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SGA 4x10: This Mortal Coil
... hmmm.
Main thought upon finishing the episode ... THAT'S the mid-season cliffhanger? Not much of one, really. There are lots of Replicator ships out there. Uh ... we knew that already! I don't think I've been really, truly disappointed in an SGA cliffhanger before, but this one -- uh. Yeah. I was expecting more. Lots more.
Okay. The good (probably not everything squeeful, and I'm sure I'll remember more later, but all that's coming to mind at the moment) :
- Rodney's scene with Radek at the end ... and how he thanks Radek for worrying about him. Awww! Coming right on the heels of his little speech about Carson and Elizabeth, it was just a nice reminder that he really is learning from his mistakes and trying to be a better friend.
- THEY HAVE A READING LIBRARY! I love it. And they don't really have to explain it, because it's Atlantis and they're in another galaxy and it's perfectly obvious that this is the equivalent of the shelf in the college dorm (at least, my dorm had one) where everyone brings their old paperbacks and leaves them for someone else -- or, in this case, probably lots of issues of old scientific journals and dog-eared copies of Gun&Ammo and Tom Clancy novels, but still! They have one! In canon! *loves*
- The team's interactions with their doubles -- the two Rodneys going into "argue about science" mode, the two Sheppards looking exasperated, and especially the two Ronon-and-Teyla combos coming upon each other while bitching about their doubles in the woods. HEEEEEEEE. (And they remembered to cover up Ronon's tattoo! Go them!)
- Continuity with past episodes. Lots of it! They remembered the retrovirus! And they got the Season 3 uniforms right (a detail I didn't pick up on until the "real" team showed up, incidentally). And they mentioned Carson, and Rodney's still having trouble dealing with it. All in all, good job on the continuity.
- Cool f/x as Atlantis blows up. And the jumper catching a ride into hyperspace. Nice!
- Elizabeth. Sadly, she's always been kind of low on my main character squee list, although it's mostly a process-of-elimination thing because the rest of them make me squee so hard. I've always adored Torri, but Elizabeth, not so much. Which makes it very sad that she actually had to leave the show to really make me appreciate her -- her quiet dignity, her self-possession, her rapport with John. I loved seeing her here. I just wish she'd had a better plot. Which brings me to ...
The bad:
- Oh heavens, THE PLOT. About five minutes into the episode, I turned to my partner and said, "They're all Replicators." Hey, I've seen too much SG-1 for that particular twist to still be that much of a twist. But it's really a twist with lots of potential ... except ... AAARGH.
SO. MUCH. TALKING. You'd think I'd enjoy that they spent a bunch of time on dialogue rather than explosions, and I would ... if the dialogue hadn't been so wooden. The middle 20 minutes of the episode was basically just exposition, and clunky exposition. I gotta hand it to the cast, they were all doing the best they could with what they had to work with (especially Jewel Staite, poor thing) but ... OH. They were trying, they really were, but every other line was just stiff and LAME. (And why did we need to see RepliLiz telling the real Sheppard & McKay the whole story AGAIN when we'd just seen it a few minutes before? Give me more real character interaction instead of people standing around telling their life stories, please!)
The switch from inside the cell with Our Replicated Heroes to the shot of the ship lowering over the city broke the fourth wall utterly because up to that point, we'd been in the characters' POV, and then we get this shot of something they cannot possibly see and do not know about yet, and ... GAH! (It especially bugged me, and I noticed it in specific, because in some episodes -- Doppelganger comes to mind here -- the show is fantastically good about staying in the viewpoint characters' POV and showing only what they could see. But not here.)
And then the replay of Carter's vision, practically shot-for-shot. Which I saw coming a mile away. SO PREDICTABLE! HELP! (Which also makes me wonder why the heck the Seer would have shown her a vision that had nothing whatsoever to do with Atlantis? She wasn't even there! She didn't even have a Replicator clone there! It's like, "Hi, I'm a fortune teller, here's a vision of something that has nothing whatsoever to do with you. Have a nice day!" WTF?)
And RepliKeller's painfully predictable death scene just annoyed me. Well, it annoyed me while also making me feel for her, because it's Jewel and Torri, and they're really good. But the utter contrived-ness of it kinda ticked me off. And DO NOT GET ME STARTED on how easily they wrote off the RepliTeam at the end. RepliTeam: "Hey, you guys are real and we're not**, so we're going to go die so you can live." RealTeam: "Sure! Seeya, suckers!"
**despite being living human beings, a point which we've just spent most of the show making. But there's that Earth Logic again.
This DROVE ME NUTS. It drove me nuts because it was just sloppy storytelling, a really easy and predictable way of writing out a potentially sticky plot point. And it drove me doubly nuts because it doesn't say a whole lot about our team, at least not a whole lot that's good, that they're willing to let five people (including the last living vestige of Elizabeth in the galaxy) die so that they can escape. And it drove me TRIPLY nuts because RepliTeam are supposed to be Our Heroes through and through (you know, stubborn? persistent? never-say-die?) and yet they're all five willing to throw away their very real lives to let the "real" team get away? Plus, quadruply nuts, because ... SO MANY INTERESTING FANTASY POSSIBILITIES (re: Jack's teenage clone on SG-1) with the RepliTeam making a new life for themselves somewhere else, thrown away on a stupid plot contrivance.
And, yeah, I am well aware that the Replicator goon squad were wielding stunners, which means we might see the RepliTeam in the second half of this alleged "two-parter" (Jan. 4! Yay! I am so there!). But this is where this episode wrapped up, and that final scene with the crashed jumper is all we have to work with right now, and I am ANNOYED.
(And, on a purely personal matter, I am ALSO annoyed because we still haven't seen Teyla tell her team about her pregnancy yet, and she is so obviously pregnant by this point that I'm starting to come to the conclusion that it really IS going to happen off camera and cheat us of that scene. No! Please!)
Okay, ranting over. Feel free to tell me I'm wrong. *g*
Main thought upon finishing the episode ... THAT'S the mid-season cliffhanger? Not much of one, really. There are lots of Replicator ships out there. Uh ... we knew that already! I don't think I've been really, truly disappointed in an SGA cliffhanger before, but this one -- uh. Yeah. I was expecting more. Lots more.
Okay. The good (probably not everything squeeful, and I'm sure I'll remember more later, but all that's coming to mind at the moment) :
- Rodney's scene with Radek at the end ... and how he thanks Radek for worrying about him. Awww! Coming right on the heels of his little speech about Carson and Elizabeth, it was just a nice reminder that he really is learning from his mistakes and trying to be a better friend.
- THEY HAVE A READING LIBRARY! I love it. And they don't really have to explain it, because it's Atlantis and they're in another galaxy and it's perfectly obvious that this is the equivalent of the shelf in the college dorm (at least, my dorm had one) where everyone brings their old paperbacks and leaves them for someone else -- or, in this case, probably lots of issues of old scientific journals and dog-eared copies of Gun&Ammo and Tom Clancy novels, but still! They have one! In canon! *loves*
- The team's interactions with their doubles -- the two Rodneys going into "argue about science" mode, the two Sheppards looking exasperated, and especially the two Ronon-and-Teyla combos coming upon each other while bitching about their doubles in the woods. HEEEEEEEE. (And they remembered to cover up Ronon's tattoo! Go them!)
- Continuity with past episodes. Lots of it! They remembered the retrovirus! And they got the Season 3 uniforms right (a detail I didn't pick up on until the "real" team showed up, incidentally). And they mentioned Carson, and Rodney's still having trouble dealing with it. All in all, good job on the continuity.
- Cool f/x as Atlantis blows up. And the jumper catching a ride into hyperspace. Nice!
- Elizabeth. Sadly, she's always been kind of low on my main character squee list, although it's mostly a process-of-elimination thing because the rest of them make me squee so hard. I've always adored Torri, but Elizabeth, not so much. Which makes it very sad that she actually had to leave the show to really make me appreciate her -- her quiet dignity, her self-possession, her rapport with John. I loved seeing her here. I just wish she'd had a better plot. Which brings me to ...
The bad:
- Oh heavens, THE PLOT. About five minutes into the episode, I turned to my partner and said, "They're all Replicators." Hey, I've seen too much SG-1 for that particular twist to still be that much of a twist. But it's really a twist with lots of potential ... except ... AAARGH.
SO. MUCH. TALKING. You'd think I'd enjoy that they spent a bunch of time on dialogue rather than explosions, and I would ... if the dialogue hadn't been so wooden. The middle 20 minutes of the episode was basically just exposition, and clunky exposition. I gotta hand it to the cast, they were all doing the best they could with what they had to work with (especially Jewel Staite, poor thing) but ... OH. They were trying, they really were, but every other line was just stiff and LAME. (And why did we need to see RepliLiz telling the real Sheppard & McKay the whole story AGAIN when we'd just seen it a few minutes before? Give me more real character interaction instead of people standing around telling their life stories, please!)
The switch from inside the cell with Our Replicated Heroes to the shot of the ship lowering over the city broke the fourth wall utterly because up to that point, we'd been in the characters' POV, and then we get this shot of something they cannot possibly see and do not know about yet, and ... GAH! (It especially bugged me, and I noticed it in specific, because in some episodes -- Doppelganger comes to mind here -- the show is fantastically good about staying in the viewpoint characters' POV and showing only what they could see. But not here.)
And then the replay of Carter's vision, practically shot-for-shot. Which I saw coming a mile away. SO PREDICTABLE! HELP! (Which also makes me wonder why the heck the Seer would have shown her a vision that had nothing whatsoever to do with Atlantis? She wasn't even there! She didn't even have a Replicator clone there! It's like, "Hi, I'm a fortune teller, here's a vision of something that has nothing whatsoever to do with you. Have a nice day!" WTF?)
And RepliKeller's painfully predictable death scene just annoyed me. Well, it annoyed me while also making me feel for her, because it's Jewel and Torri, and they're really good. But the utter contrived-ness of it kinda ticked me off. And DO NOT GET ME STARTED on how easily they wrote off the RepliTeam at the end. RepliTeam: "Hey, you guys are real and we're not**, so we're going to go die so you can live." RealTeam: "Sure! Seeya, suckers!"
**despite being living human beings, a point which we've just spent most of the show making. But there's that Earth Logic again.
This DROVE ME NUTS. It drove me nuts because it was just sloppy storytelling, a really easy and predictable way of writing out a potentially sticky plot point. And it drove me doubly nuts because it doesn't say a whole lot about our team, at least not a whole lot that's good, that they're willing to let five people (including the last living vestige of Elizabeth in the galaxy) die so that they can escape. And it drove me TRIPLY nuts because RepliTeam are supposed to be Our Heroes through and through (you know, stubborn? persistent? never-say-die?) and yet they're all five willing to throw away their very real lives to let the "real" team get away? Plus, quadruply nuts, because ... SO MANY INTERESTING FANTASY POSSIBILITIES (re: Jack's teenage clone on SG-1) with the RepliTeam making a new life for themselves somewhere else, thrown away on a stupid plot contrivance.
And, yeah, I am well aware that the Replicator goon squad were wielding stunners, which means we might see the RepliTeam in the second half of this alleged "two-parter" (Jan. 4! Yay! I am so there!). But this is where this episode wrapped up, and that final scene with the crashed jumper is all we have to work with right now, and I am ANNOYED.
(And, on a purely personal matter, I am ALSO annoyed because we still haven't seen Teyla tell her team about her pregnancy yet, and she is so obviously pregnant by this point that I'm starting to come to the conclusion that it really IS going to happen off camera and cheat us of that scene. No! Please!)
Okay, ranting over. Feel free to tell me I'm wrong. *g*
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Ehhh, in this case, at least, I don't think we're the only ones. What made me feel a bit weird about the SPN finale was that it seemed like we were the ONLY people not having a squee-fit over it, and for similar reasons. But in this case, while I was actually surprised at the amount of uncritical squee that seems to abound for this episode, there seem to be a lot of people who had similar problems.
And it's not that I begrudge people their squee. But, as you wrote ...
There were a lot of MOMENTS that I appreciated in this ep, but a collection of nice moments do NOT a Mid Season Finale make!
Yes, yes, yes.
And this is true despite that fact that it is basically the "moments" that I watch this show for. I mean, let's face it -- it's really difficult to take SGA seriously a lot of the time. But they can do better, and in fact a lot of the episodes this season have been really, really good, not just squeeful but genuinely good.
Am I asking too much that the mid-season finale should be a high point for the first half of the season? Or at least a really good episode -- on a par with "Tabula Rasa" or "Doppelganger" or "Missing"?
I was mildly surprised that Rodney was so effusively enthusiastic about working with his counterpart - especially, considering his almost instant antipathy to Rod is McKay and Mrs Miller last year.
I hadn't even thought about that. But you know, I think most of the problem with Rod was that he was afraid of being replaced. That wasn't really an issue here -- although it might have become an issue if the double had lived longer.
The more I think about it, though, the more I'm convinced that the RepliTeam aren't really dead. I find it very suspicious that they cut away immediately after showing the Replicator shooting Sheppard. And we never actually saw the two teams discussing just what, exactly, their plan might have been. I'm telling you, it'll go a long way towards redeeming this episode in my mind if it turns out next episode that this actually was a setup for another big chunk of plot involving the duplicates. (Still a lame cliffhanger, but hey, whatever.)
I also really, REALLY hope that this is not the last we ever see of Elizabeth, original or duplicate. Like with the duplicate team, I hope that they have something cool planned for next episode, because otherwise this is a really, really terrible way to kill off a character. Off-camera! Related second-hand! Well, third-hand for our guys, who heard about it from the RepliTeam. With Elizabeth, I'd settle for either RealLiz or a duplicate that's not just going to get killed off immediately. I don't expect her to come back, and I'm not even sure I'd want her to, but I love the idea of duplicate Elizabeth getting to have her own life, kind of like Jack O'Neill's clone did on SG-1. There is so much fic potential in that and no reason at all why her loose end has to be tied up in a neat bow, considering how many other loose ends are unraveling all over the place.
In short, it's not just your brain, it is the episode -- either that, or it's my brain too! *g* I suppose I'll be holding out hope that there's some kind of decent payoff ahead, and in the meantime I'll have all the nifty character moments from this episode and the last few to keep me happy. (Seriously, this season has rocked so far. And it's rocked for all the characters, too! Everybody's taken a turn in the spotlight.)
no subject
Yeah, that might be the real problem. This episode just wasn't anywhere near as good as many or the other episodes this season. And it probably did suffer from following a very... shall we say "high impact" like Miller's Crossing (love it or loathe it, that made most people - the ones with brains at least - really think and/or feel something). Where as this ep seemed to be just holding up signposts. "This is the big revelation. Cue revelation!", "This is the action sequence. Cue action.", "This is where we mourn the passing of an old character. Cue mourning!" I personally dislike the feeling that the author is trying to badger me into their point of view.
Okay, my brain is fried at the moment. Gonna go to sleep and will try to chat again sometime tomorrow. Coz I do have more to say. Surprised?
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I need to hie myself over to your LJ and read the discussion there -- I noticed that you had posted, but hadn't really gone through the comments yet.
no subject
BINGO! (Or, as Dean might say, Yahtzhee!)
I vaguely remember someone saying how this wasn't part one of a two parter, unlike the eps before the mid season break in previous seasons. Well, I do think that this storyline would have been better served as parts one AND two of a two parter! Yes, extend the story over two episodes and "fill in the gaps" so that the drama is properly fleshed out, rather than this "bare bones of a story" feeling that I get with it now. Allow the "moments" to have real weight within the story, rather than the rapidfire "tossed at the audience as distractions" feel that it had.
But you know, I think most of the problem with Rod was that he was afraid of being replaced. That wasn't really an issue here -- although it might have become an issue if the double had lived longer.
It just really "pinged" on me as off. And while the Original McKay might not have any fear or being replaced by the other, I would have expected the Duplicate to resent the Original for having "more right" to the identity he thought was his. Instead they had Duplicate Ronon voice sentiments a bit like that. I could have handled Duplicate McKay not actually saying anything about it, but maybe quietly thinking it to himself (Although McKay keeping his opinions to himself? Yeah, right.). 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.
The more I think about it, though, the more I'm convinced that the RepliTeam aren't really dead. I find it very suspicious that they cut away immediately after showing the Replicator shooting Sheppard. And we never actually saw the two teams discussing just what, exactly, their plan might have been. I'm telling you, it'll go a long way towards redeeming this episode in my mind if it turns out next episode that this actually was a setup for another big chunk of plot involving the duplicates.
Ditto.
I also really, REALLY hope that this is not the last we ever see of Elizabeth, original or duplicate. Like with the duplicate team, I hope that they have something cool planned for next episode, because otherwise this is a really, really terrible way to kill off a character. Off-camera! Related second-hand! Well, third-hand for our guys, who heard about it from the RepliTeam.
Yeah. Ditto again.
no subject
Yeah. Well, except Sam Carter. I was very much of the "For God's sake! Wait and see!" camp when the spoilers broke that she was coming to SGA, but now having waited and seen, I'm getting a bit miffed that she really hasn't got a genuine presence on the show. She's not in half the eps and I don't miss her. In the eps that she has been in, her role seems mostly peripheral and rarely (if ever) vital. I've comes to the conclusion that above all POINTLESSNESS of characters and narratives annoys me more than any other problem. I'l take inconsistency and skewed logic and "Dear GOD! That's not humanly, scientifically or even supernaturally possible!" over sheer pointlessness. And so far, since coming to Atlantis, Sam hasn't really got a point.
And that's such a WASTE! Because a) Sam, in her own right, is a great character, b) she's got heaps of personal backstory with Rodney and c) she's got the capacity to develop interesting relationships with Sheppard, Teyla and Ronon (whose attitudes to her were largely undefined before she arrived). There really is a huge amount of potential just going begging! I do hope they do an episode with a really meaty role in it for Sam soon - otherwise I might have to just put her presence on the show down to "contractual obligations" as someone suggested on my LJ.
Oh, and about that, what I originally posted at my own LJ was mostly what first put in my response here - but there have been some interesting comments. Once again with the cross-posted LJ converstaions. ;-)
And as a final BTW, I do still have problems with the SPN finale last season, but I must admit that since I got the season 2 DVD set and saw a bit of the behind the scenes doco on the making of that ep, well... I'm just a bit more "forgiving" of the problems because it sounds like they had to change a lot of things at the last minute due to budget and actor availability and other unexpected crises. And those snags included that "Papa Winchester reunion" scene that we both thought was way over the top schmaltzy - apparently Jeffrey Dean Morgan was only available to shoot one day and the script got changed AFTER that, so they had do a bunch of manipulations with blue screen, etc. 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.
no subject
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.