[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9XrrEaZ7Y4[/yt] The puppet scene! My favorite! "But spinning is so much cooler than not spinning. I'm the general. I want it to spin now!" LOL!!
I was hanging out to watch the next one last night but was invaded by a phone call. Not quite as enraging as it was 8 seasons ago though.. it's almost over
Well, you missed seeing David Andrews who played Pete Conrad in Apollo 13 and Frank Borman in From the Earth to the Moon, so he's someone who has actually played someone who has really been in outer space!
Thankfully I haven't missed anything as this universe is conveniently frozen in single serve stories that I can access any time. As all the best universes are. And now I'm going to nurse my sunburn, drink my tea and watch the next episode.
Counterstrike: Never mind all that, David Andrews also played Lorian in my favorite episode of Enterprise, E2. I didn't remember the name so when he showed up I was thrilled. AND we get Morena Baccarin!!! So exciting, and plenty more of her to come hopefully! This episode had everything, The Rapture, Force choking, more hot eye contact between Vala and Daniel and a huge jump back into the main storyline. Excellent. There was a nice shot of bounders hitting us in the face as well. One thing, and this has probably happened a million times before but I just noticed it.. the Jaffa marching sound did not match the actual movement of the Jaffa feet btw was Vala pregnant for 9 months with Adria? Or did she grow super fast in the womb as well?
Well no wonder they didn't win an Emmy for sound editing! I seem to recall that she brought up the unusual gestation of the pregnancy on one of her visits with the stones, but I could be mistaken. I was glad that the show permanently wrote off "the Ancient weapons platform at the Temple at Dakara" as the gimmicky solution to every threat, along with much of the ungrateful and problematic Jaffa leadership.
I'm interested to see what happens to the Jaffa after their second topple of leadership in a very short time.
Nothing was ever established about how long Vala's pregnancy was. I assumed it was nine months, although only seven moths of real time went by between her departure at the beginning of season 9 and her return at the end of season 9. Still, even the primitive Ren Faire towns in the Ori galaxy must know how long a normal pregnancy lasts, and if Vala's were accelerated someone would and it would likely have caused more people to fear her and be suspicious. Or at the very least, everyone would have caught on that Tomin wasn't really the father. No, no one questioned anything, therefore she must have gone a full nine months.
Memento Mori: Vala strips Mitchell's clothes off, handcuffs him to a bed and stuffs a twinkie in his mouth. What's not to love? A very fun ep with a nice dose of Goa'uld plotting thrown in. Vala is fantastic in this and it makes me wish we had her for a few more seasons. I had a good laugh over this police flyer, "Special Characteristics: None". Just an alien, nothing to see here.
Company of Thieves: I had a hilarious revelation watching this, well hilarious to me. SG1 is in a blackmarket cargo ship that Vala has procured for them and which she is attempting to fly. Unnerved by it's apparent crappiness Daniel exclaims: We gave you as much raw naquadah as you needed, and all you came up with was this piece of junk? And all I could hear was Luke Skywalker saying "What a piece of junk!" about the Millenium Falcon. And then the hilarious part hit me, VALA IS HAN SOLO and DANIEL IS LUKE SKYWALKER. Daniel is always the sweeter, less savvy one and Vala is always the ex-bandit. It was very sad when Emerson was killed. And quite a moment to see how upset Carter was. This guy has a helluva face: I'm enjoying seeing all the wrangling for power the Jaffa and the Lucian Alliance are caught up in, the factions and fighting. Yeah it kind of steps out of the Ori storyline but it's also good not to have just dropped what we saw before the Ori showed up.
I remember when the Lucian Alliance were brought into SGU I complained they were just a bunch of cartoon supervillains. But then, next time I caught Company of Thieves afterwards I was reminded they never were very good villains. Particularly the dinner scene. Goon: "You should have consulted with us." Netan shoots Goon. Netan: "I CONSULT WITH NO ONE!" Granted, SG-1 always was more of a light-hearted action adventure and could get away with such supervillains. And indeed, they fit in just fine with the Goa'uld who literally are the text book definition of cliche supervillainy. SGU, with its pretentious attempt to be "real and gritty" just looked silly with such cartoony foils for its heroes.
That's a good point, and it just struck me that Batman had much the same problem moving from the TV show's cartoonish villains to the modern dark dramas where the joker had to go from a bit of comic relief to Heath Ledger's disturbing approach. Of course that franchise also has the problem that they seem to want something more like a serious crime drama (ala CSI) but are stuck with people in silly costumes and the whole super-hero super-villain genre. The problem I had with the Lucian alliance is that they tried to portray them as Goa'uld understudies crossed with drug lords. Certainly there would be some criminals and powerful criminal gangs in a post-Goa'uld galaxy, but you can't run planetary economies just on stealing and drug smuggling. I could see the understudies taking over, just based on post-colonial (post WW-II) experience where many new states were taken over by people who'd been high-up in the colonial heirarchy (I'm thinking of most of the Middle East and parts of Africa and Asia). Although they often became dictators or re-annointed kings, they were rarely the thieves and smugglers themselves. I think SG-1 writers missed the opportunities in a newly freed galaxy, where surely countless planets that had kept themselves hidden from the Goa'uld would come out, or even try to fill the power vacuum, and instead letting some criminal syndicates monopolize the stories, kind of like viewing post-WW-II, post-colonial world history purely through the eyes of Interpol, the FBI, and the DEA.
I think we're only seeing a part of what is going on, the part that is messing with SG:1 who in turn is messing with their plans. Meanwhile there may be other planets that have seized the Goa'uld tech and are working on rebuilding their society with the ability to defend themselves. So their Goa'uld ships are patrolling their own planet not rushing off to take over other ones. Also I don't mind the silly organized crime pirates because they are a nice change from Star Trek where everyone instantly rushes to embrace democracy.
Well, that's a good point and touches one of the problems I had with Star Trek. People who had actual interests were generally villains while the good guys were from planets that said "Hey, we want to be idealistic people with no money, too!" You could also get the impression that the population of most allied planets was merely a half-dozen scientists who were either astrophysicists or medical researchers, depending on whether the episode was about a stellar phenomenon or a plague. The Ori storyline did keep the SGC from dealing with much of anything except other threats, and the series ended before they could do much post-war exploration and first contact stories, which could've been more like the stand alone episodes in the early seasons.
People who aren't embracing Federation ideals are painted as primitives in some way, needing to be enlightened. Look how Sisko and Kira despise the Ferengi initially. That gradually let up a bit. And just as it seems that we can tell stories about a rich culture that will never embrace Federation ideals without them being the enemy or self destructive lunatics (Klingon politics) they have a coup and turn the whole culture on its head !! And make the new leader soooo sorry and wanting to makeover the culture into the rootbeer image.
The Quest pt 1 and 2: That was a rather classic tale with an ending full of suspense. I liked the random transporting to new planets. It's reminding me of some scene in some other show where people are rapidly moved through places which change suddenly, some of them very inhospitable. Can't quite recall what it is, unless I'm just inflating All Our Yesterdays and the changing scenes in the portal. I like Morena Baccarin looking like a WoW chick. Way to go on the old school shoulders Morena! I liked the dragon, I really very much like dragons which means I can forgive their inclusion in anything. I'm pretty sure it was Sanctuary that had the most embarrassing dragons ever (correct me if I'm wrong) but I forgave them. Nicely done too. All the riddle stuff was incredibly silly though I guess it's in keeping with the myths and stories and ideals these ancients were spewing into humanity's history. Morena really is lovely to look at, quite other worldly at times, though not exactly a riveting actor. Still, not complaining Also SO SAD they had to go and kill Baal.. but there are plenty more!
I can forgive quite a lot when it comes to CG, but in all honestly I thought the dragon (that's really awyvern) was fucking dire. Otherwise I enjoyed the episode a lot. The fantasy storytelling style spin on the mythology is something I wish they'd done more of.
Yeah I am usually not one for those fantasy spins AT ALL but I enjoyed that part.. or perhaps I'm just so converted to Stargate past dislikes are less important. Line in the Sand: Very nice how the title comes from some Ori tome. Tobin's unraveling when forced to spend time alone with Vala worked well, peanuts character that he is. Though really I would expect him to kill himself if he actually faces what he's done. And poor Carter, that wound looked terrible. Also, I know this was some belief vs faith deal and I know macaroons mean different things in different countries but weren't those cookies BURNT?
My favorite thing to do is to troll Renaissance Fairs by showing up dressed as a member of an SG team. Oh, and teacake, shoulder armor like that is called a spaulder.
I know, it's just in WoW that slot is called "shoulders", though some of the names of the specific armour include the word spaulders. Hey I once won a spelling game by remembering the word "glaives" which I learned from WoW. Anyway they just reminded me vividly of vanilla basic shoulders. Buh.