Thanks for reviving debate on one of the only elements of
SG:A that presented an interesting dilemma and was worth debating. If only they'd figured out a better way to handle it.
As a doctor he has sworn to do no harm and he, as well as every member of the expedition, should know that the Geneva Convention strictly says that "no prisoner of war may be subjected to physical mutilation or to medical or scientific experiments of any kind which are not justified by the medical, dental or hospital treatment of the prisoner concerned and carried out in his interest".
The Geneva Convention can hardly be sensibly applied to a species whose existence requires them to kill people, and which any form of co-existence is therefore impossible. The war between humans and Wraith can only be solved by genocide of the Wraith - what other possible goal would work for humans?
Beckett's experiment could be seen as a creative attempt out of this horrible dilemma. Change the Wraith so that they no longer need to eat humans and co-existence becomes possible. The writers were simply being honest with the situation to have Michael not regard being de-Wraithed as a suitable solution. It would be far too convenient and not convincing if he had gone along with the idea. The Wraith as a species should value
being Wraith; otherwise they have no integrity as characters.
The real problem with this episode was that Our Heroes were being massively stupid. Before anyone embarked on this experiment, they should have considered all outcomes, including failure. If the experiment fails, what do they do? Kill Michael, of course. They would have killed him anyway, while a Wraith. Even if he looks human, if he continues to be a threat, they must kill him. If they don't have the stomach to murder a being who looks human in cold blood -
don't do the experiment!!!
By failing to think the whole thing through, they set in motion events that continue to get worse and worse for them. In retrospect, they shouldn't have even tried the experiment, but I can't fault them for the basic notion of wanting to try a solution that's not genocide.
And the alternative comply or die that they gave him at the end of the episode was just an incentive for him to escape and to create further problems.
Michael's reaction should have told them that, to him, being de-Wraithed
is genocide. You may as well just kill all the Wraith - you're exterminating their species by other means. It's not an acceptable solution, but since that didn't become apparent till they saw Michael's reaction, it's not a bad thing that they tried.
While humanity is entitled to fight back against the Wraith, they don't have the right to mutilate them in this way without their consent.
It's a kill-or-be-killed situation. The only reasonable strategy is to exterminate the Wraith. Any solution, even "mutilation," would be more justifiable morally - assuming it worked. The problem with the Michael experiment is that it didn't work, and was equivalent to simply killing Michael when he was a Wraith. To just kill him quickly is better than torturing him and then having to kill him anyway.
The evolution of the wraith wasn't a natural one
It really doesn't matter if it was or wasn't. They are a species that exists now, who values their existence, and that gives them a "right" to live just as much as humans.
However the humans they eat also have a right to live. This isn't a moral question since
both sides are morally in the right - all species have a right to live and to eliminate threats to their existence. This is a pure power struggle having no moral dimension, so talk of Geneva Conventions etc are beside the point.
The Wraith had a basic flaw as a villain, the premise left us in a box. We were their food source.
In the hands of the right writers, that's not a flaw. But it does require writers to abandon some of the usual storytelling tropes, such as the morality tale.
Stargate writers just weren't imaginative or rule-breaking enough to handle the topic. Ron Moore might have made something out of it.
Frankly, I still don't understand why he wanted to be Wraith
Why do you want to be a human? All beings are going to want to be what they are. That seems like a given.
I wouldn't have the natural wraith arrogance that says humans deserve to be eaten for having the audacity to have evolved naturally, rather than being a freak of nature resulting from a bug getting frisky with the wrong sack of amniotic fluid.
Why would a Wraith not value his own species simply because of the means by which that species evolved? Humans evolved just because an asteroid wiped out some dinosaurs 65M years ago. Why do we have a "right" to survive? We owe our existence to nothing more than random chance.
Honestly, I would've much preferred if they'd put a stop to his endless whining by just putting him up in front of a firing squad and explaining that he could either be made to no longer need to feed on humans, or he could be shot in the head.
I thought that was more or less what they did (in a sideways sort of way). They tried a solution that they thought wasn't genocide and found that the "beneficiaries" or at least one representative regarded it as genocide in disguise. Which it is. Shoot them or change their DNA, you're wiping out the species. Michael was refreshingly clear-sighted about the situation and didn't allow the Atlanteans to continue to be willfully blind to what they were doing.
It really, really irritated me, though, that no one ever once impressed on Michael that as far as they were concerned, he was Old Yeller after he got bit by the wolf, and he could either take his medicine or be put down, and those were the only options he or any other Wraith would ever have.
The writers were scared to call a spade a spade (or maybe didn't fully grasp the implications of their premise). They set up a premise that had no moral dimension and had to be a war of genocide, yet consistently danced around that issue. That's just a function of the mindless way in which
Stargate has always been written. They just follow the expected
Star Trek tropes, even in situations where they don't apply, and where the story would be far more interesting if they didn't apply.
The smart thing to do would be to send him to Earth through the Stargate. Let him rot in a basement in Area 51. That way, he'd be too far away from any other Wraith to communicate with them telepathically. And even if he escaped from Area 51, it would be nearly impossible for him to find and reach the SGC, reach the Gateroom, and decipher the SGC dialing computer to get back to the Pegasus Galaxy. Worst case scenario: He escapes and occasionally picks off campers in the wilderness.
