We've told TPTB that we don't want the product they are trying to sell us.  Here we explain to them why and present some Stargate Solutions.

Write or Wrong? Writing Stargate SG-1

"Stargate is a tough show to write for," continues Glassner. "One of the reasons for this is that we want to give something to all of our leads to do in every episode and occasionally that's a challenge if the plot centres on just one of them." 

Jonathan Glassner, Executive  Producer, Stargate SG-1 Seasons One - Three.

PhoenixE: An open letter to Mr. Joseph Mallozzi continued

Conflict

Conflict: noun.  Disagreement; struggle or fight. Verb: be incompatible.

Red Sky and Between Two Fires

I know I said the next section I was going to work on was humour, but the more I got to thinking about these two episodes the more I realised they belonged in this section, instead of the 'Team' section where I was originally going to discuss them.

Because they deal with the same issues as SE, TOS and BoB.  Genocide, the moral issue of who deserves to live and who doesn't - and who gets to decide.  As well as considering these issues within the framework of two different alien cultures with vastly differing ideologies and value systems from each other and us as well  - one who has judged US to be morally and developmentally inferior - and an entire culture based on absolute faith to the point of willingly submitting to their own extinction -  belief which Jack judges to be inferior and in need of correction because it is founded on a lie.

These scenarios involve no-win situations, one which is the team's fault, and one in which the team is embroiled because of the results of decisions someone ELSE makes to involve them to save their own asses, and how the members of SG-1 cope with these situations, again - herein lies the conflict in these pieces.

However, there is a marked difference in the type of conflict these scenarios generate and how the characters react to it and each other which makes them on one hand MORE successful that TOS and SE and somewhat less than successful than BoB.  The most important difference being in how the PEOPLE SG-1 are trying to save take a part in the proceedings - being far more proactive and themselves responsible for a lot of the conflict which ensues in Red Sky.  And in Between Two Fires the Tollan are the direct CAUSE of the danger because of their response to the moral dilemma they are offered before the episode even begins  - the ones who did the judging about who deserved to live, mainly themselves, and based on this assessment creating the situation SG-1 is forced to deal with. The Tollan decide preserving their own race justifies colluding with the Goa'uld into luring the Earth and SG-1 into a deal which will lead to the Earth's ultimate destruction.

While Red Sky suffered somewhat from the same problems of TOS and SE of making one member of SG-1 - Jack, this time - the one the most at odds with the rest of his team mates at no time did Between Two Fires throw all of the moral burden on one team member.  Everyone got ample opportunity to express their feelings on the situation and give the Tollans what for.  It wasn't just the overly simplistic, polarised 'good guy/bad guy' scenario so popular in the fourth season with Daniel being used as the moral mouthpiece, the sole supporter of the right and Jack opposed to him, on the other side and in the wrong.  Which was mighty refreshing to finally see, I must say!

In BTF there was still plenty of conflict and a dangerous situation but the team was united, both in purpose and action in a way they definitely weren't in Red Sky.  On the same side, working together to solve a problem they for once didn't cause but were going to be the victims of just the same.  This is what made it work the most for me even when some glaring problems with the plot reared their ugly heads.

Just a little aside to give you something to think about - I'm going to get into this a little further when I deal with episodes that fall under the X-Gate umbrella. (Decided to create yet another category.)

The Earth and SG-1 wouldn't have been drawn into this techno-trap of the Tollan in the first place and we wouldn't continue to be vulnerable to this kind of manipulation/exploitation (in 2001) if it wasn't for this whole 'defend the Earth against the Goa'uld' driving technological imperative that has pretty much become the SGC's only reason now for going through the gate.

Get the guns.  Get the damned guns. Nothing else matters any more but getting the stupid guns.

The SGC's greedy hunger for technology at any cost - personified in Jack and echoed in Sam and Hammond - is what made The Other Side so unpalatable and eps like 2010 and 2001 possible (the latter ANOTHER ep where we are almost led by our noses down the path to destruction by our single-minded focus on and greed for weapons And the former - where we DID fall for it and did indeed become victims of our own techno-envy).

'Getting the guns' is ultimately a pointless, red herring story line keeping the team looking for pie in the sky they can't possibly ever find, trying to fulfil a 'prime directive' they won't ever be able to achieve creating artificial conflict in the form of 'pressure' from above to 'produce' - further ensuring the team will keep embarking on the relentless but perpetually fruitless technology acquiring merry-go-round, going out there to 'score the big one' that'll never happen - all of which has been a really huge, huge mistake from the word go because the story line is a big fat dead end.

Because if the show needs to stay contemporary, set in our present time and on our present Earth, which it has so far, and if the gate is to stay a secret because in the here and now, on this Earth it still is, Wormhole X-treme notwithstanding  - well, I'm looking around and I don't see too many ion canons and transporters.  Or space ships.  Or any of the other cool stuff the SGC would realistically need to procure to actually be able to effectively defend the planet against the Goa'uld.  If it really happened we'd then have to deal with our world becoming like it is in 2010 - and then it wouldn't be our contemporary world, would it?

It would be impossible to get it and use it and still be able to keep the whole program a secret or not have what they find significantly impact on our society in ways that would completely change it and would have to be reflected in the story line.  Logistically ridiculous to even suggest it.  In fact, with all that has happened it's stretching the bonds of credulity the Stargate is still a secret.  Not to mention how they've been able to 'explain' a few of the medical/pharmacological advances they've alluded to from plants etc they've brought back.  Also let's not get into the moral issues around having access to things like healing devices and miracle drugs and such which could save lives if released into mainstream society, but then, how could they explain where it came from and keep the gate secret?

Because realistically dealing with the ramifications of SG-1 actually succeeding in getting and keeping significant, useful alien technology and how it would impact on our society would be more trouble than I'm sure you'd want to deal with - it's just not ever going to happen, is it?

For instance, a simple thing (hah!) like a matter transporter.  'We'll take a dozen' indeed - that one single device would instantly render every conventional method of transportation, shipping, etc, make trains, ships, planes, buses, cars even, obsolete.  Who's going to spend hours on a plane when they can be across the globe in seconds?

I would say something like this would have a couple of significant impacts on our society, wouldn't you?  And that's just one device.

So the whole 'obtain technology to defend the Goa'uld thing' is the ultimate exercise in futility. A total dead end. Waste not only of the team's time, but ours as well.  We know damned well it's never going to happen.  Jack is never going to get his hands on that 'big honking space gun' and Sam is NEVER going to be able to bring home a fusion reactor or a miracle alien elixir that will instantly restore us to health or 'change the shape of physics' as we know it.  Never. Not and have our world stay the way it is.  It can't happen, so it won't.

All bringing the Goa'uld into it has accomplished is provide a threat to the Earth which can never be averted until the Goa'uld themselves are averted and furnish a military justification for the offworld missions which can never be satisfied.  What's more, having the SGC constantly pressured to get the goods to stay in business practically ensures we can be suckered by any advanced race who knows all they have to do to get us to hand them the keys to the planet is to promise us lots and lots of big guns. Hence it gives us an enormous Achilles heel in the form of defend the planet desperation and sets us nicely up  for the con job of the Tollan and the Aschen. Or any other race the Goa'uld wants to force to 'front' for them when they spring their next little techno trap on us.

Hey, they got us to bite once.  They've got our number now.  You bet they'll try it again.  Or they should, if they were being written properly. And next time, we might not be so lucky having a friend on the inside who can alert us to the danger or a bloodstained note from the future telling us we should maybe be looking the gift-horse in the mouth.

Every alien confidence man in the galaxy is going to put the Earth on the top of his 'to bilk' list.  I can just see a whole herd of Harry Mudds posing as off world arms merchants offering to give the gullible Tau'ri the business. 'Trust me, honey, sweetie, baby, got a really sweet deal for you.  You want guns, have I got some guns for you. As well as some swampland in the Crab Nebula.  Oh yeah, and while we're at it, do you want to talk bridges..'

Bad enough our allies call us 'primitive' but to all the opportunists out there by now the word Tau'ri has to be synonymous with 'sucker' - comforting to be regarded as a race of potential marks for the con of the century.

And the least desirable result of venturing down this story path, it's also provided for the opening of the door for all the X-Gate nonsense.

This 'gotta go and get the weapons to defend the 'Earth' crap has become the justification for using the gate and the 'excuse' to keep it up and running which was never necessary in the first two seasons.  It's an extremely depressing commentary on our value systems and society in general - not to mention the values of the government of the United States, that 'peaceful exploring' and increasing our knowledge of the universe and subsequently enriching ourselves as a species through contact and meaningful interaction (not just carping at them to give us guns) with other races would not be considered enough of a justification for the Stargate program's continued existence. The gate might be in the hands of the military, but the funding is coming from the US government and that they feel getting bigger guns is more important than possibly making contact with people who can expand our knowledge and understanding in other ways - science, medicine, culture -

To attempt to rationalise making the decision to embark on this storyline by saying because the gate is in the hands of the military and most of SG-1 are military and the SGC is a military organisation therefore it should have military goals and objectives so the missions through the Stargate should have a 'military' focus to give our mostly military team something military to do each week is simplistic, not to mention unimaginative and taking the easy way out.  And as I said before, completely unnecessary.

There are no 'new' stories in science fiction?  Oh really?

The first and second season got by just fine without this relentless and depressing military focus and 'weapons-obsession' - and there were plenty of the occasions for Jack, Sam and Teal'c to do their thing without having to make it all about trying to get more guns each week.  As a matter of fact, the second season of peaceful exploration was the best, strongest season of all.

Peaceful exploring was the focus and the purpose of the missions, the reason why the team went through that gate, and within that framework there were plenty of times when the team ventured into the unknown and had to use all their military skills and acumen to get themselves out of a dangerous situation.

It breaks my heart when I think of the potential this premise had to be really DIFFERENT - to speak to the greater, higher values and goals it is possible for us to aspire to attain and instead went down the quick and easy path of making the whole thing all about more fighting and war and trying to wrangle bigger and better ways of waging it out of the universe.

Not to mention the equally depressing Earthside plotting and scheming and back-biting and power mongering.  Rubbing our noses in the lowest common denominator of humanity with deplorable characters like Kinsey, Maybourne and Simmons when all the while we could have been leaving all of that behind us, reaching out for something greater - meaning of life stuff, stepping with awe and wonder through the gate with SG-1, our eyes on the stars.

It all depresses me more than I can say.

But enough of that, no sense crying over what should have been, on to what is and talking about these two episodes.

The funny thing about them is how my opinion of them has changed over time and subsequent viewings.  Red Sky was an earlier entry than BTF - the fifth episode in the Fifth season, and because it had so much of Jack and Daniel actually being in the same scene together (although Daniel didn't really do much besides tag along at Jack's heels and look fetching and be ignored by Jack and the focus of his anger a lot) - which by this time we were so pathetically GRATEFUL for - I loved it on the strength of the fact we got to see Jack and Daniel talking to each other and ignored some of the more obvious character problems - again with Jack - and a premise so ridiculous it had some of the more knowledgeable science types on our lists screaming for days.

On first viewing I loved this episode, however, the more I watch it now, the less I like it.  Not only is the plot extremely flawed, the science absolutely ridiculous, but once again Jack is being written for the most part as a one note boor.  Impatient, aggressive, rude, condescending to his team mates, his continual 'alpha confrontational' clashes with
Brother Malchus - rudely challenging his authority, his function, ridiculing his beliefs and insulting him  - (shouldn't you be out there inciting a mob? - classy, Jack, really classy) all of which goads Malchus into blowing up the rocket.  That action wasn't about belief, it was about POWER.  Jack was threatening it - so his plan had to be opposed and stopped.  Jack's unrelentingly belligerent and adversarial attitude toward the Malchus precipitated that entire crisis - but we'll look at this in a little more detail in a bit.

I find I dislike this episode intensely now for the same reasons I like BTF more and more every time I watch it.  It aired further down the road, after we were lulled by what we had seen previously into a false sense of security our show was intact again, Jack and Daniel were back, our team was back so we could afford to be a little more critical.

I found too many things wrong with the plot to like it the first time, but now, watching it again and evaluating it against the other episodes which constitute the season up to Wormhole X-treme (as I said before, that's as far as I have seen, and from the sounds of it, might be as much of the fifth season as I ever watch because so far I haven't heard anything that makes me particularly eager to tune into a flaming wreck.  Especially as I know it's going to end in Meridian.) I'm inclined to cut the plot problems a whole lot more slack because of the entirely wonderful characterisations.

And they are wonderful.  These episodes were both written by Mr Wilkerson and while his first effort had some problems in the characterisation department, he's obviously done some homework since, and it shows.  Especially when it comes to Jack.

As far as I am concerned there are only four episodes this season where Jack is written properly and he is in character, interacting with the members of his team and NOT the Mary Sue team substitute of the week - and this is one of them.

Jack is definitely back in Between Two Fires, and he's great.  He's coolly sarcastic, witty - some of his 'aside' comments to Hammond and Teal'c and Trevel are howlers, and right in character - he's smart, suspicious but diplomatic, tactful, even - voices his objections and concerns, snarks a bit at Trevel but never goes over the top.  He THINKS, plans, evaluates, discusses - listens - and then shows us what a canny strategist and tactician he is to boot.

He doesn't start foaming at the mouth and running amok wanting to bash things before he's figured out what's going on, he uses his brains as well as his brawn and even gets to blow something up (well, Nareem does) in a way that makes sense and serves a purpose.  He is a man of action who does not become one until he's gotten ALL the information, completely evaluated the situation, decided what to do and formed a very clever and effective plan for dealing with the threat.  This is a leader - and this is Jack being one.  We always knew he had it in him, so nice to see it again.

I now love this episode for the Jack/Daniel interaction - which is amusing, quite endearing but also totally in keeping with the scenario and the characters/relationship between these two men, I love it for the inclusive and in character ways Sam and Teal'c are also written, but I mostly love it for what it does for Jack.  Gives him back to us, as the man we know and love and respect and shake our heads over at some of the completely outrageous things that come out of his mouth only he can get away with.  Jack the lad.  Here he is.  God, have we missed him!

So, yeah, there are problems with the plot but I'm finding if the characters are right and the dynamic is right - I'm willing to be far more forgiving.  I guess I was pretty surprised to discover for me, because of my changing opinion about them over time and subsequent viewing it really IS all about the characters.  That's what is most important to me.  The cleverest plot in the world wouldn't please me if the members of my team weren't being themselves within it.  But if the people are the people I know even if the plot doesn't hang together so well I'm getting most of what I want.

Of course, what would make me REALLY happy would be a clever, plausible plot AND excellent characterisations, not that I want to sound greedy or anything, but well, it would.

I'm just saying...

But on to Red Sky.

I'm warning you up front, I'm taking a fine-tooth comb to this one.  I realise it is a first script from a new writer and because it is - some of these problems go with the 'finding your footing' territory. Which I fully acknowledge, and I want to make a point of saying I'm not seeking to pick on this particular script, per se - it's no worse than a lot of scripts in the forth and fifth season. And some cases, a little better.  It just so happens it has something I need for the purposes of what I'm trying to accomplish, here.  A whole lot of somethings, actually.

Problems.  Specific kinds of problems, the SAME problems that have been plaguing the writing in this series since practically the beginning (and bugging the crap out of us in the process) and a LOT of them, all in the same episode.  So I figure as long as I have so many of them all under the same roof like this I might as well go after them here, now, in this one episode, that way they're dealt with now and I don't need to bang on about them later on down the road.   Like rounding them all up in the same barrel all nice and convenient for the shooting.

Consequently it's going to look like I'm singling out this episode out for especially heavy criticism, but that's not the case.  My comments are also as much about the bigger picture and what has gone before to contribute to what we now have to contend with - so in the long run it's actually not so much about the episode itself at all but the bigger, larger, much more problematic state of the series in general, no matter the way it appears.

We're also talking a lot of series history - and that's something Mr Wilkinson is neither responsible for nor has any control over but has now to try and contend with and find a way to make work. I sympathise.  With the way continuity has been played fast and loose with over the course of the run he's got his work cut out for him, and I acknowledge sometimes the best you can do isn't great, but it's also not your fault given what you have to work with.

So, I would like to assure Mr Wilkinson I am not picking on him by picking apart his episode, it's just a really good example of a lot of the things that have been bugging fans - certainly bugging me - about the way the eps are written and I figure if I'm gonna do this thing - I might as well do it right.

Also, I offer him this consolation just before proceeding to go on and on and on at what might seem to some to be extremely pedantic lengths about what might also seem to be very minor points (stay with me, it's about the larger principle they represent) -  I really do like the characterisation in Between Two Fires and I'll have some very nice things to say about it - also at length - in due course.

Hey, I do believe in giving credit where credit is due.  This isn't just about saying 'I don't like this, this stinks' for a thousand pages. I'm just as happy to acknowledge when it's good as when it's bad.  Much happier as a matter of fact.  I'd prefer there to be a lot more good than bad.  Which is ultimately what this who exercise is all about - making an attempt to inform about the bad so hopefully imparting the information will enable some rehabilitation of the material to occur so in the future we'll get way more good then bad.

Hey, I'm an optimist.  It could happen!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled, about to be shredded episode.

Opening this on an admittedly shallow note: in the teaser scene the team recover from getting dumped on their butts by an unusually rough ride through the wormhole and in the process the boonie makes an lovely but unfortunately brief cameo appearance before Daniel takes it off again for the rest of the episode.  Sigh.  (Hey, I like the boonie.  Sue me!)

Oh, the explanation Sam then gives Jack for why the team doesn't routinely tumble out the gate as abruptly now as they used to during the movie and the beginning of the series - nice touch.

However, then she starts to burble on about 'dialling protocols' and basically try to sell us on the gate operating a different way to which we've always observed it to operate.

Which is actually fairly simply - the computer dials an address, 'encodes' each chevron in succession electronically in lieu of a person manually keying it in on the DHD - each chevron  'locks' but the gate doesn't engage and the wormhole form until the POO chevron locks and loads.  And if that POO doesn't lock - the gate doesn't go.

We've seen this happen over and over again when the gate does not work.  In Solitudes, Torment of Tantalus, Window of Opportunity and Watergate, to name some names.  We know Sam has had to make some stellar drift adjustments in the actual locations of the target destinations and we've seen a cold dialling program that randomly calls up and dials dead addresses on the chance something has changed - like someone uncovering a gate - and they might now be viable (New Ground), but this is the first we've heard of any 'dialling protocols' that are in place or can or need to be bypassed. Not to mention for all we can see - the DHD is like a big keyboard - all you can do with it, short of taking it apart, is hit the six chevrons of the address you're dialling followed by the POO, then whack that centre crystal and wait for the ka-woosh. That's it.  It doesn't even have a 'last address dialled' button you can hit to call up the chevrons of the previous address (which would have come in handy, lots of times).  No room for doing anything fancy with it involving any sort of 'dialling protocols'.

And yet, Sam's dialling program is more sophisticated than the DHD?  Ummm, I know she's a visionary genius and all, but I don't think so.

This is a 'new' way the gate works for the purposes of this story, another example of 'making it up as we go' that has been happening too much with this series over the past three years.

You would not believe how much energy and discussion has gone into trying to make the Stargate's functioning - as it has been presented to us - work logically.  It's ultimately an exercise in futility because you guys seem to forget your own continuity and change the rules whenever you need to story by story.  Having the guys do stuff like dialling the gate manually like in ToT, Prisoners, Nemesis - forgetting you've already established - or maybe more properly hoping we won't remember - even though you have Sam remind us again, in 2001, manually dialling the gate won't - um - work because the reason why the Aschen can't use their gate to go romping through the universe and need our shift corrected address info is because they don't have a DHD to compensate for stellar drift (hold on to this point I'll be expanding on it more later) - which is why OUR DHD-less gate didn't work in CoTG until Daniel told them about the Abydos cartouche etc etc and gave Sam the hint about stellar drift  (except between Abydos and Earth and  between the Torment of Tantalus planet, which like Abydos is close enough to Earth for the gate 'stellar drift' thing not to apply).  So Sam says.

Is anyone else getting a headache from all of this?

So logically, dialling the gate by hand shouldn't work. You can spin the wheel all you want, but the destination has moved so the chevrons won't connect with the target gate you're trying to dial and encode without the DHD compensating for stellar drift....yadda yadda.... And I don't even want to talk about the discussions that have gone into trying to make the whole DHD/'stellar drift' thing make sense.... Or why a DHD designed by an alien race, possibly from another galaxy would have chevrons in the shape of star constellations as they look from EARTH....

And, oh yeah, in Watergate?  Whacking a DHD on the beta gate the Russians have makes it 'supersede' the alpha gate at the SGC when both gates are on line?  Since when?  How do they know this?  Did they do tests with the DHD from Antarctica and the alpha gate when we still had both that enabled them to determine this?  Why weren't we told?  Besides, if that really IS the case, then howcum every single team that went through the gate didn't return via the gate in Antarctica.  Which is still fully functional with an attached DHD even though it's in a block of ice.  When Sam digs down to uncover the chevrons she just starts whacking and the gate starts working.  She doesn't get through to Earth, but we know why and it isn't the DHD's fault. How do you 'connect' a DHD anyway? (it mustn't be too hard, because Daniel was able to figure out how to do it all by his lonesome when he finds the DHD on Abydos).  How do you disconnect it?  And where the heck is OUR DHD that goes with the alpha gate?  We do have one, you know. We do.  Saw it in Solitudes and Touchstone.  Big, honking DHD.  Hard to misplace one of those things, you would think.

Ooops.  Sorry, I wandered off there again, didn't I?

So this whole 'dialling protocols' business is a bit of a blip, but oh well, we're getting used to it, off we go.

And then it happens again.  Jack observes it's awfully bright and Sam says it's because this planet is much closer to its sun than Earth.

Oooops, sorry, what?

I'm no astronomer, but this one made me sit up and go, huh?  I learned in grade school the only reason life as we know it is possible on this planet is because the Earth is exactly the correct distance from our sun for it to enjoy the very narrow optimum temperature range which permits said life to exist on this planet and no other in our solar system. Not too hot and not too cold. Too close and we get Venus and Mercury.  Too far away and we get Mars.  None which support life, science fiction writers of the forties, fifties and sixties to the contrary.

I'm afraid for Sam to have gotten away with this assertion - and for this to even be possible she had to give us a line or two of additional information about the Katal sun.  It can't be a G class, not the same as ours, so what is it - is it smaller, cooler whatever it would take, astronomically speaking, to make what she is telling us  - having a planet  much closer to it's sun than our Earth so it can be brighter and yet not too hot to sustain an Earth type biosphere - that is, assuming such an a thing WOULD be possible.

I don't know.  I'm not an astronomer.  But I don't have to be one to know a planet capable of sustaining our kind of life 'a lot closer to the sun than ours' would NOT be possible if the sun was the same class of star as ours is.

If it isn't possible - you've just shot your entire premise in the foot and we're not even out of the teaser scene yet.

It's a very small detail, but a really important one.  Like I said, don't take shortcuts and try to slide this stuff by us hoping we won't notice.  Anyone who's been to school or watched Star Trek would catch this one.  That you think we wouldn't - well, it's insulting and it tends to make us mad.  Don't underestimate your audience.  Seriously.

If it's dicey and not absolutely necessary to the plot and if you DON'T want to take the time to look it up and check - get rid of it.  If in doubt, write it out?

And in this case it wasn't.  This planet being closer to the sun had absolutely no bearing on what happened.  It was just an excuse for some intense lighting in the teaser and became a piece of bad science in an ep that really doesn't need any more than it already has.

Okay, still in the teaser.  Daniel's throwaway statement explaining the way the absence of a Hammer on an Asgard Protected Planet when the only other APP we've seen has one.  Aside from the fact we need for there to not be one here so the team doesn't have to waste most of the episode trying to fetch Teal'c back again....

 Oh boy...

The Hammer and the Protected Planet business are prime examples of what I was referring to as 'making it up as you go'.  Judging from the way subsequent episodes based on premises laid down in the first and second seasons were 'spun' to try and rewrite already established history, I'd venture a guess when they were originally written there was no clear 'plan' to use scripts from the first two seasons as launching pads for third season story arcs after the decision was made to change the direction of the writing toward using the story arc format over the episodic.

Yeah, that's an assumption, but it seems to me to be a reasonable one, because - going by the eps themselves - if there had been a 'plan', then the groundwork would have been laid in the first season episodes to allow for the proper development of the subsequent story threads, and certain problems with the existing canon wouldn't then have needed to have been 'spun' to try and make what had gone before jive with the new direction/story requirements.

I haven't seen as much evidence of 'planning' in the first and second season as I have of retroactive canon adjustment in the third and fourth and now fifth.  A whole lot of making it up as you go.

Such as altering Sam's 'backstory' in Seth as previously revealed in Cold Lazarus.  She goes from - as she tells Crystal Jack - being an 'auntie' who doesn't get to go to San Diego to see her brother's two kids often enough to being as estranged from her brother as her father is because he 'tars them with the same brush' and therefore she hasn't seen the kids since they were born.  (And as for the dead mother - we'll talk about this later.)

Such as the way Jolinar had to be 'reinvented' as a sympathetic character and the female lover of Martouf in The Tok'ra after we first encountered HIM (referred to as HIM by Teal'c as well)  in 'In the Line of Duty' as not a nice guy at all.  Even if he didn't take Sam with him when he went, his behaviour through most of the episode was pretty vile.

The Jolinar in "In the Line of Duty' bore very little resemblance to the lovely, luminous being Martouf waxes so emotionally and poetically about to Sam in The Tok'ra. Complete with soft music and equally soft, flashback lighting.  Jolinar was ruthless, very cruel, arrogant, completely unlikeable - and again according to Teal'c ambitious. The Ashrak wasn't set on him because his noble, covert fifth column activities as a crusading Tok'ra in the equally noble fight against the cruel and oppressive Goa'uld made him a thorn in the System Lords' sides, he pissed them off by attempting a coup and leading an army making a power bid against them.  That little piece of information has been swept under the rug in the rush to make Jolinar one of the sympathetic, brave Tok'ra freedom fighters and Juliet to Martouf/Lantesh's cosmic Romeo.

Will you also please make your minds up how the zat guns work as well, seeing as how you use them so much.  In some eps they only make people fall down and writhe around in the ground in obvious pain, but don't make them lose consciousness.  In others, they go out cold. Blam.  No writhing or screaming.  Which is it?

The transport rings?  In Devil You Know Martouf tells us they work like a miniature version of the Stargate which means you've got to have a set of rings - sending and receiving station at each end.  Which would tend to make them of limited usefulness, wouldn't you think?  What if you want to 'beam' down somewhere where there is no 'receiving' station already set up?  Well, you can't, can you?  And what if you want to use them to retrieve a couple of team mates who've been carried away into deep space in a retrofitted deathglider who've just blown the canopy and are hanging in a hard vacuum beneath your cargo ship without suits waiting to be rescued?  But not for long.  Can't do that either.  But you did, in Tangent.  So, how do the rings work?  Really?

Then there's the enigma of the Jaffa.  Who the heck are they really, as a culture, as a people?  What do we know about them aside from the fact they have snakes in their guts, don't get sick, heal really fast, do something called Kel no reem a lot and are slaves to the Goa'uld. That - just about covers it, actually.

Practically everything revealed to us about the Jaffa has a definite feel of no 'plan' or effort to create a previous, cohesive backstory for the Jaffa culture, which is positively shocking.  Especially as understanding where he came from goes right to the root of being able to understand who Teal'c currently IS.

Teal'c is extremely hard to write for.  No doubt you've noticed.  That's because even though the character is one of the four main leads, a full fledged, card carrying member of SG-1 for the last five years - we still essentially don't know squat about him aside from the fact he was once a First Prime, was Bra'tac's apprentice, has a wife (or does he, we've never gotten a straight answer on that one) and a son and had a thing for a priestess a long time ago. Very little has been revealed about the Jaffa, and most of what has doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Or is downright contradictory - or once again, changes with the needs of each successive story.

The thing that makes the least sense of all is that most unfortunate little piece of character 'development' - practically the only thing we've really learned about the Jaffa and what they get up to in their spare time - the one that has become the writer's favourite way of copping out on properly using the Teal'c in a particular scenario and getting him out of the way. Or explaining what he has been doing when he's not been standing around being Jack's straight man.

Kel no reem.  Ack!  Don't get me started.  Not here and now, any way.  I'll be saving this for Crossroads/Threshold.

And then we come to the bit of 'make it up as you go' that directly applies to this particular portion of the dissertation.

The Asgard, the Protected Planet Treaty, and the Hammer.

From the spinning done in Thor's Chariot and Fair Game Thor's Hammer seems to have started out as a one shot episode. Kendra served her purpose in TC, but a character running around fantasising about talking to Thor and Valkyries wouldn't do in an episode where Daniel and Sam were going to be encountering the real one, so she had to go.  And she did.  She also got a posthumous upgrade.  She went from being a reclusive healer in the mountains  Gairwyn barely knew except as someone she 'took things to from time to time' - to 'her dearest friend'. As for the way the rest of the episode played out, particularly having Sam discover she could use Kendra's Goa'uld technology, pretty much instantly in spite of the fact we're told it took Kendra years to learn how to use it -  but certainly the way the entire scenario was parlayed - in Fair Game - into the platform for the 'us needing to find a way to get stuff to defend the planet against the Goa'uld' story arc with the whole 'treaty' thing...not part of the original plan when Thor's Hammer was written. Or even as late as Thor's Chariot.  Couldn't have been.

The Asgard in Thor's Chariot most definitely did NOT need any treaties with the Goa'uld.  Heru'ur was shit scared of them and scampered like a bunny as soon as they showed up.  And in any case, if at that point they DID have a treaty - it sure didn't stop Heru'ur long, did it, once the Hammer had been put out of the commission.

And if they did have a treaty - what in the world did they need the Hammer for?

Having Daniel explain away the absence of a Hammer on K'Tau by saying 'it wouldn't need one if it was named in the Goa'uld Asgard treaty' - well, okay, I suppose, but then what was the purpose of the Hammer on Cimmeria in the first place?  It is a protected planet too.  Oh yes, it is.  As of Thor's Chariot, anyway.

Thor tells Daniel so during that first contact conversation in Thor's Chariot Cimmeria is a PP, but it has a Hammer. Why? If the treaty protects the planet from the Goa'uld - what did they need the Hammer for?  Especially as its only function was to guard the gate against any snaky incursions and zap them off to be zapped if they set foot on the planet. Which they wouldn't have, shouldn't have - if there was a treaty.

Are there two types of 'protected planets' - ones covered by the treaty which the Goa'uld respect and don't mess with, like K'Tau, and now the Earth, and ones which the Asgard 'protect' and still call 'Protected Planets' but aren't covered by the treaty and therefore are fair game (snort) for the Goa'uld unless those meddling Tau'ri show up and rat them out to the Asgard, at which point they show up and swat the Goa'uld like flies but other than that don't seem to mind the Goa'uld were mucking about on one of their PPs?

 In Thor's Chariot if there is any 'protected planet' treaty in place the Goa'uld manifestly do not respect it, which would make me kind of wonder why the SGC would have ANY confidence in any deal they struck with the Goa'uld in Fair Game.  I mean, they have just seen first hand how seriously the Goa'uld take their treaty obligations. Not.  That is, if there was such a thing as the concept of a protected planets treaty in the writers' minds as of this episode.

The Goa'uld try to take over the place as soon as they realise the Hammer is out of commission (which they seem to do awfully quickly, in spite of what both Teal'c and Kendra tell us about it being 'forbidden' to come to this planet because 'legend has it' something terrible happened here and it's dangerous, stay away.  No mention of Asgard or protected planets or treaties, just 'legend'.  Also, Kendra's 'beast' didn't seem to know anything about any treaties or be aware her species had struck a deal with the Asgard making some worlds off limits).

So basically, because the concept for Fair Game didn't exist at the time Thor's Hammer was written (or so it would appear from the episodes) as it's 'foundation'- the whole episode and the concept of the Hammer itself  - doesn't make continuity sense ever since Fair Game.  The Protected Planet stuff makes the Hammer not only obsolete, but inconvenient and anachronistic.  A problem to have to be 'explained' away in Red Sky.

Also interesting to note, the one thing for which the Hammer might still have a conceivable plot use - as means to liberate a host from a Goa'uld - has been more or less glossed over in canon as well.  Not only was the Hammer seemingly forgotten by Daniel in Secrets - although Gairwyn tells us (and him) at the end of TC the Asgard are going to restore the Hammer (and make sure it doesn't zap Teal'c again if he comes back) - but its Goa'uld removing properties have been superseded as of FIAD and Pretence by the Tok'ra having a way of doing it.   In FIAD - in Daniel's 'dream' Sam tells him Sha'uri is alive because they took her to the Tok'ra and they not only had a captured sarc but a way to get the Goa'uld out. And in Pretence the Tok'ra are the ones who evict Klorel from Skaara.

No mention of the Hammer.  No mention of it whatsoever until this episode, when setting it on an Asgard 'protected' planet meant finally acknowledging the Hammer's existence and then having to get rid of it again or we'd be waving bye-bye to Teal'c.  With a throwaway mention of it by way of trying to explain why this planet doesn't have one when the one when the only other Asgard PP we've ever seen has one, and well we know it, because it was the point of the whole episode.

So the Hammer has now basically become something else to sweep under the rug along with Jolinar's former gender, unpleasant character and his Napoleonic aspirations and it looks as if the writers have been trying to make it go away for quite some time now because as of Thor's Chariot and Fair Game it makes no sense at all.

Woo!  That was fun!  Where the heck were we now?  Oh goodness, still in the teaser and establishing, via Daniel noticing some runic script on a column he says he couldn't make out from the MALP transmissions and can't read now even though he knew what runes meant in TC (and a darned good thing he did too, or none of them would be standing there right now), that we are indeed dealing with an Asgard planet. So imagine our surprise after being prepared to see more Vikings a bunch of Calvinists all kitted out in their Sunday best complete with really strange hats come strolling up to the gate to introduce themselves to our team.

Daniel's observation as they are meandering through the village with the nice little muchkins (I'm sorry, but that's what the get-up the K'Tau are parading about in reminded me of, I was half expecting someone to start breaking into the little munchkin song from the Wizard of Oz) 'It's as if Norse culture evolved into relatively modern times while continuing to worship the ancient gods'....

Aside from the fact horse and buggy and frontier town isn't too 'modern' from where I'm sitting how do Vikings evolve into Calvinists?  I'm not an anthropologist, I don't know.  Perhaps one could explain it to me.

Also, if the cultures on Cimmeria and K'Tau both are transplanted Norse cultures 'guided' by the Asgard - and getting to hear the same cryptic nonsense on a regular basis by a big bearded guy wearing a horned hat and armour (as we later see) - then how does one explain the incredible divergence of their cultural evolution - not to mention their theology?

Same root culture, (the runes Daniel sees at the column at the gate and the Viking get-up on the Freyr hologram, plus being conversant with Norse Mythology and using the terms Midgard and Ragnarok implies this) same guiding influence, same pantheon, presumably same 'teachings' - the Cimmerians were definitely still very much Vikings and they certainly didn't have the 'lie down and die, calmly accept the will of the gods' attitude to their situation the K'Tau do.  Nor did they expect Thor to personally intervene and 'save' them.  They were - as we saw - real scrappers, who not only called to the SGC for help but actively resisted the Goa'uld.  Fought back.

The only difference I can see is the K'Tau seemed to have much more personal interaction with Freyr (if you can call listening to a hologram spouting gibberish 'personal'), so maybe Freyr has a more 'hands on' approach to playing with his planet than Thor does. More free time to get involved with his hobby.  So he did a lot of meddling with the culture and messing with the people's heads to turn them into the funny hat wearing, fatalistic sheep they now appear to be.  While the Cimmerians were allowed to do, think and be what they pleased and they pleased to stay kick ass Vikings.

My, that's an unpleasant thought.

During his introduction to Brother Malchus Jack shows us why he shouldn't quit his day job and become a diplomat.  The degree of hostility Malchus initially displays toward the elven interlopers should have told Jack his first task on this mission to get it to go smoothly is getting this guy on their side - especially given his high status and influence in the society.  At the very least Jack should have twigged enough ticking off Brother M was not a good idea and made an effort to restrain his habitually ebullient personality - put himself on a fricking leash.  Adopting a confrontational, adversarial attitude toward him is not the way to go.  It's just going to make him mad and determined to work against them with the non-stop zeal of the true fanatic.  Which is of course, what happens.

Jack does an awful lot of talking in this episode.  Which is unusual.  Practically no listening whatsoever, however, which is not unusual. Not since the beginning of season four, that is.  He runs his mouth so regularly and effectively he not only mouths off at the Asgard and the K'Tau but in the course of the episode manages to get off at least one condescending and insulting remark to fifty per cent of his team.

Sam he belittles (go back to the SGC and confuse Hammond.  I only understand about one percent of what she says half the time).  Daniel he yells at.  More than once (Can't forget injecting that note of Jack/Daniel negative conflict in there to spice up the episode).  Mouths off at the Asgard.  Continually antagonises Malchus.  Tells the K'Tau their beliefs are stupid.  Maybe to us - they are, but they're NOT to them.  Which is what Daniel tries to point out to him, more than once.  Without success.

This is really the POINT of the entire episode, or rather, it should have been. The power of belief.  Not how ignorant Jack is and how wonderful and smart and highly regarded by her scientific peers Sam is as she labours unceasingly onward to 'right her wrong'.  And about that - how they happened to end up on K'Tau punching their wormhole through the sun in the first place....

More problems with the premise, and this is a huge one.  Never mind all the gobbledegook about super-heavy elements and plutonium 'somehow piggybacking on the wormhole' and ending up in the sun (what, there are free-range clouds of wandering plutonium atoms wafting through the universe and their wormhole just happened to go through one?), I'm going back to the whole 'dialling protocols' business and how they managed to make the wormhole connect in the first place.

Sam explains about the 'wormhole through the sun' thing as a reason why it was probably so difficult for them to connect to the planet initially - which is why she did all the dialling protocol bypassing.

Why?  Why was it so important to connect to this particular planet?  Going back to the way the gate - and the program works, has worked, as we have understood it to work, since the beginning of the series.

They have the Abydos cartouche, which provided them with their database of addresses.  Which don't work because of planetary shift.  Most of what Sam's dialling program is for is to do these drift calculations for these addresses to make the adjustments so they will work.  Waaaay back at the beginning of the series she tells us the computer will 'spit out a couple of destinations a month'.  (we can only hope it has gotten faster than that over time or 16 SG teams aren't going to have a lot to do.  Of course, maybe the Asgard destinations Jack downloaded into the system in Fifth Race already were shift-corrected, but we don't know that for sure).

So anyway, the computer gives them a shift-corrected address they can test dial to see if it is viable or not.  It's just a set of chevrons, they don't know anything about it except its location in space when they dial it.  If they score a hit and establish a wormhole they send a MALP, evaluate the footage, take a few readings and on the basis of that telemetry decide whether or not it's safe and worth their while to send a team through and investigate the new destination.

If that seventh chevron doesn't lock on the first dial, what does that tell them? There is no gate at the target destination, therefore it's no longer a viable address.  They have no idea why there is no longer a gate there - it could be because the gate is buried, just not there any more, maybe the entire planet isn't there any more. It's definitely one of the above, but which one, who can say and they'll never be able to find out because that seventh chevron not locking means there is nothing there for the wormhole to lock onto, ergo nowhere for them to go and no way for them to ever know what's on the other end because they can't get any info about the target destination until they open that wormhole and have a look.  Which they can't, because the seventh chevron won't lock because there's nothing there for it to engage with.

A bit of a vicious circle, eh wot?.

The address is therefore 'cold'.  Non functional. They can't connect to get a wormhole through so they can't send a MALP through so they have no way of getting any information about what is still only a set of co-ordinates.  As of New Ground we learn Sam has a cold address program, so I assume any 'dead addresses' are added to it and then randomly dialled every once and a while to see if any have come on line since the last time they were dialled.  She tells us in New Ground the Bedrosian hit was the first one since she started using the program.

So again, I have to ask you, if the first time they dialled K'Tau and it came up cold - and it must have because she says 'the fact that the gate wouldn't dial here when we first tried' and 'we couldn't get a lock' - why did she continue to try and futz with the program in order to get one?  What would make her think there would be a point?  You can 'bypass' all the protocols you want, but if the gate is buried or just plain gone, not to mention the planet - it won't make no never mind what you do.  And as simply having the gate not engage would tell them only the address wasn't working but not why - why would she put all this effort into a cold address without knowing for sure there was indeed a gate at the other end - which she had no way of knowing - or anything about the planet at the other end that would have made all the effort worth it?  Which she also had no way of knowing.

What was so darned special about K'Tau that she did all this?  Other than the fact pushing the envelope and pushing their wormhole through the sun precipitated the crisis of the episode.  Makes no sense.

Now, if they had already BEEN to K'Tau once, knew for a fact there was a gate, had a reason for going back there, knew there was a point to trying to get the gate to dial and they should be able to go there then there Sam's efforts would have been justified, especially if they had a team there they were concerned about - her trying to tweak dialling protocols to get a lock makes sense.  Of course, it would have meant adjusting the premise a tad, maybe not making it first contact, but this wouldn't have been hard and wouldn't have affected the story a heck of a lot and it would have made sense of Sam's actions and completely removed this story problem.

But unfortunately, not the next one.

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