stargate atlantis: 5x19 Vegas
Guys, guys, guys. I'm back. I had an absolutely wonderful holiday-- but the ubersad thing is one of the first things I did when I got home was to find the last four eps of Stargate: Atlantis-- the last ever!-- and start watching them. I've watched 4x17 Infection, skipped 4x18 Identity (will probably go back to it after) and watched 4x19 Vegas. I have not watched the finale yet so don't spoil me in the comments! ETA: Watched the finale. Spoil away! Please bear in mind that I haven't read any tags or comments yet, so feel free to post links in the comments to good discussion/episode tags!
So.
-I wasn't sure about the CSI-on-crack style that they were pushing for this episode but eventually decided that it was just angled to our SGA universe enough to work. The directorial style was a bit confused at times, often when trying to outdo CSI rather than emulate it (the card playing scene with the black-and white segments, for instance)
-A John-centric episode. A John-centric character episode. And it worked, worked, worked.
-Okay, it was really just fanfic. I think we can all, Brad Wright and Joe Malozzi included, agree on that.
-This universe was just weird enough to work, I love all the characters and their interactions. A slicked, suited, company man version of Rodney. Who is most certainly the badass, even though it's John that sacrifices himself in the end. He's cool, the man with all the information. The character interaction was so great this episode that even the Rodney/Keller moment in the corridor was compelling-- their glance was steamy, illicit, fun. She isn't the one he's married to, oh no, she's the hot little thing he screws on the side.
-Also, I don't know why people are assuming that it's OUR universe that's the one that this universe's Rodney contacted with the interdimensional rift. This Rodney McKay isn't Rod, so he contacted an alternate universe just similar enough to ours for some of the details to work...but maybe not the others.
-Rodney's team. I got the impression that he's the leader of this team. And they must be offworlders or military, because we don't see them. Which is a shame. Would Teyla be there? Would Ronon? Would Ford still be around? Obviously Atlantis-the-expedition still exists, without John Sheppard. But the alternate him is still intriguing enough a figure to Rodney to believe in this Sheppard, take an interest in him.... I want fic about the meeting between a Sheppaprd-slightly-skewed-from-our-own and this Vegas!Rodney. This Rodney is most definitely not just a geek-- he's hard, political, probably CIA or FBI since the latter (and not the IOA or even the US Air Force) appears to be controlling the Stargate Program, and running Area 51 as a national defense centre. What would a similar John think about a Rodney that had to learn to be this hard, this controlled?
-Though of course, we see glimpses of our Rodney in his interactions with the clean-shaven Radek Zelenka. Their relationship seems even closer in Vegas!universe...he's stepped up into being Rodney's John, maybe? 'You are such a child!'
-The parallels to our John are the most interesting aspect. Really, it's just the fallout of the mission, pure luck that turned then into different creatures. The John we see doing milk runs at McMurdo at the beginning of the series is just a couple of months away from quitting and turning into this guy, this Johnny Cash-fuelled Vegas stereotype.
-'Involved' with a field medic? Did they just make it canon that Sheppard tries to rescue people he's involved with? This show is playing some crazy mindfuck games with Sheppard's sexuality.
-When Rodney says 'political reasons' he's implying more than military politics. That sounds like a reference to Sheppard's powerful and rich family. They'd get him out of jail time at the price of his own conscience, his soul. God, it must absolutely gall Sheppard to owe his family anything...
-Things that are brilliant: Johnny Cash's Solitary Man, Rodney saying 'I believe in your strength of character', 'I know everything there is to know about you', the spearmint gum ('I was joking', 'No, you weren't'), Sheppard's smile as he looks at the cash on his passenger seat, The Stones 'Sympathy for the Devil', poet-prophet Todd, Sheppard packing up all his things from his desk and then realising that the Man in Black poster is all he really needed, the unexplained bruise that's almost certainly from Mikey's guys cause he hasn't paid interest, the last shot
ETA: Having watched the finale, I realised that two scenes set next to each other tell me everything I need to know about the difference between Vegas!Sheppard and ours, and how Atlantis has changed them. At the end of Vegas, Sheppard stumbles and falls, looking up at the sun with bullet holes in his chest, and he gives up. It's all over his face. He doesn't expect anyone to come for him. He doesn't have anyone to try and live for, to say goodbye to-- just like our Sheppard, in Letters to Pegasus, doesn't have anyone to send a message to. But in Enemy at the Gate, for the very first time when he's about to detonate the nuke in a suicide strike (which, dude, they are going to be calling 'pulling a Sheppard' for years to come at the SGC because he has done that how many times now?, sigh) he stops and says, 'When Atlantis gets here, tell them I said goodbye'. Our Sheppard offering the sacrifice means so much more-- he has things to live for, holding him down, holding him back, he has people to say goodbye to.
combat reflexes
short tag to 5x19 Vegas, between John & Rodney's meeting and the end
The desert is always unreal. Something about the heat reflecting off the sand, the sharp divide of the horizon against the eye. Drive far enough out from Vegas and the desert starts to feel like Afghanistan, the lights from the casinos blinking dully like mortar shells exploding. It’s quiet too, like the first few moments when you get dropped into combat: so much noise and light and sweat that your senses switch off. Everything coated in a heat-haze, all the sound muffled so that all you can hear is the blood rushing around your own brain.
The desert outside Las Vegas is the closest you can get to a warzone without actually being in one.
I actually say this to McKay over a beer in this shitty little dive that he takes me to when I call him. We’re sitting at the end of the bar and talking over beers, like we’re friends, so I say it. He knows everything about me already, anyway.
He smiles. “Yes, Detective. It is no surprise to me that you’re a masochist.”
Like I said: he knows everything about me already.
Weirdly enough, this little fact makes me want to talk rather than clam up. There’s nothing to give away with McKay. It’s just a waste of effort to keep things on the surface, and I like to think of myself as fundamentally lazy.
It’s a momentary urge, and I don’t get a chance to act on it before it passes because McKay talks. He talks. His voice is always calm and clipped and smoothed, like his hair, precisely arranged, but his hands, yeah, that’s what’s actually interesting about him. They are the undisciplined vestige of some earlier form of the Doctor that wore coffee-stained t-shirts and ragged sneakers rather than well-pressed suits. The hands with fingers that twitch and clench with furled up gestures are the only lapse in his cultivation of the company man.
I say that to him too. It’s liberating. I smirk at him as he tries to look me in the eyes, deflected by the aviators placed there exactly for that purpose. Instead he ends up looking at the distorted reflection of his own face in the glass. He looks so direct, wearing that focused, half-amused, feverish look that I’ve already learned to recognise. It worries me more than I’d care to admit.
“If you want to know about me, Sheppard, you can just ask,” he says, but doesn’t wait for me to. Instead: he talks. About his estranged sister who’s going to be informed of his death on the five year anniversary of his disappearance (coming up in two weeks). About how he was lying when he said he was Canadian: he was once, but not any more. The FBI had him give up citizenship before they’d let him on the project. Without prompting McKay tells me about his political allegiances, how he hates hippies and vegetarians and English majors especially because his sister married one and how he’s married to someone beautiful and brilliant and blonde, and fucking that little-girl Medical Examiner-- Keller-- on the side. He talks about a lot of things but he tosses everything away with an impatient gesture, like the truths and secrets he’s offering up aren’t at all intimate. Like they’re so much irrelevance that offers me no power.
But then his voice changes when he says this one word: Atlantis.
He kind of grabs my hand as he says it, and I feel like I felt when he told me about the other universe. Sick. And like I need a drink. We’re in a bar, so the latter’s a pretty easy desire to deal with. The sick settles in though. Along with something else more uncomfortable in my gut.
He stands up abruptly after that, a little more drunk than he’s letting on but still doing a passable imitation of sober. He isn’t a drinking man. He doesn’t have the practice. Not like I do.
I could smile at him. Take my aviators off. Get him another two drinks. Slide a hand over his wrist--
He puts down a couple of big bills, more than our three drinks each are worth.
I don’t smile. The passenger seat of my car is taken up with a box full of stolen bills from a crime-scene, and we’re going for a long ride together. And three would be a crowd.
“Thanks for picking up the tab.”
“Well,” McKay says, adjusting his tie. “You don’t have a job any more.”
My heart starts beating faster. I actually look at his face, into those godawful clear blue eyes of his and I realise: he knows. About the money from the scene, the debts, the full tank of gas in the car. Probably even about the Johnny Cash CDs in the glove-box, nestled underneath the bottle of bourbon. He’s known this whole evening.
“I guess I’ll-- see you around, Sheppard.”
His smile mocks me. His gaze makes me feel transparent, like he can see right through my skin, and flesh, right into the bones. X-ray vision. I have scifi on the brain, thanks to this bastard.
I kind of tilt my head. It could be interpreted as a nod. All my muscles are carefully relaxed but I can feel the sweat just underneath the skin. It doesn’t matter, because McKay doesn’t wait around for my answer.
This guy could destroy me.
I finish my beer. Right next to the car keys in my pocket is the wallet with McKay’s stupid fucking card and his stupid fucking number.
This guy could destroy me, but like most things in my life, it isn’t my choice. So I don’t waste my time thinking about it.
I put the empty mug down on the bar, and reach into my pocket for the car keys.
I’ve got a long way to go.
OK. Now I'm off to watch the finale. Fingers crossed, boys and girls.
So.
-I wasn't sure about the CSI-on-crack style that they were pushing for this episode but eventually decided that it was just angled to our SGA universe enough to work. The directorial style was a bit confused at times, often when trying to outdo CSI rather than emulate it (the card playing scene with the black-and white segments, for instance)
-A John-centric episode. A John-centric character episode. And it worked, worked, worked.
-Okay, it was really just fanfic. I think we can all, Brad Wright and Joe Malozzi included, agree on that.
-This universe was just weird enough to work, I love all the characters and their interactions. A slicked, suited, company man version of Rodney. Who is most certainly the badass, even though it's John that sacrifices himself in the end. He's cool, the man with all the information. The character interaction was so great this episode that even the Rodney/Keller moment in the corridor was compelling-- their glance was steamy, illicit, fun. She isn't the one he's married to, oh no, she's the hot little thing he screws on the side.
-Also, I don't know why people are assuming that it's OUR universe that's the one that this universe's Rodney contacted with the interdimensional rift. This Rodney McKay isn't Rod, so he contacted an alternate universe just similar enough to ours for some of the details to work...but maybe not the others.
-Rodney's team. I got the impression that he's the leader of this team. And they must be offworlders or military, because we don't see them. Which is a shame. Would Teyla be there? Would Ronon? Would Ford still be around? Obviously Atlantis-the-expedition still exists, without John Sheppard. But the alternate him is still intriguing enough a figure to Rodney to believe in this Sheppard, take an interest in him.... I want fic about the meeting between a Sheppaprd-slightly-skewed-from-our-own and this Vegas!Rodney. This Rodney is most definitely not just a geek-- he's hard, political, probably CIA or FBI since the latter (and not the IOA or even the US Air Force) appears to be controlling the Stargate Program, and running Area 51 as a national defense centre. What would a similar John think about a Rodney that had to learn to be this hard, this controlled?
-Though of course, we see glimpses of our Rodney in his interactions with the clean-shaven Radek Zelenka. Their relationship seems even closer in Vegas!universe...he's stepped up into being Rodney's John, maybe? 'You are such a child!'
-The parallels to our John are the most interesting aspect. Really, it's just the fallout of the mission, pure luck that turned then into different creatures. The John we see doing milk runs at McMurdo at the beginning of the series is just a couple of months away from quitting and turning into this guy, this Johnny Cash-fuelled Vegas stereotype.
-'Involved' with a field medic? Did they just make it canon that Sheppard tries to rescue people he's involved with? This show is playing some crazy mindfuck games with Sheppard's sexuality.
-When Rodney says 'political reasons' he's implying more than military politics. That sounds like a reference to Sheppard's powerful and rich family. They'd get him out of jail time at the price of his own conscience, his soul. God, it must absolutely gall Sheppard to owe his family anything...
-Things that are brilliant: Johnny Cash's Solitary Man, Rodney saying 'I believe in your strength of character', 'I know everything there is to know about you', the spearmint gum ('I was joking', 'No, you weren't'), Sheppard's smile as he looks at the cash on his passenger seat, The Stones 'Sympathy for the Devil', poet-prophet Todd, Sheppard packing up all his things from his desk and then realising that the Man in Black poster is all he really needed, the unexplained bruise that's almost certainly from Mikey's guys cause he hasn't paid interest, the last shot
ETA: Having watched the finale, I realised that two scenes set next to each other tell me everything I need to know about the difference between Vegas!Sheppard and ours, and how Atlantis has changed them. At the end of Vegas, Sheppard stumbles and falls, looking up at the sun with bullet holes in his chest, and he gives up. It's all over his face. He doesn't expect anyone to come for him. He doesn't have anyone to try and live for, to say goodbye to-- just like our Sheppard, in Letters to Pegasus, doesn't have anyone to send a message to. But in Enemy at the Gate, for the very first time when he's about to detonate the nuke in a suicide strike (which, dude, they are going to be calling 'pulling a Sheppard' for years to come at the SGC because he has done that how many times now?, sigh) he stops and says, 'When Atlantis gets here, tell them I said goodbye'. Our Sheppard offering the sacrifice means so much more-- he has things to live for, holding him down, holding him back, he has people to say goodbye to.
combat reflexes
short tag to 5x19 Vegas, between John & Rodney's meeting and the end
The desert is always unreal. Something about the heat reflecting off the sand, the sharp divide of the horizon against the eye. Drive far enough out from Vegas and the desert starts to feel like Afghanistan, the lights from the casinos blinking dully like mortar shells exploding. It’s quiet too, like the first few moments when you get dropped into combat: so much noise and light and sweat that your senses switch off. Everything coated in a heat-haze, all the sound muffled so that all you can hear is the blood rushing around your own brain.
The desert outside Las Vegas is the closest you can get to a warzone without actually being in one.
I actually say this to McKay over a beer in this shitty little dive that he takes me to when I call him. We’re sitting at the end of the bar and talking over beers, like we’re friends, so I say it. He knows everything about me already, anyway.
He smiles. “Yes, Detective. It is no surprise to me that you’re a masochist.”
Like I said: he knows everything about me already.
Weirdly enough, this little fact makes me want to talk rather than clam up. There’s nothing to give away with McKay. It’s just a waste of effort to keep things on the surface, and I like to think of myself as fundamentally lazy.
It’s a momentary urge, and I don’t get a chance to act on it before it passes because McKay talks. He talks. His voice is always calm and clipped and smoothed, like his hair, precisely arranged, but his hands, yeah, that’s what’s actually interesting about him. They are the undisciplined vestige of some earlier form of the Doctor that wore coffee-stained t-shirts and ragged sneakers rather than well-pressed suits. The hands with fingers that twitch and clench with furled up gestures are the only lapse in his cultivation of the company man.
I say that to him too. It’s liberating. I smirk at him as he tries to look me in the eyes, deflected by the aviators placed there exactly for that purpose. Instead he ends up looking at the distorted reflection of his own face in the glass. He looks so direct, wearing that focused, half-amused, feverish look that I’ve already learned to recognise. It worries me more than I’d care to admit.
“If you want to know about me, Sheppard, you can just ask,” he says, but doesn’t wait for me to. Instead: he talks. About his estranged sister who’s going to be informed of his death on the five year anniversary of his disappearance (coming up in two weeks). About how he was lying when he said he was Canadian: he was once, but not any more. The FBI had him give up citizenship before they’d let him on the project. Without prompting McKay tells me about his political allegiances, how he hates hippies and vegetarians and English majors especially because his sister married one and how he’s married to someone beautiful and brilliant and blonde, and fucking that little-girl Medical Examiner-- Keller-- on the side. He talks about a lot of things but he tosses everything away with an impatient gesture, like the truths and secrets he’s offering up aren’t at all intimate. Like they’re so much irrelevance that offers me no power.
But then his voice changes when he says this one word: Atlantis.
He kind of grabs my hand as he says it, and I feel like I felt when he told me about the other universe. Sick. And like I need a drink. We’re in a bar, so the latter’s a pretty easy desire to deal with. The sick settles in though. Along with something else more uncomfortable in my gut.
He stands up abruptly after that, a little more drunk than he’s letting on but still doing a passable imitation of sober. He isn’t a drinking man. He doesn’t have the practice. Not like I do.
I could smile at him. Take my aviators off. Get him another two drinks. Slide a hand over his wrist--
He puts down a couple of big bills, more than our three drinks each are worth.
I don’t smile. The passenger seat of my car is taken up with a box full of stolen bills from a crime-scene, and we’re going for a long ride together. And three would be a crowd.
“Thanks for picking up the tab.”
“Well,” McKay says, adjusting his tie. “You don’t have a job any more.”
My heart starts beating faster. I actually look at his face, into those godawful clear blue eyes of his and I realise: he knows. About the money from the scene, the debts, the full tank of gas in the car. Probably even about the Johnny Cash CDs in the glove-box, nestled underneath the bottle of bourbon. He’s known this whole evening.
“I guess I’ll-- see you around, Sheppard.”
His smile mocks me. His gaze makes me feel transparent, like he can see right through my skin, and flesh, right into the bones. X-ray vision. I have scifi on the brain, thanks to this bastard.
I kind of tilt my head. It could be interpreted as a nod. All my muscles are carefully relaxed but I can feel the sweat just underneath the skin. It doesn’t matter, because McKay doesn’t wait around for my answer.
This guy could destroy me.
I finish my beer. Right next to the car keys in my pocket is the wallet with McKay’s stupid fucking card and his stupid fucking number.
This guy could destroy me, but like most things in my life, it isn’t my choice. So I don’t waste my time thinking about it.
I put the empty mug down on the bar, and reach into my pocket for the car keys.
I’ve got a long way to go.
OK. Now I'm off to watch the finale. Fingers crossed, boys and girls.