Deconstructing success: the Tollan and beyond
In Between Two Fires, we witness the betrayal of the Tollan people by their government, the attempted perfidy of the Curia against Earth, and the destruction of the Tollan race. The loss of the Tollan is designed to serve two purposes: to emphasize the menace and power of Anubis the new, mysterious nemesis that is threatening the galaxy, and to deprive the SGC of an ally in their future struggle.
There is, of course, good drama involved in grief and loss and the need for Earth to fight a lonely battle. However, in achieving that dramatic plot twist, the writers had to do two things: commit absolute character assassination, and begin what will become a systematic deconstruction of past victories for the sake of injecting cheap angst into more current storylines. This is lazy, poor writing, and the SG-1 universe will continue to suffer from it for the duration of the series. There were hints of this problem before Between Two Fires, but the betrayal of Tollana - not only by the Curia, but by the writers - is the first real example of what seems to be an almost compulsive desire by the writers to take every triumph, every victory, and reduce them to nothing but bitter ashes.
(Long meta under the cut! Also, assume spoilers for the entire series, including the movies.)
First, let's consider what we know of the Tollan mindset, and how badly the writers needed to twist characterization in this episode to drive events towards Tollana's extinction.
We first met the Tollan back in Season One, in Enigma. SG-1 gated to the original Tollan planet and found it in its death throes, with a handful of individuals lying unconscious, near death, at the Gate. Only ten of them actually survived. We are told that the people SG-1 rescued had volunteered to stay behind to seal the Stargate, to ensure that no innocents might accidentally gate to a dying planet. Omoc suggests a ship was on its way to rescue them; considering their desire to return to Tollan, this may have actually been true. The deaths of most of the volunteers, however, clearly shows that the mission had been extremely hazardous. The need of the Tollan to protect anyone from the dangers of the planet clearly shows their reverence for life, even at the risk of their own.
(Please note that one of those volunteers was actually one of the leading members of the Curia. We don't see Omoc again, but his assassination in Between Two Fires, the formality of the funeral, and SG-1's attendance all indicate his importance and influence. Consider the massive contradiction of Omoc, a head of the government, willing to die for his people; and the so-called characterization of Travell here in Between Two Fires, where we are expected to accept that she will risk the lives of others for the sake of saving her own skin.)
During the course of Enigma, we learned that the Tollan are an advanced race with highly superior technology to our own. They'd shared that technology with Surita, a neighboring planet, and watched the inhabitants blow themselves up in the process - literally. The explosion was so huge, in fact, that it shifted Tollan's orbit enough to cause massive enviornmental disasters. This was not something that happened recently, either; Narim tells Sam that birds have been extinct on Tollan for generations, which implies that the disasters that destroyed their planet took a long time to reach the point of no return. So the need to defend "primitives" - and themselves - is surely a deeply-ingrained instinct in the Tollan psyche.
"Like Surita. It's going to happen again... Surita could happen on any of them." That is a quote from Narim, when he explains their reluctance to seek refuge from Maybourne and the NID with the SGC's "primitive" allies. It is clear that the Tollan aversion to sharing technology is not only based on how badly they themselves were burned, but also on their fear of seeing other planets destroyed. It might even be suggested that the Tollans' insistence that the SGC clean house on their own in Shades of Grey is part of the same mindset: non-interference with "primitive" cultures, even to the point of refusing to police them.
The Tollan value all life, not just their own. Consider their behavior in Pretense. The destruction of the motherships - two of Heru-ur's, and Zipacna's - is done out of self-defense only. Even Klorel is not removed from Skaara without all due care for the symbiote's survival of the process. This is not a people who can be characterized as willingly betraying a "primitive" planet and allowing for billions of deaths to spare themselves.
Then comes Between Two Fires, and all this characterization is abandoned and perverted. We are expected to believe that the same Travell who oversaw Triad - the same woman who acknowledged the debt her people owed Teal'c, and showed true class in bowing her head to him - is supposed to tamely submit to trickery and genocide instead of fighting back against Tanith's demands. We are told to accept that Travell, who leads a nation that believes in absolute transparency in government and is herself steeped in that mindset, would perversely betray her people's ideals and plot genocide behind their backs. "For the highest members of our government to deceive the people… as strange as it may sound, it's an even more heinous crime than murder. It's... it's unthinkable."
The episode never offers justification for such out-of-character behavior. A mothership with shields the ion cannons can't penetrate may be a crisis, but that doesn't compel a complete reversal of deep-seated cultural thinking. It also cannot explain the huge plot-holes and contrivances to bring Travell to this course of action. To make this all work, we must blindly accept the sudden leap in Goa'uld technology (this will be attributed to Anubis and his funky half-Ancient cheat codes, which gets more than a little tiresome); the failure of the Curia to do anything but meekly comply with Tanith's demands; the utter reversal of generations' worth of cultural thinking; and the complete absence of even the suggestion of any efforts to find some other way to avoid committing genocide. Where are the consultations with the Nox or the Tok'ra, both powerful allies with whom the Tollan have a cordial relationship? Where are the private meetings between Travell and Hammond - who we have seen working quietly together before - in which she warns the SGC of the new danger and seeks ways and means to protect both planets? Where are the discussions among the Tollan people, with the possibilty of evacuation to a new planet off the Stargate grid - as Tollana itself was, before they revealed their existence to the Goa'uld during Triad?
Some might suggest that Tollan nature would not permit them to seek help or advice from "primitives" - that they would consider it beneath them. But that doesn't wash, either. Even Omoc, for all his grumpiness, expressed his appreciation to Daniel and Teal'c at the end of Enigma. (And may I say that I always appreciated that Omoc wasn't likable? Good doesn't have to equal nice.) The Tollan have no qualms in calling in the Tok'ra to remove Klorel when it was beyond their own abilities. And, of course, there is Travell's gracious gesture to Teal'c, when she acknowledges that he'd saved the planet from Zipacna's treachery.
Are the Tollan arrogant and complacent? Certainly. To be fair, however, it's with good reason. These people buit their own Stargate, something far beyond the Goa'uld's abilities - possibly beyond even the skills of the Asgard. Yes, their complacency put them at risk in Pretense. But a single ion cannon was, in fact, enough to take out a Goa'uld mothership with a few blasts. It's only the new "big bad" that changes things so drastically. So a fascinating, advanced people are sacrificed on the altar of Ominous Drama, despite the lack of characterization and the unlikely sudden Goa'uld superiority that must be forced and squeezed to fit the storyline. And that is nothing short of criminal.
Now, consider how much this impacts on the SGC, and why the loss of Tollana is even worse than it might seem at first glance.
"You evacuated ten people from an alien planet, Colonel. Doctor Frasier says they're all human and it looks like they're going to live. This was one hell of a rescue operation."
The Tollan represent the best of victories for the SGC: one of moral clarity, where the team (and Hammond) chose the right thing over the expedient one. Maybourne, the NID, even the President - they were all practically salivating at the chance to keep the Tollan on Earth, even against their will, in order to harness their technology. But the SGC recognized that the Tollan deserved their freedom, and threw away all that potentional technology for the sake of getting them safely off-world. It was one of the clearest delineations of the difference between Earth and their enemy - the Goa'uld take what they want regardless of how it might destroy others' lives, but the SGC refused to exploit the Tollan, despite what was surely an immense temptation.
Sadly, there is much less moral clarity in later seasons. Consider The Other Side, where the SGC is ready to take advantage of a desperate nation to gain a hundred years' advancement for the price of genocide. By Season Five, no one even pretends that there are "rogue factions" at the NID - shameless exploitation becomes official policy. By the time we reach Season Nine, the SGC blithely accepts technology that dangerously alters memory, despite the very pointed example of how that technology can be so easily abused. And Landry has no trouble proposing that they destroy the gateway between dimensions, leaving dozens of teams stranded - including those trying to find a cure for the Ori plague. As far as I can tell, the only reason for this is the SGC's personal convenience.
The saving of the Tollan was a victory. Between Two Fires wiped that victory - and that moral certitude - away. And this is only the beginning of a depressing trend to take the SGC's triumphs and turn them into defeats.
We see some of this in earlier episodes, where the SGC's efforts not only fail to achieve victory, but actually cause damage. I'm not talking about genuine moral dilemmas like Thor's Hammer, Spirits, or Prisoners - in those cases, there is a real effort to rectify mistakes. But consider The Serpent's Venom, where the team risk their lives to reprogram the mine in order to take out Heru-ur and Apophis. The result of their efforts? Heru-ur killed, and Apophis stronger than ever. At least that was confined to a single episode. In later seasons, we see entire arcs wiped out - all the effort and pain and toil of a previous victory dismissed and ignored for the sake of the current storyline. The destruction of the Tollan was the first of these egregious retroactive erasures, but sadly, it was hardly the last.
The Tok'ra. The Tok'ra were the first powerful ally the SGC ever gained. There was suspicion on both sides - the SGC had the bad example of Jolinar to contrast with the Tok'ra's claim that they never took hosts unwillingly, and the Tok'ra had great trouble with the idea that unblended humans could actually do something to help fight against the Goa'uld. It took Jacob Carter's willingness to host Selmac, and Jack's identification of Cordesh as a traitor, to convince them.
Over the next few seasons, we see the Tok'ra actually helping the Tau'ri. They came to Earth to advise them about Apophis in Serpent's Song; they brought TER's to Earth and helped in the battle against the Reetou; they sent word to the SGC about Hathor's capture of SG-1; they passed crucial information about Nirrti's transphase experiments to the SGC in Fair Game; they removed Klorel from Skaara. We do see that they still maintain a certain ruthless pragmatism - there is Aldwin's willingness to destroy Netu even with SG-1 and Jacob still on the moon, and Anise was only willing to give Daniel a hint that Jacob might be close enough to help in Tangent. Yet the SGC could still count on them to actually help - or, at the very least, give advice.
With the onset of Season Four, this begins to change. We see the Tok'ra use the SGC as guinea pigs in Upgrades and Divide and Conquer. Daniel is cannon fodder in Summit/Last Stand. When Kanan literally hijacks Jack in Abyss, the Tok'ra refuse to even disclose information about his past missions, much less actively help in the search. There are still times when the Tok'ra are of genuine assistance - in Failsafe, for example, a Tok'ra rescues the team after they've completed their mission, and Jacob does try to heal Daniel in Meridian. As the seasons pass, however, the only "good" Tok'ra seems to be Selmac/Jacob - and he, in turn, is snubbed by the Tok'ra Council for his defense of the Tau'ri! With his death in Threads, the Tok'ra drop out of the story entirely. They resurface for few minutes in Dominion and they are included in Continuum, but aside from those very minor cameos, what was once a great triumph - an alliance with a powerful race of beings against the Goa'uld - dwindles into barely an afterthought.
The Ancients and Ascension. When we first hear of the Ancients, it's by way of Jack's encounter with their download and the Asgard: they're one of the Four Races, more powerful than the Goa'uld. Over the next three years, we learn more. There is Kheb, and the existence of an undercurrent of belief among the Jaffa, running silently beneath the propaganda of the Goa'uld. The belief in Ascension was theirs - fostered by Oma Desala, yes, but something untainted by their slavery to the System Lords. Think of Teal'c's salute when Daniel Ascends, and his subsequent discussion with Sam. We perceived the Ancients as benevolent, powerful beings that protect the innocent (Shifu) and offer the Jaffa something greater.
This slowly begins to unravel in Abyss and Full Circle, when we learn that Daniel isn't allowed to interfere. (No one ever points out the contradictions between this rule of non-interference and Oma's behavior on Kheb - or, for that matter, her assistance to Daniel in Ascending. Also, no one seems to notice that non-interference doesn't stop the Ancients from littering various galaxies with their failed experiments and leftover mistakes, allowing "lowers" to suffer for their carelessness even as they maintain that it is Not Their Problem.) Now the Ancients are reduced: they are on a higher plane of existence, and immensely powerful, but they look upon "lowers" as beneath their interest and wholly unimportant. By the time we reach Season Eight, the Ancients are little more than smug, selfish beings that see nothing wrong with allowing an entire galaxy destroyed, as long as it grants them the opportunity to make a point with Oma. By Season Nine, even Ascension is a biological fact, rather than an achievement, as we see with Khalek. And again, the Ancients are perfectly content to leave a time bomb behind, one that will alert the Ori to the Milky Way's existence. Daniel calls it "free will"; I call it criminal.
So the Ancients and Ascension, once an inspiration and the promise of transcendence, are systematically reduced to a bunch of creatures treating humans as their toys, to be used and manipulated and subsequently discarded. I am most angry on behalf of the Jaffa, who looked to Oma and Ascension as something pure the Goa'uld couldn't touch... and instead had it perverted into yet another group of beings who like playing games with the lives of those they consider beneath them. Really, is it any wonder they were tempted by the Ori?
Victory over the Goa'uld. The SGC spent eight years struggling against the Goa'uld. They were horrifying: viscerally, technologically, personally. They were hugely powerful, utterly callous, deliberately cruel. Destroying the System Lords should have been the greatest of triumphs.
What happens instead? In the effort to emphasize the gravity of the threat of the Ori, the Goa'uld we see in S9-10 are reduced to laughable caricatures. Baal goes from being the System Lord who casually wipes out millions to becoming a CEO who specializes in aggressive takeovers. Nerus is a fat slob who can't see past his next meal. Even Athena, a completely new Goa'uld, wields a cell phone rather than a ribbon device!
We are supposed to be impressed by the Ori as infinitely more menacing than the Goa'uld. But the only way the writers seem to be able to do this is by forgetting the menace and struggle and cost of the previous eight years, and turning the Goa'uld into pitiful jokes in comparison. Unfortunately for them, our memories are a little better than that.
Merlin's weapon. The SGC spent an entire year searching for Merlin's weapon that could destroy Ascended beings. They sacrificed time and personnel in their search. Daniel took the Ancient download and ended up as Adria's prisoner, eventually becoming a Prior. All this was for a single goal: to find the weapon, assemble it, and destroy the Ori.
Never mind that all that effort went to waste; in the end, Adria deliberately planted the answer in Vala's mind as a "dream" to get SG-1 where she wanted them. They finally find Daniel the Prior, they risk trusting him, they finish assembling the weapon, they confront Adria and send the weapon through the Supergate...
And seven more Ori ships come back.
Now, that setback doesn't actually bother me; as Daniel says at the time, it might make the immediate future much more difficult, but if they've really destroyed the Ori, it would be worth it in the long run.
Only we don't actually get to find out whether the Ori are actually dead!
In Dominion, Adria says the weapon didn't work. Baal-in-Adria says it did, but he's hardly any more trustworthy than Adria herself. By the time we do get an actual confirmation in Ark of Truth, it doesn't even matter any more! Adria has Ascended and taken all the Ori's power for herself. It comes down, as it did with Anubis and Oma, to a single Ancient stepping up the plate to do battle with her for eternity.
So the entire story arc from Arthur's Mantle through The Shroud becomes pointless. Adria and the Ori are defeated by the Ark - a literal deus ex machina. And everything the SGC went through was for absolutely nothing.
Abydos. I've saved what I consider the worst for last: the completely unnecessary destruction of Abydos in Full Circle. Like Tollana, the only purpose for this was to emphasize that Anubis was Very Very Bad. But the writers were very shortsighted here, and they sacrificed Earth's greatest victory for the sake of a minor plot point.
Abydos is the victory over the Goa'uld. The System Lords reigned unchallenged for millenia; Ra was the Supreme System Lord during all that time. And then the Tau'ri stumbled through the Stargate to Abydos and blew him up. Ra had been acknowledged as the superior of every other System Lord at the time, and the Tau'ri took him down - over Abydos.
The status quo in the galaxy was shaken for the first time since the Ancients wandered off for greener dimensions. For the first time ever, the Goa'uld had actually been challenged - not just chased off a planet or two, but actually killed by "slaves." Abydos represented that victory not only for Earth, but for the entire galaxy.
And all that got wiped out to make a good season cliffhanger! It makes the death of Skaara - the only person they'd gotten back from the Goa'uld in six years - almost inconsequential.
Bottom line: Tollana may have been one of the first unnecessary major loss that the SGC suffered, but sadly, it certainly wasn't the last.
"Anyway, I'm sorry, but that just happens to be how I feel about it. What do you think?"
(I'm sure there are many examples I've missed [NID turning into the Trust, anyone?], and I welcome discussion - and disagreement! - in the comments.)
There is, of course, good drama involved in grief and loss and the need for Earth to fight a lonely battle. However, in achieving that dramatic plot twist, the writers had to do two things: commit absolute character assassination, and begin what will become a systematic deconstruction of past victories for the sake of injecting cheap angst into more current storylines. This is lazy, poor writing, and the SG-1 universe will continue to suffer from it for the duration of the series. There were hints of this problem before Between Two Fires, but the betrayal of Tollana - not only by the Curia, but by the writers - is the first real example of what seems to be an almost compulsive desire by the writers to take every triumph, every victory, and reduce them to nothing but bitter ashes.
(Long meta under the cut! Also, assume spoilers for the entire series, including the movies.)
First, let's consider what we know of the Tollan mindset, and how badly the writers needed to twist characterization in this episode to drive events towards Tollana's extinction.
We first met the Tollan back in Season One, in Enigma. SG-1 gated to the original Tollan planet and found it in its death throes, with a handful of individuals lying unconscious, near death, at the Gate. Only ten of them actually survived. We are told that the people SG-1 rescued had volunteered to stay behind to seal the Stargate, to ensure that no innocents might accidentally gate to a dying planet. Omoc suggests a ship was on its way to rescue them; considering their desire to return to Tollan, this may have actually been true. The deaths of most of the volunteers, however, clearly shows that the mission had been extremely hazardous. The need of the Tollan to protect anyone from the dangers of the planet clearly shows their reverence for life, even at the risk of their own.
(Please note that one of those volunteers was actually one of the leading members of the Curia. We don't see Omoc again, but his assassination in Between Two Fires, the formality of the funeral, and SG-1's attendance all indicate his importance and influence. Consider the massive contradiction of Omoc, a head of the government, willing to die for his people; and the so-called characterization of Travell here in Between Two Fires, where we are expected to accept that she will risk the lives of others for the sake of saving her own skin.)
During the course of Enigma, we learned that the Tollan are an advanced race with highly superior technology to our own. They'd shared that technology with Surita, a neighboring planet, and watched the inhabitants blow themselves up in the process - literally. The explosion was so huge, in fact, that it shifted Tollan's orbit enough to cause massive enviornmental disasters. This was not something that happened recently, either; Narim tells Sam that birds have been extinct on Tollan for generations, which implies that the disasters that destroyed their planet took a long time to reach the point of no return. So the need to defend "primitives" - and themselves - is surely a deeply-ingrained instinct in the Tollan psyche.
"Like Surita. It's going to happen again... Surita could happen on any of them." That is a quote from Narim, when he explains their reluctance to seek refuge from Maybourne and the NID with the SGC's "primitive" allies. It is clear that the Tollan aversion to sharing technology is not only based on how badly they themselves were burned, but also on their fear of seeing other planets destroyed. It might even be suggested that the Tollans' insistence that the SGC clean house on their own in Shades of Grey is part of the same mindset: non-interference with "primitive" cultures, even to the point of refusing to police them.
The Tollan value all life, not just their own. Consider their behavior in Pretense. The destruction of the motherships - two of Heru-ur's, and Zipacna's - is done out of self-defense only. Even Klorel is not removed from Skaara without all due care for the symbiote's survival of the process. This is not a people who can be characterized as willingly betraying a "primitive" planet and allowing for billions of deaths to spare themselves.
Then comes Between Two Fires, and all this characterization is abandoned and perverted. We are expected to believe that the same Travell who oversaw Triad - the same woman who acknowledged the debt her people owed Teal'c, and showed true class in bowing her head to him - is supposed to tamely submit to trickery and genocide instead of fighting back against Tanith's demands. We are told to accept that Travell, who leads a nation that believes in absolute transparency in government and is herself steeped in that mindset, would perversely betray her people's ideals and plot genocide behind their backs. "For the highest members of our government to deceive the people… as strange as it may sound, it's an even more heinous crime than murder. It's... it's unthinkable."
The episode never offers justification for such out-of-character behavior. A mothership with shields the ion cannons can't penetrate may be a crisis, but that doesn't compel a complete reversal of deep-seated cultural thinking. It also cannot explain the huge plot-holes and contrivances to bring Travell to this course of action. To make this all work, we must blindly accept the sudden leap in Goa'uld technology (this will be attributed to Anubis and his funky half-Ancient cheat codes, which gets more than a little tiresome); the failure of the Curia to do anything but meekly comply with Tanith's demands; the utter reversal of generations' worth of cultural thinking; and the complete absence of even the suggestion of any efforts to find some other way to avoid committing genocide. Where are the consultations with the Nox or the Tok'ra, both powerful allies with whom the Tollan have a cordial relationship? Where are the private meetings between Travell and Hammond - who we have seen working quietly together before - in which she warns the SGC of the new danger and seeks ways and means to protect both planets? Where are the discussions among the Tollan people, with the possibilty of evacuation to a new planet off the Stargate grid - as Tollana itself was, before they revealed their existence to the Goa'uld during Triad?
Some might suggest that Tollan nature would not permit them to seek help or advice from "primitives" - that they would consider it beneath them. But that doesn't wash, either. Even Omoc, for all his grumpiness, expressed his appreciation to Daniel and Teal'c at the end of Enigma. (And may I say that I always appreciated that Omoc wasn't likable? Good doesn't have to equal nice.) The Tollan have no qualms in calling in the Tok'ra to remove Klorel when it was beyond their own abilities. And, of course, there is Travell's gracious gesture to Teal'c, when she acknowledges that he'd saved the planet from Zipacna's treachery.
Are the Tollan arrogant and complacent? Certainly. To be fair, however, it's with good reason. These people buit their own Stargate, something far beyond the Goa'uld's abilities - possibly beyond even the skills of the Asgard. Yes, their complacency put them at risk in Pretense. But a single ion cannon was, in fact, enough to take out a Goa'uld mothership with a few blasts. It's only the new "big bad" that changes things so drastically. So a fascinating, advanced people are sacrificed on the altar of Ominous Drama, despite the lack of characterization and the unlikely sudden Goa'uld superiority that must be forced and squeezed to fit the storyline. And that is nothing short of criminal.
Now, consider how much this impacts on the SGC, and why the loss of Tollana is even worse than it might seem at first glance.
"You evacuated ten people from an alien planet, Colonel. Doctor Frasier says they're all human and it looks like they're going to live. This was one hell of a rescue operation."
The Tollan represent the best of victories for the SGC: one of moral clarity, where the team (and Hammond) chose the right thing over the expedient one. Maybourne, the NID, even the President - they were all practically salivating at the chance to keep the Tollan on Earth, even against their will, in order to harness their technology. But the SGC recognized that the Tollan deserved their freedom, and threw away all that potentional technology for the sake of getting them safely off-world. It was one of the clearest delineations of the difference between Earth and their enemy - the Goa'uld take what they want regardless of how it might destroy others' lives, but the SGC refused to exploit the Tollan, despite what was surely an immense temptation.
Sadly, there is much less moral clarity in later seasons. Consider The Other Side, where the SGC is ready to take advantage of a desperate nation to gain a hundred years' advancement for the price of genocide. By Season Five, no one even pretends that there are "rogue factions" at the NID - shameless exploitation becomes official policy. By the time we reach Season Nine, the SGC blithely accepts technology that dangerously alters memory, despite the very pointed example of how that technology can be so easily abused. And Landry has no trouble proposing that they destroy the gateway between dimensions, leaving dozens of teams stranded - including those trying to find a cure for the Ori plague. As far as I can tell, the only reason for this is the SGC's personal convenience.
The saving of the Tollan was a victory. Between Two Fires wiped that victory - and that moral certitude - away. And this is only the beginning of a depressing trend to take the SGC's triumphs and turn them into defeats.
We see some of this in earlier episodes, where the SGC's efforts not only fail to achieve victory, but actually cause damage. I'm not talking about genuine moral dilemmas like Thor's Hammer, Spirits, or Prisoners - in those cases, there is a real effort to rectify mistakes. But consider The Serpent's Venom, where the team risk their lives to reprogram the mine in order to take out Heru-ur and Apophis. The result of their efforts? Heru-ur killed, and Apophis stronger than ever. At least that was confined to a single episode. In later seasons, we see entire arcs wiped out - all the effort and pain and toil of a previous victory dismissed and ignored for the sake of the current storyline. The destruction of the Tollan was the first of these egregious retroactive erasures, but sadly, it was hardly the last.
The Tok'ra. The Tok'ra were the first powerful ally the SGC ever gained. There was suspicion on both sides - the SGC had the bad example of Jolinar to contrast with the Tok'ra's claim that they never took hosts unwillingly, and the Tok'ra had great trouble with the idea that unblended humans could actually do something to help fight against the Goa'uld. It took Jacob Carter's willingness to host Selmac, and Jack's identification of Cordesh as a traitor, to convince them.
Over the next few seasons, we see the Tok'ra actually helping the Tau'ri. They came to Earth to advise them about Apophis in Serpent's Song; they brought TER's to Earth and helped in the battle against the Reetou; they sent word to the SGC about Hathor's capture of SG-1; they passed crucial information about Nirrti's transphase experiments to the SGC in Fair Game; they removed Klorel from Skaara. We do see that they still maintain a certain ruthless pragmatism - there is Aldwin's willingness to destroy Netu even with SG-1 and Jacob still on the moon, and Anise was only willing to give Daniel a hint that Jacob might be close enough to help in Tangent. Yet the SGC could still count on them to actually help - or, at the very least, give advice.
With the onset of Season Four, this begins to change. We see the Tok'ra use the SGC as guinea pigs in Upgrades and Divide and Conquer. Daniel is cannon fodder in Summit/Last Stand. When Kanan literally hijacks Jack in Abyss, the Tok'ra refuse to even disclose information about his past missions, much less actively help in the search. There are still times when the Tok'ra are of genuine assistance - in Failsafe, for example, a Tok'ra rescues the team after they've completed their mission, and Jacob does try to heal Daniel in Meridian. As the seasons pass, however, the only "good" Tok'ra seems to be Selmac/Jacob - and he, in turn, is snubbed by the Tok'ra Council for his defense of the Tau'ri! With his death in Threads, the Tok'ra drop out of the story entirely. They resurface for few minutes in Dominion and they are included in Continuum, but aside from those very minor cameos, what was once a great triumph - an alliance with a powerful race of beings against the Goa'uld - dwindles into barely an afterthought.
The Ancients and Ascension. When we first hear of the Ancients, it's by way of Jack's encounter with their download and the Asgard: they're one of the Four Races, more powerful than the Goa'uld. Over the next three years, we learn more. There is Kheb, and the existence of an undercurrent of belief among the Jaffa, running silently beneath the propaganda of the Goa'uld. The belief in Ascension was theirs - fostered by Oma Desala, yes, but something untainted by their slavery to the System Lords. Think of Teal'c's salute when Daniel Ascends, and his subsequent discussion with Sam. We perceived the Ancients as benevolent, powerful beings that protect the innocent (Shifu) and offer the Jaffa something greater.
This slowly begins to unravel in Abyss and Full Circle, when we learn that Daniel isn't allowed to interfere. (No one ever points out the contradictions between this rule of non-interference and Oma's behavior on Kheb - or, for that matter, her assistance to Daniel in Ascending. Also, no one seems to notice that non-interference doesn't stop the Ancients from littering various galaxies with their failed experiments and leftover mistakes, allowing "lowers" to suffer for their carelessness even as they maintain that it is Not Their Problem.) Now the Ancients are reduced: they are on a higher plane of existence, and immensely powerful, but they look upon "lowers" as beneath their interest and wholly unimportant. By the time we reach Season Eight, the Ancients are little more than smug, selfish beings that see nothing wrong with allowing an entire galaxy destroyed, as long as it grants them the opportunity to make a point with Oma. By Season Nine, even Ascension is a biological fact, rather than an achievement, as we see with Khalek. And again, the Ancients are perfectly content to leave a time bomb behind, one that will alert the Ori to the Milky Way's existence. Daniel calls it "free will"; I call it criminal.
So the Ancients and Ascension, once an inspiration and the promise of transcendence, are systematically reduced to a bunch of creatures treating humans as their toys, to be used and manipulated and subsequently discarded. I am most angry on behalf of the Jaffa, who looked to Oma and Ascension as something pure the Goa'uld couldn't touch... and instead had it perverted into yet another group of beings who like playing games with the lives of those they consider beneath them. Really, is it any wonder they were tempted by the Ori?
Victory over the Goa'uld. The SGC spent eight years struggling against the Goa'uld. They were horrifying: viscerally, technologically, personally. They were hugely powerful, utterly callous, deliberately cruel. Destroying the System Lords should have been the greatest of triumphs.
What happens instead? In the effort to emphasize the gravity of the threat of the Ori, the Goa'uld we see in S9-10 are reduced to laughable caricatures. Baal goes from being the System Lord who casually wipes out millions to becoming a CEO who specializes in aggressive takeovers. Nerus is a fat slob who can't see past his next meal. Even Athena, a completely new Goa'uld, wields a cell phone rather than a ribbon device!
We are supposed to be impressed by the Ori as infinitely more menacing than the Goa'uld. But the only way the writers seem to be able to do this is by forgetting the menace and struggle and cost of the previous eight years, and turning the Goa'uld into pitiful jokes in comparison. Unfortunately for them, our memories are a little better than that.
Merlin's weapon. The SGC spent an entire year searching for Merlin's weapon that could destroy Ascended beings. They sacrificed time and personnel in their search. Daniel took the Ancient download and ended up as Adria's prisoner, eventually becoming a Prior. All this was for a single goal: to find the weapon, assemble it, and destroy the Ori.
Never mind that all that effort went to waste; in the end, Adria deliberately planted the answer in Vala's mind as a "dream" to get SG-1 where she wanted them. They finally find Daniel the Prior, they risk trusting him, they finish assembling the weapon, they confront Adria and send the weapon through the Supergate...
And seven more Ori ships come back.
Now, that setback doesn't actually bother me; as Daniel says at the time, it might make the immediate future much more difficult, but if they've really destroyed the Ori, it would be worth it in the long run.
Only we don't actually get to find out whether the Ori are actually dead!
In Dominion, Adria says the weapon didn't work. Baal-in-Adria says it did, but he's hardly any more trustworthy than Adria herself. By the time we do get an actual confirmation in Ark of Truth, it doesn't even matter any more! Adria has Ascended and taken all the Ori's power for herself. It comes down, as it did with Anubis and Oma, to a single Ancient stepping up the plate to do battle with her for eternity.
So the entire story arc from Arthur's Mantle through The Shroud becomes pointless. Adria and the Ori are defeated by the Ark - a literal deus ex machina. And everything the SGC went through was for absolutely nothing.
Abydos. I've saved what I consider the worst for last: the completely unnecessary destruction of Abydos in Full Circle. Like Tollana, the only purpose for this was to emphasize that Anubis was Very Very Bad. But the writers were very shortsighted here, and they sacrificed Earth's greatest victory for the sake of a minor plot point.
Abydos is the victory over the Goa'uld. The System Lords reigned unchallenged for millenia; Ra was the Supreme System Lord during all that time. And then the Tau'ri stumbled through the Stargate to Abydos and blew him up. Ra had been acknowledged as the superior of every other System Lord at the time, and the Tau'ri took him down - over Abydos.
The status quo in the galaxy was shaken for the first time since the Ancients wandered off for greener dimensions. For the first time ever, the Goa'uld had actually been challenged - not just chased off a planet or two, but actually killed by "slaves." Abydos represented that victory not only for Earth, but for the entire galaxy.
And all that got wiped out to make a good season cliffhanger! It makes the death of Skaara - the only person they'd gotten back from the Goa'uld in six years - almost inconsequential.
Bottom line: Tollana may have been one of the first unnecessary major loss that the SGC suffered, but sadly, it certainly wasn't the last.
"Anyway, I'm sorry, but that just happens to be how I feel about it. What do you think?"
(I'm sure there are many examples I've missed [NID turning into the Trust, anyone?], and I welcome discussion - and disagreement! - in the comments.)