On Daniel and zats and Teal'c and Hammond and general SQUEE! Within the Serpent's Grasp
Because aurora_novarum would be disappointed if I didn't do this... :)
This week, in redial_the_gate, we finish Season One with the cliffhanger: Within the Serpent's Grasp.
Such an utterly fantastic episode! Off to save the world and seeing Skaara and discovering the zats! ("Zatnikatels." "Let's call them zat guns." And later, in S3: "They are intar." "What's that short for?" "Intar.") SG-1 in their cool black outfits (ninjas, hee!) and headgear! Daniel shooting two pistols at once, and being on target! Jack getting through to Skaara, and Skaara managing to influence Klorel! SGC looking after their own and Hammond going all general! Sam bringing up all the objections and then throwing them all away to go with her team!
Love it.
On Hammond.
Hammond is just incredible here. He's tried so hard to keep the SGC going, to the lengths of being thrown out of Kinsey's office for persistence. The conversation with Ferretti (who, I think, we sadly never see again). His "official orders" to SG-2 and the quietly added, "Bring them home." And his stoic acceptance of what's happening: "Guess Doctor Jackson is lucky.... This is Major General Hammond. Let me speak to the President." (Red phone bonus!)
While I was watching this, I was thinking back (or forward, heh) to 1969. When we did COTG some five months ago, we discussed how much of Hammond's decisions were framed by his experiences as a lieutenant back in '69 when he met SG-1. Now, though, Hammond doesn't have as much to go on as he did back then. All he knows is that he hasn't yet written that note, but SG-1 is already in existence. How much is he depending on that past/future here? Does he believe the attack won't succeed, because SG-1 still hasn't gone back in time yet? Or has he read enough of Sam's research to know that there's no guarantee that the events of 1969 will actually take place? Does Daniel's experiences with an alternate reality cast even more doubt in Hammond's mind, that maybe the SG-1 he met were actually from an alternate reality in the first place?
On the other hand, it makes Hammond's actions in Into the Fire even more amazing - it's the first time he's operating without even the vaguest assurances of a possible future, and he still goes all out for SG-1.
Really, Hammond rocks. That sums it all up. :)
On Daniel.
All those fanfic writers that automatically assume that pacifist Daniel is always placed in the middle of SG-1's formation for protection must not have watched this ep very closely. Half the time, as they sneak through the ship, Daniel is on their six. When Sam suggests they plant C4 on the death gliders, and she's thinking out loud, it's Daniel who finishes the statement: "...if we blow up one, we'll probably start a chain reaction." Sam looks at him sideways for a moment, then slowly says, "Right." Surprise that Daniel knows enough chemistry/physics to make that conclusion? Startlement that Daniel is being so cold-blooded about the suicidal mission? Take your pick. And later, after Teal'c and Jack are captured, it's Daniel who argues that succesfully blowing up the ship has to come before rescue. Sam has to offer a compromise to get him to agree to go after them.
What's with the absence of glasses, though? He considers pulling them out at one point, but doesn't. Afraid of reflection from the lenses? Going into a commando raid half-blind doesn't make much sense. Shooting two-handed and squinting for the win!
What interests me is Daniel's initial appeal at the start of the episode: "By the time I left, Sara was dead. Carter, your whole family was dead..." I can read that two different ways, each one intriguing on its own. Either General Jack and Doctor Carter did talk to Daniel off-screen, so that he was able to learn those details. This would support the suggestion that Daniel did enough investigating and research in the alternate reality to come to a reasonable conclusion that his own reality was equally at risk. Conversely, Daniel didn't actually have that information, but he shamelessly invented/extrapolated it to add pressure to Jack and Sam. I really can see Daniel doing that, actually. And it further suggets that Daniel and Jack, and Daniel and Sam, have had a lot of personal conversations - Daniel knows that Jack still cares about Sara, and that Sam has a family to lose.
I think the writers misstepped by having Jack so intense about Skaara without having Daniel equally as worried/concerned. Yes, Skaara and Jack bonded, and Skaara is, to Jack, the child he managed to save when he couldn't save Charlie. But Daniel is Skaara's good brother, to use Abydon nomenclature. They had a year together. Whether or not Daniel really did Skaara how to make moonshine (and get drunk), we know they were close, simply from the scenes in COTG - both those on Abydos and on Chulak. Yet except for Skaara screaming, "Sha'uri! Danyel!" when he first gets zatted, there's nothing. We do see Daniel reacting to Skaara, but Skaara for Daniel? Nada. The horror of watching Skaara nearly kill Daniel is exponentially greater when their own emotional bond is factored into the equation, but we have to fill it in ourselves, and that's the waste of a golden opportunity.
As a little aside: Sam and Daniel, ninja commandos! They are just so cute together. Yay!
On Teal'c.
It's interesting to see how little Teal'c knows, here in this first season. How long was he First Prime, if he's only qualified to fly death gliders? How much have the Goa'uld changed and modified their technology in the wake of Ra's death and the Tau'ri's resurgence in the galaxy? I think it was redbyrd_sgfic who first suggested that Ra had been hoarding a lot of the best technology for himself, and in the wake of Ra's death, the Goa'uld were able to scavenge a lot of goodies and suddenly upgrade their own fleets. That would fit nicely here - with Teal'c suggesting that the ship can only fly ten times the speed of light, for example, and his general ignorance of many of the workings on the ship. (C'mon, he can't even find the door?)
Interesting that Apophis didn't know how Cronus killed Teal'c's father (and how Tanith will later kill Shau'nac - he says that removing Junior is the most painful death, not killing the symbiote within the pouch. But where did the priests come from, with the seriously wicked-looking knife? Was there an alcove just outside the Gateroom, with priests waiting there to kill random Jaffa?
On zats and ribbon devices.
I've floated this theory before, but I think it's time to give it status as part of my personal canon: if a person is getting his mind fried by the ribbon device, and someone zats the Goa'uld that's doing the ribboning, the zat blast will travel along the energy stream of the ribbon device and prove fatal to the ribboning victim. As proof, I offer the following screen caps. My apologies for not being very good at this.
Here is Teal'c in Within the Serpent's Grasp:
"O'Neill! You must take action!" Panicky Teal'c here, knowing that Daniel will be dead within seconds. He's aiming a zat when he shouts at Jack, yet he doesn't fire himself. Why?
And here is Teal'c again, in Forever in a Day, in two separate images. The first is just as Jack orders Teal'c to follow Daniel, who has gone to confront Amaunet. The staff weapon blocks it slightly, but you can definitely see the zat strapped to his leg. The scenes in the tent were too dark for me to find a decent screencap, but here is Teal'c just as he fires the fatal blast. Note, again, the zat clearly strapped to his leg.
So, Teal'c didn't dare to stop Skaara in Within the Serpent's Grasp, and he used his staff weapon instead of the zat to stop Amaunet from killing Daniel in Forever in a Day, even though he would have given anything to avoid having to kill Sha're. In both cases, the zat was available, but Teal'c didn't use it. I maintain that Teal'c didn't use the zat because he knew that in both cases, it would have been fatal to Daniel: somehow, a zat blast in conjunction with a ribboning is absolutely deadly.
"Anyway, I'm sorry, but that just happens to be how I feel about it. What do you think?"
Aurora will be doing the offical recap at redial_the_gate tomorrow, and then we go on season hiatus until the first week of January, when we start Season Two. But the comm will definitely keep busy in the interim! Why not wander over there and check it out for yourself? :)
This week, in redial_the_gate, we finish Season One with the cliffhanger: Within the Serpent's Grasp.
Such an utterly fantastic episode! Off to save the world and seeing Skaara and discovering the zats! ("Zatnikatels." "Let's call them zat guns." And later, in S3: "They are intar." "What's that short for?" "Intar.") SG-1 in their cool black outfits (ninjas, hee!) and headgear! Daniel shooting two pistols at once, and being on target! Jack getting through to Skaara, and Skaara managing to influence Klorel! SGC looking after their own and Hammond going all general! Sam bringing up all the objections and then throwing them all away to go with her team!
Love it.
On Hammond.
Hammond is just incredible here. He's tried so hard to keep the SGC going, to the lengths of being thrown out of Kinsey's office for persistence. The conversation with Ferretti (who, I think, we sadly never see again). His "official orders" to SG-2 and the quietly added, "Bring them home." And his stoic acceptance of what's happening: "Guess Doctor Jackson is lucky.... This is Major General Hammond. Let me speak to the President." (Red phone bonus!)
While I was watching this, I was thinking back (or forward, heh) to 1969. When we did COTG some five months ago, we discussed how much of Hammond's decisions were framed by his experiences as a lieutenant back in '69 when he met SG-1. Now, though, Hammond doesn't have as much to go on as he did back then. All he knows is that he hasn't yet written that note, but SG-1 is already in existence. How much is he depending on that past/future here? Does he believe the attack won't succeed, because SG-1 still hasn't gone back in time yet? Or has he read enough of Sam's research to know that there's no guarantee that the events of 1969 will actually take place? Does Daniel's experiences with an alternate reality cast even more doubt in Hammond's mind, that maybe the SG-1 he met were actually from an alternate reality in the first place?
On the other hand, it makes Hammond's actions in Into the Fire even more amazing - it's the first time he's operating without even the vaguest assurances of a possible future, and he still goes all out for SG-1.
Really, Hammond rocks. That sums it all up. :)
On Daniel.
All those fanfic writers that automatically assume that pacifist Daniel is always placed in the middle of SG-1's formation for protection must not have watched this ep very closely. Half the time, as they sneak through the ship, Daniel is on their six. When Sam suggests they plant C4 on the death gliders, and she's thinking out loud, it's Daniel who finishes the statement: "...if we blow up one, we'll probably start a chain reaction." Sam looks at him sideways for a moment, then slowly says, "Right." Surprise that Daniel knows enough chemistry/physics to make that conclusion? Startlement that Daniel is being so cold-blooded about the suicidal mission? Take your pick. And later, after Teal'c and Jack are captured, it's Daniel who argues that succesfully blowing up the ship has to come before rescue. Sam has to offer a compromise to get him to agree to go after them.
What's with the absence of glasses, though? He considers pulling them out at one point, but doesn't. Afraid of reflection from the lenses? Going into a commando raid half-blind doesn't make much sense. Shooting two-handed and squinting for the win!
What interests me is Daniel's initial appeal at the start of the episode: "By the time I left, Sara was dead. Carter, your whole family was dead..." I can read that two different ways, each one intriguing on its own. Either General Jack and Doctor Carter did talk to Daniel off-screen, so that he was able to learn those details. This would support the suggestion that Daniel did enough investigating and research in the alternate reality to come to a reasonable conclusion that his own reality was equally at risk. Conversely, Daniel didn't actually have that information, but he shamelessly invented/extrapolated it to add pressure to Jack and Sam. I really can see Daniel doing that, actually. And it further suggets that Daniel and Jack, and Daniel and Sam, have had a lot of personal conversations - Daniel knows that Jack still cares about Sara, and that Sam has a family to lose.
I think the writers misstepped by having Jack so intense about Skaara without having Daniel equally as worried/concerned. Yes, Skaara and Jack bonded, and Skaara is, to Jack, the child he managed to save when he couldn't save Charlie. But Daniel is Skaara's good brother, to use Abydon nomenclature. They had a year together. Whether or not Daniel really did Skaara how to make moonshine (and get drunk), we know they were close, simply from the scenes in COTG - both those on Abydos and on Chulak. Yet except for Skaara screaming, "Sha'uri! Danyel!" when he first gets zatted, there's nothing. We do see Daniel reacting to Skaara, but Skaara for Daniel? Nada. The horror of watching Skaara nearly kill Daniel is exponentially greater when their own emotional bond is factored into the equation, but we have to fill it in ourselves, and that's the waste of a golden opportunity.
As a little aside: Sam and Daniel, ninja commandos! They are just so cute together. Yay!
On Teal'c.
It's interesting to see how little Teal'c knows, here in this first season. How long was he First Prime, if he's only qualified to fly death gliders? How much have the Goa'uld changed and modified their technology in the wake of Ra's death and the Tau'ri's resurgence in the galaxy? I think it was redbyrd_sgfic who first suggested that Ra had been hoarding a lot of the best technology for himself, and in the wake of Ra's death, the Goa'uld were able to scavenge a lot of goodies and suddenly upgrade their own fleets. That would fit nicely here - with Teal'c suggesting that the ship can only fly ten times the speed of light, for example, and his general ignorance of many of the workings on the ship. (C'mon, he can't even find the door?)
Interesting that Apophis didn't know how Cronus killed Teal'c's father (and how Tanith will later kill Shau'nac - he says that removing Junior is the most painful death, not killing the symbiote within the pouch. But where did the priests come from, with the seriously wicked-looking knife? Was there an alcove just outside the Gateroom, with priests waiting there to kill random Jaffa?
On zats and ribbon devices.
I've floated this theory before, but I think it's time to give it status as part of my personal canon: if a person is getting his mind fried by the ribbon device, and someone zats the Goa'uld that's doing the ribboning, the zat blast will travel along the energy stream of the ribbon device and prove fatal to the ribboning victim. As proof, I offer the following screen caps. My apologies for not being very good at this.
Here is Teal'c in Within the Serpent's Grasp:
"O'Neill! You must take action!" Panicky Teal'c here, knowing that Daniel will be dead within seconds. He's aiming a zat when he shouts at Jack, yet he doesn't fire himself. Why?
And here is Teal'c again, in Forever in a Day, in two separate images. The first is just as Jack orders Teal'c to follow Daniel, who has gone to confront Amaunet. The staff weapon blocks it slightly, but you can definitely see the zat strapped to his leg. The scenes in the tent were too dark for me to find a decent screencap, but here is Teal'c just as he fires the fatal blast. Note, again, the zat clearly strapped to his leg.
So, Teal'c didn't dare to stop Skaara in Within the Serpent's Grasp, and he used his staff weapon instead of the zat to stop Amaunet from killing Daniel in Forever in a Day, even though he would have given anything to avoid having to kill Sha're. In both cases, the zat was available, but Teal'c didn't use it. I maintain that Teal'c didn't use the zat because he knew that in both cases, it would have been fatal to Daniel: somehow, a zat blast in conjunction with a ribboning is absolutely deadly.
"Anyway, I'm sorry, but that just happens to be how I feel about it. What do you think?"
Aurora will be doing the offical recap at redial_the_gate tomorrow, and then we go on season hiatus until the first week of January, when we start Season Two. But the comm will definitely keep busy in the interim! Why not wander over there and check it out for yourself? :)