SGA 4x11: Be All Our Sins Remember'd
Jan. 6th, 2008 02:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xparrotNew SGA! Which ultimately frustrated more than satisfied - this really should have been a two-part episode, it was so cramped. And let's face it, SGA can't really do 'epic'. But still! New SGA!
Start off with points of Squee, 'cuz yeah, I still love my silly scifi show:
--John & Ronon finding out Teyla's secret was the best scene of the ep, Teyla's reluctant admission (one can see why she was keeping the pregnancy to herself, with the way Sheppard freaked), John's shocked and angry guilt and the way he kept glancing down at her belly, and Ronon's supportive sangfroid and hand-holding and baby-naming advice (hee!) So is one of them going to spill the beans to Rodney, or will Teyla get a chance to tell him personally?
--Todd! Who still hasn't been officially named in canon. But man, favorite Wraith ever. His sense of humor kills me (and possibly Rodney. Heh.) I love that he makes sure Sheppard's the first to wake up, and is so quick to hand him his Beretta--Todd totally knows how to handle Sheppard, making sure to give him his security blanket. He's also becoming rather fond of Dr. McKay, the way everyone does with prolonged exposure, or is it just me?
--Sam! Yeah, still loving Carter, especially when she's standing up for her people, or science-geeking out with Rodney while Sheppard stands around "..."-ing. I've been wanting to see that happen since she came on board. Also, "We're geniuses!" Aww!Get married, you crazy kids!
--Zelenka was adorable as always, being all sympathetic in just the teasing way Rodney needs.
--And of course the final dinner invitation, because it's not a season 4 ep if there's not at least one John & Rodney scene, and those will always make me happy; I'm easy like that.
But not too easy, because that scene also underlined one of my major problems with the ep, that it was too light in tone. Now, I'm torn about this, because in general I think SG (1 & A) does much better with popcorn SF action than serious drama; they just don't handle epic storylines with anything approaching finesse. SG-1 is one of the few shows out there in which I tended to prefer the episodic storylines to the arcs; character arcs they can do okay (both SGs are strongest with characters) but major plotlines tend to fall short. Some of SG-1's most boring eps are those in which they're resolving major crises (the end of the Replicators & Goa'uld I barely remember because I was almost dozing off watching it. Something with Jaffa and pushing lots of buttons?) They're much more entertaining when they're doing smaller, lighter stories.
This ep was strange because the tone was of a smaller, lighter story, and it had a lot of funny bits - the "Colonel" routine, and McKay's dry spell, and Todd, and even Larrin was tolerably amusing. Except the plot was bigger than those bits--the annihilation of an enemy they've been up against for over a year, an enemy which has committed genocide...and a sentient enemy, whose motivations were partly on their own heads. There might be repercussions later, though this being SGA I'm not holding my breath. And obviously the Replicators aren't entirely gone, but they destroyed a whole planet here, and to write it off at the end with a quick joke...felt off, especially when they referenced "Trinity" in the doing, and that planetary destruction had more impact, though less loss of life.
It maybe wouldn't have played as strangely if the teaser hadn't been so much more serious in tone than the rest of the ep, with thousands dying, including Atlantians. And okay, I'll admit that some of my problem comes from being a major McKay fan, because he came off as not a little callous, being more concerned with his pride than with the major crises going on. Which is quite contrary to his guilt in "The Seer." It does make sense from a character perspective; Rodney tends to cover his insecurities with his ego, and it's pretty easy to interpret the "dry spell" they're all teasing him about as a reaction to the pressure and guilt, not to mention fatigue (how much rest was he getting for those three weeks? He's pulling ten and twelve hour shifts, and I'm betting not sleeping more than a couple hours between them. And do Wraith even need to sleep? If Todd wasn't going to bed than Rodney wouldn't be, either.) But there's no support for that reading in the ep, except in the subtext (both John and Radek are acting pretty worried about their McKay, the way they're humoring him.) I'd have liked just one little scene like that in "The Seer" or the end of "This Mortal Coil", hinting that there was more going on with Rodney than just the obvious stung pride...(It's odd; Martin Gero, when he writes Rodney-focused episodes, seems really into exploring Rodney's various issues; but in the team/epic eps his McKay tends to be much more straightforward and obvious.)
A lot of this is due to the other major problem with the ep, which is that it was too short. I got no idea why they didn't make this a true 2-parter, and just moved "This Mortal Coil" back or left it out entirely. There was way too much going on to follow it all, and some potentially interesting plot points got stomped and squished into messy smears. The final space battle was more confusing than exciting, not to mention ultimately not that interesting, since there was no real peril for any of the chars or ships we knew (what was the purpose, script-wise, of beaming Rodney and Ronon et al down to the planet, when they just did some stuff and beamed back up again none the worse for wear? Plot-wise I understood the purpose of them being there, but it added nothing to the drama. You don't put your chars in a new place unless they're going to face some potential jeopardy, otherwise why bother?) They could have at least damaged the Daedalus--we like the Daedalus, it's an old friend! But the ships went unscathed, as did all the people.
Really they should have just cut out the Fran subplot (because, uh. Yeah. You don't create a sentient being to be destroyed and then just destroy it without a hiccup in about ten minutes' screen-time. That's just bizarre writing! It felt like they grabbed three pages of script from a whole other episode that never got made and shuffled them in without looking) and spent a bit more time on the final confrontation with Nullzilla (for the ReBoot fans among you.) (Sort of a pity, really, because that Fran episode might have been awful but might have been interesting. Especially with the symmetry of Rodney creating life as he learns Teyla's pregnant. As it is I think I'm going to file the whole incident in the 'Closing My Eyes and Plugging My Ears and Humming Loudly' drawer, which is already quite stuffed with SGA artifacts.)
Or they could have just hurt one of the team at the end. I don't really care which one...Rodney or Ronon were both in a position to be recklessly self-sacrificing, but it could have been John if Larrin's ship got damaged, I'm not picky. That probably would've sold the ep for me, because yup, ultimately, I'm that easy after all...
Start off with points of Squee, 'cuz yeah, I still love my silly scifi show:
--John & Ronon finding out Teyla's secret was the best scene of the ep, Teyla's reluctant admission (one can see why she was keeping the pregnancy to herself, with the way Sheppard freaked), John's shocked and angry guilt and the way he kept glancing down at her belly, and Ronon's supportive sangfroid and hand-holding and baby-naming advice (hee!) So is one of them going to spill the beans to Rodney, or will Teyla get a chance to tell him personally?
--Todd! Who still hasn't been officially named in canon. But man, favorite Wraith ever. His sense of humor kills me (and possibly Rodney. Heh.) I love that he makes sure Sheppard's the first to wake up, and is so quick to hand him his Beretta--Todd totally knows how to handle Sheppard, making sure to give him his security blanket. He's also becoming rather fond of Dr. McKay, the way everyone does with prolonged exposure, or is it just me?
--Sam! Yeah, still loving Carter, especially when she's standing up for her people, or science-geeking out with Rodney while Sheppard stands around "..."-ing. I've been wanting to see that happen since she came on board. Also, "We're geniuses!" Aww!
--Zelenka was adorable as always, being all sympathetic in just the teasing way Rodney needs.
--And of course the final dinner invitation, because it's not a season 4 ep if there's not at least one John & Rodney scene, and those will always make me happy; I'm easy like that.
But not too easy, because that scene also underlined one of my major problems with the ep, that it was too light in tone. Now, I'm torn about this, because in general I think SG (1 & A) does much better with popcorn SF action than serious drama; they just don't handle epic storylines with anything approaching finesse. SG-1 is one of the few shows out there in which I tended to prefer the episodic storylines to the arcs; character arcs they can do okay (both SGs are strongest with characters) but major plotlines tend to fall short. Some of SG-1's most boring eps are those in which they're resolving major crises (the end of the Replicators & Goa'uld I barely remember because I was almost dozing off watching it. Something with Jaffa and pushing lots of buttons?) They're much more entertaining when they're doing smaller, lighter stories.
This ep was strange because the tone was of a smaller, lighter story, and it had a lot of funny bits - the "Colonel" routine, and McKay's dry spell, and Todd, and even Larrin was tolerably amusing. Except the plot was bigger than those bits--the annihilation of an enemy they've been up against for over a year, an enemy which has committed genocide...and a sentient enemy, whose motivations were partly on their own heads. There might be repercussions later, though this being SGA I'm not holding my breath. And obviously the Replicators aren't entirely gone, but they destroyed a whole planet here, and to write it off at the end with a quick joke...felt off, especially when they referenced "Trinity" in the doing, and that planetary destruction had more impact, though less loss of life.
It maybe wouldn't have played as strangely if the teaser hadn't been so much more serious in tone than the rest of the ep, with thousands dying, including Atlantians. And okay, I'll admit that some of my problem comes from being a major McKay fan, because he came off as not a little callous, being more concerned with his pride than with the major crises going on. Which is quite contrary to his guilt in "The Seer." It does make sense from a character perspective; Rodney tends to cover his insecurities with his ego, and it's pretty easy to interpret the "dry spell" they're all teasing him about as a reaction to the pressure and guilt, not to mention fatigue (how much rest was he getting for those three weeks? He's pulling ten and twelve hour shifts, and I'm betting not sleeping more than a couple hours between them. And do Wraith even need to sleep? If Todd wasn't going to bed than Rodney wouldn't be, either.) But there's no support for that reading in the ep, except in the subtext (both John and Radek are acting pretty worried about their McKay, the way they're humoring him.) I'd have liked just one little scene like that in "The Seer" or the end of "This Mortal Coil", hinting that there was more going on with Rodney than just the obvious stung pride...(It's odd; Martin Gero, when he writes Rodney-focused episodes, seems really into exploring Rodney's various issues; but in the team/epic eps his McKay tends to be much more straightforward and obvious.)
A lot of this is due to the other major problem with the ep, which is that it was too short. I got no idea why they didn't make this a true 2-parter, and just moved "This Mortal Coil" back or left it out entirely. There was way too much going on to follow it all, and some potentially interesting plot points got stomped and squished into messy smears. The final space battle was more confusing than exciting, not to mention ultimately not that interesting, since there was no real peril for any of the chars or ships we knew (what was the purpose, script-wise, of beaming Rodney and Ronon et al down to the planet, when they just did some stuff and beamed back up again none the worse for wear? Plot-wise I understood the purpose of them being there, but it added nothing to the drama. You don't put your chars in a new place unless they're going to face some potential jeopardy, otherwise why bother?) They could have at least damaged the Daedalus--we like the Daedalus, it's an old friend! But the ships went unscathed, as did all the people.
Really they should have just cut out the Fran subplot (because, uh. Yeah. You don't create a sentient being to be destroyed and then just destroy it without a hiccup in about ten minutes' screen-time. That's just bizarre writing! It felt like they grabbed three pages of script from a whole other episode that never got made and shuffled them in without looking) and spent a bit more time on the final confrontation with Nullzilla (for the ReBoot fans among you.) (Sort of a pity, really, because that Fran episode might have been awful but might have been interesting. Especially with the symmetry of Rodney creating life as he learns Teyla's pregnant. As it is I think I'm going to file the whole incident in the 'Closing My Eyes and Plugging My Ears and Humming Loudly' drawer, which is already quite stuffed with SGA artifacts.)
Or they could have just hurt one of the team at the end. I don't really care which one...Rodney or Ronon were both in a position to be recklessly self-sacrificing, but it could have been John if Larrin's ship got damaged, I'm not picky. That probably would've sold the ep for me, because yup, ultimately, I'm that easy after all...
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Date: 2008-01-05 10:30 pm (UTC)But overall I've been really happy with how the Replicator storyline has been handled. Maybe my expectations are low *g*, because between the scene in "Seer" and then John's stricken look in the teaser when the team of Marines is wiped out (plus the fact that the Atlanteans are obviously going to a lot of trouble to try to rescue and protect people) I didn't really feel a need for more scenes emphasizing their guilt. I think just the fact that Atlantis has pretty much turned all of its energies to protecting/rescuing civilians in the Pegasus Galaxy says a lot, I think, because in the past, their actions have been fairly self-serving in that area. They've never gone out and tried to prevent villages from being culled, for example. Most of their assaults against the Wraith have been driven by self-interest. But in this case, they're completely safe; the Replicators don't know where they are. All they have to do is go "isolationist" and carry on as they have been, avoiding Replicators as they've been in the habit of avoiding Wraith while they explore other planets. But instead, they're actively putting themselves in danger trying to protect people and end the threat they caused. Compared to their past behavior, I think that says a LOT about their guilt and willingness to accept responsibility for their actions in this case.
And there have been some episodes in the past where I've really gotten the sense that things were being overly condensed, but for some reason, while I *did* feel that here, it didn't really bother me overly much. I guess in part because the things that were being clipped out would, for the most part, have been deadly dull -- negotiating with the Wraith, negotiating with Larrin's people. As with some other SGA episodes, I think this episode would have been paced better if they'd do more carrying forward of plot threads between episodes -- for example, if they'd re-established contact with the Travelers and started the ball rolling on getting a fleet together in an earlier episode, and then revisited that here. As it is, things had to fall into place too conveniently. But, while there have been episodes where that plot convenience drove me nuts, it really didn't bother me here.
Though I do agree with your nitpick about the lack of peril at the end -- I had the same reaction when I was watching it. They've done much better with the tangible sense of jeopardy in their space battles in the past -- I was expecting screaming and stuff exploding all over the Daedalus bridge and, yeah, an injury or two and some more visible worry between the team would not have gone amiss. *g*
You don't create a sentient being to be destroyed and then just destroy it without a hiccup in about ten minutes' screen-time. That's just bizarre writing!
You know what's funny about the whole Fran thing -- I really LIKED it! I liked that they didn't go the whole "robot wants to become human" route with her. She looks and sounds like a human being, she does seem to have a little free will, but she's still very much driven by her programming. Rodney is right when he points out that she's a program, not a person -- and while the ethics of creating her just to sacrifice her may well be a little skeevy, I was pretty happy with how they maintained her alien-ness and didn't over-humanify her.
So, yeah, overall ... I recognize the validity of your nitpicks and I've had similar problems with a number of SGA episodes in the past, but for whatever reason, it really didn't bother me this time around.
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Date: 2008-01-06 02:51 am (UTC)Your big issue with this one was one of my big issues in season 3, that certain episodes (especially "Irresponsible" and "Game") were WAY too light in tone for the events that were actually happening.
I'm not really bothered by "The Game" because it's a one-shot episode; I can just not take it seriously (don't care for "Irresponsible" but that's because I can't stand the Lucius char) and it's got a lot of comedy and char interaction I enjoy. The trouble with "Be All My Sins..." is that I have to take what happens seriously, but the chars weren't, exactly...ahh, I guess some of it is expectations. I've actually quite liked how they've handled the Replicator storyline myself, more than I've liked their other serious arcs (like Michael), because as you said, the Atlantis crew is stepping forward and claiming responsibility. It's just that previous eps have had serious scenes with the chars discussing this, and this one didn't really have any serious scene except the teaser and Teyla's confession, and...I guess I've come to expect a little deliciously bitter bite of angst to counter the sweet humor? My palate was bored! XD
Though I do agree with your nitpick about the lack of peril at the end -- I had the same reaction when I was watching it. They've done much better with the tangible sense of jeopardy in their space battles in the past
I think if the final climax had been more exciting (seriously, I found the space battle confusing, I can't tell all these ships apart ^^;) I would've been a lot more patient with the episode overall. I don't actually demand char angst - the heroes being awesome and actiony and saving the day does it for me fine ("The Siege" and "The Return" are some of my favorite eps ever.) But the ending action didn't do it for me, so there was nothing to balance out the problems I had with the rest of the ep. (Kind of the opposite of what happened with "Miller's Crossing", in which the ep's conclusion blew away any issues I had with the earlier parts.)
You know what's funny about the whole Fran thing -- I really LIKED it! I liked that they didn't go the whole "robot wants to become human" route with her.
Oh, don't misunderstand me - I think I liked the idea of Fran, keeping her a program rather than having her trying to be human. I just thought that idea that deserved better than to be shoehorned in as a mostly-unnecessary 10-minute plot-fix. (...and okay, let's face it, I'm ultimately a shallow creature who mourns the loss of potential McKay-angst. I like McKay-angst, dangit! He does it so well...) That was the part of the ep that felt most rushed to me. Like you, I didn't really have a problem with the convenience of the Wraith and Larrin's group allying; when I say I wanted it to be a two-parter, it was to expand things like Fran's story. (They really didn't need her, story-wise; her role as easily could have been filled by Zelenka figuring out a key portion of the plan, and having McKay listen to Radek for once, which would have been a nice reversal of "Trinity", and uh, okay, yeah, I enjoy the edited ep I've got in my head more than the actual ep, which might be my real problem here, will shut up now ^^;)
Anyway, yeah...your points are valid, and honestly I wish I had just been able to turn off the part of me that was wanting more, and just enjoyed what we got! Will haveta practice that - should watch more SV, that always makes me appreciate what SGA provides ^^
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