Defending Daniel: Part 3

The following article contains spoilers for unaired episodes of Stargate SG-1.

Defending Daniel Part 1
Defending Daniel Part 2

More disasters on the relationship front! On a mission Daniel starts to fall for a woman with amnesia called Ke’ra. He then discovers that even though she doesn’t recall it, she happens to be Linea, the ‘Destroyer of Worlds’. A brilliant scientific mind, creator of bioweapons, and quite possibly the greatest mass murderer in all known galaxies.

Then he runs into an ex-girlfriend and colleague named Sarah Gardner when an old professor of theirs dies. While rooting through the prof’s artifacts and playing with the toys, they stumble across… a canopic jar! With a Goa’uld in it! Osiris! Who does what kids? Have we been paying attention so far? Possesses yet ANOTHER one of Daniel’s lady friends! Daniel can’t win.

This is why it almost seems a blessing when Daniel receives a lethal dose of radiation from disabling an unstable naquadriah reactor. He is blackened, peeling, and oozing from places he oughtn’t. He begs them to stop trying to heal him, unplug him, and just let him die. But oh no! He has finally found “enlightenment� and ascends to a higher plane of existence, guided by Oma Desala, that meddling ethereal pain in the butt. [DEATH #5, ASCENSION #1]

But it turns out this enlightenment thingie ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. This whole ‘non-interference’ policy is chafing his knickers (“What do you MEAN I can’t help my friends? My allies? The human race? Y’all can bugger off!�) In a death or glory, damn the consequences maneuver, he flings all of his magical might at a major foe of earth, Anubis. And just before the full force of Daniel’s sheer pissedoffedness smacks the Darth Vader wannabe straight between the eyes… the ascended Ancients catch on to what he’s trying to pull, and yoink him from his ascended form. He then proceeds to land with a meaty thud on a dusty rock in the middle of nowheresville called Vis Uban. With no memories. [DESCENSION #1]

SG-1 finally finds him, and coaches him back to full capacity. His memory is still a bit spotty, and he recalls no more than bits and snatches from the time he was ascended, but he’s back in the game, with a new mission- find Atlantis, the Lost City of the Ancients. Hey, everyone’s gotta have a hobby.

Well, wouldn’t you know, he does it! It is the culmination of everything he’s worked for academically! The pinnacle of his security-clearance riddled career! But what have we learned children? The universe only gives Daniel what he wants long enough for him to miss it when he can’t have it anymore. So, when Stargate Command mounts a one way mission to explore and settle Atlantis, Daniel wants to go. He wants to go so badly he can feel it in his teeth. He wants to go so badly because he really has nothing else to work or live for. Therefore, it stands to reason, they don’t let him.

This gives him a number of new and interesting opportunities to die and get screwed over, not necessarily in that order, but not necessarily independent of each other.

“Prometheus Unbound� is one of the funniest episodes in the history of the show. It is also the first time Daniel meets a space thief named Vala Mal Doran. She shows up in power armor, beats the snot out of him, tries to seduce him, and steals the ship. He bests her, takes the ship back, she tries to seduce him some more, gets him in a bunch of trouble, and then escapes to go gallivant around the universe and be naughty.

He then gets killed by RepliCarter while she attempts to mindrape him for intel. But not before wresting just enough control of her programming to halt all of the replicators in the universe long enough for them to be destroyed. I’d also just like to state for the record that Michael Shanks puts in one of the most intense, finely crafted performances of his career in this episode, matching wits and wills with a seemingly implacable enemy wearing the face and demeanor of a trusted friend. [DEATH #6, partial ASCENSION #2]

Now stuck in the diner of Limbo, he is waited on by none other than Oma Desala. She is trying to help him ascend again, but he is having difficulty due to being distracted by events on his plane. He pulls a variety of clever things that benefit Earth, and declines ascension, landing with a meaty thud yet again in General Landry’s office. He gets to keep his memories this time though. [DESCENSION #2]

Funny things happen with time travel, it’s buckets of interesting, but not terribly traumatic, and most of it gets undone at the end, so I’ll not get into it.

Welcome back, Vala! Just when Daniel gets a second chance to go to Atlantis, this time on the Daedalus, Vala costs him the opportunity by shackling him to her with funny bracelets that knock you out and make you sick if you stray too far from each other. She drags him on a treasure hunt, they find out some stuff about the Ancients, get their heads eaten by an intergalactic communication device, end up baiting the Ori, come back, get the bracelets off, go on an Arthurian quest, and find Merlin. Stargate Command decides that they can’t exactly let Vala go free in the universe, nor can they let her wander about unattended on Earth, so they add her to the team. She starts to prove integrity and loyalty.

Poor Daniel the whipping post yet again gets possessed by another consciousness. This time, the dying Merlin somehow brainhops into Daniel, to complete a weapon to kill Adria, the leader of the Ori army. The baddies find them, and Daniel pushes his Merlin powers to the max in order to cover their retreat, only to be captured by Adria. Who… turns him into a Prior! Mister “free will, integrity, and rational thought above all�, the Agnostic Avenger, has now become the very thing he hates most.

DanielMerlinPrior is discovered while ‘ministering to his flock’, and captured by SG-1. Most of the American military wants to kill him, even though he insists that this whole thing has gone to plan, and that he wants to help them kill all of the Ori. They’re less than convinced of his motives, and so, he hijacks a ship and helps complete the plan himself. He is then left as just Daniel once more, wondering why there’s a headache where his expanding consciousness should be, and where his other eight senses have gone.

He’s just now had a few opportunities to relax a bit, and by relax, I mean battle the Ori for the fate of mankind, you know, the usual. When he gets stuck, on a ship, with Vala.

During that recap, I was only counting individual, remembered deaths for Daniel. Times where all of SG-1 died in alternate realities or somesuch, or it got undone and everyone forgot, or they thought he was dead when he wasn’t, or someone or something that looked like Daniel and wasn’t died, have all been omitted for the purposes of brevity and relevance. And besides, 6 Deaths, 1 ½ Ascensions, and 2 Descensions really oughtta be enough to screw you up royal in the head, combined with systematically losing everyone and everything you have ever worked for or cared about.

Jennifer Sulkin is a writer, gonzo journalist, jewelry artist, graphic designer, photographer, musician, actress, and occasional office drone. She is an avid student of world culture and cuisine. She has an inordinate fondness for hats. She has been known to mainline Diet Rockstar and make sushi, though usually not at the same time. One day she will be on the 11 o clock news for executing the Fox executives responsible for canceling Firefly. You may post her bail care of Pink Raygun.

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