Comments | sg_fignewton: Redial the Gate: Allegiance

sg_fignewton

Redial the Gate: Allegiance

Jan 10, 2010 23:10

Last week, all my fannish time was occupied with Alphabet Soup and Gen Fic Day, so I didn't have a chance to rewatch Allegiance. And it is a rewatch, too; a year or so ago, when aurora_novarum was trying to coax me into watching S6, she recced it for its general lack of Jonasness (don't forget, I wasn't anti-Jonas but I wasn't a fan either) and the high quality ( Read more... )

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Comments 24

colej55 January 11 2010, 03:18:11 UTC

I feel like such a Stargate dolt. I fail to get all thinky about the episodes. I'm ridiculously cerebral about my writing (i.e., canon, continuity, etc.), but not my watching. I get lost in the shiny, pretty of it all (ex., Jack's 360 with the big, honkin' machine gun). Your insights fascinate me!

sg_fignewton January 11 2010, 12:29:28 UTC

Thanks! I'm finding my watching goggles to be much sharper with these new(ish) eps. Watching it only once, and that over a year ago, makes it easier to focus on the details. Fun, too. :)

night_spear1287 January 11 2010, 14:05:14 UTC

Squee for Jacob and Bra'tac! I'll take a few plot holes for them ( ... )

sg_fignewton January 11 2010, 21:27:14 UTC

You and Suzannemarie see the hostility as starting from Day One - that interests me. My personal opinion is that yeah, Jack resents Jolinar big time, and yes, their behavior at that first meeting annoyed him, and true, the Tok'ra are yet another race that look at the Tau'ri as being "very young" - but that they're still good allies to have. And the Tok'ra did come through for them, back in S2, and treated the SGC as almost-equals in S3. It's only with the advent of Anise, and the treatment of Shau'nac, that I see it all start to unravel.

I do very much like your point that the Jaffa resent the smug elites who tell them what to do while they're the ones dying on the front lines.

And they're arrogant and stubborn :)Of whom do you speak here exactly ( ... )

night_spear1287 January 11 2010, 22:18:32 UTC

You're right that Jack/Tok'ra (and Tau'ri/Tok'ra) relations got a lot more strained once season 4 hit, with treaties and zatarcs and Tanith, but I definitely feel like there were seeds of dislike from the start. Maybe it's also partly that they mostly dealt with the more Tau'ri-friendly Jacob/Selmak and Martouf/Lantash in seasons 2-3, while the whole treaty-signing would have naturally meant delving deeper into murkier Tok'ra intrigue.

Of whom do you speak here exactly? :)

Both, of course (or all three, maybe; the SGC's not innocent of those two traits) :) Ah, this episode is such a lovely little pissing contest.

Hehe--it's funny how aliens are better at hand signals than Daniel (like in "Show and Tell," too).

sg_fignewton January 11 2010, 22:56:32 UTC

Ah, yes. I like that - dealing with individuals was okay, but dealing with the whole infuriating race as a whole? Not so much. :)

it's funny how aliens are better at hand signals than Daniel (like in "Show and Tell," too)

Oh, that screams for crackfic! :D

suzannemarie January 11 2010, 17:53:29 UTC

"You can't forgive him for that?" "No." No hesitation. Interesting conversation, that, and also that Jacob feels that Jack did like the Tok'ra until Kanan. Most of us feel that Jack's anti-Tok'ra feelings were well under way by S4. Anyone disagree?I think the attitude toward the Tok'ra is a pretty straightline progression: beginning with Jolinar invading Sam's body and acting exactly like a garden variety Goa'uld; holding them all hostage upon their first "formal" meeting and basically blackmailing them into coming up with a host for Selmak; treating their Tau'ri allies as after thoughts; becoming uninformed subjects for Anise's experiment with alien armbands; all topped off with Kanan highjacking Jack's body and sending him straight into Baal's clutches ( ... )

sg_fignewton January 11 2010, 21:29:49 UTC

You and Nightspear seem to share identical opinions re the Tok'ra, which fascinates me! :) I always saw Jack as dealing somewhat reluctantly with a race that he might not like much but does see as good allies - at least until the advent of Anise, heh.

The Tok'ra aren't bent total domination, but they do share some unfortunate traits of arrogance and attitude with their Goa'uld cousins.

YES. And actually, I love that. Because bottom line? Philosophical differences aside, the Tok'ra are snakes. They may choose to use their abilities and instincts differently, but the same abilities and instincts are still there. As I always like to point out, the main modus operandi for the Tok'ra is infiltration for a reason.

suzannemarie January 11 2010, 22:17:43 UTC

Jack is basically a practical guy, so he doesn't necessarily have to like the people that he's working with as they're working toward the same basic goals. But I do think that he holds an underlying suspicion ( ... )

sg_fignewton January 11 2010, 23:02:13 UTC

I strongly agree that Jolinar was the worst possible introduction the Tau'ri could have ever had to the Tok'ra. But then, don't we see Jolinar as particularly ruthlessly pragmatic, even for a Tok'ra? Think of how she escaped from Netu and never told Martouf how. If that kind of thing was par for the course, maybe it wouldn't have been so impossible for her to tell him.

I like your analogy, but I'd go a step further and suggest that the Tok'ra started off as seeing the Tau'ri (or all humans, perhaps) as somewhere between slaves to be petted and pets that know how to perform. To be fair, I think they spent a lot of time trying to overcome that over the years. They just weren't... very good at it.

There are fierce advocates of the Tok'ra out there. A few of them (waves at merrykk) are right here on my flist. :) I don't think I'll ever be a real Tok'ra fan, because they take the greyest of special ops and see it as a starting point, but they've given us some marvelous and thought-provoking storylines and some great characters along the way. ( ... )