I hadn’t really intended it to shake out this way, but this is kind of an appropriate episode to review on my birthday.
SG-1: 1x06: Brief Candle
I don’t actually like this episode very much, it’s always seemed really poorly thought out and the more they try and explain it the less sense it makes. Let’s just overview the problems here (I guess it’s more listing this time):
1. So how long has the goa’uld been gone? He could show up for a couple days every two years to pick up data recorded and that would be generations for these people. And they don’t keep records so I don’t suspect anyone knows what has happened.
2. How does the society function if there aren’t outside forces keeping them supplied? They spend their time partying with no worry over food or resources. Maybe the nanobots do something to keep the crops growing constantly, in which case aren’t they going to have a problem now that that’s gone?
3. Really, even without that, isn’t this culture in for a huge adjustment period once it sets in how different their time is? No one is used to carrying for babies for years until they are able to take care of themselves, it seems that no one grows old, their entire concept of time is going to have to change.
4. I don’t think this episode realizes it discounts one of its own premises. This culture has been here for conservatively 1000 years and it’s completely stagnant. So I don’t think anyone could study evolution in that environment. There is no survival of the fittest, no conflict, no struggle, and no room for progress that evolves either the species of the culture. Since this culture split from its ancient Greek roots, humans on Earth have traveled the planet, split the atom, traveled to space, had inventions and art and change that shaped billions of people; and on this planet, supposedly meant to study evolution they have reduced to infantile beings that do nothing but have pleasant lives. Now this does support the idea that the goa’uld that set this up probably doesn’t bother to come back because there wasn’t much to see here, but this Eden-like world (except they eat neither from the tree of life nor that of knowledge) doesn’t really make sense.
5. This episode has a decent amount of reproduction issues that it really makes it hard to ignore. Does this mean pregnancy basically lasts a day here? How about the birthing process itself? It must go fairly normally since none of the Earthers noticed anything until she was back on her feet really quickly afterward. And...wouldn’t these people always be fertile? We don’t actually see that many kids around (obvious why from a production standpoint but in universe it doesn’t work), the main couple we see don’t seem to have any other children so are we dealing with a declining population on this planet? But if that’s the case how have they lasted for centuries like this?
6. Aside from change actors of the children, none of the other people appear to age. I know Sam pointed out early on that no one seemed to be very old but Jack is there for weeks, he gets very very old, but everyone else just looks the same. I could maybe buy that their aging levels out after they reach maturity, but that point is never actually addressed.
7. And mainly I just don’t get how Jack is going to revert to his natural age without showing any effects of this having happened. If he had only ever appeared to age but still been otherwise physically unaffected *maybe*, but he’s clearly suffering some decay of age and complaining about prostate problems.
Okay, outside of complaining about the very structure of the episode, I need to complain that RDA just does not work in the old man scenes. I don’t know if it’s the makeup hampering him, feeling like he needed to play it really old (which could be to him or the director), or just straight up bad acting, but it doesn’t work.
I’m also not really sure what we’re supposed to get out of this Qinthia relationship. It’s pretty squirky if you get right down to it (on both sides), which at the same time feeling like someone in the relevant PTB wanted to make Jack as much of a Kirk figure as possible without any real development to make it happen and still needing a guaranteed out at the end.
On the good side, the team is really starting to feel like they’ve gelled, and we get plenty of Sam and Janet being awesome science sisters (they’d be science bros if they were dudes) which I always enjoy. And I really like the small detail in the meeting when Sam and Janet stand up when the General does while Daniel and Teal’c don’t. Those seem like kind of minor points after I spent so much time complaining, but it’s good that the episode does feel authentic within the world even if the plot of the week really doesn’t hold water.
Next time:
shrug, guess we’ll find out when I come to it
I even updated to suggestion possibilities list