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I have to watch 'Unending'!
I never read Joseph Mallozzi's weblog (Joseph Mallozz is a writer/producer on Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis for any people reading this who are not in SG-1 or SGA fandom and so don't know who he is) because I'm worried about seeing any SG-1 or SGA spoilers. (I haven't seen the second half of S10 of SG-1 yet so it would be perfectly reasonable for him or people asking him questions on his blog to post about those episodes without spoiler warnings as most people have seen them already rather than waiting for the DVD to come out.) But today's answers to some questions (sent to me by a kindly friend) - despite having a small spoiler - made me squee.
Disgusted Sam-Jack Shipper writes: “So Sam/Teal'c got more in one single episode than Sam/Jack ever would.”
Answer: You mean the so-subtle-everyone-missed-it suggestion of a Sam/Teal’c relationship in Unending which was undone at episode’s end is, in your opinion, more than anything we’ve done in relation to the Sam-Jack ship? Okay, I‘d buy it, if this happened to be the one and only episode of SG-1 you’ve ever watched.
Obviously, I'm sorry that the Sam/Jack shipper who posted was upset, but my Sam/Teal'c loving heart did a little tango there. There was Sam/Teal'c in 'Unending' - however subtle - and nobody told me?? I'm so excited about seeing this episode now.
WARNING - SOME SG-1 WHINING FOLLOWS
To be honest I was somewhat dreading that episode as I heard there is a lot of Daniel/Vala in it, and Daniel/Vala now irks me almost as much as the Sam/Jack moments in S4 of SG-1 used to. (Not a bash of the S/J ship or the shippers who like it, I hasten to add. I'm all for people liking what they like, but I didn't like the Sam/Jack in S4 of SG-1 because I felt it took away from the team dynamic.)
The damage to the team dynamic is exactly the same problem I have with the execution of the Daniel/Vala ship in the first half of S10 (and possibly the second half too, but I haven't seen it so I can't comment yet). There were just too many moments where IMO - as with Jack in S4 of SG-1 - the writers and directors wanted to show how much Daniel cared about Vala while not bothering to put in the balancing moments that felt necessary (to me) which showed he also still cared about Sam and Teal'c. (Not Sam/Teal'c, obviously, as there is no reason why Daniel should care about that as I have never seen him wearing an 'I support the Sam/Teal'c ship' t-shirt, oddly enough.)
I really felt the lack on a couple of occasions of a reaction shot or a line from Daniel suggesting that he might actually be concerned about Teal'c being blown up or Sam having been killed, which, as he's known these people for a decade and they have repeatedly risked their lives to save his (as he has for them), makes him look a bit crappy IMO. I think that writers and producers and directors just assume that viewers will take it as read that characters who are canonically shown to care about one another are upset about their friends being in danger, and, logically, one knows they must be, but I don't like having to fanwank what feels like the essential building blocks of why I care about a show in the first place - that the main characters love each other like a family. A one second reaction shot showing that Daniel cared about Sam and Teal'c being in peril when they were would have really helped me not get so fed up with the Daniel/Vala thing so quickly and got me so pissed off with Daniel's apparent lack of concern for Sam and Teal'c. I could feel my liking for Daniel dropping like a rock in some of those episodes, just as with Jack in the past. I think directors sometimes forget that the characters haven't read the script and don't therefore know that someone is still alive when they appear to be dead and it would be a good idea to put in the character beat where we see their concern. (Sam not being given a concerned moment about her father being in enemy hands in 'Evolution' still irks me as it was such a huge WTF? for me.)
Even that wouldn't have solved the other problem for me of Daniel/Vala, whic was the lack of turn and turn around in how people were paired up (non-romantically) in the episodes. I enjoyed S9 and the first half of S10 very much but I was still starting to get bored with the waste of two new characters and all those different permutations and combinations of friendships not being explored. Every other episode (if not every episode) seemed to feature Daniel and Vala together with no chance to see Sam or Teal'c or Mitchell interacting with Vala or Daniel. I thought Vala and Mitchell were both wonderful additions to the team, but I felt increasingly cheated, as the episodes went on, of seeing them interacting with everyone. I was really impatient for Sam to come back in S9 so I could see what she made of Vala and Mitchell, and by mid-Season 10 I rather felt I was still waiting. Daniel and Vala certainly got explored up the wazoo and to a lesser extent so did Mitchell and Teal'c but there didn't seem to be anything like enough Sam and Vala, Teal'c and Vala, Sam and Mitchell, and Daniel and Mitchell in the episodes for me, or - as usual - enough Daniel and Teal'c, Sam and Daniel, and Sam and Teal'c. Daniel and Vala have fantastic chemistry, IMO, but I thought CB had chemistry with everyone and everything - in the little bits I got to see of her interacting with people who weren't Daniel - including the furniture, and it seemed a bit of a waste of her character to only see her doing that naughty schoolgirl with flustered teacher thing in what felt like every other episode.
So - to summarize long, dull, whiny and over-excited ramble - much excitement from me if there was Sam and Teal'c interaction in 'Unending' even if it's so subtle one has to be really really looking to see it. After years of a Sam-Teal'c interaction starvation diet I'll take what I can get. :)
Disgusted Sam-Jack Shipper writes: “So Sam/Teal'c got more in one single episode than Sam/Jack ever would.”
Answer: You mean the so-subtle-everyone-missed-it suggestion of a Sam/Teal’c relationship in Unending which was undone at episode’s end is, in your opinion, more than anything we’ve done in relation to the Sam-Jack ship? Okay, I‘d buy it, if this happened to be the one and only episode of SG-1 you’ve ever watched.
Obviously, I'm sorry that the Sam/Jack shipper who posted was upset, but my Sam/Teal'c loving heart did a little tango there. There was Sam/Teal'c in 'Unending' - however subtle - and nobody told me?? I'm so excited about seeing this episode now.
WARNING - SOME SG-1 WHINING FOLLOWS
To be honest I was somewhat dreading that episode as I heard there is a lot of Daniel/Vala in it, and Daniel/Vala now irks me almost as much as the Sam/Jack moments in S4 of SG-1 used to. (Not a bash of the S/J ship or the shippers who like it, I hasten to add. I'm all for people liking what they like, but I didn't like the Sam/Jack in S4 of SG-1 because I felt it took away from the team dynamic.)
The damage to the team dynamic is exactly the same problem I have with the execution of the Daniel/Vala ship in the first half of S10 (and possibly the second half too, but I haven't seen it so I can't comment yet). There were just too many moments where IMO - as with Jack in S4 of SG-1 - the writers and directors wanted to show how much Daniel cared about Vala while not bothering to put in the balancing moments that felt necessary (to me) which showed he also still cared about Sam and Teal'c. (Not Sam/Teal'c, obviously, as there is no reason why Daniel should care about that as I have never seen him wearing an 'I support the Sam/Teal'c ship' t-shirt, oddly enough.)
I really felt the lack on a couple of occasions of a reaction shot or a line from Daniel suggesting that he might actually be concerned about Teal'c being blown up or Sam having been killed, which, as he's known these people for a decade and they have repeatedly risked their lives to save his (as he has for them), makes him look a bit crappy IMO. I think that writers and producers and directors just assume that viewers will take it as read that characters who are canonically shown to care about one another are upset about their friends being in danger, and, logically, one knows they must be, but I don't like having to fanwank what feels like the essential building blocks of why I care about a show in the first place - that the main characters love each other like a family. A one second reaction shot showing that Daniel cared about Sam and Teal'c being in peril when they were would have really helped me not get so fed up with the Daniel/Vala thing so quickly and got me so pissed off with Daniel's apparent lack of concern for Sam and Teal'c. I could feel my liking for Daniel dropping like a rock in some of those episodes, just as with Jack in the past. I think directors sometimes forget that the characters haven't read the script and don't therefore know that someone is still alive when they appear to be dead and it would be a good idea to put in the character beat where we see their concern. (Sam not being given a concerned moment about her father being in enemy hands in 'Evolution' still irks me as it was such a huge WTF? for me.)
Even that wouldn't have solved the other problem for me of Daniel/Vala, whic was the lack of turn and turn around in how people were paired up (non-romantically) in the episodes. I enjoyed S9 and the first half of S10 very much but I was still starting to get bored with the waste of two new characters and all those different permutations and combinations of friendships not being explored. Every other episode (if not every episode) seemed to feature Daniel and Vala together with no chance to see Sam or Teal'c or Mitchell interacting with Vala or Daniel. I thought Vala and Mitchell were both wonderful additions to the team, but I felt increasingly cheated, as the episodes went on, of seeing them interacting with everyone. I was really impatient for Sam to come back in S9 so I could see what she made of Vala and Mitchell, and by mid-Season 10 I rather felt I was still waiting. Daniel and Vala certainly got explored up the wazoo and to a lesser extent so did Mitchell and Teal'c but there didn't seem to be anything like enough Sam and Vala, Teal'c and Vala, Sam and Mitchell, and Daniel and Mitchell in the episodes for me, or - as usual - enough Daniel and Teal'c, Sam and Daniel, and Sam and Teal'c. Daniel and Vala have fantastic chemistry, IMO, but I thought CB had chemistry with everyone and everything - in the little bits I got to see of her interacting with people who weren't Daniel - including the furniture, and it seemed a bit of a waste of her character to only see her doing that naughty schoolgirl with flustered teacher thing in what felt like every other episode.
So - to summarize long, dull, whiny and over-excited ramble - much excitement from me if there was Sam and Teal'c interaction in 'Unending' even if it's so subtle one has to be really really looking to see it. After years of a Sam-Teal'c interaction starvation diet I'll take what I can get. :)
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I don't know on the friendship-without-romance thing. It's become so rare these days that I really treasure it when we do get it. There are plenty of romances on TV that I've enjoyed but they still don't move me quite as much on the whole as platonic friendships, and I don't know where there aren't more TV writers who don't get the squee factor of it. I suppose TV writers are just angsty shippers at heart and relationships like the Xander/Willow friendship where people move through a romance and come back to being best friends don't do it for them in the same way.
I don't mind romance per se, at all, but it has to be done well, whereas there does seem to be a tendency to short change romances on TV. Writers don't seem to always put the thought into them that they would a different kind of dramatic development so they tend to give the characters nothing to do that isn't mooning about each other. (I'm thinking of how little Awesome!Gunn and Crazy!Genius!Fred had to do once they became Gunn-and-Fred. And I'm saying that as someone who loved the idea of Gunn/Fred and then was wondering why all they got to do was eat breakfast and have dull conversations about their relationship when they had previously had lots of interesting things to do.) Even worse is when people who had a previously loving friendship became unpleasant to one another as soon as they start having UST which I thought happened with SG-1, where loving friends who had risked their lives for one another got turned into people who no longer even seemed to like each other. (I still find it hard to believe that Jack would have been such a total asshat about Sam landing on the ramp in 2001 before the shippy yearnings in S4. And yes, I am still bitter about that, thank you for asking...)
I think SGA has handled all the relationships beautifully so far, but then, like you said, they handled them beautifully on SG-1 for the first three seasons too. I've loved all the saving one another and caring for one another and moments of closeness between them so far. I particularly liked the Sheppard-Weir and Sheppard-McKay risking and saving of lives. Of course, as a Sam/McKay shipper (back off, Sheppard, you ho, Sam saw him first!) I am looking forward to S4 rather a lot.*g* As with Sam and Teal'c I get pretty excited by Sam and McKay being in the same galaxy, never mind the same room, so it will probably take me a few episodes to notice if other things are not as good as once they were before I come down from my first 'Sam and McKay are *interacting* and neither of them are hallucinations omigod - squee!' euphoria. Of course, too, if they gave them an actual romantic relationship on the show - unless it led to an angsty break up and McKay going off to LA to start his own vampire detective agency, which is always cool - I would probably not like it at all, but I'm hoping there will just be snarky/sexy interaction which doesn't actually do in the possibility of anyone else's imaginary ship while I think that in an AU Sam and McKay are having lots of snarky genius babies.
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I liked the way romantic relationships were handled on WaT until the Danny/Elena tedium of S5. It felt as if there was real progression with the Sam/Jack Malone and Sam/Martin relationships. I found the S1 WaT post-relationship snark and angst and Sam's bitter witty comments really enjoyableand intriguing, and the scene where Jack tells her it's over very moving. And I was thinking 'You'd better get in there and save her life after dumping her, you bastard!' for the excellent S1 season-ender too. I thought it was very realistic, as was them getting together in the first place and them breaking up and the impact it had on Jack's marriage that he'd had an affair, and then ditto with Sam and Martin with his conservative upbringing and white picket fence outlook and her baggage from her childhood and relationship with Jack Malone. (If you're going to show a woman dating a guy who is years too old for her at least acknowledge that she has serious Daddy Issues.) I also loved that where all those relationships have ended up at the moment is with them all really caring for one another and usually being there for one another. On the other hand Danny and Elena just bores me to distraction now and I wish they'd hurry up and have an angsty break up as Danny is so annoying when he's with her. (All TV couples should be as endearing as Willow/Oz or Willow/Tara or as entertaining as Xander/Cordelia by diktat, I think.)
I also wonder why, if TV writers are filled with little shippy yearnings that simply MUST be fulfiled or they will die from the lack of them, there aren't more relationships that are already established when the show begins, like Zoe's marriage to Wash in 'Firefly'. I loved that relationship and thought it was beautifully handled. (As was Simon and River's sibling relationship, which I thought was incredibly moving.) Unlike the Mal/Inara tedium which I thought was the bog standard TV standby 'we have to spin this relationship out for five seasons without it going anywhere interesting so we'll start boring you with it in the pilot and then have it move not a single inch in any direction thereafter' yawnathon. Okay, with the Zoe/Wash relationship, the sudden jealousy from Wash in 'War Stories' did seem a bit pulled out of nowhere but as it led to total awesomeness later from Zoe in the episode I forgive it completely.
I would admittedly also forgive the Mal/Inara thing for its dullness if spoilers could be produced that showed Joss Whedon's original intention was that post-Serenity, Inara would fatally stab Mal with a nailfile because of his total inability to STFU, before eloping with Kaylee (who had finally caught up with the rest of the world and realized that Simon is irretrievably gay) and that the apparent dull predictability of the Mal/Inara stuff was just to lull us into a false sense of complacency.
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That is because Zoe is made of the finest awesome. It is an awesome so fine and rare that wars have been fought for the rights to behold such awesome for longer than five minutes.
"I would admittedly also forgive the Mal/Inara thing for its dullness if spoilers could be produced that showed Joss Whedon's original intention was that post-Serenity, Inara would fatally stab Mal with a nailfile because of his total inability to STFU, before eloping with Kaylee (who had finally caught up with the rest of the world and realized that Simon is irretrievably gay) and that the apparent dull predictability of the Mal/Inara stuff was just to lull us into a false sense of complacency."
I want to see this as a mini series. Mal bitch-slapped by every other character every time he uttered the word 'whore' would be in every episode.
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And here was I getting all ready to squee, too. 42 minutes of Daniel/Vala ship unleavened by Sam-and-Teal'c chewy goodness is not my idea of fun at all. Well, at least I know now and will not be disappointed when I see 'Unending' and its unending Daniel-Vala-ness and total lack of Sam/Teal'cness. Bleargh! I may have to rewatch 'A Matter of Time' and it's One True Sam/Teal'c Scene just to console myself now. Thanks for the head's up, hon.
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That said, I *totally* saw Sam/Teal'c in "Unending". And I just listened to the commentary on my brand new S10 dvds (new toy!!!!! Yay!!!!) Amanda Tapping is one of the commentators, and she admits she and Chris were totally playing that in subtle moments throughout the show.
As for the D/V, I...share your philosophy about the ship, and I'm not saying it's not there, but I didn't find it was really as terrible as I was expecting, based on the various squees and groans of my fandom friends (I have Vala haters and D/V lovers amongst my friends). Actually, I found...well, I'll get into when
However, I found the Daniel and Vala dynamic toned down more in S10, so I was finding Vala's character much more palatable than I did in S9. And I found the team was there more in S10 then the awkward S9. MMV.
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This is so true. I think Zoe may have raised the bar on awesome to almost unattainable levels for any other character.
I want to see this as a mini series. Mal bitch-slapped by every other character every time he uttered the word 'whore' would be in every episode.
I would have loved five seasons of 'Firefly', or indeed an extra mini-series, even with Mal being such an annoying w*nker, but if someone could have just smartly kicked him in the shins when he came out with that or even said 'Whore yourself, slutboy' a few times, I admit I would have enjoyed it more.
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That high pitched sound you just heard was my squee. :) I really don't mind if it's Sam/Teal'c romance or friendship, I just love them interacting in any way whatsoever.
S10 isn't out on DVD over here (and I'm currently dithering about as to whether to start buying the US slimpacks, wait for S10 to come out and rent it, or wait and see if there is a ten seasons megapack that comes out soon) but I am now once again looking forward to getting it when it comes out. Thank you! :)
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Hee! I was disappointed there was no Daniel/Teal'c scene actually (in the friendship way), but yes, there are Sam/Teal'c moments, and some teamy goodness.
Hopefully this isn't a spoiler, but the Unending extra has the sequence after the last shot was done, and AT, CJ, and MS are just clinging to each other like life preservers. CB and BenB are there too, and they're not excluded really, but it's really those three. *sniffle* AT was breaking up crying by the end of the commentary. Aw!!!! CJ kept starting to cry and they couldn't roll until he composed himself while they were still shooting, and AT said she and MS kept trying to avoid each other's eye so they wouldn't start bawling too. AWWWWW!!!!!!
I can't remember where you are, but Region 1 is releasing a full series megapack in October. It's retailing for $300.00 USD (but Amazon.com has it for $210.00) with FOUR EXTRA disks of stuff including not previously aired extras. Dammit! I'm not buying all these seasons again!!! I hope they'll add the extras to the movies.
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Right. I want you to send a map with 'X' marking the spot so I can find this treasure! :-D
I found Unending fairly enjoyable but I suspect that might be because: a) I was relieved they hadn't completely f*cked up the way Bellisario did with Quantum Leap; b)It was (mostly) reset; c) there are movies, so it's not really the last we'll see of them; and d) they went with *that* final scene, which felt right. That said, I wanted more team friendship stuff. I like Daniel, I like Vala, I like Daniel and Vala. I don't like it when Daniel/Vala means we can't have Daniel/anyone else, which is how season 10 felt at times. That might be because MS was missing in four episodes, so there was less Daniel to go around, but I didn't get the same sense of, say, Daniel and Teal'c friendship that I did at the beginning of season 9.
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There's the tretonin scene, and then after Sam leaves Landry, and some interaction in the team scenes (apparently in that final table scene, they're holding hands, plus his look to her when Mitchell calls her away).
And then in the final scene when she talks about how what's happened affects Teal'c, and he turns to her and says what he says half choked up...aw!!!
I found "Unending" melancholy the first time I watched it, but I was ill. The second time, I enjoyed it more...it might have been the codeine, but I think it was because of what I expected.
As I mentioned above, I missed Daniel & Teal'c in S10 too. And Daniel and Sam (though MORPHEUS!!!! AW! And there's extra stuff in the dvds of Daniel, and Mitchell and Teal'c, and team, and Sam and Vala!), but I got a better sense of "Team" in general than I did with Season 9. (They have this whole plot arc of conflict "Getting the band back together", slap on a patch in EDM, then have everyone split up and we're supposed to assume a team dynamic? Um...no.)
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Wow, that's incredibly tempting. If I can afford that I definitely will. My DVD plays any region so it doesn't matter that it's Region 1. (I'm Region 2, in the UK.) It really depends on the boxset shape, too. I can't bear the novelty ones that don't fit on a shelf or go with anything else, but the four extra disks of stuff sounds amazing. Wasn't there a scene for 'Crossroads' way back in S4 that was filmed with Teal'c that was never shown? If that's the kind of thing that's going to be on there I would have to buy it even if it's the shape of a novelty zatgun. Thank you for the head's up!