex, sheppard_teyla, sheppardzelenka
Here are shipmanifesto's entries on McKay/Sheppard and Sheppard/Weir
One for the actor: http://joeflanigan.info/
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Character: John Sheppard
Author: _medley_
Spoilers for: Pretty much all of seasons one and two
Notes: Quotes are from the transcripts on www.twiztv.com/scripts/atlantis
The appeal of John Sheppard, for me, is that he can be heroic and competent one minute, and then be the biggest dork in two galaxies the next. The dorkiness keeps him human rather than a cardboard cutout hero and makes him seem more approachable. I like that he's very protective of his people, and determined to leave no one behind. He's the kind of commander who wouldn't ask the people under his command to do anything he's not willing to do himself, and in fact, he frequently risks his own life rather than send someone else. This could get annoyingly heroic if he wasn't a big doofus at the same time.
From the beginning:
When I started watching SGA, Sci-Fi was on about its third repeat of the first season, and the first episode I happened to see was The Storm. As weird as I find this now, I wrote in my LJ that I wanted to like Sheppard, really, but that the actor spent the first half of the episode looking bewildered, and the second half looking angry and bewildered. I was not overly impressed, although I liked the character from fanfiction, and certainly liked the show enough to keep watching. Then the next week, Sci-Fi in its infinite wisdom aired some kind of monster movie marathon instead of airing the second half, The Eye, so the second episode I actually saw was The Defiant One. That was pretty much all it took. John and Rodney collaborating to convince Elizabeth that they really needed to check out that downed alien spacecraft, their nervous conversation about whether or not any of the Wraith could have survived this long, John's subsequent battle with the Superwraith, Rodney coming to help; all of it cemented my love for the John and Rodney show.
Then the pilot came out on DVD, and that pretty much settled Sheppard as my favorite character, although I still love him best when he and Rodney are onscreen together. Rising has elements of the hero's journey, following John Sheppard's progression from skilled-pilot-in-exile to the military leader of the Atlantis expedition. He discovers, practically accidentally, that he possesses the rare gene that allows a person to activate Ancient technology. In fact, Dr. Weir tells Jack O'Neill that, while others with the gene can activate the tech with practice, Sheppard can use it on an instinctive level. He's a natural. There's a fairy tale quality to that that I love, as predictable as it is. I'm a sucker for people finding somewhere they belong, and John Sheppard belongs in Atlantis. More so than he does on Earth, where he has been relegated literally to the ends of the Earth following an incident where he disobeyed orders while attempting to rescue his people.
I like that he's not really gung-ho about going to a new galaxy at first. He needs to come to terms with nearly being shot down by an alien missle and with his own "mutant" gene, as he calls it. He flips a coin. Gotta love a guy who flips a coin to decide whether to make a potentially one-way trip to a distant galaxy. He steps through the gate with his eyes closed, but once in Atlantis, the "oh, cool" factor kicks in as he and McKay explore a bit, and later on he's entirely sold once he sees that Atlantis has spaceships, which he calls "Puddlejumpers," because they're not big enough to be called "Gateships," in his opinion, even though Ford and McKay point out that they are, indeed, ships that go through the gate.
The pilot shows us other things about Sheppard, as well: he's clever, he's capable of a certain level of disarming charm when meeting new people, or at least new people who are not his superior officer, and he's still determined not to leave people behind.
The first Pegasus galaxy natives the members of the expedition meet are the Athosians, who are understandably a bit wary of armed strangers who claim that they are there to trade. This leads to the following conversation:
TEYLA: We do not trade with strangers.
SUMNER: Is that a fact.
SHEPPARD: well then we'll just… we'll have to get to know each other. Me, I like Ferris wheels, college football, and anything that goes more than 200 miles per hour.
FORD: (whisper) Sir, that’s not going to mean anything to them.
SHEPPARD: (whisper) feel free to speak up. I’m just trying to break the ice.
SUMNER: (whisper) if these people can't help us I'd rather not waste my time
TEYLA: Each morning before dawn our people drink a stout tea to brace us for the coming day. Will you join us?
SHEPPARD: *steps forward* I love a good cup of tea. Now there's another thing you know about me. We're practically friends already.
Sheppard is sort of dorkily charming here, coming across as a bit flirtatious with Teyla, but trying to put her at ease and distract her from Sumner’s no-nonsense attitude. Later, when Teyla comments that Sumner looks through her as though she isn’t there, he asks, “Do I?” He sounds like he genuinely wants to know, and that he cares if she feels he’s dismissing her; she assures him that he doesn’t act that way.
When the Wraith attack the Athosian settlement, he brings the survivors back to Atlantis and immediately wants to track the Wraith to get his people and the captured Athosians back. Insists on it, in fact, despite Dr. Weir’s objections and McKay’s initial denial that it’s even possible. “You don’t leave people in the hands of the enemy,” he shouts at Weir, and it stands out not because of the words (again fairly standard hero material) but for its very vehemence from a man who has been laid-back and generally calm until then.
In rescuing most of the people the Wraith took, he does two things that have implications for the series and for his character: he is forced to shoot his commanding officer, and in killing the Wraith queen, he wakes all the hibernating Wraith. This leads the Wraith to begin culling the people of the Pegasus galaxy in numbers unheard of in many generations, which tends to make Our Heroes really popular with the Pegasus natives as they look for allies. It’s a mixed ending, with the celebration of their survival tempered by Sheppard’s regret at what he has done.
John Sheppard’s strengths and weaknesses:
To me, John’s strengths are his willingness to do what he has to do to protect Atlantis and his people, his goofy charm, and his ability to be reasonably calm in a crisis. He gets bonus points from me for his ability to snark in dangerous situations.
John's even protective of his people when he's not in his right mind. In Conversion, as his control is slipping away, he is aware of it and tries to protect others. When he becomes uncharacteralistically enraged and smashes a glass door, he immediately agrees to return to the infirmary. When he is confined to quarters, he tells Elizabeth to double the guard on his door. When he awakens in the infirmary after his escape attempt, his first question is, "Did I hurt anybody?" In The Long Goodbye, the alien who has taken over John's body has tricked Ronon by playing on his trust of John, and used him for bait. Ronon's been shot, and the alien says about John, "He's screaming in my head like you wouldn't believe." It isn't hard to imagine that this scene is one of John's personal nightmares -- his teammate is hurt through trust placed in him and he can do nothing to help.
In some cases, he seems to trust too easily, but often that's only the appearance of trust and he has a contingency plan. The exceptions are Teyla and Ronon. Sheppard seemed to trust Teyla immediately, and he defended her several times throughout the first season when others were suspicious of her. He was right about her, but he really had no way of knowing that. Similarly, he asked Ronon to be on his team despite knowing very little about the man. Ronon's been extremely loyal to him, but again, John had no way of knowing that beforehand.
Usually, though, he has a plan in case supposed allies turn out to be untrustworthy. In Underground, for example, he is prepared for Cowan's attempted double-cross. In Home, he is constantly testing things and manipulating the illusion until he is sure it's not real. In The Hive, he's onto the Wraith collaborator and doesn't tell her anything useful. He brings Chaya to Atlantis in Sanctuary, which Rodney points out isn't the brightest idea from a security standpoint, but at the end he returns to Proculus in order to get answers, not because he is trying to help her people. He tells her he's there to help defend her people, but before he left Atlantis, when Elizabeth says that he can't possibly defend Proculus with one ship, he says, "I don't think I'll have to," because he knows Chaya is capable of destroying the Wraith darts. His cards are not always on the table, and as the military leader of Atlantis, they shouldn't be.
Negotiation, though...he's just no good at it. So bad it's funny, actually. Teyla tries, bless her heart, but it's an uphill battle between John agreeing to things he shouldn't (C4 for the Genii), Rodney's mouth, and Ronon's hostility. All in all, they're better off leaving the negotiation to Elizabeth. And don't even get me started on the bad flirting John was doing in an attempt to get out of the cell in Aurora.
A more serious problem turned up in Hot Zone, when the scientists were trapped in the viral lab, dying one by one from a nanovirus with Atlantis in lockdown mode. John was stuck in the gym with Teyla, unable to do anything to help. Instead of staying put and letting Dr. Beckett handle it, he orders Bates to override the gym doors against Dr. Weir's orders so that he can stop one of the infected scientists who panicked and broke quarantine. Inadvertantly, he allows the man to escape into the mess hall, where many more people are then infected. John ends up risking his own life in order to destroy the nanovirus, and is successful, but if he hadn't been, many people would've died. On the one hand, I understand that he couldn't stand helplessly by while people he felt responsible for were dying, and I admire that. On the other, he was wrong to force Bates to go against Weir's orders, and he was wrong to break quarantine. To his credit, he seems to understand this by the end of the episode, and I don't remember him going against her orders so blatantly again.
Character Evolution:
Of history, we know very little of John Sheppard. He served in Afghanistan. He lost some friends there, presumably the same people he was attempting to rescue against orders, but not necessarily. The Sci-Fi Channel site's bio of him states that he is the son of a Cold War colonel, but there's been nothing on the show about his family except for one ambiguous line in Letters from Pegasus. He's recording a message for Colonel Sumner's family, and he says, "I’m not sure he even has a family back there - not all of us do." In Intruder, he says nobody expected him to make it past Captain, much less all the way to Lieutenant Colonel. He's very proud of that promotion and works it into conversation several times in early season two. Which likely means that the guy who acted as if he could care less what his superior officers thought of him really did care, on some level.
As far as character development goes, he goes from being unsure of all this alien galaxy stuff to being willing to sacrifice himself to save the city and his people over the course of the first season. He and Dr. Weir seem to come to a deeper understanding, and he comes to accept her authority with more maturity than he showed with Sumner. He and McKay go from somewhat adversarial to, well, adversarial in the way that friends can be. Over the course of the second season, we saw him react proudly to his promotion, freak out somewhat over being stranded in Epiphany, and gradually get more willing to consider extreme options to protect Atlantis and his people.
Relationships:
Rodney: By far my favorite relationship on the show is the one between John Sheppard and Rodney McKay. Whether it's testing out Ancient personal shields in ways that nearly give Dr. Weir a heart attack, trying to talk her into letting them check out crashed alien spaceships, or sniping at each other as the Genii hold them at gunpoint, they're just fun to watch. They argue over whose fault it was that they died in an alternate timeline. They look to each other when they get stuck trying to persuade Elizabeth or the aliens of the week of something. They give synchronized power point presentations. (OK, it was some Ancient version of power point, but still. There were synchronized hands on hips.) They take turns saving each other's lives. John calms Rodney down when he panics. John trusts Rodney to fix absolutely anything, even if Rodney thinks it can't be fixed. They have this down to such an art form that by Inferno it's all by the numbers, and they both know it:
SHEPPARD: How are those engines coming?
McKAY: I'm not even close.
SHEPPARD: Well, then, I guess we're all gonna die.
McKAY: Oh, you're doing that on purpose!
Teyla: John seemed to like and trust Teyla from the very beginning, and his trust in her has never wavered, even when others were suspicious of her, and even when it was revealed that she has Wraith DNA. He seemed a little bit flirtatious with her in the pilot, but that passed quickly. He respects her. He listens to her when she tells him what she knows of the people in the Pegasus galaxy. She trusts him as well, and seems to respect him, despite some eye-rolling over his and McKay's antics.
Ford: And then there's Aiden Ford. Formerly Lieutenant Ford, now...well, who knows. He looked up to John a great deal and was willing to give John a chance even in the pilot, when it was clear Sumner didn't like him. And then John couldn't save him, couldn't stop him from leaving. Sheppard endangers his team twice to try to get Ford back, but is ultimately unsuccessful. The fact that he's willing to risk not only his life, but his team's, is telling. Sheppard's conversation with Ford's cousin back on Earth is painful to watch because it's clear that he blames himself and does wonder if Ford's trust in him was misplaced.
Ronon: John trusted Ronon quickly, although he kept a guard on him for a while just in case. Ronon's been very loyal to Sheppard, following his orders, watching his back, and helping protect the rest of the team and Atlantis. One of my favorite exchanges between John and Ronon, though, happens in Condemned on Ronon's first offworld mission with John, Teyla, and Rodney, before the chain of command is entirely established:
SHEPPARD: Now listen to me. When you get free, you get *us* free and we all get out of here. Let `em find out we're gone *after* we're gone.
DEX: You're expecting me to let them get away with this?
SHEPPARD: The operative words are "get away".
DEX: After I kill them.
SHEPPARD: That type of thinking will get *us* killed.
DEX: Well, if you had returned fire ...
SHEPPARD: The weapons systems were damaged.
DEX: If you say so.
SHEPPARD: I *do* say so, and right now I'm saying knock it off.
DEX: Is that an order, Sheppard?
SHEPPARD (laughing ruefully): I am beat up, tied up, and couldn't order a *pizza* right now if I wanted to. But if you need it to be, yeah - it's an order.
DEX: OK.
And that's good enough, as far as Ronon's concerned.
Elizabeth: There has been a growing respect between them as the series has progressed. She worries when he and his team are late coming back from a mission. John perches on her desk and they talk about ethics and what they are willing to do to protect their people. Sometimes there seems to be a "mama hen" vibe there, sometimes a brother-sister thing, and sometimes a spark of something else in their teasing. Caldwell's a little concerned that they're too close, but I think that concern is misplaced.
Enemies: The Wraith, The Genii: John may be goofy and charming, but when his people are threatened, Sheppard can be absolutely deadly. There can be no negotiation with the Wraith, and Sheppard is willing to do whatever it takes to eliminate the threat they pose to his people and the rest of the Pegasus galaxy. Whatever it takes, including killing prisoners and, for lack of a better term, trying to brainwash them.
It's a scary side of him, and there are people who have said that this is the real John Sheppard, that the charm and goofiness are a cover. While I think some of the charm he exudes upon meeting people is an act, it's mostly a way of setting people at ease, of calming a tense situation down. I also think it's practically automatic, but not really fake. As pentapus says, he's "playing harmless." If they underestimate him a little because of it, that's good too.
The Genii are almost as immune to the John Sheppard charm as the Wraith. Sheppard seems to have slightly different rules for them, however. If they're not a direct threat, he leaves them alone, possibly because he hopes that they'll be of some help against the Wraith one day. When the Genii strike force tries to take Atlantis, holding Elizabeth and Rodney hostage, Sheppard is quite willing to kill them, and quite efficient at it as well. In The Brotherhood, however, he leaves Kolya alive. In Coup, he tells Cowan about the supposed coup, but he seems to be trying to get information at the same time.
What Keeps Me Watching:
-The hope of backstory one day, although the mystery is appealing, too, and leaves plenty of room for fanfiction.
-The banter between John and Rodney, and the humor, although I like the darker John, too, if it's tied in with his protectiveness of his people.
-What remains of the gee-whiz-we're-on-Atlantis mentality of the first season.
-I also just want to know what they're going to do next. The last half of the second season took a darker tone, and I'm very interested in the repercussions for all the characters, not just John.
-Finally, of course, there is the sheer hotness of the guy. When I saw that most of the essays in this community did not include pictures, I wondered how in the world I was going to be able to write an entire essay on John Sheppard without pictures. In the end, I kind of made it a challenge, and I hope I succeeded. There are pictures in the links, though, never fear!
Links:
Here is the definitive explanation of why John Sheppard is not Kirk, by mecurtin
Here is a (non-shippy) analysis of John's relationship with Teyla, by harriet_spy
Before Post Secret was cool, there was This Sheppard postcard by tayawulf. Excellent characterization, in very few words.
For lots of pictures, advent_atlantis has had a Many Faces of Sheppard, and a Goofy Sheppard Week. It's also a fun place to distract ourselves until July.
The master list of SGA communities, by spikedluv, which is a labor of love, considering the sheer number of communities in the SGA fandom.
There are communities, in fact, for just about every pairing imaginable. Here are several involving John: mckay_sheppard, john_elizabeth, sheppard_dex, sheppard_teyla, sheppardzelenka
Here are shipmanifesto's entries on McKay/Sheppard and Sheppard/Weir
One for the actor: http://joeflanigan.info/