On Daniel and zats and Teal'c and Hammond and general SQUEE! Within the Serpent's Grasp

[sg_fignewton]

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

Comments

[nomadicwriter]

I noticed it most in TBFTGOG, when he gets up and unerringly picks up his glasses. There have been times when I've had to call my kids to come and help me find my glasses when I've knocked them off the night table!

The whole glasses/no glasses thing doesn't bother me as much as it seems to other people. I'm short-sighted and I wear my glasses all the time, but I can still function 98% fine without them. Detail gets increasingly blurry with distance, but I can still locate things perfectly and read a book or a computer screen. And I could easily shoot somebody at any distance (well - if, you know, I could actually do that with glasses on in the first place). Only thing I really have trouble with sans glasses is recognising faces at a distance or reading signposts/notices on walls.

So I really don't find it at all odd that Daniel functions okay without glasses. (Hell, for all we know he has a very mild prescription. Is there really any canon evidence that his eyesight is particularly bad?) What is messed up is the whole decision-making process behind when he chooses to wear them vs. when he doesn't. For instance, as you say: the whole commando raid thing? Probably a good time to go better safe than sorry. And they clearly never sat down and figured out whether he was meant to be long or short-sighted.

(Reposted because it somehow ended up in the wrong place, dammit.)

[redbyrd_sgfic]

Is there really any canon evidence that his eyesight is particularly bad?

The only one I can think of is the bit in FIAD when he wakes up in the infirmary (which *is* in the dream, it must be said), and you get a Daniel's eye view of blurriness until Janet gives him his glasses.

The problem of course is that it's *camera* fuzziness, without the variation in focus you get with actual nearsightedness. So I figure part of that has to be the just-waking-up-from-being-ribboned effect, and the rest is inaccuracy in the dream.

I'm with

[sg_fignewton]

Actually, we get a bit of blurry vision in Solitudes also - but, like with FIAD, it's post-concussion awakening. I do like the camera effect, though.

[sg_fignewton]

The glasses thing doesn't bother me so much as I can't seem to make sense out of it. :)

Maybe it's because I am so very near-sighted that without lenses/glasses, anything more than a few feet away becomes a blur. Daniel does put his glasses back on in TBFTGOG when he sits down at a computer. But you're right that there's no canon evidence of how strong his prescription might be.

And I could easily shoot somebody at any distance (well - if, you know, I could actually do that with glasses on in the first place).

LOL! Yes, that little detail might help. And another nyeah nyeah at the people who insist that Daniel is lousy with weapons!

the whole commando raid thing? Probably a good time to go better safe than sorry.

Yes, exactly. I don't mind handwaving a low prescription, but when you're trying to save the world, Daniel, it helps if you can see while you're doing it!

[cesy]

The glasses thing also doesn't bother me, because most of the time, he acts much as I would - wearing them is the default, contacts are not used, I can function well enough without them to find them, run without tripping, read stuff, presumably shoot stuff, but I get headaches if I go without them too long, and I see better with them.

Of course, I am a special snowflake, because I have one eye long-sighted and one eye short-sighted, so I switch between them instead of normal binocular vision using both at once, because I also had a very bad squint when I was young, and I've also got mild astigmatism. But hey, Daniel is already a special snowflake in so many ways, and at least this is plausible. If I was doing something where getting my glasses knocked off and broken was a serious worry, I might well leave them at home deliberately, and I'd still be able to see well enough to do everything Daniel does in the ep. But I still wear them whenever I'm awake, and have done ever since I was a toddler.

Also, I love the zat theory.

[sg_fignewton]

Daniel is already a special snowflake

::grins::

Who knows? I am glad that they didn't seize upon the sarc in Need to do away permanently with his glasses, as I've heard they considered at the time. I like my geeks with glasses!

I've actually worked the zat theory into fic. I do tend to get kinda obsessed. :)