Stargate SG-1, 101-102
So, since work is super slow today and I really don't want to be reading my book right now and since I've been meaning to do this for a little over a week now, I thought I'd go ahead and give my impressions of rewatching Children Of The Gods and The Enemy Within.
Yeah, sorry this took so long paraka, but crap kept coming up last week. And then there was procrastination. *hangs head* I'm a horrible person, I know.
101 - Children Of The Gods
The thing that first got me was that opening scene with the four guys and the one girl all sitting around the Stargate playing cards. First of all, I didn't believe for an instant that the chick was military. There was something about her that just bugged me. When she died, I wasn't moved. Also, as curious as I can be and as cool as it would be to see the Stargate in action, if I had no idea what it was and the damn thing opened like that, my first instinct would not be to go check it out. Especially when you take into consideration that this is in the middle of a mountain in a top secret government facility...yeah, the bitch could blow at any moment.
I think my favourite scene from the whole ep was the tissue box scene. That was the beginning of just awesomely classic Jack that I can't help but love it. "They could be blowin' their noses right now." Brilliant!
When Hammond was first introduced and, for really, the first few eps, he could be something of an asshole. I mean, I know he's supposed to be hardnosed career military, on his way out and all, but damn. That is not the Hammond we know. His attitude with Daniel, especially was shocking. The scene that really comes to mind was when Daniel first came back and was wanting to go galavanting off after Sha're and he asks Hammond to let him be on the team that goes, Hammond said (and don't quote me here cause it has been a week) "You're hardly in a position to be making demands." And there just seems to be such...maybe not malice, but definite distaste and a bit of anger, that I really was just stunned. He does, however, seem to be our Hammond when introducing Sam. That's one of the reasons why I'm pretty sure he was "Uncle George" when Sam was growing up and they kept in touch even when Sam wasn't talking to her father.
Which brings me to Sam. Oh, gods, but I hated her in those first couple of scenes. My personal canon has always stated that she was coming off of an assignment where her CO was a masoginist pig and that she was still in the mindset of having to defend her feminity from the get go. I have the vaguest pictures in me head of Jack and Sam just talking a bit later and Jack asking what was up with that and Sam explaining that she expected him to be a total bastard. I can see the two of them getting a laugh out of that.
Daniel's character hasn't really changed.
Teal'c has changed in ways that you'd expect. He's very aloof and quiet at the beginning because he's still trying to figure out how to interact with these people.
Pairings wise, this ep I saw more Jack/Daniel and Daniel/Sam then anything. I always have. That whole "flirting" bit between Jack and Sam with the reproductive organs and the bit on the ramp, I've never seen as pairing-ness. That's each getting a feel for the other and Jack testing her.
I liked how Jack grabbed Daniel when he was just standing there in limbo and took him home. "I don't know what to do with me." That line kinda broke my heart. That was the first time that I really just wanted to pet Daniel. At Jack's apartment, there was a nice touch of awkwardness where they weren't entirely sure how to talk and the going back and forth between topics was very natural. When Daniel was asking about Sarah, that was the most telling bit. "So, when am I going to meet Sarah?" "Oh, probably, *blows* never." The crestfallen look that Daniel gets was very indicative, in my mind, not only of the possibility of a pairing, but just the fact that Daniel was looking so hard for a friend at that moment and the possibility that Jack was just taking him on as a charity case and he better not get too comfy was very poignant.
The Daniel/Sam moments were more frienship and nerdy based, but they were there. They were also kinda mostly Sam's side of things. When they first meet and Sam's all excited to meet him...that scene kinda bothered me. I'm hoping that it was the combination of first time 'gate travel and the fact that she was nerding out over the DHD, but I swear, that scene almost felt like hero-worship. I know Daniel opened the 'gate and all, but Sam had been working on it for two years before hand. Personally, I wouldn't feel hero-worship toward someone who had done in 14 days what I couldn't do in 2 years. But I'm also competetive and I hold grudges. But I did like the scene in the cartouch room when they were talking expanding universe theorem. Normally, I'd say she should've been able to figure that out for herself, being the uber astrophysicst and all, but I like to think that that explanation was one of those, so simple, you don't think about it. And it was a plot device to explain to the Jack and Kawalsky type people what the hell was going on...even though I'm sure Jack already knew what it was they had just figured out.
Some of the science of this episode (some that they later explained and some that they used/use as canon) did kind of bother me. Here be nitpicks from someone who was starting to study astrophysics and then gave up for the more exciting, but not near as lucrative field of criminal justice...
When Sam mentioned that she and her team had run hundred of permutations using Earth as the point of origin, I do have a hard time believing that they didn't come up with even a single match. Granted, knowing that there are six symbols to precede the point of origin and there are 42? 49? Forty-odd possible symbols...if one cannot repeat a symbol (I'm basing that off the fact that the DHD lights up and stays lit and the principle of defining a set of coordinates based on spatial relativity which would both preclude the use of a single symbol twice), that does leave a crap load of possible options (over 10 billion according to my fast estimate) and "hundreds" barely scratches the surface, but Sam is not stupid. I have no doubt that she could chart Abydos's position and then chart other known systems and make informed guesses on which combinations to try. Basically, that whole idea was a very big "Plot Master say..."
At the beginning of the series, they had the problem of the SG teams being thrown out of the gate frozen while the bad guys were just waltzing around without a problem. I can't remember if they explain it in Emancipation, but I'm going to hope that the explanation is based on the sonic dampeners that are supposed to be installed early on. We don't see Apophis and them when they get back to Chulak after abducting...the blonde bitch that I couldn't stand...didn't she even get named? Anyway, we don't know if they were frozen upon exit or not. And the fact that they weren't frozen coming *back* seems to indicate that it does have something to do with the Earth gate. I do wish, however, that they had explained that a bit more.
I could've sworn that there was another nitpick from the pilot, but I'll be damned if I can remember it now...
Anyway, considering it was 1997 and this was cutting edge stuff, it's good by the standards of the time. Judging it in comparison with later seasons is kinda unfair. Gateworld.net has said that they are redoing the pilot to be rereleased as a stand along movie and that they're going to be doing some heavy editing including cleaning up the effects and removing the nudity (which I didn't really have a problem with, but apparently a lot of people are saying that it didn't fit in with the original feel to the show), redoing the score (please let Joel Goldsmith release that as it's own soundtrack even though there is a released soundtrack already). It's actually supposed to shorten it by about 7 minutes. I'm curious to see how that's going to turn out. Expect meta on that once it's released.
Damn...that was longer than I expected. Apparently letting this stuff stew in my head for a week means I write more about it. I'll try not to talk so much about Enemy Within. Since I don't have to rehash some of the world-building stuff, it probably won't be as long.
102 - The Enemy Within
Enemy Within felt like they were actually becoming a team. There were a couple of minor team-building moments in Children Of The Gods (Sam/Daniel interaction, Jack/Sam ribbing, Sam taking Teal'c's staff weapon and that look that they shared which upon later viewing and much thinking was totally the first hint at Sam/Teal'c and dammit, geonncannon, you've corrupted me to your evil ways!), but they were much more pronounced in Enemy Within. The team dynamic was already starting to be established.
Daniel/Sam was being established early on and I can kinda understand why the beginning of the fandom was flooded with so much fic for them. They were the ones who were doing all the briefings together and I think that they were discussing a lot of the initial gate theory in off-camera scenes. I think in these first few months, they were both learning a lot about each other's fields and it kinda makes me want to go try and find fic for it. Unfortunately, if memory serves, a lot of the early SG-1 fic was bad!fic. At least, I don't remember having much luck finding decent stuff when I first got into the fandom six or seven years ago. I suddenly feel old.
Anyway, there was the scene when Sam and Daniel were walking down the hall and Sam asks how long it's been since Daniel slept and then basically orders him to go sleep. That one established, for me, that they were already well aware that they were both workaholics who tended to forget about taking care of themselves and that they were also going to look out for each other as much as they could.
There was what I felt was a Stargate!Happy Threesome moment (apparently, I'm going to have a "Happy Threesome" for every one of my fandoms and it all started with the original H3 in CSI). When Jack, Sam and Daniel were all in the control room and they were talking about the iris, that was the first hint. The way they were all standing there staring at the iris and Daniel asks, "So that iris is gonna hold, right?" Sam explains about it being trinium and only 3 nanometres and matter can't even reintegrate and blah blah. Jack: "So that iris is gonna hold, right?" I know a lot of people just see that as Sam technobabbling and Jack and Daniel both just looking for a straight answer, but I see it as otherwise and no one can tell me different. *sticks out tongue*
Jack standing up for Teal'c early one was another team thing. I know Sam and Daniel weren't really involved in that aspect, but that really did feel like it was more Jack's thing. This was an early strong episode for Teal'c that I felt really established his innate honesty and trust in Jack. When he participated in the testing to find a good anesthetic for the symbiote, I think he really did want to help Kawalsky and wasn't thinking in terms of getting himself brownie points.
Sam...ah, my dear Sam...again, I have issues with her early characterization. When Kawalsky grabbed her, I didn't like the way she just kinda hung there like a damsel in distress. Especially since they establish in the next freaking episode that she has mad self defence skillz. That hold that Kawalsky had her in, she should've been able to break. I know Kawalsky is supposed to be former Special Forces like Jack and he probably has some made skillz of his own and the added presence of the Goa'uld gave him some badass strength, but they could've at least shown a little more fight then just being thrown around and then pulled into a headlock. She is probably used to fighting guys twice her size with triple her strength. You learn to compensate.
Since I'm getting pretty longwinded on this one, I'm gonna conclude with a final thought toward the science of Goa'uld in Kawalsky. If you knew that there was an alien parasite in his head and you'd just had to surgically remove the damn thing, why the hell didn't they do a second MRI to make sure there weren't still bits of snake still in him. When the part fell out of his brain in that last scene, that bitch was definitely big enough to show up on a scan. "Plot master say..." got a bit sloppy on that one.
So, there you have it. 101 and 102 according to maekala. It's probably a good thing that I didn't try to meta this until now because my starting timestamp says that I first opened this at 1730 and it's now 1855. Granted, I had someone check in, got a cup of coffee and made a trip to the bathroom in that time, but otherwise I've been typing meta for almost an hour and a half. If Stargate meta continues to go this way, it's gonna get done on Sunday afternoons at work when I'm bored out of my skull and need something to occupy myself for a bit.
paraka, if you want to try and go more in depth about something, I'll probably be on AIM tomorrow in the afternoon (assuming Tina doesn't grab me and want to do something) and then while I'm in class. You know how class goes, so don't be surprised if I get distracted and then I'll be driving an extra 50-ish miles afterward back to College Station since my appt to get this damn cast off is at 0900 the next day and I don't want to have to drive that much that early, so talking after class may not be practical. Or, we can do a comment fest.
In the next week, I'm gonna try and watch Emancipation, Broca Divide and First Commandment. First Commandment may or may not happen depending on how much time I have. Cool with you? Or are you already ahead of me?
Yeah, sorry this took so long paraka, but crap kept coming up last week. And then there was procrastination. *hangs head* I'm a horrible person, I know.
101 - Children Of The Gods
The thing that first got me was that opening scene with the four guys and the one girl all sitting around the Stargate playing cards. First of all, I didn't believe for an instant that the chick was military. There was something about her that just bugged me. When she died, I wasn't moved. Also, as curious as I can be and as cool as it would be to see the Stargate in action, if I had no idea what it was and the damn thing opened like that, my first instinct would not be to go check it out. Especially when you take into consideration that this is in the middle of a mountain in a top secret government facility...yeah, the bitch could blow at any moment.
I think my favourite scene from the whole ep was the tissue box scene. That was the beginning of just awesomely classic Jack that I can't help but love it. "They could be blowin' their noses right now." Brilliant!
When Hammond was first introduced and, for really, the first few eps, he could be something of an asshole. I mean, I know he's supposed to be hardnosed career military, on his way out and all, but damn. That is not the Hammond we know. His attitude with Daniel, especially was shocking. The scene that really comes to mind was when Daniel first came back and was wanting to go galavanting off after Sha're and he asks Hammond to let him be on the team that goes, Hammond said (and don't quote me here cause it has been a week) "You're hardly in a position to be making demands." And there just seems to be such...maybe not malice, but definite distaste and a bit of anger, that I really was just stunned. He does, however, seem to be our Hammond when introducing Sam. That's one of the reasons why I'm pretty sure he was "Uncle George" when Sam was growing up and they kept in touch even when Sam wasn't talking to her father.
Which brings me to Sam. Oh, gods, but I hated her in those first couple of scenes. My personal canon has always stated that she was coming off of an assignment where her CO was a masoginist pig and that she was still in the mindset of having to defend her feminity from the get go. I have the vaguest pictures in me head of Jack and Sam just talking a bit later and Jack asking what was up with that and Sam explaining that she expected him to be a total bastard. I can see the two of them getting a laugh out of that.
Daniel's character hasn't really changed.
Teal'c has changed in ways that you'd expect. He's very aloof and quiet at the beginning because he's still trying to figure out how to interact with these people.
Pairings wise, this ep I saw more Jack/Daniel and Daniel/Sam then anything. I always have. That whole "flirting" bit between Jack and Sam with the reproductive organs and the bit on the ramp, I've never seen as pairing-ness. That's each getting a feel for the other and Jack testing her.
I liked how Jack grabbed Daniel when he was just standing there in limbo and took him home. "I don't know what to do with me." That line kinda broke my heart. That was the first time that I really just wanted to pet Daniel. At Jack's apartment, there was a nice touch of awkwardness where they weren't entirely sure how to talk and the going back and forth between topics was very natural. When Daniel was asking about Sarah, that was the most telling bit. "So, when am I going to meet Sarah?" "Oh, probably, *blows* never." The crestfallen look that Daniel gets was very indicative, in my mind, not only of the possibility of a pairing, but just the fact that Daniel was looking so hard for a friend at that moment and the possibility that Jack was just taking him on as a charity case and he better not get too comfy was very poignant.
The Daniel/Sam moments were more frienship and nerdy based, but they were there. They were also kinda mostly Sam's side of things. When they first meet and Sam's all excited to meet him...that scene kinda bothered me. I'm hoping that it was the combination of first time 'gate travel and the fact that she was nerding out over the DHD, but I swear, that scene almost felt like hero-worship. I know Daniel opened the 'gate and all, but Sam had been working on it for two years before hand. Personally, I wouldn't feel hero-worship toward someone who had done in 14 days what I couldn't do in 2 years. But I'm also competetive and I hold grudges. But I did like the scene in the cartouch room when they were talking expanding universe theorem. Normally, I'd say she should've been able to figure that out for herself, being the uber astrophysicst and all, but I like to think that that explanation was one of those, so simple, you don't think about it. And it was a plot device to explain to the Jack and Kawalsky type people what the hell was going on...even though I'm sure Jack already knew what it was they had just figured out.
Some of the science of this episode (some that they later explained and some that they used/use as canon) did kind of bother me. Here be nitpicks from someone who was starting to study astrophysics and then gave up for the more exciting, but not near as lucrative field of criminal justice...
When Sam mentioned that she and her team had run hundred of permutations using Earth as the point of origin, I do have a hard time believing that they didn't come up with even a single match. Granted, knowing that there are six symbols to precede the point of origin and there are 42? 49? Forty-odd possible symbols...if one cannot repeat a symbol (I'm basing that off the fact that the DHD lights up and stays lit and the principle of defining a set of coordinates based on spatial relativity which would both preclude the use of a single symbol twice), that does leave a crap load of possible options (over 10 billion according to my fast estimate) and "hundreds" barely scratches the surface, but Sam is not stupid. I have no doubt that she could chart Abydos's position and then chart other known systems and make informed guesses on which combinations to try. Basically, that whole idea was a very big "Plot Master say..."
At the beginning of the series, they had the problem of the SG teams being thrown out of the gate frozen while the bad guys were just waltzing around without a problem. I can't remember if they explain it in Emancipation, but I'm going to hope that the explanation is based on the sonic dampeners that are supposed to be installed early on. We don't see Apophis and them when they get back to Chulak after abducting...the blonde bitch that I couldn't stand...didn't she even get named? Anyway, we don't know if they were frozen upon exit or not. And the fact that they weren't frozen coming *back* seems to indicate that it does have something to do with the Earth gate. I do wish, however, that they had explained that a bit more.
I could've sworn that there was another nitpick from the pilot, but I'll be damned if I can remember it now...
Anyway, considering it was 1997 and this was cutting edge stuff, it's good by the standards of the time. Judging it in comparison with later seasons is kinda unfair. Gateworld.net has said that they are redoing the pilot to be rereleased as a stand along movie and that they're going to be doing some heavy editing including cleaning up the effects and removing the nudity (which I didn't really have a problem with, but apparently a lot of people are saying that it didn't fit in with the original feel to the show), redoing the score (please let Joel Goldsmith release that as it's own soundtrack even though there is a released soundtrack already). It's actually supposed to shorten it by about 7 minutes. I'm curious to see how that's going to turn out. Expect meta on that once it's released.
Damn...that was longer than I expected. Apparently letting this stuff stew in my head for a week means I write more about it. I'll try not to talk so much about Enemy Within. Since I don't have to rehash some of the world-building stuff, it probably won't be as long.
102 - The Enemy Within
Enemy Within felt like they were actually becoming a team. There were a couple of minor team-building moments in Children Of The Gods (Sam/Daniel interaction, Jack/Sam ribbing, Sam taking Teal'c's staff weapon and that look that they shared which upon later viewing and much thinking was totally the first hint at Sam/Teal'c and dammit, geonncannon, you've corrupted me to your evil ways!), but they were much more pronounced in Enemy Within. The team dynamic was already starting to be established.
Daniel/Sam was being established early on and I can kinda understand why the beginning of the fandom was flooded with so much fic for them. They were the ones who were doing all the briefings together and I think that they were discussing a lot of the initial gate theory in off-camera scenes. I think in these first few months, they were both learning a lot about each other's fields and it kinda makes me want to go try and find fic for it. Unfortunately, if memory serves, a lot of the early SG-1 fic was bad!fic. At least, I don't remember having much luck finding decent stuff when I first got into the fandom six or seven years ago. I suddenly feel old.
Anyway, there was the scene when Sam and Daniel were walking down the hall and Sam asks how long it's been since Daniel slept and then basically orders him to go sleep. That one established, for me, that they were already well aware that they were both workaholics who tended to forget about taking care of themselves and that they were also going to look out for each other as much as they could.
There was what I felt was a Stargate!Happy Threesome moment (apparently, I'm going to have a "Happy Threesome" for every one of my fandoms and it all started with the original H3 in CSI). When Jack, Sam and Daniel were all in the control room and they were talking about the iris, that was the first hint. The way they were all standing there staring at the iris and Daniel asks, "So that iris is gonna hold, right?" Sam explains about it being trinium and only 3 nanometres and matter can't even reintegrate and blah blah. Jack: "So that iris is gonna hold, right?" I know a lot of people just see that as Sam technobabbling and Jack and Daniel both just looking for a straight answer, but I see it as otherwise and no one can tell me different. *sticks out tongue*
Jack standing up for Teal'c early one was another team thing. I know Sam and Daniel weren't really involved in that aspect, but that really did feel like it was more Jack's thing. This was an early strong episode for Teal'c that I felt really established his innate honesty and trust in Jack. When he participated in the testing to find a good anesthetic for the symbiote, I think he really did want to help Kawalsky and wasn't thinking in terms of getting himself brownie points.
Sam...ah, my dear Sam...again, I have issues with her early characterization. When Kawalsky grabbed her, I didn't like the way she just kinda hung there like a damsel in distress. Especially since they establish in the next freaking episode that she has mad self defence skillz. That hold that Kawalsky had her in, she should've been able to break. I know Kawalsky is supposed to be former Special Forces like Jack and he probably has some made skillz of his own and the added presence of the Goa'uld gave him some badass strength, but they could've at least shown a little more fight then just being thrown around and then pulled into a headlock. She is probably used to fighting guys twice her size with triple her strength. You learn to compensate.
Since I'm getting pretty longwinded on this one, I'm gonna conclude with a final thought toward the science of Goa'uld in Kawalsky. If you knew that there was an alien parasite in his head and you'd just had to surgically remove the damn thing, why the hell didn't they do a second MRI to make sure there weren't still bits of snake still in him. When the part fell out of his brain in that last scene, that bitch was definitely big enough to show up on a scan. "Plot master say..." got a bit sloppy on that one.
So, there you have it. 101 and 102 according to maekala. It's probably a good thing that I didn't try to meta this until now because my starting timestamp says that I first opened this at 1730 and it's now 1855. Granted, I had someone check in, got a cup of coffee and made a trip to the bathroom in that time, but otherwise I've been typing meta for almost an hour and a half. If Stargate meta continues to go this way, it's gonna get done on Sunday afternoons at work when I'm bored out of my skull and need something to occupy myself for a bit.
paraka, if you want to try and go more in depth about something, I'll probably be on AIM tomorrow in the afternoon (assuming Tina doesn't grab me and want to do something) and then while I'm in class. You know how class goes, so don't be surprised if I get distracted and then I'll be driving an extra 50-ish miles afterward back to College Station since my appt to get this damn cast off is at 0900 the next day and I don't want to have to drive that much that early, so talking after class may not be practical. Or, we can do a comment fest.
In the next week, I'm gonna try and watch Emancipation, Broca Divide and First Commandment. First Commandment may or may not happen depending on how much time I have. Cool with you? Or are you already ahead of me?