Canon vs. Fanon, part 10: Pre-series Daniel

[sg_fignewton]

Finally, the post so many of you have been nagging me about asking for: Pre-series Daniel!

Backstory is a crucial part of understanding and writing a character. When you consider some of the more iconic fictional characters, nearly all of them reference pivotal moments in the hero's childhood or past to help us understand the driving force behind the character's motivations and actions. Elessar Telcontar, for example, is on a quest to not only redeem his ancestor's mistake, but to prove himself worthy of Arwen in her father's eyes; Clark/Kal-El is the lone survivor of an entire planet, and will do anything in his power to protect his adopted world. (I could go on and on and on in this vein, and thus introduce you all to my favorite books and fandoms, but I think I'd best stop there.) There are very, very few heroes that have made their way into our collective consciousness without giving us at least some glimpse into the backstory.  Sherlock Holmes is one, although we see him through the more immediate filter of Watson's eyes, and we do know Watson's backstory.

How about our heroes from SG-1, then? The details of their backstories are mostly vague, but we do have some basic broad strokes - enough to comprehend their motivations. Jack O'Neill lost his son and was chosen for his suicidal tendencies to be the leader of a suicide mission; Samantha Carter is an Air Force brat who was driven to be better than the best by her need to prove to her father that she was just as good as a son; Teal'c lost his father to the caprices of the Goa'uld and, under Bra'tac's tutelage, determined the falsity of the Goa'uld's claims to divinity and longed to do something about it. (Actually, Teal'c's backstory is probably the most complete of the four.) And Daniel? His motivations are introduced to us from the moment we meet him: brilliant but controversial, Daniel accepted a job when he was practically out on the streets and walked through the Stargate in a driving determination to know that he was right.

So much for the broad strokes. But if we narrow the focus to Daniel, how much do we know about his life before he met Katherine, and how much of the common themes in fanon have any basis in that canon?

My usual brief recap of defining canon and fanon won't do here, so let's study that in a bit more detail first. The definition of fanon hasn't changed; I still use that term to refer to widely-accepted concepts that appear in fanfic, but do not have any real basis in canon. For the purpose of this specific topic, however, some might choose a wider spectrum for their canon.

First and foremost, despite coming last, is the series. Anything we discover about Daniel's background during the episodes of Stargate: SG-1 is definitive canon.

Next comes Stargate: The Movie. As always, the canon of Daniel's life and experiences in the movie is invalidated if the series later contradicts it; but if there is no such contradiction, than the events of the movie are considered canon.

Finally, there is a third source - or, I should say, two sources that fit into the third category - the novelization of the movie (I'll use the term "the book" from now on), and the official press release issued by MGM when the show first began. Both of these sources can be termed as apocryphal.

That's my own judgment, of course. Others might look at those sources as more canonical. I call them apocryphal for three reasons: one, they're much less well-known (the only source I can find for the press release, as directed by the ever gracious shutthef_up, is RDA's website, and many many fans have never bothered to read the book, either because they're not interested or they can't get hold of it); two, they're often contradicted by canon; and three, they're not the final product, so to speak. The book, in particular, is astonishingly different in some sections and details, particularly characterization and descriptions. I understand from moonshayde that the book was written from an early draft, which makes things a lot more understandable.

So where does that leave us, with regards to using the book and press release as a canonical source for Daniel's backstory? My personal opinion is that they're too apocryphal to use. But since my personal opinions don't belong in this section, I will suggest that while they shouldn't be considered true canon, they're useful as springboards for creating an original backstory of the author's choice. (The discussion on a previous thread on this topic gives a nice example of how some fanfic writers chose to use contradictory aspects of the book to create some pre-series history for Daniel.)

Here is the press release issued by MGM, way back when the show first began, as taken verbatim from RDA's website:

Dr. Jackson joined the SG-1 team on a voluntary basis to study the cultures of other planets. He holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology as well as a Ph.D. in Linguistics, and has prior experience with the culture of Abydos. He is an expert in ancient cultures and languages in addition to current ones; he speaks over 20 languages including ancient Egyptian. Originally he was contracted by the military to decipher a mysterious hieroglyphic cartouche. His subsequent translation of the cartouche allowed the Stargate to be opened for the first time. He married Sha're, an off-world human and native of Abydos, after he chose to stay behind on the planet following the first mission, and he became something of a deity to the people of Abydos. His humanistic, liberal approach is often in conflict with O'Neill's militaristic approach. Some see him as a soft, brainy, clumsy scientist who carries a wide-eyed enthusiasm with him through every mission.

Aside from the painfully obvious nature of this as being written by someone before the character was fully realized, there are plenty of things wrong with it. Daniel did not join the team to study the cultures of other planets; he joined it so he could search for Sha're, and it isn't until The Broca Divide that we see him pushing for the exploration of other cultures and learning more about Earth's past through them. Daniel translated the cartouche on the coverstone in his first two minutes on the project; it was his identification of the symbols as constellations, two weeks later, that allowed the Stargate to be opened. There has never been any suggestion that the people of Abydos looked upon Daniel as "something of a deity," although there was surely some hero-worship going on, as Daniel himself tells Jack on that first evening back from Abydos. And while Daniel did carry a "wide-eyed enthusiasm with him" during the first few seasons, "brainy" and "scientist" are legitimate labels for Daniel, but "soft" and "clumsy," despite fanon's frequent suggestions to the contrary, are not.

So much for the press release. For those of you unfamiliar with the book, I'm going to list a few of the more incredulous contradictions here:

Kawalsky, a lieutenant, is in charge of the Stargate Program under General West until Jack is called in. He was slated to lead the team, if there was one, though the Stargate. He's huge, physically intimidating, and deeply resentful of Jack, who has not only taken over the project, but is hugely irritating in the "need-to-know" department.

Katherine is the one who tossed out the question that torpedoed Daniel's lecture, rather than an anonymous voice from the crowd; the implication is that she did it deliberately. And instead of meeting him outside in a limo, she breaks into his apartment to talk to him. The picture she discusses with him is framed on his wall; when he walks into his apartment, he discovers her idly rifling through his things while she waits for him to get back from the liquor store, where he cadged a bottle from the owner to help him drown his sorrows after the disastrous presentation.

Daniel didn't get his inspiration from the guard's newspaper; he broke into Jack's office because he was frustrated from the constant refusal of West et al to give him the necessary information. He tore Jack's star map off the wall and actually used it in the presentation; it is implied, although not specified, that Jack and West actually knew that the constellations played a crucial part in figuring out the symbols.

Kasuf gives Sha'uri to Daniel because Daniel cannot take his eyes off her from the moment he sees her, to the point where Jack calls him on this on more than one occasion and tells him to stop staring at the pretty girl and get back to work.

Jack won't let Daniel taste the lizard-chicken because Daniel, at that time, is too valuable to risk, so Kawalsky eats it instead.

Ra loses his hand and wrist in the matter stream when Daniel and Sha'uri are ringed back down. He screams for his slaves to take him to the sarcophagus, but all the children flee to the rings and quite literally jump ship when Jack and Daniel activate the rings from below. This does have the advantage of saving Jack and Daniel from killing all those civilian children as collateral damage in the nuke.

Considering all this, how much can the book be taken as canon? Obviously, anything contradicted by the movie, or later by the show, has to be discarded. But what about extra details of Daniel's life that are not later contradicted? Should these be considered canon?

My personal opinion is that they should not. For the purposes of this discussion, however, I will reference them and allow my readers to draw their own conclusions as to their status as canon.

To be (hopefully) as clear as possible, information taken from the press release or the book will be in blue, with direct quotes in italics, and information from the movie will be in red. If this turns out to only make things worse, I'll edit the post accordingly.

Unlike most canon vs. fanon discussions, I want to start with the canonical facts and then analyze the common fanon themes to see if they have basis and/or merit. I also will detail exactly when we learn each bit of pre-series history. While I first discovered Stargate in the summer of 2005 and was thus presented with eight years of canon all at once, it's fascinating to consider how slowly real-time fans actually discovered much of Daniel's backstory.

Canon pre-series Daniel facts:

Birth. The book states that Daniel was just shy of thirty at the start of the movie, which would suggest a birthdate of 1966 or 1967. However, in the second season episode 1969, Daniel tells Jack that he was "about four and a half years old in 1969." Many of us like to snark about Daniel's puzzling concept of "half a year," considering that he was unquestionably born on July 8th and 1969 took place in August. To be fair, however, that piece of information was only gleaned in S3, during FIAD. So fans have to choose between 1964 and 1965 as Daniel's birth year; 1965 is more popular, but both choices are equally valid.

Then there's the question of where Daniel was born. I'll document the most popular choices below, but thanks to the brilliant aurora_novarum, we have confirmation that Daniel was, in fact, born in Olympia. Her full post is here, but I've reproduced a crop of the screencap here:




With Aurora's gracious permission, here are the stats, as she determined them:

ENLISTMENT RECORD NO: 00-404-226
ENLISTMENT RECORD: ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES
DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE

NAME: JACKSON, DANIEL DATE OF BIRTH: [ILLEGIBLE]
PLACE OF BIRTH: OLYMPIA, OR/GR (?)
SEX: MALE RACE: CAU
COLOR OF EYES: BLUE COLOR OF HAIR: BROWN
HEIGHT: 6'00"
WEIGHT: 175 LBS.

HOME ADDRESS: 4?00 [ILLEGIBLE STREET]
MARITAL STATUS: SINGLE

EDUCATION
HIGH SCHOOL: GRADUATED
FIRST SECONDARY: GRADUATED
FINAL DEGREE: PHD
DEGREE OF STUDY: ARCH ANTH

MAIN CIVILIAN OCCUPATION:
ACADEMIC - ARCHEOLOGICAL TRANSLATOR
DATE [ILLEGIBLE]: 11901-E

SERVICE NO: N/A : CIVILIAN
PHYSICAL CATEGORY: A-2
ENLISTMENT LOC: COLORADO

Is that Olympia, Washington, or Olympia, Greece? The text is too unclear to determine. I personally think the idea of Daniel being born in Greece is irresistible (Aurora's post includes a delightful comment to the same effect), but it might have easily been Washington State, or even a fictitious Olympia arbitrarily selected by the props department. (Aurora likes the idea of an Olympia in Oregon, since the Ballards, in any case, have some connection there - that's where Nick's psychiatric institution is located.) In any case, this information did not become available until the sixth season episode of Full Disclosure; and perhaps there are more Daniel fans out there like me - I never bothered watching more than three specific episodes of that season, and I missed this episode entirely.

The only time we actually witness Daniel and his parents interact is in Season Two, during the events of Gamekeeper. Unfortunately, the only time that we can be absolutely sure that Claire and Mel are wholly in character is the first loop, in which Daniel only watches and does not speak to them. In subsequent loops, when Daniel tries to stop their deaths from happening, the Gamekeeper is directly influencing their behavior and reactions; so it's impossible to say whether Claire is usually brisk and kindly dismissive or whether Mel is usually brusque and perfectly willing to have anonymous workmen haul his eight-year-old son off the premises. The only behavior that Daniel certifies for us as entirely in character for them is that his parents used to call him Danny when he was little.

ETA: Aurora comes through for us yet again! abyssinia4077 wondered about the canon source for Daniel's parents' name, and I panicked at the possible Ewok incusion! But Aurora found their names listed in the credits for Gamekeeper: Claire and Melburn. Sigh. That's actually why I always call him Mel; that spelling, to my eyes, is atrocious. But at least it's solidly canon, so we're safe from any Ewoks. :)

Our next bit of canon involves the deaths of Daniel's parents. His status as an orphan is already confirmed in the movie:

"Your parents, Jackson?"

"My foster parents."

We get a quick glimpse of the photograph that Katherine is holding. The child pictured in it is much younger than show canon's Daniel was when he was eligible for foster parents, so either movie canon suggests his parents' deaths at an earlier age, or the child in the picture isn't actually Daniel, but a foster brother. The book gives us the additional detail that his parents were killed in a plane crash in 1973, which makes the child in the picture the right age for a Daniel born in '66 or '67. In any case, Daniel's reference to his foster parents suggests that he had only one set of foster parents after his own parents' death.

It's not until The Gamekeeper that we discover that not only is Daniel orphaned, but he actually witnessed his parents' deaths when they were crushed by a falling coverstone. In late Season Three, we learn that this happened when he was eight years old and that he has a grandfather, Nicholas Ballard, who refused to adopt Daniel at the time, since he'd already found (and lost) the crystal skull in '71 and was obsessed with finding it again. Since the movie specifies foster parents and not adoptive parents, we can assume that Daniel was never formally adopted. Five years later, in Threads, that we learn that Nick took Daniel to a diner for waffles after the funeral. Threads does not specify that Nick told Daniel that he couldn't adopt him while they were at the diner, although many fanfic writers suggest this.

I have noticed that very, very few fanfic authors have a positive view of Nick.

Canon draws a blank on the next eight years for Daniel. Although the book tells us that he's a city boy with no experience with domesticated animals, we really don't learn any details about Daniel's life until we get to his academic history. This proves to be contradictory and confusing, so we'll take it step by step.

The book gives us a frustrated Daniel looking back at his previous successes after the lecture:

Wasn't he the boy who had won the scholarships in high school for his translations of Phoenician poetry, then had been accepted at UCLA when he was only sixteen? The young wizard with the triple major in languages, philology, and ancient history? How had he let so much promise slip through his fingers to end up a scorned, dead-broke, friendless, lonely, unemployed, and very wet ex-professor?

We are told that he taught at Columbia. His department chair was Dr. Ajami, who introduced him at the lecture as follows:

"He graduated with his Master's at the age of twenty… He has written several seminal articles on the comparative linguistics of the Afro-Asiatic language groups, and, of course, on the development of the Egyptian language from the Archaic Period to the Old Kingdom…"

The MGM press release tells us that Daniel holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology as well as a Ph.D. in Linguistics.

So our apocryphal sources give him three majors, which are either languages, philology, and ancient history or anthropology and linguistics, while in the movie, he is only identified as an Egyptologist. On the show, he most frequently calls himself an archeologist; the information onscreen in Full Disclosure in S6 gives his degrees as being in archeology and anthropology. His AU counterpart in the first mirror universe, at the end of S1, was known as a linguist; his AU counterpart in the Moebius-verse, at the end of S8, identified himself as an Egyptologist. We don't get a specific, verbal canonical statement about Daniel's academic record until the ninth season episode The Scourge (no specific spoilers):

"Doctor Daniel Jackson. Ph.D. in Archaeology, Anthropology, and Philology."

So much for his credentials. Where, exactly, did he earn them?

The book has him accepted at UCLA. In FIAD in Season Three, we learn that Robert Rothman was his research assistant when he earned his dissertation, but we don't know where that was. In Season Four, The Curse takes us to Chicago, where Daniel's former archeology professor, Dr. David Jordan, has been killed. That implies that he studied in the Oriental Institute there. However, we run into a contradiction in Season Seven, when we learn from Daniel's Osiris-induced dreams/memories that when Daniel and Sarah were at the Oriental Institute, they had both already earned their doctorates before they met. That would suggest that Dr. Jordan didn't teach Daniel, but mentored him, which means that Daniel didn't actually get his degree in Chicago… unless he studied there as a student and either remained or returned after earning his degree, which is when he met Sarah. That leaves us without clear canon for where he earned his degrees.

ETA: Thanks to green_grrl who points out that there is canonical evidence that at least one of Daniel's degrees was earned at UCLA! While the Air Force officers invite Daniel out of the pouring rain into the limo, Katherine is busy paging through his dossier, which includes a very brief glimpse of a diploma. The only detail I can personally make out is that he graduated in June; the year doesn't seem to be visible, nor does the nature of the degree. Someone with better eyes, or possibly more talent in making screencaps, might get further than me.



Then there's Daniel's flair for languages. The book gives him eleven, including Armenian and Greek; the press release suggests over twenty, with "Ancient Egyptian" cited as one of those. Daniel himself, in 1969, tells Jack that he speaks "twenty-three different languages." Whether or not Goa'uld or Abydonian was on that list is questionable, since the topic of discussion was Earth languages he might use to pose as someone other than himself when he met the Katherine Langford of 1969. The languages confirmed on the show are German (1969), Russian (1969, Watergate, and Full Alert), Spanish (Evolution), and Mandarin (The Scourge). (In regards to Mandarin, Daniel speaks at least one dialect; he needs a translator for a different dialect in Fragile Balance, unless the man in that case was speaking Japanese - I don't pretend to be even vaguely familiar with either of those languages. [ETA: redatdawn identified it from the script of Fragile Balance as being Cantonese.] And some people have cheerfully suggested that considering his atrocious accent in 1969, he probably shouldn't include German, either.)

ETA: Whoops! Forgot Daniel's experiences as an archeologist on Earth. We learned in Season One's Brief Candle that Daniel was part of a dig in the Yucatan and ended up delivering a baby when there was no one else to do it; after that, he studied with the local mid-wife, which is a nice nod to Daniel's love for knowledge in all shapes and forms.

What do we know of Daniel's life outside of academic pursuits?

Between the time Daniel earned his degrees and he presented his disastrous lecture, we know that he used to visit Nick regularly at the psychiatric institution. Nick disparaged Daniel's theories, much as Daniel did his.

Nick asserted that Daniel claimed the pyramids were built by aliens. Daniel did not claim that; he said that the pyramids were older than Egyptologists had assumed, and a jeering member of the audience caustically suggested that maybe Daniel thought they'd been built by aliens: "Martians, perhaps?" Orinarily, show canon supersedes movie canon; but since Nick also said that Daniel "hadn't published in two years," and it had been four years since Daniel had walked through the Stargate to Abydos, I'll take movie canon over Nick canon any day.

As for Daniel's personal life, the book suggests that he has no trouble striking up casual relationships with women. There's Svetlana, the girl who runs the office for his apartment building: They had joked and flirted and even gone around the corner for Thai food a couple of times. But just when things were starting to warm up between them, he'd run out of funds and had turned into "the problem tenant." In the movie, Daniel has no trouble initiating a kiss with a painfully shy Sha'uri. In show canon, we first learn that he had a girlfriend in Season Four, when we meet Sarah Gardener in The Curse; we don't discover that the level of intimacy in that relationship until Season Seven, from the dreams/memories that Osiris prompts in Chimera.

Daniel's final lecture in academia took place at the Park Plaza Hotel, with no city specified. (Thanks, moonshayde, for pointing that out!) The book puts the lecture in the Scottish Rite Temple on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. From that point, pre-series Daniel's story is over, and we have the canon of the movie and the show for his current events.


That's about all we have of Daniel's canonical backstory. It isn't much, is it? In some ways, that lack is a blessing; it invites the fanfic author to use imagination freely to create a plausible background for the man we know and love. But since we do have so much free rein, why do so many writers follow the same tired fanon themes, disregarding how implausible many of them might be?

In terms of Daniel's birth, I think it's only fair to recognize that Aurora's discovery of canon Olympia is actually a three-second glimpse at a screen prop at the beginning of a clip show in Season Six. Any fanfic written before that can hardly be expected to observe that canon, and even those authors writing after that show was aired can claim plausible deniability at missing it. But with an entire world to choose from, the vast majority of fanfic authors place Daniel's birth in Egypt, with New York running a close second - presumably because his parents died there. There are usually references to Arabic being Daniel's first language, with Dutch as a frequent second choice (because of Nick Ballard). None of this, of course, has any basis in canon.

We have no canonical information on the first eight years of his life: whether he was formally schooled, or had private tutors, or was taught by his parents; whether his parents took him with them on digs, or left him with friends or nannies; or even what kind of relationship Daniel had with his parents. Most fanfic writers present Daniel's childhood with his parents as idyllic, usually with Daniel running freely through the sand dunes while his indulgent parents teach him his hieroglyphics before he learns his ABCs. There is nothing that contradicts this, but there's nothing that confirms it, either; so why does everyone choose the same backstory?

Now, Daniel's birth and early years are, despite the sameness of the common fanon themes, not very controversial. But now we come to those blank years between his parents' deaths and his university years… and here's where fanon gets rather ugly.

I think that too few writers recognize the following fact: No adoption does NOT equal only temporary fostering. All we know is that Daniel had foster parents. The nature of those parents, or how long Daniel remained with those foster parents, is unknown.

As far as I can tell, the rampant fanon tropes of Daniel suffering from a series of successive, abusive foster homes is based on a single canonical fact: Daniel's tendency, especially in the early seasons, of self-hugging - wrapping his arms around his chest for what seems to be the need to provide himself with emotional warmth. From this habit, authors seem to have leapt upon the conviction that Daniel never received any kind of affection after his parents' death; that he has always been starved for approval, acknowledgment, and hugs; and that the show clearly failed to provide Daniel with enough angst, so it's the fanfic writer's job to supply lots and lots more.

There is no canon evidence that Daniel was abused during the years he was fostered. There is no canon evidence that he had more than one foster home; if anything, the movie implies the opposite. There is, in fact, no canon evidence about those years at all.

I'm not trying to disparage the many fanfic writers out there who choose to go this route. I am trying to point out that there's no canon for it, that Daniel has plenty of tragedy in his life without inventing more, and that Daniel couldn't possibly be the strong, self-confident Ph.D. who dared to openly express his controversial views before a skeptical academic audience if he had truly been downtrodden as badly as so many fanfic authors would suggest. To be completely frank, abused!Daniel seems to serve only one pupose: more whumping equals more comforting, so pile on the angst in order to get more hugs. The problem with that, of course, is that by the time many such writers have finished, their Daniel (or Danny) is no longer recognizable as the strong, competent Dr. Daniel Jackson of SG-1.

Another common fanon theme is Daniel-the-Innocent: a Daniel that has never dated, who was never in a relationship before Sha're, and needed to be taught and guided by Sha're into a successful marriage. By S4, with the appearance of Sarah Gardener, this theory was pretty much damaged; by S7, Chimera more or less demolished it. But even without Sarah Gardener, the movie itself disputes this assertion.

While Daniel didn't realize that he and Sha'uri were married until the boys mentioned it two days after the fact, this was because he had no way of knowing that Sha'uri-the-Gift was actually intended to be Sha'uri-the-Bride. Once he realized the truth and confronted Sha'uri, it was Daniel who initiated their first kiss; Sha'uri herself was shy and timid, believing that Daniel didn't desire her. Daniel clearly convinced her otherwise, because once Ra was dead, that same shy girl had absolutely no trouble kissing Daniel on the steps of the temple in front of the entire city of Nagada. And, as randomfreshink pointed out in a previous discussion, Sha're had certainly gained enough self-confidence in their year together to plant that searing kiss on Daniel in COTG - and someone had to teach her that!

My personal fanon opinion? The movie and the show have given us very little canon backstory for Daniel - just enough to give us an understanding of his motivations and characterization, and to tantalize us into wanting more. We have a mostly blank canvas on which authors can choose to paint an array of individual and original landscapes… so why, why, why do so many authors choose the easier route of following what so many others have done before - especially when those choices are a direct contradiction to Daniel's personality and character? I appeal to all you wonderful fanfic writers out there: create your own backstory for our archeologist, and make it one that can reasonably allow the delightfully stubborn Dr. Daniel Jackson that we all know and love to come into being!

"Anyway, I'm sorry, but that just happens to be how I feel about it. What do you think?"
Stargate was written by Dean Devin and Roland Emmerich. No copyright infringement is intended by quoting some of its passages in this post.