Topic: Stargate: SG-1 - Season 5.

[8ullfrog]

6 is catching up to me. Granted, there are ten seasons total, so we're half way through this thing.

I really liked the opening of 5, but there were some serious issues with props. One time Daniel goes to lean on a thing, and it moves. He recovers fairly smoothly, BUT I SAW IT.

[6pairsofshoes]

Rite of Passage;  teenager from another planet presents with retrovirus in her blood that threatens to transform her.  Carter and the doc are frantic.  Evil Gou'ald chick  wearing quasi muslim garments is to blame.   They finally capture her and Cassandra, the victim, can no longer move chess pieces around with her mind.

Gou'ald gets banished after curing the girl.  The prior episode with 17th century norwegian boneheads on yet another planet who think that Asgaard guy is a god was simply stupid.  I was glad when that was over.

The Tokra Gou'ald traitor guy, who has the face you want to slap, is back causing big trouble for the Torun or whatever they're called.  So much for being neutral and not sharing your tech with lesser races.  Now the Gou'ald have managed to develop shields that make their cannons useless.  The Torun guy who is sweet on Carter help abort the bad Gou'ald plan to nuke earth.  Then the Gou'ald attack the Torun or whatever they're called and the nice guy makes a call to SG1 and they get cut off.  The end.  Cliffhanger ...  Meanwhile the pyrotechnics guys have fun at Simon Frazer University in Vancouver, which is a paean to Corbusien brutalism.  Yee Haw!  If you ever wanted to see this stuff get blown up, here's your chance.  The stuff that the Smithsons' nightmares are made of. 

[8ullfrog]

poo, Cassie was Season One material. And that Goauld is the one that killed her entire planet and tried to blow up earth by making her a bomb. Nirriti. She'll show up again later.

Pretty sure we're not supposed to like the norsk. I know they're not called norsk, but that's what my brain says when I ctrl+F Vikings. Wikipedia says Scandanavians.

But yeah, they're huge assholes. The Asgard essentially use their planets as phone booths.

[6pairsofshoes]

Beast of Burden:  Unas are mad as hell and they're not going to take it any more.

Kind of interesting take on slavery and sentient beings who don't speak human language or look humanoid, but that nevertheless have humane values:  affection, a sense of community, a language and culture.  Plus the guy running the slave trade is a total richard and a paean to excessive corporeality.  Speaking of deadly sins, this guy was Gula incarnate.

[8ullfrog]

I dunno, I kind of felt like Jack, the Unas are extremely violent and territorial, and best left to their own devices.

At the same time, slavery is evil, and kind of one of SG-1's standing missions is to free slaves, even if Jack is extremely uncomfortable about it.
Another question is if even Daniel would give a poo if this wasn't Chaka?
Daniel essentially sentenced every human on that planet not wearing an SG patch to a brutally painful death.

I do like the counterpoint that Daniel is treated like Chaka like a stupid little brother, always getting into trouble and needing him to save the idiot in glasses.

Considering what happens to Daniel this season... He might not be wrong.

[6pairsofshoes]

Daniel does have a very weak grasp of politics and power struggles.  He seems like a sheltered academic who thinks the world is basically a good place, despite his own personal experience with his wife's abduction.   Jack seems like Mr. Military, entirely pragmatic and somewhat cynical.  Carter is somewhere between the two and smarter than both of them put together.  I have slowed my viewing to an episode a night as I have gotten back to watching Engrenages (Spiral) and once a week, back to Mayans MC.  It's not clear why I liked Sons of Anarchy and this show so much. 

[8ullfrog]

Well Kurt Sutter got himself fired of Mayans, so it will probably be a very different show moving forward

I really don't get the naiveté Danny walks around in, he had a hard life. His parents died right in front of him, his grandfather refused to take custody, and Danny bounced around the foster system. Also, there are times he displays an intricate knowledge of politics and power struggles, so I honestly think in this case he didn't care. That's one of Danny's uglier traits.

Let me know when you get to Wormhole X-treme, it's episode 12.

 

[6pairsofshoes]

Danny's grandfather was in a mental institution so it's hard to imagine how he would have been in a position to take over custody of his brother's/sister's minor child.

The Tomb:  goofy ziggurat with creepy crawly cheap o horror movie stuff crawling around and causing problems.  More Gou'ald, as if they're the only baddies in the world.  Snore.  The Russians are stupid and get offed.  They're asses to the end.  O'Neill is contemptuous and impatient.  They lose a bunch of guys and high tail it back to Moscow.  One of their weaker episodes.  Daniel sits around and translates a bunch of stuff.  Finally they get the Gou'ald transportation rings to rev up and take them out.  Wow.  Those writers are running out of ideas.



Between two fires.
The Tokra Gou'ald traitor guy, Tanith, who has the face you want to slap, is back causing big trouble for the Tollun.  So much for being neutral and not sharing your tech with lesser races.  Now the Gou'ald have managed to develop shields that make their cannons useless.  The Tollun guy who is sweet on Carter (Narim) helps abort the bad Gou'ald plan to nuke earth.  Then the Gou'ald attack the Tollun and the nice guy makes a call to SG1 and they get cut off.  The end.  Cliffhanger ...  Meanwhile the pyrotechnics guys have fun at Simon Frazer University in Vancouver, which is a paean to Corbusian brutalism.  If you ever wanted to see this stuff get blown up, here's your chance.  These are the things that the Smithsons' nightmares are made of. 

[8ullfrog]

Was also the Riverwalk in Battlestar Galactica, but I believe I mentioned that in a previous post.

The actor who played Narim shows up in the spinoff movie, he gets dumped there. I wonder how Carter would react if she knew Narim had an earth doppelganger.

Him being dumped is the only thing we know about him.

I'll admit, the ring transport was a little lazy, but that may have been one of the ways goauld keep their youngsters in-line. Sure they have genetic memory, but maybe they ringed down, showed them how Marduk lives and dies every day, being devoured by the squid thing.

I think they had bigger plans, considering that's the Alien Mothership set redressed ala Indiana jones, but they either needed the set back or the script didn't go where they wanted it to, because it ended up being a one-off. I believe they mocked the monster movie premise in the BTS, but it's been a while since I watched it.

In that episode we also learn that Teal'c has the goauld sensing ability previously displayed by Carter. They always acted like that was important, but I can't ever remember a payoff.

In fact, it's something that needs to constantly be written around if you don't want your newly en-goulded baddie to be detected, you have to write carter off somewhere the golly else. Now Teal'c has to be with her!

Between two fires, in my little notepad reviews all I have down is "I don't like this one, it annoys me."

[6pairsofshoes]

I watched a couple more last night.  2001  -- A retread of the note thrown through the wormhole, "don't go to Planet number P...." signed Jack O'Neill.  So General crosses it off the list and of course the baddies at the Pentagon put it back on.  Cute ambassador that was married to Carter in prior episode now sacrifices self to keep the Aschen from taking over. At any rate, creepy people who go around with promises of tech and biological help only to sterilize populations, destroy civilizations and turn the planets into farming businesses.   The Senator actor plays bad guys everywhere.  He's totally gung ho about getting in bed with the evil aliens little realizing how catastrophic this will be.  He's in lots of movies and tv shows in a similar role.  He annoys me.  He's apparently a country and western singer in real life.  Ronny Cox.
That big mess does gets fixed.  No husband for Carter in this version.

Next:  Desperate Measures.  sick guy billionaire gets a Gou'ald symbiote and captures Carter to study her to figure out how to use symbiote to get better and then get rid of it.   Gou'ald takes over and kills his girlfriend.  Who could have seen that coming.  They're about to kill Carter to study her brain tissue when Jack swoops in and saves the day. I assume they kill the Gou'ald but I forget.  Maybe the Pentagon makes off with him to study him, yeah.  They have turned former Pentagon baddie guy Maybourne into "good" or "beneficial" ally while new bad guy has taken his place.   Ta da.

Some of these plots are dull and predictable.  They are still entertaining, but, I'd expect that after 5 seasons it's hard to keep things going so they're fresh.

[6pairsofshoes]

Wormhole extreme was funny.  Particularly the end.  Talk about self referential.  I still haven't seen the movie, so maybe I'll take a break and watch that next.

[8ullfrog]

I believe the feature is on youtube for free.

The one point I wanted to make on wormhole x-treme was that the danny stand in was more danny than danny.

In the credits, I think they let him chew the scenery to the extreme? Or was that a BTS? He talks so much poo, it's great.

The movie is a weird, sleepy dream. I can't say I'm a fan, but I have the original pressing. Which sucks.

It sucked so bad they stuck a coupon for "NEXT VERSION" in it. But that coupon expired in 1996, I'm bent.

I'm glad to see you do remember 2010, I thought that was a particularly mean spirited episode, not only does everyone die, but they die by inches. I think there is a gratuitous shot of Jack getting his cheek blown out by a laser. That was gross, to me.

But yeah, Ambassador Joe totally gets bent in that episode.

Ronnie Cox is a folk musician, blew my frickin' mind, he's been playing baddies since Robocop!

That being said, his one episode of TNG, he was right, all the way down. Told troi to stop wearing a booby mermaid dress and start wearing the uniform her rank confers.

I actually dislike what a poo brick Kinsey was. There is plenty of VALID criticism of the SGC, and they play the sad saw of "GOD will see us through".

It could have been so much more.

That goauld is not dead. Jack got shot in the back, Colonel Frank Simmons did the deed, and ran off with the billionaire with a snake in his head.

Everything turns out to be Maybourne's fault, and that's a nice bit of continuity. He was paid $3 million to smuggle a snake in, and he got the job done. Not his fault everything went to poo (but it is.)

Sometimes I feel like pacing is a bit off? Like they could get on with it. I guess that's where the "dull" and "predictable" come from, I'll admit, I've occasionally abused VLC's fast forward five seconds button.

[6pairsofshoes]

48 hours:  Teal'c gets trapped coming through the wormhole and they have 48 hours to figure out how to retrieve him before he's toast.  Maybourne is again instrumental in getting problem solved.   Guy from Pentagon NID who needs face slapped or to be shot every minute he's alive, runs comic relief.  He gets arrested by the end of the show.  Teal'c comes home.  Yay.  Sometimes I think you only need watch the first and last 5 minutes to get what's going on in any individual plot.

[8ullfrog]

aw, you don't like Rodney Mckay? It's okay, I'm pretty sure you weren't meant to. No clue how his character survived being a oneoff… but you will see him again.

Carter even sasses the politician! Carter sasses NO ONE!  Not sure why you thought he went to jail, he just got "transferred" to the worst project they could send him to. Siberia.

One fun fact, in sixth grade, he built a nuke! Despite being Canadian, this triggered a visit from the CIA. Probably how he ended up at the beck and call of the NID.

Aside from Carter, Rodney McKay is the pre-eminent expert on the stargate. One of his degrees is in astrophysics.

One very sad note, when his "team" is exposed to a device that causes paranoid hallucinations, he acts normally, implying he lives a hellish life in his own head. They played it for comedy... but fuuuuuuck.

[6pairsofshoes]

Rodney McKay?  Yeah.  He's really super annoying.  David Hewlett.  He was apparently a relatively handsome young man.  I checked earlier roles he played in the 1980's.  He gets a lot of work, maybe because he's good.  He's good at being annoying.  I just get tired of all the snidley whiplash writing of the Pentagon characters.  Are they all just raving power hungry jerks with no regard for the long term consequences of their actions?  Maybe just maybe one of them might have a little self reflection.

I guess it's the writing that I find frustrating.  That episode was sort of goofy.  I'm contrasting it with the more satisfying and complex Spiral, watching episodes of each, back to back, so maybe that is what depresses my take on the SG1 episodes, or could it simply be that the writing has been off this season?  My suspicion is that it's the latter.