Below, I just posted a 4-part essay that pretty much says everything you say here (only I didn't have the real-world facts to back it up). YES. One of the biggest (if not the biggest) problems with Keller is that she's a medical doctor. With the scientists on Atlantis, they all have crazy esoteric skills, it's easy to handwave their presence as specialists in some field that only a dozen people in the world have heard of. But Keller, by her own admission, is a regular doctor. Of which there are many, many, many on Earth.
The thing is, with Atlantis, they've never actually said the application process is as rigorous as the one you describe here (though they really imply it is in "Intruder.") However, every single other character we've see on Atlantis could have made it through such a process - we don't know if they did, but they could have. But Keller could not. And there's no other reason given that she could've skipped through the process otherwise.
I wonder if that's one of the reasons a lot of us find Keller so irritating - because she's undermining our (fanon?) view of Atlantis. I love the idea that Atlantis is an elite sort of super-university - that it's the home of misfits, but incredibly gifted misfits. Keller seems to go counter to that - that all you need to get on Atlantis is a couple years of medical school and a cute, unsure smile.
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winterfish
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Date: 2008-09-25 02:07 pm (UTC)The thing is, with Atlantis, they've never actually said the application process is as rigorous as the one you describe here (though they really imply it is in "Intruder.") However, every single other character we've see on Atlantis could have made it through such a process - we don't know if they did, but they could have. But Keller could not. And there's no other reason given that she could've skipped through the process otherwise.
I wonder if that's one of the reasons a lot of us find Keller so irritating - because she's undermining our (fanon?) view of Atlantis. I love the idea that Atlantis is an elite sort of super-university - that it's the home of misfits, but incredibly gifted misfits. Keller seems to go counter to that - that all you need to get on Atlantis is a couple years of medical school and a cute, unsure smile.