IOA talk- may be Stargate Atlantis spoilers through season 5
Going off of my earlier rant (see previous entry) the depiction of the IOA has started to really annoy me.
What's wrong with civilian oversight? You know- us crazy civilians aren't idiots and occasionally we come up with some good ideas. Because- hello- lots of people in those committees have military or some kind of international experience.
And you know, those of us who have studied international conflict get something else- military dictatorships can go very, very bad in the name of national security. And maybe it's easy to poke fun at politicians, but a lot of them are good people who will do the right thing if given the knowledge and power to do it.
Urrgh! Why do Stargate writers persist in writing politicians and diplomats like Woolsey and Kinsey? Except Elizabeth, who was constantly undermined and never really given a chance to be smug in the face of the people who treated her like crap (including Sheppard sometimes), and then written off in a way that manages to make Carson's death by exploding tumors look gracious. Elizabeth had so much potential, and now it's all gone.
At least SG-1 had Daniel and often Sam and then Jonas standing up to Jack. Originally, SGA had Rodney and Elizabeth doing the peaceful, there's another way thing. And now we're down to this.
It was really depressing when I saw that episode where they had that Anubis created guy and Daniel wanted to kill him before he showed his evil stripe. And then when SGA made that crack about the wraith eating people at the Geneva Conventions- of course, there are some crazy people you can't negotiate with, but that's never been true of entire people outside of sci-fi.
I guess it's the tragedy of sci-fi that it's becoming defined by shows where genocide is okay, aliens you can't negotiate with are the norm, etc., when for me, it began with Star Trek where every such concept was challenged. What happened to the days when humans and Klingons laughed together to fight the alien that fed off anger and hate? Or the moment when Jean-Luc shouted out that famous Amnesty International touted line about how torture never works? And oh- that episode with Hugh (Hugo) the first Borg who led some of the Borg away from assimilation?