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ravenWhy, why, why were these a two-parter? They would need the minimum amount of pruning to make them both fun stand-alones. The link between the two is just cobbled together. Eeeshk.
Ignoring that, then, Prometheus. Started well - I've always liked the episodes that deal with the contining secrecy of the Stargate programme, and Paul Davis makes a fairly memorable cameo, randomly stepping into that woman's car. "That woman" - a journalist who's somehow got a scoop concerning the programme, is fun. She's kinda annoying, but not too much. I also liked the Air Force decision to double-cross her ("This is an insanely bad idea." - Col. Jack O'Neill) and instead of showing her the Stargate, show her the ship they're building, the X303, and make her believe it's composed of an alien ship that crashed in Alaska.
So they show her. And the camera crew turns out to be from the NID rogue offshoot. Is it just me, or is everyone from the NID rogue offshoot? They've really made a meal of that plotline. Anyway. Cue panic as hijackers try to take over. Jack's response is classic. "MAJOR DAVIS!" Was it just me who was sure he was going to scream, "MAJOR FUCKING DAVIS!"
I have to say, I wasn't really interested in the hijacking plot. Neither, it seems, were the writers. Once they'd managed to kill the Goa'uld, and ended up on the other side of the galaxy, and Sam has said, "I have no idea where we are," the whole thing disappears into the ether. The Asgard ship arrives, cool. Thor is monitoring all hyperspace activity, so he takes them home. Finish. I would have ended the episode there. The next part, involving the replicators, could easily have been introduced in the next episode.
Which was Unnatural Selection. I loved this one. Much more than Prometheus. The replicators have always struck me as being much more scary than the Goa'uld. They're not classic, stereotypical, "Prepare to meet your doom!" villains are many of the Goa'uld are. They're not even evil, as Teal'c observed in the episode. They're machines, they want to increase their numbers, they're basically like a virus. They can't be reasoned with, they will never show mercy, they're bloody scary, and they make anyone who's remotely twitchy around creepy-crawlies cringe.
Thor is his usual fabulous self, of course. I love Thor. His methods of persuastion are fantastic. They're dithering about taking on the mission as they don't have the supplies, so he beams up the contents of the SGC armoury and half the contents of the kitchens! Hammond's reponse to that is also characteristic. "What the hell is going on?"
Thor also beams down the camera crew and journalists left over from Prometheus, but it's like sweeping things under the carpet - this should have been a stand-alone, as I said. They shouldn't have had to deal with the remnants of a previous episode that really didn't have much to do with this one.
Of course, they agree to the mission. And I love the humour. Jack quibbles that they're going off to save the world in a ship that doesn't have a name, but the President refuses to let him call it the Enterprise. It was inevitable that it would be named Prometheus, of course. I actually really like the classical resonance in the name - Prometheus stole fire from the gods and suffered for eternity because of it. The SGC have stolen technology from the Goa'uld to build the ship, but may or may not have to suffer for eternity because of it. Good, well-thought-out stuff.
More on the humour - Thor may be highly intelligent, moral, a member of an extremely advanced race and Supreme Commander of the Asgard fleet, but even he makes mistakes. He beams up half the food in the kitchens, and forgets the necessity of refrigeration! Teal'c is hysterically funny without saying much - he keeps taking the ice-cream off Jack and Jonas and eating it himself, which made me laugh. Weirdly enough, my grandmother has started watching the show with me, and I managed to explain to her the reason behind the laughter. It was all good.
The planet they went to, original homeworld of the Asgard, was called Halla! Valhalla, anyone? Perfect. But the planet itself is scary. The episode gets more serious as it goes on, of course, and scarier and scarier. The idea of the entire planet being paved with replicator blocks scared me. So did the replicators themselves. Within the time dilation field, time has been speeded up, and they have had time to evolve into almost-human shapes. I found the human shapes even more scary than the bug replicators. They have all the characteristics I mentioned earlier (no mercy, no reason, etc) but they look human. And they can use real human minds for their own ends. So scary, especially when we see First put his hands into Jack's mind. Urgh. Urgh.
I liked Fifth from the beginning. He was so wide-eyed and cute and Frodo-ish, for lack of a better term. And he carries SG-1 back to the ship, one by one as not to hurt them. I loved the concept of his having a "flaw" - the flaw is the fact he has some of the humanity of his creator, instead of being a killing machine like the others. And then, he shows Sam his own mind instead of going into hers, and I loved the landscape used to represent his mind - so bleak and desolate and scary. And he agrees to help them, if they take him with them! I thought that was so apt - he is more human than he is machine. Especially as he has the capacity to be evil, unlike the others - he's no virus. He's real.
I liked him from the beginning, as I said. And I really didn't want him to turn out to be an evil-replicator and turn on them all. But as I was watching, it all seemed to be going quite well - he adjusts the time dilation device, setting it so it will go slower and slower until the replicators are trapped for thousands of years, but I was still afraid he would turn on them...
And they turned on him! Such a good episode, and such a powerful moment - where Fifth, talking about Sam, has time to whisper, "She promised," before being trapped forever. SG-1 espcape without him, and Jack's insistence that they did "the right thing" is a direct counterpoint to Sam and Jonas, who are both feeling guilty as all hell. "We used his humanity against him." A good quote.
There is one big mistake in the episode - SG-1 were in the time dilation field, which means they should have emerged from it only seconds after they entered, and a mention of that would have been nice. But I suppose it would have ruined the moment. A really good episode. I suppose that's a link of sort with Prometheus - first the Air Force double-cross Donovan and then SG-1 double-cross Fifth. That's what I like about it - no-one's perfect. They may be the flagship team, but they're still capable of doing really terrible things.
Ignoring that, then, Prometheus. Started well - I've always liked the episodes that deal with the contining secrecy of the Stargate programme, and Paul Davis makes a fairly memorable cameo, randomly stepping into that woman's car. "That woman" - a journalist who's somehow got a scoop concerning the programme, is fun. She's kinda annoying, but not too much. I also liked the Air Force decision to double-cross her ("This is an insanely bad idea." - Col. Jack O'Neill) and instead of showing her the Stargate, show her the ship they're building, the X303, and make her believe it's composed of an alien ship that crashed in Alaska.
So they show her. And the camera crew turns out to be from the NID rogue offshoot. Is it just me, or is everyone from the NID rogue offshoot? They've really made a meal of that plotline. Anyway. Cue panic as hijackers try to take over. Jack's response is classic. "MAJOR DAVIS!" Was it just me who was sure he was going to scream, "MAJOR FUCKING DAVIS!"
I have to say, I wasn't really interested in the hijacking plot. Neither, it seems, were the writers. Once they'd managed to kill the Goa'uld, and ended up on the other side of the galaxy, and Sam has said, "I have no idea where we are," the whole thing disappears into the ether. The Asgard ship arrives, cool. Thor is monitoring all hyperspace activity, so he takes them home. Finish. I would have ended the episode there. The next part, involving the replicators, could easily have been introduced in the next episode.
Which was Unnatural Selection. I loved this one. Much more than Prometheus. The replicators have always struck me as being much more scary than the Goa'uld. They're not classic, stereotypical, "Prepare to meet your doom!" villains are many of the Goa'uld are. They're not even evil, as Teal'c observed in the episode. They're machines, they want to increase their numbers, they're basically like a virus. They can't be reasoned with, they will never show mercy, they're bloody scary, and they make anyone who's remotely twitchy around creepy-crawlies cringe.
Thor is his usual fabulous self, of course. I love Thor. His methods of persuastion are fantastic. They're dithering about taking on the mission as they don't have the supplies, so he beams up the contents of the SGC armoury and half the contents of the kitchens! Hammond's reponse to that is also characteristic. "What the hell is going on?"
Thor also beams down the camera crew and journalists left over from Prometheus, but it's like sweeping things under the carpet - this should have been a stand-alone, as I said. They shouldn't have had to deal with the remnants of a previous episode that really didn't have much to do with this one.
Of course, they agree to the mission. And I love the humour. Jack quibbles that they're going off to save the world in a ship that doesn't have a name, but the President refuses to let him call it the Enterprise. It was inevitable that it would be named Prometheus, of course. I actually really like the classical resonance in the name - Prometheus stole fire from the gods and suffered for eternity because of it. The SGC have stolen technology from the Goa'uld to build the ship, but may or may not have to suffer for eternity because of it. Good, well-thought-out stuff.
More on the humour - Thor may be highly intelligent, moral, a member of an extremely advanced race and Supreme Commander of the Asgard fleet, but even he makes mistakes. He beams up half the food in the kitchens, and forgets the necessity of refrigeration! Teal'c is hysterically funny without saying much - he keeps taking the ice-cream off Jack and Jonas and eating it himself, which made me laugh. Weirdly enough, my grandmother has started watching the show with me, and I managed to explain to her the reason behind the laughter. It was all good.
The planet they went to, original homeworld of the Asgard, was called Halla! Valhalla, anyone? Perfect. But the planet itself is scary. The episode gets more serious as it goes on, of course, and scarier and scarier. The idea of the entire planet being paved with replicator blocks scared me. So did the replicators themselves. Within the time dilation field, time has been speeded up, and they have had time to evolve into almost-human shapes. I found the human shapes even more scary than the bug replicators. They have all the characteristics I mentioned earlier (no mercy, no reason, etc) but they look human. And they can use real human minds for their own ends. So scary, especially when we see First put his hands into Jack's mind. Urgh. Urgh.
I liked Fifth from the beginning. He was so wide-eyed and cute and Frodo-ish, for lack of a better term. And he carries SG-1 back to the ship, one by one as not to hurt them. I loved the concept of his having a "flaw" - the flaw is the fact he has some of the humanity of his creator, instead of being a killing machine like the others. And then, he shows Sam his own mind instead of going into hers, and I loved the landscape used to represent his mind - so bleak and desolate and scary. And he agrees to help them, if they take him with them! I thought that was so apt - he is more human than he is machine. Especially as he has the capacity to be evil, unlike the others - he's no virus. He's real.
I liked him from the beginning, as I said. And I really didn't want him to turn out to be an evil-replicator and turn on them all. But as I was watching, it all seemed to be going quite well - he adjusts the time dilation device, setting it so it will go slower and slower until the replicators are trapped for thousands of years, but I was still afraid he would turn on them...
And they turned on him! Such a good episode, and such a powerful moment - where Fifth, talking about Sam, has time to whisper, "She promised," before being trapped forever. SG-1 espcape without him, and Jack's insistence that they did "the right thing" is a direct counterpoint to Sam and Jonas, who are both feeling guilty as all hell. "We used his humanity against him." A good quote.
There is one big mistake in the episode - SG-1 were in the time dilation field, which means they should have emerged from it only seconds after they entered, and a mention of that would have been nice. But I suppose it would have ruined the moment. A really good episode. I suppose that's a link of sort with Prometheus - first the Air Force double-cross Donovan and then SG-1 double-cross Fifth. That's what I like about it - no-one's perfect. They may be the flagship team, but they're still capable of doing really terrible things.
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no subject
on 2004-04-01 02:52 am (UTC)I haven't seen that episode for a long time, I can't remember... :P
no subject
on 2004-04-01 07:53 am (UTC)