i can't get enough of this local color!

[walkingshadow]

when it came to writing up my reactions to my most recent viewing of SGA season one, i started ranting again about everyone in the pegasus galaxy being JERKS, because i get so worked up during "underground" and "the storm/the eye." PEOPLE IN THE PEGASUS GALAXY ARE JERKS, i wrote in all-caps in my notes. (i took notes! of course i took notes. jules

Comments

[walkingshadow]

okay, strina got here first and made all my points for me, but a couple of things:

Well the way it works out to me is that there is a Pegasus Alliance in that they don't start wars with each other. And of course ceratin worlds have good relationships with with other world so if something were to happen, they would have thier back.

first of all, that's not an alliance—that's a non-aggression pact. and secondly, they don't have a non-aggression pact. maybe they're too busy dreading and then hiding and dying from the wraith to pick fights with other planets (there's also the part where they don't seem to *have* that much contact with each other, and are spread too thinly to rub up against each other all the time; and the fact that they just don't have the population to wage large-scale—or even small-scale—wars), but we've heard the genii say explicitly that they're perfectly happy with the wraith culling other peoples as long as they (the wraith) leave them (the genii) alone; and hoff was also happy to make themselves immune to the wraith at the expense of other planets. nobody has anybody's back. they trade necessities; and the manerans consorted with the genii to deliver the atlanteans (though that feels more personal; the head guy would be rewarded for snitching, not his people), but there's no feeling of neighborliness, not even on the level of FDR's garden hose analogy. that's the most inexplicable and interesting part: that they don't think in terms of the long term and the big picture, of eradicating the wraith and removing the threat for everyone, forever.

Also about the Atlantis expedition giving help regarding wraith... how? The best they can do is relocate them, and any world with decent trading contacts can do that on their own.

i'm actually not completely comfortable with the idea of relocating whole populations, especially in cases like planet kidkill—it smacks of paternalism and colonialism and refugee camps—but strina makes an excellent point about the long-range sensors and possibly helping some of the planets avoid wraith attacks—can you just imagine the wraith dropping out of hyperspace, ready to feed, and finding an abandoned planet? but relocation isn't the only thing the neo-atlanteans have to offer. atlantis's technology is the only thing in the galaxy comparable to wraith technology, and at the moment the neo-atlanteans are the only ones capable of using it—that is, utilizing it, regardless of who in pegasus may have the gene. even if you didn't like them, even if you didn't really want to have anything to do with them, why would you not only antagonize them (hello, don't piss off the people with the superior firepower) but actively sabotage their efforts and kill their best minds and leaders?