One fan's views on Sam Carter, the death of Martouf, Season 5 and the departure of Daniel Jackson. January 2002

Being strictly honest, I didn't find Sam a very interesting a character in S1. I thought her first appearance in "Children of the Gods" was embarrassingly dreadful (scripting only, not acting), and I disliked them bringing in an old boyfriend of hers in "First Commandment" as it seemed so hackneyed.  I very much enjoyed "Bloodlines" and the role she played in that one as Daniel's protector, although I did wish that she had been allowed to have more interaction with Teal'c. I liked the way Sam was depicted in "Singularity" but was very disappointed she had to give up Cassandra to Janet Fraiser after all her bonding with her in that episode. And in "Enigma", although I thought she and Nareem had nice chemistry, I didn't like the "Bimboy of the Week" feel to their relationship: alien love interest turns up, he and the lead female have "feelings" for each other, but something intervenes so that by the end of the episode he's either absent/dead, the status quo is restored and she's single again, and apparently without any emotional fallout from the experience. 

In "Solitudes" I did feel we got to know Sam, with the focus of the episode on her character, and especially her relationship with Jack as her commanding officer.  After several episodes in which his rather patronizing and "squashing" behavior towards Sam had contrasted a little uncomfortably with his generally patient and compassionate behavior towards Daniel, we see him showing her real respect. And even better we see her earning his respect by the way she behaves in that episode. I thought Sam sometimes seemed so eager to impress Jack in early missions she came close to acting like someone with a hero-worshipping crush.  Which made me uncomfortable as it seemed to be building up his character at her expense. But in "Solitudes" she really did act like an Air Force officer, and after that episode I thought how interesting she could be if the right kind of episode was written for her.

But on the whole I thought although Sam got a lot of screen time in S1, and a lot of episodes centered around her, the writers and directors somehow missed out on bringing Sam into any kind of consistent focus until S2. (Very much like S4, where both Sam and Jack never seemed to be off our screens in every episode, yet we barely learnt anything about either one of them.) 

The episode that really impressed me where Sam was concerned was "In The Line of Duty". I thought what happened to Sam was *so* original. The idea of having Jolinar be a force for "good" who gave her life to save Sam was unexpected, as was Sam being left so isolated at the end of the episode by her teammates not understanding what she had been through. There were no easy choices for SG1 and no pat conclusion.  (Jack might well have killed Jolinar and almost killed Sam by his actions, but I felt he was right to put the safety of the base first.) Best of all from then on, Jolinar was a part of Sam, and the show gave us proper follow through. There was a realization in "Need" she still has access to Jolinar's memories. In "Thor's Chariot" there is the revelation she can use Goa'uld technology. After that we get the very complicated relationship with her father in "Secrets". I thought Sam showed real heroism and strength of character when, even though her father is dying, and she is thwarting his dying wish for her, she still doesn't tell him about the Stargate program.  

Then in "The Tok'ra" we learn that Jolinar/Rosha had a previous emotional connection to Lantesh/Martouf which might now be part of Sam's inheritance from Jolinar, as well as the plot twist of her father now becoming permanently what Sam had briefly been when taken as a host by Jolinar. The way Jacob's character has developed as a result of this blending with Selmak is very good television, as is the way his relationship with Sam has evolved as a result.

I liked the way this storyline isolated her from the rest of the team. (Well from Jack and Daniel although I still think we should have seen it bringing her closer to Teal'c as he was the only one who was sympathetic to the Tok'ra and admired what they were trying to achieve.) It made her simultaneously stronger and more vulnerable, especially with her feelings for Martouf being a reaction over which she had little control but which she did not know was her "own" or not. There were some touching scenes between Sam and her father, and bonding between Sam and Martouf when he will not leave her father. I got a real sense of the Tok'ra as people Sam could empathize with and understand, and now also had emotional connections to quite apart from her existing sympathy towards them because of the memories of Jolinar inside her.

Every time Martouf reappeared we had more insights into Sam. Their relationship was allowed to develop at a convincing speed, as was the progress of her changing relationship with her father. Martouf reappeared in "Serpent's Song" where he was portrayed as a character who was not perfect by any means, but was sympathetic if a little unreachable at times. Then there was what seemed to me to be the real breakthrough in their relationship in "Jolinar's Memories-The Devil You Know". I think this is the ultimate Sam episode. (As well as the ultimate Sam-Martouf episode.) AT's acting was so good in this episode, and something I took for granted at the time - Sam being allowed to be grubby and not wear obvious make-up - I am even more grateful for since "Beneath the Surface" 's contrasting (and I think very inferior) make-up and depiction of Sam under stress.

In this episode, she and Martouf are brought together by their shared grief/realization of what Jolinar endured when she was Sokar and Bynar's prisoner. We see Martouf's vulnerability at the same time as Jacob is dying and Sam has to be strong for both of them while being forced to relive some of hers (and Jolinar's) most traumatic memories. Once again Martouf shows compassion for her father as well as for Sam.  Her relationship with Martouf at the end of those episodes has undergone major growth. They have an understanding because of the way the memories of Jolinar have been accessed inside her that no one else does. She knows how Jolinar felt about Martouf and how Martouf felt about Jolinar. They are linked in a way that no one else on SG1 can really comprehend.

Her words to Nareem in "Pretense" definitely seemed to suggest her feelings for Martouf were just as important to Sam (and as confusing for her) as we had seen in "Jolinar's Memories etc". It felt very much as if Sam's relationship with Martouf was an important part of the person she was now, someone who had been forever changed by her (temporary) blending with Jolinar. Someone who could never now again be someone who did not have those memories and that slight separation from the rest of the human race as a result. 

So, given the way their relationship had been so carefully developed over so many episodes and such a long period of time, the death of Martouf should have been the most major trauma Sam has undergone since her blending with Jolinar. It should have been a big part of S4. Instead it felt as if it - and all of the painstaking character development of Sam which had gone before - was just thrown away in one episode. The writers had carefully created a romantic relationship for one of the members of SG1 that wasn't predictable, that actually added to the character development of a female character instead of simplifying her, and which felt as if it had a long way still to run, then effectively cut it off at the knees without putting anything in its place. 

Instead of a complex relationship between two people from two different cultures, with a hundred years of shared memories between them, but only an acquaintance of a few intense and usually very stressful occasions, we got a half-hearted attempt to depict Sam as someone with a crush on her CO. Something partially explored and quickly abandoned in S1, I presumed at the time, because the writers had realized how denigrating to women officers and the Air Force it could seem. Yet, four years later it came back again, and a much more interesting relationship (to me at any rate) was cleared out of the way without any ceremony apparently to accommodate it. Then we neither got any development of Sam as someone with the memories of a Tok'ra who had once loved Martouf in mourning for him, or as a struggling subordinate trying to deal with innappropriate feelings for her CO. For me, in S4, Sam became as uninteresting all over again as she had been in S1. Only this time it was like losing a friend because I had come to know the character I believed the writers and actor to be developing so much better.

I also feel very cheated that the writers spent so much screen time and episodes building up a relationship between Sam and Martouf which made me feel they could never be happy apart only to drop it again. Why bother to tell us that while Martouf/Lantesh and Rosha/Jolinar loved one another far more deeply than most humans (who haven't the advantage of having being blended with a Tok'ra) can even comprehend then never do anything with it? Why bother spending so much of  "Jolinar's Memories & The Devil You Know" showing us so clearly how Sam first came to understand the extent of that love and then began to develop her own feelings for Martouf, that were separate from Jolinar's feelings for Lantesh, and then just ignore it?

I would hate their relationship to end with an episode as poorly conceived and executed as "Divide & Conquer". After all that build up, I can accept a hiatus in hers and Martouf's relationship, but to have it end in such a fashion seems to make a nonsense of everything which went before. "Divide & Conquer" just wasn't a good enough episode to be the climax of a romantic relationship which had been a part of the show and a part of Sam for so long. It required something of the quality of "Forever In A Day" if they truly wanted to draw a line underneath that relationship, and then proper follow-up afterwards. We got neither. Now, leaving me totally confused as to what their intentions were supposed to be from the beginning for the Jolinar thread, the Sam-Martouf relationship, and, as it clearly wasn't done to give us any character insight in Sam, what the point was of killing Martouf in "Divide & Conquer" in the first place.

If only they had made Martouf's death have some kind of point in Sam's life and showed some consequences from it, I might not have minded so much. It was as the time went on and it became more and more obvious they didn't really have any interest in Sam or Martouf or their relationship any more that I found myself becoming more and more upset by his death. Up until "Beneath the Surface" I thought Sam losing Martouf was supposed to be the defining act of the season (S4). The "feelings" "revelations" weren't something I paid much attention to, I'm afraid. Some aspects of the scene were almost comic (Jack not knowing what Sam was talking about and he did kiss Anise in the same episode) and to me the s/j bits and pieces they put in to previous episodes had never been more than a surface flirtation in this universe (although a proper romance in other universes and very enjoyable in fanfic) usually arising out of ad-libs and not meant to be taken seriously by anyone. It never seemed to be part of any character arc or be anything more than the mildest subtext, unlike the Sam-Martouf relationship which seemed pivotal to who Sam was since her blending with Jolinar. (She is physically altered by her contact with the Tok'ra. She is never the same person again. This seems to me to be a relationship operating on an entirely different level from a 'tank top' joke in S1.) So I thought they would be about as likely to kill off the Sam-Martouf relationship to concentrate on the Sam-Jack one as they would be to kill off Daniel so they could keep Rothman. 

I felt that from mid-S1 to mid-S3 Sam's character became more complex and interesting, moving from 'high' ("Solitudes") to 'high' ("In the Line of Duty") to 'high' ("Jolinar's Memories") but that from "A Hundred Days" onwards we have seen only new 'lows' for Sam. From being strong, compassionate, brave, brilliant, sometimes arrogant, but also sometimes riddled with self-doubt, Sam became petty, selfish, unprofessional, cold to her friends, one-dimensional in the way she was written, and latterly defined only by her attraction to men. It feels as if the writers no longer feel Sam is interesting unless some man *deems* her so by paying attention to her. I couldn't see the point of Sam being the 'object of desire' of first Orlin ("Ascension") then Nareem ("Between Two Fires") then Joe ("2001") when nothing came of any of it. What does it tell us about Sam that some man we don't really know or have much interest in finds her attractive? We know what Sam looks like. We can see her on our screens. Instead of wasting so much time telling everyone that Sam is a pretty woman men find attractive (which I think we can see for ourselves) they could have told us how Sam feels about things; what her opinion is; especially how she feels about being part Tok'ra or having a father who is a Tok'ra, or having a brother she can't tell about her work, or not being able to see Cassandra as much as she likes, and especially how it felt to lose Martouf when a part of her was in love with him. 

I thought "Desperate Measures" was the worst so-called 'Sam' episode of S5 until I saw "Fail Safe" (admittedly only on a download). I didn't feel "Desperate Measures" had anything to say about Sam at all, or her relationship with the other characters. I hate the fact they have now made it *canon* that the rest of SG1 (and Janet Fraiser) apparently care so little about Sam and have so little contact with her that she can go missing for 48 hours and none of them even notice. All this episode had to do with Sam was to put out some biographical data which we already knew anyway, and no character insight. Are the men writing this show now so divorced from the concept of Sam as a living, breathing, human being that they feel that by saying she needs more sedative than a 'normal' person this tells us something about her? What does the contents of Sam's bloodstream have to do with how it feels for her to have the memories of another person in her subconscious? I didn't even feel this episode was written for Sam. It felt more as if it had originally been intended to be about Scully from "The X Files".

Perhaps it isn't fair to talk about an episode I have only seen on a small screen but I thought "Fail Safe" had nothing to do with "Stargate" and everything to do with the movie "Armageddon" and nothing to do with *Sam* but everything to do with the writer(s) having been exposed to the character of Wonder Woman at an impressionable age. She was just a cipher for plot information again in this episode, which was the one where my husband - who finds Amanda Tapping very attractive - announced that he was now so sick of Sam he wasn't prepared to watch another episode in which she featured. Even on Sam-centered lists of which I am a member people are talking about S5 feeling like a 'Sam-A-Thon' and it's true. For two seasons now we have had far too much Sam to far too little purpose and it has done terrible damage to the character. I feel so sorry for Amanda Tapping it makes me want to cry. She has worked so hard to make Sam an interesting character and been thwarted by the writers and their own problems writing for women. I have reached the point where I can hardly bear to tune in to see what they've done to Sam this week. If it had been Amanda Tapping rather than Michael Shanks who said that she was leaving the show I would have felt equally supportive of her decision. I think to remove Sam from the 'harm's way' these new writers represent may be the only way to stop them ruining her even more and alienating the audience who used to like her still further. 

I am angry the writer who wrote "Solitudes" (Brad Wright) and the writer who wrote "In the Line of Duty" (Robert Cooper) and who are both still producers on the show have allowed  Sam to be turned into the Universal Love Interest, "Goa'uld Sniffer", and as someone put it on the NewsGroup, "Super Sam Savior of the Universe" when in the earlier seasons they seemed to want her to be an interesting character in her own right.

I feel the way Daniel was treated in S5 left Michael Shanks no choice but to leave the show. Daniel is the character who opened the Stargate. He and Jack should always have been equals within the show, whatever the billing on the titles of the show of the actors who play them. He is the character who has drawn the most viewers to the show from the movie as without Movie Daniel's existence there would not have been enough interest to make a series in the first place. He is the character most movie-viewers remember, and it was his story people wanted to see continued. The Jack in the movie was not an interesting enough character to have merited a spin-off series meaning there would not ven be a show without Daniel Jackson. The attitude the writers have displayed towards the character who is effectively earning their bread and butter for them has been not just disloyal but despicable - and that isn't a word I use lightly. 

I and I know many other (offline) viewers were attracted to the show initially because of the character of Daniel and how well Michael Shanks managed to form a bridge between the Movie Daniel and the new show. I stayed because I liked the compassion Jack showed to his friends, the way the Jack and Daniel chemistry was so much stronger in the series than it had been even in the movie, the strong character they promised to allow Sam to become (we had assurances in S1 that she would be 'one of the boys' and would never be the love interest for any of the male characters because that was 'just too easy a way to go') and the interesting character Teal'c was. Best of all was how much they cared about one another and the possibilities for development all of the characters and their relationships with one another seemed to promise back then. Now all of those possibilities seem to have been wasted, undermined, or positively ruined.

The Jack-Daniel friendship used to be a mixture of banter and ideological disagreements that were *always* underpinned by their obvious concern and compassion for one another. When Jack and Daniel argued in "One False Step" they were so upset by the disagreement they had to apologize to one another and were clearly dismayed by the way they had spoken to one another.  Now the writers seem to have it fixed in their heads that unpleasant arguments are the norm for the characters rather than the aberration it was upposed to be in that episode. It was so shockingly out of character for Jack in the beginning of "Shades of Grey" when he tells Daniel to "shut up" that it was used as the end of the teaser but no one seems to have explained that to the writers. I do sometimes wonder if the newer writers have even watched the earlier episodes or understood them if they have. I can't remember the last time in recent episodes I saw any trace of the Jack who rushed to Daniel's side in "There But For The Grace of God" with such naked anxiety on his face. It is a sad thing when a viewer has to go back two years to find a version of the main character in the show she actually recognizes.

If Jack is now someone who is so indifferent to the suffering of his teammates that he will just stand there when Sam is in obvious pain on the ramp, and show no concern about Daniel when he is heading off on a dangerous mission then he is not a character I have ny interest in any more. As Jack is such a large part of the show, this means I have no interest in the show either. The way Teal'c has been changed from an important part of the team in the first three seasons to a hat stand is heart breaking and as others have pointed out looks positively racist. What has been done to Sam I have already mentioned and how upsetting I find it. In some ways I think Daniel is the lucky one. In S4 his was the only character who managed to hang onto some integrity. In S5 he has featured so little that he is not really associated with any of the (many) poor episodes the season has produced. I don't think anyone who watched the first three seasons with such pleasure and admiration and then was confronted with the ruination of all that had gone before in the last two seasons has any doubt as to why Michael Shanks left this show or why he was so right to do so. 

Only by a major overhaul of the writing staff and by an insistence on the part of MGM (and SciFi channel) that the previous quality of the show is maintained again do I think there is any way forward or back for this show. Frankly, I don't *want* Michael Shanks to come back until the show is good enough for Daniel again. I hope before considering a return he is insisting on a written assurance from the producers that Daniel will never be downgraded again as he was in S5, that the importance of the Jack-Daniel friendship will take center stage in the majority of S6 episodes, and that Brad Wright, Robert Cooper and Peter DeLuise will be writing the lion's share of the S6 episodes *not* the newer writers who have displayed their contempt for the characters and us fans in far too many episodes now. I also hope that he doesn't  sign anything until he has read the scripts they want him to perform in because S5 started well and look how it ended up. 

These writers clearly can't be trusted to maintain quality and character integrity unless they are made to do so and as MGM have been totally negligent in ensuring this happens I think all we have left to rely on is any leverage Michael Shanks can exert. I don't expect him to insist that the Sam/Jack relationship is proclaimed finished *on* screen as well as off before it does any more harm to the character of Jack and Sam - although I wish someone would! They have ruined that relationship so completely I can't even enjoy it in fanfic now and I bitterly resent that. I don't expect him to demand better treatment for Sam or for Teal'c - although again I wish someone would. I do hope, however, that he is never again going to let them treat Daniel the way he has been treated by these writers this season, and that the Jack-Daniel relationship is made a significant part of any plot arc the writers come up with for S6. 

Other people may be happy to watch any show that features the word "Stargate" in the title but I have no interest in watching a preview for a spin-off show I have no intention of watching even if that is all these writers are now interested in writing. If that is what their intentions were/are for S6, I honestly think it would be better if the show were cancelled before the actors wasted any more of their time on it.

I must admit too that I sincerely regret that Amanda Tapping and Christopher Judge didn't leave at the same time as Michael Shanks did. Perhaps if they had done the writers would have had to face just how negligent they have been to these characters, these actors, and in particular to us, the fans, who have not for some time now, been getting the show on our screens that we want to watch. I feel Michael Shanks is really our last hope of ever getting our show back but I do wish he had been given more support by people on the set and as well as off it, and most of all wish that MGM had ensured this situation had never been allowed to develop to the point where we are now sick of Jack, even more sick of his callous indifference to the person who used to be his best friend, sick of the cipher Sam has become, can hardly remember what Teal'c looks like, and are being forced to wave goodbye to Daniel Jackson because the best thing his actor can do for both the character and us fans is to leave.

Kerenza

(c) 2001 Kerenza.  All rights recognised.  No copyright infringement intended.