We've Been Over This!
Time travel gives me, and any me in the theorised multiverse of universes close to this one, the shits. Which is counter-intuitive to the creation of energy and mass resulting from their creation *bedum tish*.
I fully admit up front that my impression of Moebius Squared may be coloured by the temporal wank stain that was Moebius. Perhaps I am being too harsh. Regardless, I will admit that is a brave thing to take on such an episode for a tie-in novel.
I put this one off for the longest time because I heard that it was heavy with ship. I don’t have a problem with the AU Jack and Sam’s relationship because it is canon. It was a tad schmaltzy in the novel, but there was no uncontrollable sexings at an inopportune time in the back of a puddle jumper, so… And I am not a fan of baby fic, but some people are, so hakuna matata and all.
Set after Continuum, SG-1 go back to ancient Egypt to rescue Carolyn Lam who was kidnapped by dodgy Tok’ra and forced to fly the time machine puddle jumper so they could search in the past for their queen Egeria, in order to save the Tok’ra - a dying race.
So we have two lots of people meddling in the timeline - which kind, who knows, because Stargate has borrowed from the fixed timeline, dynamic timeline and multiverse theories of time travel, which aren’t even compatible anyway. Never mind AU-1 Daniel and AU-2 Jack, Sam and Teal’c are also still living in ancient Egypt playing happy families and making huge assumptions about their effect on the development of the first dynasty…
My greatest problem with Moebius Squared is that the reason for travelling back in time is just as stupid as the reason they went back in Moebius. It’s just too risky, and there are too many variables. And, in Moebius Squared, they had no way of returning to the future unless they actually found the dodgy Tok’ra who kidnapped Lam and stole the puddle jumper with the time machine (within the SGC, and with only zat guns!!!!). AND, because they used Ba’al’s solar flare time machine, they only had the one chance to get to the right time!
Meanwhile, in the past, AU-2 Teal’c’s symbiote is maturing and AU-2 Jack devises a plan to use the Stargate to go to Abydos and steal a new one from the prim’tah ceremonies that Ra is apparently holding on the mining world where the human slave population don’t tend to be Jaffa… Which results in Ra invading Earth… again.
And it just so happens that AU-2 Teal’c’s mature symbiote is none other than Egeria, mother of the Tok’ra for no explainable reason at all!
So, it’s up to all the Sams and Daniels and Teal’c’s, and… Jack, Cam and Vala, to rid the world of Ra once more.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the action, the actual rescues and way in which everyone works to get rid of Ra and preserve the Giza Stargate. SG-1 essentially confronted with themselves living with the choices they have made in their lives is also quite interesting, however for the year in which it was set (2008), I feel a lot of the things our SG-1 were confronted with were things they had already dealt with in the past, such as Sam’s choice of career over family life, and Daniel’s connection with Abydos.
The ending was lovely though, bittersweet as Sam finally stepped away from SG-1, and took command of the Hammond.
Likes:
* Jack’s near nakedness in the majority of the book, what a fine anthropologist he turned out to be. *g*
* Cam losing his skirt (yes, skirt) when trying to pull his zat and fire.
* Teal’c finding love with Aset, though there was no mention of whether this Teal’c had a Drey’auc and R’yac, left in the future.
* Addressing the play of leadership between Sam and Cam.
* No overt inappropriateness from Vala, she has really grown as a character.
* The end with the team’s farewells and Sam’s rise to Command the George Hammond.
Dislikes:
* Pointless ship. Jack is going to wait around for Sam while she does her tour of duty on the Hammond? Please.
* Anise on the Tok’ra high council - they really are scraping the bottom of the barrel.
* Lots of typos and spelling errors.
* The reasons for going back in time.
* The way in which SG-1 stopped Ra from taking the gate. Could have flown a puddle jumper into the gate, extended the engines, cloaked, and flown off with the damn thing. It ain’t heavy…
Canon Errors:
* The ancient Egyptian timeline in the novel is set in 2492BC, several hundred years after the teams went back to Egypt in Moebius in 3000BC and 2995BC respectively.
* Jack claims to be 55 years old. Jack was born ’52 as per his service record in Entity and ID card in Fragile Balance, he went back in time in 2004 at the age of 52. Moebius Squared is set less than a year after they fixed the timeline, thus he would be 52-53 years old.
* Page 16, Jack’s office having windows and being outside of the Pentagon, when establishing and interior shots of Jack’s office in Washington as per SGU, show that it is inside the Pentagon and windowless.
* Page 76, when would AU-2 Jack have had the chance to see AU-2 Teal’c with ‘a two-inch wide hole punched through his biceps’?
* Page 84 refers to Ra having recently obtained a new host, however movie canon shows that Ra had just the one host - the boy he took from ancient Egypt as the first Goa’uld host when Ra was dying.
* Page 100, Sam was born in ’68 as per her service record seen in Entity, Moebius Squared is set 2008, she would be turning 40, not 41.
* Page 108, how would AU-1 Daniel (known as ‘Danyel’) know who Landry and Lam were?
* Page 127 Ra doesn’t seem to remember torturing this Jack guy whom he believes to be an Ancient, when they meet up again in 5000 years…
* Page 138, Daniel doesn’t remember helping rescue Jack in Abyss, yet Jack mentioned these events in Fragile Balance and Daniel referenced them back at Jack in The Shroud.
* Page 141, Ra isn’t suspicious of Egeria’s exotically white entourage running around ancient Egypt?
* Page 141, why would Egeria ask Ra about himself if she is pretending to be a symbiote from one of his Jaffa left behind on Earth, she would have Ra’s genetic memory.
* Page 210, Daniel and Danyel interchange when referring to AU-1 Daniel.
* Page 217, ‘Captain’ Jaffa?
* Page 255, AU-2 Sam would not know who Janus was, yet held a conversation on him with AU-3 Sam.
I fully admit up front that my impression of Moebius Squared may be coloured by the temporal wank stain that was Moebius. Perhaps I am being too harsh. Regardless, I will admit that is a brave thing to take on such an episode for a tie-in novel.
I put this one off for the longest time because I heard that it was heavy with ship. I don’t have a problem with the AU Jack and Sam’s relationship because it is canon. It was a tad schmaltzy in the novel, but there was no uncontrollable sexings at an inopportune time in the back of a puddle jumper, so… And I am not a fan of baby fic, but some people are, so hakuna matata and all.
Set after Continuum, SG-1 go back to ancient Egypt to rescue Carolyn Lam who was kidnapped by dodgy Tok’ra and forced to fly the time machine puddle jumper so they could search in the past for their queen Egeria, in order to save the Tok’ra - a dying race.
So we have two lots of people meddling in the timeline - which kind, who knows, because Stargate has borrowed from the fixed timeline, dynamic timeline and multiverse theories of time travel, which aren’t even compatible anyway. Never mind AU-1 Daniel and AU-2 Jack, Sam and Teal’c are also still living in ancient Egypt playing happy families and making huge assumptions about their effect on the development of the first dynasty…
My greatest problem with Moebius Squared is that the reason for travelling back in time is just as stupid as the reason they went back in Moebius. It’s just too risky, and there are too many variables. And, in Moebius Squared, they had no way of returning to the future unless they actually found the dodgy Tok’ra who kidnapped Lam and stole the puddle jumper with the time machine (within the SGC, and with only zat guns!!!!). AND, because they used Ba’al’s solar flare time machine, they only had the one chance to get to the right time!
Meanwhile, in the past, AU-2 Teal’c’s symbiote is maturing and AU-2 Jack devises a plan to use the Stargate to go to Abydos and steal a new one from the prim’tah ceremonies that Ra is apparently holding on the mining world where the human slave population don’t tend to be Jaffa… Which results in Ra invading Earth… again.
And it just so happens that AU-2 Teal’c’s mature symbiote is none other than Egeria, mother of the Tok’ra for no explainable reason at all!
So, it’s up to all the Sams and Daniels and Teal’c’s, and… Jack, Cam and Vala, to rid the world of Ra once more.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the action, the actual rescues and way in which everyone works to get rid of Ra and preserve the Giza Stargate. SG-1 essentially confronted with themselves living with the choices they have made in their lives is also quite interesting, however for the year in which it was set (2008), I feel a lot of the things our SG-1 were confronted with were things they had already dealt with in the past, such as Sam’s choice of career over family life, and Daniel’s connection with Abydos.
The ending was lovely though, bittersweet as Sam finally stepped away from SG-1, and took command of the Hammond.
Likes:
* Jack’s near nakedness in the majority of the book, what a fine anthropologist he turned out to be. *g*
* Cam losing his skirt (yes, skirt) when trying to pull his zat and fire.
* Teal’c finding love with Aset, though there was no mention of whether this Teal’c had a Drey’auc and R’yac, left in the future.
* Addressing the play of leadership between Sam and Cam.
* No overt inappropriateness from Vala, she has really grown as a character.
* The end with the team’s farewells and Sam’s rise to Command the George Hammond.
Dislikes:
* Pointless ship. Jack is going to wait around for Sam while she does her tour of duty on the Hammond? Please.
* Anise on the Tok’ra high council - they really are scraping the bottom of the barrel.
* Lots of typos and spelling errors.
* The reasons for going back in time.
* The way in which SG-1 stopped Ra from taking the gate. Could have flown a puddle jumper into the gate, extended the engines, cloaked, and flown off with the damn thing. It ain’t heavy…
Canon Errors:
* The ancient Egyptian timeline in the novel is set in 2492BC, several hundred years after the teams went back to Egypt in Moebius in 3000BC and 2995BC respectively.
* Jack claims to be 55 years old. Jack was born ’52 as per his service record in Entity and ID card in Fragile Balance, he went back in time in 2004 at the age of 52. Moebius Squared is set less than a year after they fixed the timeline, thus he would be 52-53 years old.
* Page 16, Jack’s office having windows and being outside of the Pentagon, when establishing and interior shots of Jack’s office in Washington as per SGU, show that it is inside the Pentagon and windowless.
* Page 76, when would AU-2 Jack have had the chance to see AU-2 Teal’c with ‘a two-inch wide hole punched through his biceps’?
* Page 84 refers to Ra having recently obtained a new host, however movie canon shows that Ra had just the one host - the boy he took from ancient Egypt as the first Goa’uld host when Ra was dying.
* Page 100, Sam was born in ’68 as per her service record seen in Entity, Moebius Squared is set 2008, she would be turning 40, not 41.
* Page 108, how would AU-1 Daniel (known as ‘Danyel’) know who Landry and Lam were?
* Page 127 Ra doesn’t seem to remember torturing this Jack guy whom he believes to be an Ancient, when they meet up again in 5000 years…
* Page 138, Daniel doesn’t remember helping rescue Jack in Abyss, yet Jack mentioned these events in Fragile Balance and Daniel referenced them back at Jack in The Shroud.
* Page 141, Ra isn’t suspicious of Egeria’s exotically white entourage running around ancient Egypt?
* Page 141, why would Egeria ask Ra about himself if she is pretending to be a symbiote from one of his Jaffa left behind on Earth, she would have Ra’s genetic memory.
* Page 210, Daniel and Danyel interchange when referring to AU-1 Daniel.
* Page 217, ‘Captain’ Jaffa?
* Page 255, AU-2 Sam would not know who Janus was, yet held a conversation on him with AU-3 Sam.