Well, brightest (i.e. most academically intelligent) doesn’t necessarily mean most socially well-adapted, too. In fact, it sometimes means just the opposite. Witness McKay: undeniably brilliant scientist, moron when it comes to interpersonal relationships, particularly with members of the opposite sex. I’d even argue that Carter, friendly and outgoing though she may be, occasionally has a similar problem. (Poor Pete.) Everyone has a measure of social ineptitude. It just manifests in different ways and different situations. Much like Porter, I often find myself feeling awkward and saying goofy things in front of people I’ve just met, whether I’m attracted to them or not.

My point exactly, thank you very much! Having been a noncom in the USAF myself for a number of years, and having worked under a couple women who were senior to me in rank, I can honestly say that “The Sarge” is not at all how they act, behave, what have you. As I said, the others I can forgive, but “Sarge” just grated on me. I imagine her stage directions were something like “Go out there and pretend you’re a dude” rather than “Go out there and pretend you’re in the military” which are different things. Makes me appreciate Starbuck a bit more, and I always felt she was borderline-grating until this.

Oh, the “Go, Beavers!” line was really embarasing, too. I ignored it earlier since she wasn’t one of the AF folks, but, wow. She’s been out of college for 11 years, which would make her at least 33, and she still says crap like that? Wow. Best and brightest indeed.

Because sexism is wrong, no matter from whom it comes from, just like racism isn’t any better when it comes from someone who’s black or asian (and I’ve lived in Atlanta for a year, only white girl in my school, and a foreigner, believe me, racism exist in all shapes and form. To me sexism is just another form of racism). I don’t like it when people say that women should be allowed to be “as bad as men are”, it’s just dragging mankind down instead of trying to make it better.
And by the way, I hate when guys are sexists too (after all I keep saying how I dislike the fact that Carson is through the whole episode ).

Ah, I should have been clearer. Of course sexism is wrong — I meant character-wise. Stories are moe interesting when characters are flawed. Of course I would prefer no sexism in real life. But perfect people in stories turn out like Cyclops, and until the X-Men movies, Cyclops was a very 2-dimensional, boring character to me. Sure, there comea a point when it’s unredeemable, but I didn’t feel like Teldy had crossed that line just because of that one incident (I consider the glutes remark unrelated and not sexist so much as simple snark), which I felt was in direct reaction to John and Carson’s surprise. I also felt the boys weres omewhat justified in their surprise; even though it was a bit sexist of them, it didn’t upset me exactly. And theyre really aren’t chauvanistic all the time, so the hand-tap, while it made me want to smack them, wasn’t overly-upsetting to me — if I never forgave my guy friends their lapses/flaws (after pointing out their sexist behavior, of course), I’d never have any guy friends. Hormones may not excuse such behavior, but it does *explain* it. And in Carson’s case, his other chauvanistic moments at least had an overtone of caring to them — like he was raised to be protective of the “fairer” sex/chivalrous, as opposed to personally believeing that we are 100% useless. Still doens’t make it right, but it’s a faaaaar less negative connotation to have him act out of worry/underestimating than out of outright derision. So he gets points from me for good intentions, even as he loses them for lack of common sense ….

@ Trinity Beckett

I can’t remember if you mentioned this later in the episode run-down, but I remember reading somewhere that the figure in the gas-mask was Michael. I’m sorry if you mentioned that somewhere in here and I just didn’t notice.

I did mention it, but kind of subtly so, so it’s understandable if you missed it.

Regarding the creature with the night-stick…..I was under the impression that the monster wasn’t HOLDING the nightstick. It seemed to me that the nightstick had been jabbed into the shoulder. I could be wrong, but that’s what it looked like to me. Perhaps a brief close encounter with Teldy, who defended herself as best she could. Granted, it would seem strange that she wouldn’t shoot as well. But they went to an awful lot of trouble establishing that the nightsticks would actually stick into things. Just my opinion.

Ooh, good possibility! Wasn’t Teldy, because she still had hers (unless she had more than one), but could have been Carson (although I didn’t see him with one in the first place).

Regarding the creature with the night-stick…..I was under the impression that the monster wasn’t HOLDING the nightstick. It seemed to me that the nightstick had been jabbed into the shoulder. I could be wrong, but that’s what it looked like to me. Perhaps a brief close encounter with Teldy, who defended herself as best she could. Granted, it would seem strange that she wouldn’t shoot as well. But they went to an awful lot of trouble establishing that the nightsticks would actually stick into things. Just my opinion.

The all-girl team and the fuss made over it on Mr. Mallozzi’s blog just made me all the more eager to see the episode. I don’t understand why everyone made such a big deal about the ’supermodel’ actresses in the parts. I visited the websites for each actress. Yes, the pictures there are, for the most part, stunning. But that doesn’t mean they’ll look like that on the show. A good case in point is Jaime Ray Newman, who played Cadman. She was pretty on the show, looked very healthy….as you mentioned while talking about the girls here. If you look at her publicity shots or in some of her other roles, she’s just flat-out beautiful. In my opinion, anyway. That’s why they’re called actresses, people. They try to fit the part. But you know all this, so why am I pestering you with it? Sorry.

I hope you had a great time at DragonCon. I wanted to go so much this year, but life can be such a drag sometimes….especially financially speaking. I got to go last year. My first convention ever. And, despite the fact that I acted like an absolute idiot around Paul McGillion, I had a blast. Maybe next year…..

And that’s where SGA is strong , they have episodes for everyone, and in the whole of a season it just make a great ensemble (one more reason why only a movie is wrong wrong wrong)

Why can’t a female character be sexist sometimes too?

Because sexism is wrong, no matter from whom it comes from, just like racism isn’t any better when it comes from someone who’s black or asian (and I’ve lived in Atlanta for a year, only white girl in my school, and a foreigner, believe me, racism exist in all shapes and form. To me sexism is just another form of racism). I don’t like it when people say that women should be allowed to be “as bad as men are”, it’s just dragging mankind down instead of trying to make it better.
And by the way, I hate when guys are sexists too (after all I keep saying how I dislike the fact that Carson is through the whole episode ).

I’m upsat at the lack of the rest of the team, but I cee it as a scheduling/monetary thing — this way they could spread the cast around and not have to pay them all for every episode. :/ Unfortunate, but there it is.

Alas I think you are in the right . It’s just that all the episode with the team are always my favorite and even when they do character developpment they can do it as a team thing, so I just wish we could see more of them all the time .

For one, I’ve known gals just like Dusty, so I didn;t have a problem with her masculine qualities. Teldy and Vega didn’t seem overly masculine, si I didn’t see Dusty as a sterotype, juts adifferent kind of gal. John and Jack have been similarly insubordinate, so I didn’t bat an eyelash at Teldy being so. And yes, Tedly was being sexist in her own way, but she just reminded me of some of my “militant feminist” friends in the process, so that didn’t bother me, particularly as I can easily see a woman in the military being that way to combat the “little lady” attitude of some male soldiers. Why can’t a female character be sexist sometimes too?

And I can see Carson as being old-school chivalry, so whil he annoyed me being that way, it didn’t seem out of character to me (although I do agree that it’s odd that he would leave Allison alone to defend Mehra). It was wrong of him, but the characters being wrong now and then make them more interesting to me. Same with Teldy — her words may have been inappropriate, but that made her *more* appealing to me, not less. I did like these women, so I can’t blame the lack of being scared on not caring about them, because I did!

And while I didn’t find the ep scary, a number of reviewrs at Gateworld did …

I dunno, I didn’t feel like this ep was really meant to be taken seriously — I think it poked fun at itself and the horror genre, so I was willing to take it that way.

I hadn’t considered the bubble-popping thing! Good point! Althought, in Dusty’s defence, a) the pop wasn’t audible, and b) It wouldn’t have occured to me either — there was a day when I chewed gum all the time, so I wouldn’t have even have been conscious of it. Plus that frequency the computer was putting out should have been more of a draw anyway.

I do love your assesment of john’s thinking toward sthe end, especially the fact that those outside of his team don’t know how to curb his suicidal tendencies.

I’m upsat at the lack of the rest of the team, but I cee it as a scheduling/monetary thing — this way they could spread the cast around and not have to pay them all for every episode. :/ Unfortunate, but there it is.

I agree totally on shows needing to adjust for the new technology — I too think they should sell the episodes directly to the consumer, they way they do with films. And if they still need advertiser support, they can run text ads at the bottom fo the screen, rather than having commerical breaks — then we’d be forced to see the ads, no matter what, and the sponsers couldn’t complain that people TIVOing it missing the commercials …

To be honest given how they’ve been writing Carson I’m almost disappointed they didn’t kill him off for good. And this episode just served to cement my dislike for what they did out of a great character in season 1. (And hello again, sorry I didn’t yet have the time to comment on the other ones, I’m getting at it backward ! lol)

And I did rather like the all-girl team they worked with —

Alas, I didn’t like them all that much either. The very idea of an “all something” team makes me deeply uncomfortable (“all guys” “all black” “all asian” “all gay” and so on, just no no no, for me the very definition of a team is that they need to have as much variety as possible to be able to face any situations and new civilisations, which is why SG1 and SGA1 have always been great teams : diversity)

I liked Carson’s interaction with Porter — it reminded me of his flirtation with that Hoffan woman, Perna, and I found it charming.

One more thing I really didn’t like. Firstly the situation was very wrong for flirting, then it was done as if Carson was a hormonal 12 years old boy instead of a grown man.

To be honest, this episode was so painful to watch and bad and full of idiotic clichés that I almost gave up watching it multiple times. As much as The Shrine makes it painful that there won’t be a season 6, this one just makes things easier. I love SGA to bits, but some episodes are just bad (at least as far as I’m concerned, of course I know very well that the stuff I like other might dislike :p).

Back in Atlantis, Rodney whinges as Carson packs; apparently Carson had come back for a week and is now leaving again. (I start to whinge too — we the viewers didn’t even get that week!)

Whereas I was grateful lol.

ut to no avail Sheppard comes up (wearing a fetching turtle-neck, a choice by Flanigan, apparently, thanks to how cold filming was for this episode).

And that is the one and only redeeming quality of this episode for me. I could spend hours oogling at him in this turtleneck. Thank you JoeF for making that decision, best costume choice ever. It needs to be really cold for the rest of the season shooting so we can see it again :p. Honestly, if I fast-forward everything but his scenes I might even get to “watch” the episode again, that’s how much I like the turtleneck.

Hesitant, John starts to say he didn’t realise something; amused, Teldy finishes for him, “that my team was a bunch of girls, sir?” John tries to downplay that, as does Carson, but it’s clear she it the nail on the head. She smugly informs them that she only did as ordered — she chose the best and brightest for her team. “Funny how that worked out!” (Absolutely brilliant “lantern” — address the audience’s question and dismiss it as the unimportant, asinine concern it is. Well, that’s how I feel about it, anyway — if it had been an all-male team, no one would have even noticed. The series has already established that it’s a little different, militarily-speaking, than reality — Sam’s been fighting in the field for ten years, after all — so why not? I look forward to the day when the lantern wouldn’t have been necessary, but for now it was quite amusing.)

I hated this scene with a passion, which is a rare thing for me, the only other time I’ve hated a scene that much in SGA was everything concerning Lucius (serial date-rapist).
First it make John almost a bad commander, whatever Malozzi’s excuse is, there isn’t more than 200, maybe at most 300 soldiers on Atlantis, and given how they keep making John all about “taking care of his people”, I think he knows every single soldier under his command. Now if they had given us only even ONCE a proof that there is more than 1000 soldiers on Atlantis, then maybe I would have understood. The director of my secondary school knew every pupils by their names, and we were 600 in his school, there is NO excuse.
Secondly, Teldy’s comment ? She’s this close to insubordination with such a comment, which admittedly won’t touch John much, but still. And then she makes that terrible comment about the best and the brightest who just happen to be all women ? (IMO extremely ironic given that when asked, multiple times, why there wasn’t a female writer in the team that’s also the type of comment JoeM did, which I found extremely offensive, especially considering NONE of them can write a female character properly). This is a terribly offensive comment. An insult to many other people, and think for one second of how it could have been taken if the “all something” team had been anything else ? Yes I’m saying that this is a sexist comment, because it is.
Lastly, if she had been as bright as she seems to think she is, then she would have had at least one guy in her team just in case they arrive in a patriarchal society. Just as important as having at least one woman in the team in case of a matriarchal society. Even I know that and I’m certainly not part of the “best and brightest”.

John and Carson bump fists, apparently in glee at getting to spend the day with a bunch of cute girls. (*Rolls eyes affectionately and shakes head ruefully* Boys … Aw, who am I kidding — if I found those women that attractive, I’d probably be thanking my luck too ….)
Once again, didn’t like the gesture. If they were hormonal teenagers trying to “score” it would have been believable, still bad taste but at least believable, but two 40 years old guys ? once again, just no. are we already in SG : 90210 or something here ?

Carson compliments Porter on her work, flirtatiously; Mehra turns away, disgusted. (*Snicker*)
First time I almost gagged. And I found myself understanding Mehra, who was a terribly bad written guy dressed as a woman (that’s how they try to wrigt “strong women” on SGA, either she’s a tramp : Larrin, or she’s behaving way too much like a guy with not one feminine bone in her body : Mehra; which is why they should have had a female writer to tell them to cut the crap and write a normal strong female character, now it’s too late. The only 2 women they didn’t 100% butchered are Teyla and Carter, and it’s probably because they don’t have a choice given they don’t have any other female leads). [I know I'm ranting quite a lot, but 3 weeks without Internet to vent from time to time will do that to me :p].

She adds that the walking will firm up his glutes and calves. “Oh, great(!) Couple more hours of this and I can skip my cardio funk workout,” he replies.

Once again, any other commanding officier would just have told her to shut up. She’s lucky that it’s John, who is probably the most lenient CO ever. Even O’Neill would not have accepted this kind of remark. He’s not their buddy out for a walk with them, he’s their commanding officier, would it kill them to have at least the tiniest bit of respect ?

She’s reminding me very strongly of Ronon right now.)
Thus proving my earlier point. And I’ll add that I would have prefered to see Ronon in fact. Where was he ? Where was Teyla ? Why didn’t Rodney come to this party ? Major plot holes that where never explained ! (instead of the offending “best and brightest” comment, they should have adressed this)

Disgusted, Mehra says she’s going to check the perimeter. (Oh no, don’t go off alone! Don’t you watch horror movies??) Starting to leave, she says she’ll be back in twenty; she pauses and adds, “Unless there’s a sock on the door.” (*Snicker* I wonder if they actually use that in Atlantis? *Cough*) She leaves the couple in their awkward moment. (Evil!)

Once again a despicable scene. I almost expected one of the woman to take her clothes off an run around in a nighty before being killed. Malozzi took the worse out the horror flicks he’s been watching, including all the teenage sex reference, and that’s just not SGA, once again we’re right into SG:90210 (by the way, if this is but a taste of SGU, I think I’m really happy not to be in the demographics, I watch SGA for the TEAM, the action, the FX, and some character developpment, if I want to watch love stories, sex talks, constant inuendo I’ll watch a soap, there’s plenty of them in the UK -_-).

Mehra whistles as she wanders. Suddenly, she looks unsettled, and glances behind her, at a well. (I assume it’s just a Ringu reference, but it serves a purpose later.) She walks over to it and drops a stone down it, with the camera angled to look up at her from inside the well; it’s a long wait before we hear it strike the bottom.

Bit of a plot hole there, you would think the villagers who buit that well would have been careful not to mke it so it’s an entrance to tunnels or catacombs or something. As a plot help it’s great, as a well it doesn’t really have a place in the village :p.

Teldy admonishes Vega to stay sharp. (I rather like her and her no-nonsense attitude.) Vega doesn’t listen, starting to say cattily that they should go back to Atlantis the, when she’s suddenly grabbed from behind and pulled into the fog like she’s been snatched by a big monster.
So much for “the best and the brightest”, does that include total disrespect for any commanding officer ?

Her comrades hurry after her, but when they find her, it’s too late: she’s dead. (Yeah, somehow this isn’t really scary to me — perhaps too predictable? I mean, it was a surprise that she would bite it, since we kind of knew her better — well, sooner, anyway — than the other women, but when a character turns their back on danger and gets cocky, you expect something to grab them.

Yep, one of the main reason for an all female team was that people would feel more badly about them being canon fodder (completely crap way of thinking as for me a life is a life, no matter the race, sex or whatever else), and yet it just fell completely flat. It was way too expected, and the characters have done nothing for us to feel really bad about any of them dying. Honestly, any of the 4 could have died and it would have changed nothing to the story, nothing to the fact that because we don’t know them we just expect them all to be potential red-shirts. I know it’s terrible, but at least when they kill off a regular character we really feel bad, we really feel sad, when they kill off someone we’ve know for all of 15 minutes and who has done nothing to win us over, there’s no way we can be affected).

Wait, another redeeming quality I just thought of : The kodama-like sound. It’s a great sound and actually creepier than the mist or the bad guys lol.

Alison shyly tells Carson that she’s really glad for the chance to work with him; he feels the same. (Good chemistry! … Wait, don’t would-be lovers usually get killed in these sorts of stories?) Before they can get smootchin’, they’re startled by the sound of gunfire outside.

Do I really need to keep going about how very high-school cringe worthy this is ? I think it’s because I would rather die than being a teenager again that I hate teenage action so much, especially when performed by 40 years old (or close).

He armours up to go outside, despite Alison’s protests, feeling that, if there is something out there, its’ better to go out and surprise it rather than the other way around. (Hmm, he has a point.)

Hum actually no, he doesn’t have a point. First of all he’s been ordered to stay inside. Secondly, if anything, it’s easier to defend yourself in a room with a known geography and 2 people than outside in the fog alone seeing nothing and not even knowing where you are walking. I was a bit annoyed when Carson tried to “protect” Mehra espetially since she’s obviously the most “bad-ass” of them all. What does he think he’s going to protect exactly ? Not even going into how sexist that is, would he have said the same to a male soldier ? Nah, didn’t think so either. There’s being polite, and then there’s being insulting, Carson just crossed the line. And how nice of him to leave the “defenseless scientist” all alone, does he think she can fend for herself while Mehra can’t ? This going out alone is just the stupidiest decision ever. And that’s why I hate the way they’ve been writing Carson, they try to make him brave but he comes out as stupid, recless and brainless, making decisions that endanger others more than they help (and this is not the first time), no wonder they don’t put him back in the CMO position.

Someone on LJ stated that the Fog must have been made of a gas making people stupid (makes the prey easier to catch after all), I have to agree on this, seemingly intelligent people are making bad and then worse decisions all over the place, guided more by their lizard brain that by their thinking brain and that’s never a good thing, that’s in fact how you get people killed (even in real life). At least if Rodney had been there, he would have been thinking like a normal person :p.

In the house, Dusty testily asks what that thing was, while Carson looks for an apparently missing Alison. (Okay, maybe she’s not such a fraidy-cat after all, if she disobeyed both Carson and Dusty’s orders.)

See the above point, they’ve just all become a lot more stupid, so it’s normal that they act idioticly for no good reason. Because honestly appart from the “moronic gas”, I can’t see one good reason for a bunch of intelligent adults to behave as they do, not one.

“Oh that’s just great; all we need is for the Prom Queen and the kid in the wheelchair to wander off, and we’ll be all set,” John quips.
Hey, apparently John really is a genius and he agrees with me that Carson and his girlfriend are acting like a bunch of stupid teenagers.

It’s a little puzzling that Carson wouldn’t insist on finding Porter like he did Mehra, but then again I suppose after his run-in with the monster, he’s realised he wouldn’t be much help That or we simply didn’t see an argument he had with Sheppard

Or it’s the fact that John has his reproductive organs on the outside maybe ? Given the rest that’s how it looks to me, making his earlier insistence even more insulting. Way to go writers, don’t only dig your grave, jump in it.

(The search through the fog is at least very tense, even if I’m not personally creeped out.)
And strangely given the atmosphere, nobody I know was creeped out by all of this, which proves that people don’t really care about another team. We already don’t have enough team episode as it is, who cares about another team that’s going to be there for only one episode ? I’m not saying it would have worked better with our team, but we would sure have been more worried for them than for a bunch of strangers (plus they are way more fun and entertaining in every way possible).

Stunned a moment, Carson finally gathers his wits and drags a china cabinet-like thing in front of the window. (Dude, noise! Can’t you just stay still? They might be able to just burst through that thing anyway!)

I will once again refer you to either the stupid gas theory, or the terrible fact that the clone is an idiot (after all even the Asgard never mastered the cloning process entirely, who know what mistake Michael could have done ?). I don’t even have to search for proof, they are being handed to me free of charge.

Okay, I’m suspicious again, but if the thing can’t see, how does it know about the sticks or the fact that it will lure others to it? Well, at any rate, I’m right this time. And it would be a great twist, if I could just figure out how it knew to do that.)

Yep one more of those huge plot holes that fill the episode. The un-important stuff is being explained twice while the really strange things are not even brushed upon. Great writing ! [/irony]

Awww … it should be noted that, according to Mallozzi, this was ADR’d in when one of the crew felt it was odd that no one expressed concern for Carson.)

The crew had to tell them something that obvious ? It’s even scarier than I thought… or maybe it’s because by that point the writers themselves are becoming annoyed at Carson’s idiocy and think he deserves to die without anyone mentionning him ever again (at that point of watching the episode my patience is completely gone, I’m this close to fast-forwarding what’s left of it just to get to the end).

Aww, his chagrined expression here is just adorable! Glad to see he isn’t too proud to ask the women for help.)
Once again John saves the day. I don’t know if it’s JoeF input of if the writers reall get him, but it’s clear that he has respect for his soldiers, and that appart from the initial reaction (which I still think was idiotic) he couldn’t care less about them being gals or guys as long as they are doing their job properly (and so far Teldy, despite being a bit too familiar, has done a good job). And that’s why I don’t think for one minute that John doesn’t know his soldiers. I think he knows them all and will do everything to protect them. He’s John.

The gals start to question what to do if things go bad, and in typical Sheppard fashion, he tells them to stop being negative and denies the possibility, telling them to stick with the plan. (Obviously, as far as he’s concerned, it doesn’t matter whether he makes it out alive or not, so long as they get all the monsters.)
Once again this is John in a heartbeat. And see, this time I’m not getting hit by the nausea of sexism, because John would do this for anyone, he has done it in the past. He’s not doing this because they are women (okay he’s having suicidal tendencies, and if HIS team was there : Ronon would not let him do it alone, Teyla would agree to shoot the things and Rodney would find a way to make it work from afar despite of the fog so that they could all stay together for the shoot-em-up. His team knows how to protect him from his suicidal tendencies, nobody else does).

Dusty blows a bubble, looking to be concentrating intently.

Best and brightest ??? And she can’t help but blow a bubble which is noisy when there’s a ennemy attracted by noise ? How stupid are they going to make her ? why doesn’t she just stand up and dance while whistling while she’s at it ??? This is the equivalent of lighting a cigarette in the middle of the night while facing the ennemy sniper, and it’s just stupid.

Carson commiserates, then notes something is wrong and asks if she’s all right. (Again, at this point I think they can be “turned” and assume she is becoming a monster, and again I’m wrong.) She assures him that she is fine, she just doesn’t want go back to the lab, having had “enough mad science for one day”. Carson takes her backpack and assures her they won’t be long; Dusty volunteers to stay with her. As the others go on, Dusty gives Porter a wry look, while Porter looks less than pleased.

This scene makes absolutely no sense. Porter is acting completely strange, and separating the team once again after everything that just happen makes no sense either. Had it been Rodney (and we all know how much he can complain), Carson himself would have told him to “buck it up”. This woman is young, apparently not in bad shape, she hasn’t been running around for hours (she’s been waiting more than walking), and she’s creeped by a few bad guys ? 1. her commanding officer caller her “best and brightest”, she should at least try to own up to the title (Rodney has never been called that and yet he obviously is, with all his insecurities, he still owns up to the title that nobody but himself wants to give him [okay, John told him he was a genius in The Last Man, ibetter than nothing]. 2. If she can’t take this she sould be shipped back to Earth in emergency, the Wraiths are a hundred time worse. 3. So if Rodney complains it’s funny and great to mock and belittle him, but as soon as a woman does the same it’s “oh, you poor thing, here, take a seat and rest for a while” : SEXISM at it’s worst. Teldy should have told her “to buck it up”, that they were almost done and that she would have time to rest back on Atlantis.

And if we’d gotten a sixth season, we would have seen more of Teldy, Porter, and Dusty, Mallozzi suggests. He also says there’s a good possibility we’ll see them in the Atlantis movie, at least.But my gods, there are so many people I want to see in it, no one will have much screentime!)

That’s a joke right ? You mean to tell me that not only are they going to give us barely 2 more hours of SGA but that some of this time is going to be taken up by them ? Great, fantastic, yeehaa -_-. The only important people to me are the Team, eventually Zelenka, Lorne and Caldwell. For all I care the rest of them can get eaten by the Wraith (yes I’m pretty pissed off right now, it’ll pass, but right now I am).

Back in Atlantis, we repeat the scene from earlier,
And after the fantastic friendship scenes in the Shrine I can help but think how empty those are. No feelings, no chemistry, they’re still trying to sell us the Rodney/Carson being great friends thing, but it’s just going nowhere. It wasn’t believeable after Sunday (the best friend that sprout from nowhere) and it’s still not believable. The actors might be friends irl, but their characters have no chemistry at all. I see more friendship between Ronon and Rodney than between Carson and Rodney, stop trying to sell it to me ! It’s cheap and it doesn’t work.

I will admit that I may not have been as harsh on this episode without the cancellation news (although my POV on those subjects would have been the same, I might just have refreigned from voicing that much dislike), but after The Shrine (proving that they can write fantastic things), the insults to our intelligence and the disregard I don’t really feel the need to keep my dislikes to the bare minimum. If this is going to be the last season then I’m going to be honest about what is good and what plainly sucks (as this episode did for me)

Even if we fail, we’ll be a step closer to putting the power of choice into the hands of non-Nielsen viewers and reminding the execs that what they want is, ultimately, OUR money — which they won’t get if we don’t watch their sponsors! For me, personally? “Stargate Voyager 90210″ may very well end up being a great show, but what will that matter if it, too, is ends prematurely? I have no intention of letting them break my heart again, especially since they are building this new show on the efforts we made to support Atlantis. If Wright and MGM and Skiffy are done with Atlantis, then I’m done with them — I’ll buy the movies to support the actors, Mallozzi, and crew, but I would have bought those anyway, even if it ended ten years from now. I probably won’t be buying any other MGM films, save for those with a member of the SGA crew involved. And I’ll be making sure that show’s sponsors know who butters their bread, let me tell you …

I will definitely fight for at least a 6th season of SGA. Even if I’m a french living in the UK and apparently too old for them. The thing is that taking SGA off the air this year is the worst decision they could have made, if only for the fact that if SG:90210 doesn’t take off (so far there’s 50% chance it’ll be good and 50% chance it’ll be bad, plus the fact that their “targeted audience” might very well not be interested [I don't think they really know their audience to be truthfull]) then they won’t have any Stargate program on air (and since Howe apparently think we’re junkies in need of a fix, that might be a problem…)
Truth is, despite all the criticism I like to throw at them, no show has ever has as much impact on my life than SGA has, and we’re talking about almost 30 years of watching a huge number of different shows. I was even a big SG1 fan, but somehow SGA has that little something more that made it what it is. And I don’t think I’m alone in this.
I’m still watching other shows, but none of them has that thing. I won’t even go into how John and Rodney are probably the two characters with the most chemistry ever on TV. I don’t know if the actors are all that much friends, but their characters are just made for each other (and I’m not even talking about the slash, just their friendship is already that strong).
I also thing that MGM and Sci-fi need to enter the 21st century if they are serious about making money. I know the show is produced for the USA mainly, but the USA is “only” 300 millions people, the world is 7 billion people and as Dr. Horrible has recently showed a whole lot of those people outside the US are ready to pay good money to be able to watch something they like. How many times have I complained about not being able to buy a season’s pass on iTunes ? So yes I still bought the DVD’s but in the meantime I was one of those who downloaded illegaly. Every season they would have had the possibility of me giving them the money twice and they never made it possible. How many in the world would have done the same ? How much money did they loose by being technologically retarded ? At $2 an episode (and given that I’ve read that SG1 used to cost about $2 million/episode near the end), they would have needed one million out of seven billion (that’s about 0.015%) people to pay for the show, without even taking into account the advertisers. They could have made so much money by entering the 21st century.

Probably not as much as I seem to remember but a fair ammount, yeah.

I mostly liked the all-female team, but Mehra was played a bit too over-the-top for my tastes. Of all the previous guest characters in the Stargate series, she most reminded me of O’Neill’s friend Burke from ‘Evolution’, but less funny. Joe Mallozzi described her as the embarrassing relative with no speech filter, which may be why I found her a bit off-putting.

I liked Vega, though, and I’m sad she was killed off. Hope we at least get to see Teldy again. Christina Cox was great in this role. Kinda reminded me of Major Kawalski or Lorne, actually. A solid right hand for Sheppard.

The Vega thing is odd, but I hadn;t thought she recieved any more hype than any of the rest, save for hat we saw her n another ep fiorst. Then again, until the cancellation, I only hung out at Hewlett and Mallozzi’s sites, not GW (too hostile an environment for my liking) — was there a lot of chatter about her there?

So after months of this, we get to the “Meet Captain Vega” episode, and – boom – she’s dead 20 minutes in with no fanfare.

What the hell? Did they just change their minds? Were they screwing with us all along? Was it a red herring do distract us from something bigger later on in the season (I can’t imagine what, if so) Seriously: What the hell?

As to this episode: I never object to them introducing new blood into the series, but I felt the story was all rather “Meh.” I didn’t dislike it, but perhaps it read better as a script and faltered due to flat direction or something, I dunno. Something did bother me about the “Girl’s Squad”, however, and it wasn’t their looks (I mean, come on, it’s TV – it’s not like we’re ever gonna’ see ugly people on TV!): I didn’t believe for a moment that any of them were in the military.

I mean, look at Colonel Carter for comparison: She actually acts like a USAF officer. O’Neil and Shepard are both somewhat more informal than the Air Force usually gets, but still well within normal guidelines for that sort of thing, there’s still that nuance of military bering. The Girl’s squad was completely lacking in that. I can cut some slack for this: they’re not *really* in the military, they’re not even *really* American, and they’re just one-off guest stars that we’ll never see again, but come on, that Sergent was just terrible! Terrible! She acted in no way like a noncom in the Air Force, and her performance was all “Look at me! I’m acting!” without any acting in it.

Having been in the USAF myself, I feel the ‘Gate shows generally do a good job depicting how the service behaves, but there aren’t a lot of women in the Air Force to begin with, and the enlisted females have to be a very special type to survive it, frankly. They’ve got a swagger and a harshness to them that they need to have to wash off the treatment a lot of the guys give them, they even tend to separate themselves from the females that they know are short-termers or otherwise aren’t gonna’ make it. “Sarge” in this episode caught none of that, acted like an officer in a WW2 film, or possibly a cop. Women who make a career in the service are tough broads, not to be trifled with, because, frankly, it’s harder for them than it is for us guys. This episode caught none of that.

I realize being a vet myself made this more annoying to me personally than it probably was for everyone else, kind of like being a doctor annoyed at the non-medical lapses you see in doctor shows, but it really, really bugged me.