Canon vs. Fanon, part 7: "No more beer for you."
Finally, the section you've all been waiting for! …Okay, some of you. At least one or two. Maybe.
We'll make a brief detour into Daniel's junk food habits, but the primary focus of this section will be Daniel and drinking: his preferences, interactions with his teammates, and his capacity for alcohol. This one turned out to be a bit more analytical than some of the others, and the conclusions might be surprising for some. As always, pointers to what I've missed, and discussions/disagreements with my analyses, are more than welcome.
Special thanks to the following people, who helped this non-drinker work out accurate details for the various members of SG-1: aurora_novarum, green_grrl, princessofg, redbyrd_sgfic, and shutthef_up. While much of it is mentioned in the post below, anyone interested in greater details can check out the comments listed here. Any mistakes included in this post are entirely my own.
Recap: Canon is anything shown onscreen in the movie or show; show supersedes movie, when necessary. (Daniel is married to Sha're, not Shau'ri.) Fanon is defined as popular concepts that occur regularly in fanfic, but have little or no actual canon basis to defend them.
Daniel is a junk-food junkie, and goes into raptures about anything chocolate.
Interestingly, this bit of fanon has some solid basis to it - but the canon is in the movie, which is rarely used for referral by Stargate fanfic writers. In the movie, before Daniel has his breakthrough, the camera pans on a view of his very messy desk, which includes a granola bar and some kind of salty snack. Of course, if we logically consider his lifestyle before he met Katherine - living on college campus long enough to earn two or three doctorates, and months or years spent on digs - Daniel was quite likely living more on junkfood than managing decent meals. There's no canon for this, but it's certainly reasonable.
Most of all, there's the sheer hilarity of a person stepping across the event horizon, on a journey that has never, to his knowledge, been undertaken in the last several centuries, ready to face the utter unknown without being absolutely positive that he can ever come back… and carrying a stash of Fifth Avenue bars in his pocket. It doesn't matter how useful that turned out to be, when Daniel was able to offer a candy bar to Kasuf. The simple fact that he took Fifth Avenue bars along with him? That is a man addicted to chocolate. :)
Surprisingly enough, however, the movie really is the last clear canon proof of Daniel and chocolate. On any occasions in the series when we see Daniel eating something outside a meal - and, as noted in a previous post, that doesn't happen very often - it's most often an energy bar of some kind, whether or not it's chocolate covered. He seems to have a tendency towards snacking on nuts, as well. But chocolate? We get vaguely close to it twice: in Forever In a Day, when, in his dream/vision, Sam brings him "those chocolate walnut cookies that you like so much"; and in The First Ones, when Daniel ever-so-politely declines the offering of roasted symbiote head. Instead, he pulls out an energy bar, unwraps it, pantomimes - much as he did in the movie - how good it tastes, and offers it to Chaka. As Chaka happily eats it, Daniel's face splits into a grin as he tells him, "Y'know, I met my father-in-law like this."
That's it, people.
Compare this with the regular fanon theme of Daniel absentmindedly reaching into a drawer to raid his stash for a chocolate bar instead of eating a meal, or Jack bribing him away from his desk by waving a candy bar, or team members bringing him chocolate and candy in the infirmary. Does this contradict canon? Of course not. Is it supported by canon? Yes, but only up to a point; and that point is left panting in the dust by the overwhelming frequency of chocolate fanon in fanfics.
It can be suggested, perhaps, that only movie-era and long-haired Daniel was a junk-food junkie, and Daniel eventually moved away from chocolate and candy to the more practical power bar - a natural evolution, as he developed into more of a soldier than the geeky archeologist that lived on snack food. But that's only a suggestion, as much of a fanon extrapolation as Daniel's love for chocolate. So that doesn't really help very much, does it?
Conclusion: While Stargate: The Movie offers solid canon that Daniel likes chocolate and junk food, and there is nothing in the series that actually contradicts this, Daniel's love for chocolate, as portrayed in fanon, is largely exaggerated.
Time to take a look at Daniel and alcohol!
I will preface this section by pointing out that we don't actually get much of a chance to see our gang in an atmosphere where casual drinking is possible. I don't have personal experience with the military, but I would question whether alcohol is permitted on base altogether, much less whether it would be permissible to drink it when on duty. Daniel, of course, is a civilian; but if alcohol is verboten at the SGC, he won't have it there. That makes a certain closing scene in S9 a bit questionable, but they're both in civvies at the time, it's definitely after hours, and, as they both say, it's been a "bad day." So we're more or less restricted to times when SG-1 is either off-world or off-duty; and since any drinking off-world is to keep the natives happy and won't involve personal choice, it'll mostly be off-duty, of which we sadly didn't get as much as we might have wanted.
There are several common fanon themes for this topic, with an extra nod to our favorite Jaffa:
Daniel is a lightweight when it comes to alcohol, getting tipsy after only a beer or two; Teal'c either doesn't bother drinking or drinks to excess, because his symbiote metabolizes alcohol so quickly it negates the effects.
Daniel doesn't like beer, and drinks it only to keep Jack company, and only because Jack insists on it.
Daniel only likes expensive imported beers (or unusual ones), and is constantly trying to "educate" Jack, whose taste in beers is far beneath Daniel's.
Yes, I know the latter two contradict each other. :) But they're both frequently found in fanfics, so they both deserve to be listed here.
Let's start with the first fanon assertion: Daniel as a lightweight with little tolerance for alcohol. We'll get to Teal'c shortly.
At first glance, this one seems to be solidly based on canon. After all, it's one of the best scenes in COTG, isn't it? Jack takes Daniel home after the devastating attack on Abydos, and the two of them talk quietly about life on Abydos, about Sha're, about Sara divorcing Jack.
"This is going straight to my head… What time is it, anyway? I must have Gate lag, or something."
"For crying out loud, Daniel, you've had one beer. You're a cheaper date than my wife was."
But that's only a casual glance at the scene. I would suggest that looking at the dialogue and the actions on a deeper level offers an entirely different interpretion - one with some solid canon backing.
Daniel is a master of words, and has always capable of deflecting the conversation away from what he wants (or dragging it back to what he wants). We see this at the beginning of Meridian, when Jack tried to insist that Daniel tell him what happened and Daniel turned the conversation off on a tangent to the dangers inherent in the naquadriah experiments; we see it again in the way he avoided telling his teammates any of the more sordid details about Nick at the beginning of the episode in Crystal Skull.
Now, consider the topic of conversation: Abydos. Sha're. Painful, intimate subjects. He's already made one attempt to lighten their talk by diverting Jack to "grinding yaffetta flour"; now, he is changing the topic again, by voicing a non sequitur and getting Jack off the subject of Abydos entirely. Picture the scene in your mind (or watch the ep again. Really, go ahead. I don't mind, and you probably won't either.) "Well, if it weren't for Sha're, I'd…" Daniel's sudden realization that his automatically casual reference to Sha're can never be so automatic again; the way he stops, and sits, and takes a deep breath before he approaches the subject again, only this time, from an entirely different angle. That's avoidance, that's closing off, and the comment about the beer going straight to his head only served to change the topic of conversation entirely. How quickly did Daniel seize on Jack's words to turn the subject over to Jack and Sara, rather than himself and Sha're?
So the question really is: Was Daniel's statement wholly sincere, or just a distraction? My own analysis of the entire scene - including facial expressions and body language as well as the actual dialogue - is that Daniel was more interested in changing the subject than actually expressing a statement of fact.
Fast-forward past over seven years of casual drinking onscreen - without any mention that Daniel is automatically the designated driver, since he can't handle even one bottle of beer - before we come to the absolutely delightful scene in Lost City, part 1, in Jack's living room. That scene is one to be cherished, especially for its rarity value - it served no other purpose than teamy goodness, and how often did we get that in the later seasons of the show?
So here we have Jack and Sam in armchairs, and Teal'c and Daniel on the sofa. The team is busy discussing Jack's insistence of comparing characters from The Simpsons to the Goa'uld (disclaimer - I've never seen an episode of The Simpsons, so forgive me if I'm getting that wrong). Daniel is a bit pre-occupied with carefully balancing an orange on his beer bottle. Teal'c calmly points out that The Simpsons are only cartoon characters, Jack dismisses Teal'c's opinion as being shallow, and Daniel lets the orange tumble onto the sofa as he bursts into one of the most charming defenses of Teal'c, ever:
"Oh, please! Teal'c's like one of the deepest people I know. He's so deep. Come on, tell them how deep you are! You'll be lucky if you understand this."
(Again, feel free to pull out the episode to watch a Daniel almost giddy with excitement at Teal'c's "deepness.")
Teal'c… looks at Daniel, and announces, "My depth is immaterial to this conversation."
"Ooooooh!" Scrunched up, triumphant in his victory: "See?"
"No more beer for you."
As I said, it's a lovely, lovely scene. And it's certainly canon proof that Daniel, at the very least, has a lower tolerance of alcohol than Sam and Jack, who have probably been drinking a similar number of beers during the same timeframe as Daniel. But it's after seven years of Stargate before we get this canon proof; and we don't know how long the team has been sitting there, or how many beers were consumed, or even if Daniel ate any of the doughnuts, or was drinking on an empty stomach. It's certainly been long enough for the seating arrangements to change, the doughnuts to disappear, and pizza to be ordered with the expectation that it would arrive. The scene shift between Daniel and Teal'c's arrival and the "Burns as Goa'uld" discussion leaves us guessing; it could have been only one hour, or as long as three or four. It's certainly unlikely that Daniel was still on his first bottle of beer. In addition, they're all drinking Guinness, which is a heavier beer than most and has a higher alcoholic content.
I would suggest that that the incident in COTG is not really sufficient proof, unless it's matched with this scene. And because there's such a long gap between the two, and we've seen Daniel drinking on other occasions without being utterly drunk, and I tend to be a bit skeptical about later canon actually being influenced by fanon, I would conclude that Daniel is not quite the lightweight that fanon would suggest. Yes, he does have a lower tolerance for alcohol than Jack and Sam; but that doesn't mean he gets plastered after a single bottle of beer. If that were the case, he would be as much of a teetotaller as Teal'c (more on this shortly) except for very rare occasions, and canon clearly shows that he isn't.
Let's take a look at that, shall we? Aside from the aforementioned COTG and Lost City, Daniel drinks beer, or suggests it, on four (six?) separate occasions, as listed in the next section. Other than that, we see Daniel with alcohol on four different occasions. While three of them actually take place outside our reality/timeline (as detailed here), the concept of Daniel drinking can't be as easily dismissed.
COTG. This one is quite iffy, but I can't ignore it entirely. When Skaara offers Jack some "moonshine," Jack looks across at Daniel and asks, "Daniel, what are you teaching these kids?" Daniel and Sha're only look amused. Jack is clearly suggesting that Daniel is the one to introduce fermented liquor to Abydos, but there is absolutely no way to tell if Jack is being facetious or not. How could Jack know that there wasn't alcohol on Abydos before Daniel's arrival there? He certainly wasn't around long enough the first time to get a true understanding of their dietary preferences, lizard-that-tastes-like-chicken notwithstanding. And I personally find it hard to believe that a society evolved without someone inventing a way to get drunk. :) So, while "moonshine" can't really be used as proof either way, a fanfic author is welcome to take Jack literally if it suits the story.
2010. Daniel clinks glasses and drinks champagne with everyone else; later, at dinner, he has an empty wineglass at his place.
Absolute Power. He opens champagne to celebrate the successful launch. Like everything else in that dream/vision, Daniel's choice of champagne is based on power and the status symbols of power, which, as shutthef_up suggested, is probably why he chooses a brand that costs "two thousand dollars a bottle."
Chimera. Sarah/Osiris prepares a romantic, candlelit dinner, complete with wine, in Daniel's dream.
So yes, Daniel drinks wine, and beer. Contrast this with his teammates:
Teal'c, as aurora_novarum pointed out, doesn't drink. Period. Yes, there's fanon that suggests his symbiote can negate the effects of alcohol, but that's just that - fanon. We see Teal'c avoiding alcohol on a number of occasions:
Fire and Water. Jack offers Teal'c a beer at the wake. Teal'c says, "I must refrain." I know he just told Sam that on Chulak, mourning includes a three-day fast; but since Jack's next words are, "There's food upstairs," and Teal'c doesn't refuse that, he was clearly referring to the alcohol.
The Other Side. On Euronda, each member of SG-1 is offered a glass (of rather awkward design) for a toast. Teal'c refuses, explaining that he does not drink alcohol, giving Alar an excuse to chalk up yet another bad mark against him.
2010. While this didn't actually happen in our timeline, Teal'c still isn't drinking, even after the Goa'uld are defeated and his tattoo is gone. When the others toast General Hammond with champagne, Teal'c is holding a glass of fruit juice; later, at the dinner table, he's still drinking juice.
Lost City. Sam hands Teal'c a glass of juice just before the wonderful depth discussion.
Then there's Sam. Sam agrees to a beer in Fire and Water; she drinks a light beer in Upgrades; Orlin offers her wine in Ascension; she drinks beer in Lost City. (I might be missing a few canon incidents, so please point them out if you know of any.)
Jack's preferences in beer and spirits will be further detailed in a later section; for the purpose of this comparison, it is sufficient to say that in Citizen Joe, Sam suggested that Jack's likely secret ingredient to omelettes was "beer" for a reason.
So, if we needed to compare the drinking habits of all four members of SG-1, where would Daniel fit? Not with teetotaller Teal'c, but with Jack and Sam.
Conclusion: While Daniel has a lower tolerance for alcohol than Jack and Sam, he is not quite the complete lightweight that fanon would suggest. Teal'c, on the other hand, does not drink alcohol. Period.
Let's move to the second common fanon assertion, that Daniel hates beer and drinks it only because Jack expects it of him.
This concept has even less standing than the first, in that there's only one canon incident from which it's derived. Granted, it's a most memorable (and painful) scene; but, like that conversation in COTG, I would suggest that Daniel's words should not be taken wholly at face value.
Let's examine the setting of the scene closely, taking it entirely from Daniel's POV. (And, yes! I'm perfectly happy to wait while you go and watch it, if you'd like!) Whether or not the team has actually drawn straws - and I've read some excellent arguments for both sides - Daniel is the one who comes, alone, to face Jack and try to get some answers. He rings the bell and waits for Jack to answer it. Jack opens the door, but stands directly in the doorway, clearly blocking Daniel from entering.
Daniel tries a tentative, "Hi." Jack's hostile reply - "What do you want?" - is as much of a barrier as his physical blocking of the door. The rest of Daniel's dialogue at the door serves a single purpose - to actually get inside, where he hopes he can talk Jack into some kind of sense. Is Daniel actually interested in drinking beer at that moment? No, of course not; what interests him is getting through the door and through Jack's defenses. And since that's the only purpose the beer actually serves…
"So, how are you feeling about all this?" The falsely casual tone makes it clear that Daniel has reached the main import of his visit.
"Yes to the beer. No to the feelings."
Quietly muttered: "That's too bad, because I don't really like beer."
Jack himself seems to recognize that the dismissal of the beer isn't out of dislike, but out of concern for Daniel's true intentions, because his very next words are, "Stop your worrying. I'm fine."
My analysis of the scene is this: Daniel's likes or dislikes for beer are immaterial to the conversation, to paraphrase Teal'c. Daniel used the request for beer to get into the house and try to get Jack to start talking; and since Jack insisted that "yes to the beer, not to the feelings," the beer no longer served any purpose for Daniel, and he was therefore uninterested in drinking it.
A single point of data can't really serve as proof, especially when there are other points of data that contradict it. Do we other canon incidents in which Daniel seems perfectly happy to drink beer? Yes, certainly. Two of them have already been detailed: COTG, and Lost City. Besides those two, there are others:
Upgrades. As discussed in a previous section, the team's behavior under the influence of the armbands was affected in terms of restraint and control, but not in terms of taste preferences. In the scene at O'Malley's, Daniel is shown drinking a darker beer than Sam and Jack.
Evolution, part 1. As Daniel and Lee make their way towards the café for the planned rondezvous with Rogelio, Bill asks Daniel what they will do if Rogelio doesn't show up. Daniel cheerfully replies, "Well, we'll have a few beers, make a few friends…" While they don't have the opportunity to do any drinking, Daniel's casual proposal hardly suggests a dislike for beer.
Threads/Moebius. When Daniel and Teal'c carry the cooler between them and set it on the dock, Daniel pulls out two beers - one for himself, and one for Jack. (You can include 200 in this if you really want to.) Actually, it seems to me that Daniel is only carrying one bottle in Threads, but it's hard to be sure. If I'm right, it opens the door for some truly fascinating speculation on how the timeline was changed - even if it was "close enough" - so that Daniel either doesn't want to drink a beer himself, or isn't interested in offering one to Jack. :) (ETA: Hm. It looks like he reaches both hands into the cooler to pull out beer, so it probably was two. Ah, well.)
Season Nine Spoiler! Ethon. Mitchell brings Daniel a can of beer in the closing scene of the show. It's a Coors Light, which isn't a very high quality brand. Daniel hesitates before drinking it, but he does drink it; and considering his evident preference for darker, higher-quality brews, the hestiation might be either because he doesn't care much for Coors Light, he's unsure about drinking on the base, or the unhappy news the two of them have just discussed leaves him uninterested in drinking at all. In the end, the two of them toast each other: "Bad day." As several people commented, it seems only reasonable to salute the lousy day with lousy beer. :)
(As an aside, I will say that there is something very… Cameron about the way that Mitchell goes to all the trouble to bring AU Daniel just the right blend of coffee in Ripple Effect, but he brings Daniel a cheap can of cheap beer here in Ethon. It seems to fit him, somehow. And I'm quite charmed by it, for some reason I don't really understand.) End Season Nine Spoiler.
Conclusion: While Daniel might not be quite as fond of beer as Jack seems to be, he doesn't dislike drinking it at all.
Finally, we have the contrasting fanon opinion that Daniel resists Jack's beer because it's beneath his tastes. This one has even less canon backing than the previous one.
Let's look first at what we know about Daniel's beer preferences:
He accepts a second bottle of beer from Jack in COTG and drinks a swallow. (Yes, that's his second bottle of beer, not his first. Jack would not say, "Daniel, you've had one beer," when Daniel is taking his first swallow from the bottle - unless Daniel is actually on his second bottle.) This beer has been identified as Moosehead, which is a Canadian import that is a bit darker and heavier than many American beers.
He refuses a beer in Shades of Grey. The beer in question is Budweiser. Since Daniel says he "doesn't like beer" and not that he "doesn't like Budweiser," you either have to take it as a general dismissal of beer - which we've already debunked - or not wanting to drink at that moment, as I suggested in my analysis above. And since Daniel seems perfectly willing to drink the same brand in Moebius/Threads…
We next see Daniel drinking in Upgrades, at O'Malley's. His glass is filled with a beer that is clearly darker than Sam's or Jack's. After that, we need to jump three more seasons to Lost City, where he has clearly been quite happily drinking Jack's Guinness, which is a dark, higher-quality beer.
He hesitates before he drinks a Coors Light with Mitchell; but, as stated earlier, the reasons for this could range from dislike of the taste to not wanting to drink on base to not being in the mood to drink anything at all. But it would fit with Daniel's tastes to attribute it to a dislike for the brand.
Conclusion: When Daniel drinks beer, he prefers darker ones. This part of the fanon, at least, is true: Daniel does have a taste for more expensive, better-quality beers.
Now, let's take a look at Jack's drinking habits, which are astonishingly diverse.
He has Moosehead in his home in COTG; he has a bottle of the same brand in Fire and Water, and offers some (in a can, though, not a bottle) to Sam, who accepts.
In Upgrades, he is drinking a lighter beer than Daniel; he also has a shot of something, which we can presume is Scotch - since that's what Kinsey helped himself to when he raided Jack's liquor in Full Alert. (That was Dewar's, by the way, which has been identified as a good-quality blended Scotch.)
In Fragile Balance, the detritus of his dinner the night before (and hoo boy is "detritus" the right word there) include two bottles of what seems to be called Island Gold and a bottle of red wine. "Island Gold" is probably a lighter beer, considering its name.
He and the team - and Hammond! - all drink Guinness in Lost City. Jack is also drinking Guinness in Paradise Lost.
Jack is carrying a case of Heinekin, a better-quality brand, at the beginning of Citizen Joe.
In Threads/Moebius, he and Daniel both drink Budweiser, the same brand Jack was drinking in Shades of Grey.
Conclusion: Jack doesn't need educating about the different quality of beers. He has a broad palate, and probably chooses brands according to his moods, what's on the menu, or possibly even what's for sale at the moment. :)
Final Conclusion: While Daniel does prefer darker beers, so does Jack. Jack also prefers lighter ones, and Scotch, and wines on occasion. Daniel is not trying to "reform" Jack's tastes.
My personal fanon opinion? These concepts are actually a classic case of fanon: a single point or two of data in canon is seized upon and exaggerated beyond recognition, or, in the case of beer-drinking, twisted out of context. Yes, Daniel likes chocolate - a lot. But he isn't a chocolate addict. He does like beer on occasion; he prefers darker ones, and he has no need to "educate" Jack on the quality of beers, since Jack is a big boy and is perfectly capable of drinking good-quality alcohol when he feels like it.
As for Teal'c… I have no idea where the "symbiote metabolizes alcohol" fanon came from, but it's so pervasive that I assumed it was true until it was pointed out that canon contradicts it. So no, Teal'c doesn't drink. He can play "designated driver" all he wants, though, because yes, Daniel will get tipsy faster than the others… but not as much as fanon would suggest.
"Anyway, I'm sorry, but that just happens to be how I feel about it. What do you think?"
