I think what I'm missing the most about Sam's role in SGA is the absence of her backstory with Rodney. They have such a complex history, and I think the ONLY scene with them was that one when she first arrived on Atlantis and he told her he's seeing someone. I did appreciate having that in there, his attempt to get their relationship off on a professional footing (even if, being Rodney, he muffed it badly), but there is SUCH potential in having someone around who knew Rodney back before his Atlantis days, and it is very annoying to never have that touched upon.
Honestly, aside from that, so far I really haven't been unhappy with Sam's overall lack of participation because she did get 10 years of having her character very thoroughly explored in SG-1. In Doppelganger, for example, I didn't mind Sam not getting a dream sequence of her own because I would honestly rather see the other characters' psyches get explored in the limited time that we have for an episode. I thought "Seer" did a great job with her, and "Reunion"; I think I'll be happy as long as we keep getting occasional Sam-heavy episodes, because I think so far we've had about as much in the way of Sam introspection as we normally get for any of the rest of the cast in an average half-season (although I really wish they wouldn't just have her VANISH every other episode -- at least acknowledge her presence in a line of dialogue, f'r pete's sake!).
But to have both Rodneys be so effusive about working together and to have Rodney instantly see a Replicator nannite-built version as "me" (when he kept reitierating that and Alt Universe version was definitely "NOT me") - it just seemed wrong to me. Inconsistent characterisation about what you'd think would be a fairly central issue in anyone's psyche. Just. Wrong.
Er ... character growth, maybe? He's not nearly as threatened by a replica of himself as he was a year ago because in the wake of M&MM and Tao he's become a lot more confident about his place in the team? I dunno ... it just didn't ping as "wrong" to me, although possibly at the time I was more distracted by the sheer squee of having both teams in one room at the same time.
To have someone at least acknowledge that they've encountered alt-McKays before would have been nice, though.
So while it doesn't change my view that there were significant deficiencies in the episode, I find myself a little more forgiving of some of the places it's not quite up to par - and so I can just focus on enjoying the squee moments. As we agreed at the time, the bits that were good were very, very good - and fortunately for me it seems that the good tends to linger more than the bad in my memory.
It does really help on a lot of a show's deficiencies to know the behind-the-scenes of it all. And that's interesting about JDM ... I guess that could explain a lot (and I wonder what they were originally going to do with him?).
My brain definitely tends to edit episodes for the best bits as time goes on. In fact, I rewatched parts of AHBL2 when I was writing my "Dean is a girl" AU and I couldn't really figure out why I'd disliked it as much as I had. Of course, I didn't go ahead and watch the parts I liked the least -- but the first half was still quite good.
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Honestly, aside from that, so far I really haven't been unhappy with Sam's overall lack of participation because she did get 10 years of having her character very thoroughly explored in SG-1. In Doppelganger, for example, I didn't mind Sam not getting a dream sequence of her own because I would honestly rather see the other characters' psyches get explored in the limited time that we have for an episode. I thought "Seer" did a great job with her, and "Reunion"; I think I'll be happy as long as we keep getting occasional Sam-heavy episodes, because I think so far we've had about as much in the way of Sam introspection as we normally get for any of the rest of the cast in an average half-season (although I really wish they wouldn't just have her VANISH every other episode -- at least acknowledge her presence in a line of dialogue, f'r pete's sake!).
But to have both Rodneys be so effusive about working together and to have Rodney instantly see a Replicator nannite-built version as "me" (when he kept reitierating that and Alt Universe version was definitely "NOT me") - it just seemed wrong to me. Inconsistent characterisation about what you'd think would be a fairly central issue in anyone's psyche. Just. Wrong.
Er ... character growth, maybe? He's not nearly as threatened by a replica of himself as he was a year ago because in the wake of M&MM and Tao he's become a lot more confident about his place in the team? I dunno ... it just didn't ping as "wrong" to me, although possibly at the time I was more distracted by the sheer squee of having both teams in one room at the same time.
To have someone at least acknowledge that they've encountered alt-McKays before would have been nice, though.
So while it doesn't change my view that there were significant deficiencies in the episode, I find myself a little more forgiving of some of the places it's not quite up to par - and so I can just focus on enjoying the squee moments. As we agreed at the time, the bits that were good were very, very good - and fortunately for me it seems that the good tends to linger more than the bad in my memory.
It does really help on a lot of a show's deficiencies to know the behind-the-scenes of it all. And that's interesting about JDM ... I guess that could explain a lot (and I wonder what they were originally going to do with him?).
My brain definitely tends to edit episodes for the best bits as time goes on. In fact, I rewatched parts of AHBL2 when I was writing my "Dean is a girl" AU and I couldn't really figure out why I'd disliked it as much as I had. Of course, I didn't go ahead and watch the parts I liked the least -- but the first half was still quite good.