Agents of SHIELD. Season 1 Discussion Thread

[Reverend]

I don't know why people keep saying that alien was alive, it looked pretty dead to me. Missing not just it's lower torso but at least one eye IIRC and some nasty facial wounds to the face and chest. Just because they were able to harvest some unknown compound from the corpse in a preserved state is hardly any reason to assume it's still alive. Some living tissue maybe, but in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, the obvious assumption is that the life-form itself has expired.

 

[DEWLine]

What is it about this particular spy story that makes it subject to a totally different set of standards than we use to assess every other spy story we've ever seen?

Because SHIELD is the new Enterprise.

Or, perhaps, the Bus specifically fills that emotional role? For all the espionage trappings, it still fills that role.

 

[DEWLine]

Reverend: In any case, that alien - dead or alive - was not being treated decently in any sense. And letting whoever had him keep him looked about as abominable as letting the Clairvoyant acquire him.

And thanks to the guards' "security" measures, there wasn't much time to figure out a good solution.

 

[Reverend]

Abominable? I didn't realise SHIELD had a way to contact the Krell, much less established a protocol for repatriating any discovered remains. If it had been a Chitauri or Jotun corpse in that facility, would it have made any difference? Indeed, we don't even know what they were doing exactly, besides taking samples for analysis and research.

 

[Shawnster]

S.H.I.E.L.D. is not an American institution answerable to American laws, expectations or conventions.

They told Ian that he had no rights.

If he literally had zero rights, then they would have been allowed to torture and murder him, which is why May wasn't in any trouble for beating Quinn, which is an extension of the Bus being an Embassy, although they'd have more freedom if the bus was declared international waters (space?) and then no laws applied on that plane, or any other S.H.I.E.L.D. installation in the world other than S.H.I.E.L.D. internal policy.

What radius past the Busses hull extends this law void?

a hundred meters?

2 miles?

200 miles?

That's how the international says it works. Plant a flag in an unclaimed territory and 200 miles in every direction of that flag belongs to you.

The trouble of course is that these days everything is claimed except international waters, so you're building a derrick or a pontoon island if you want to start a kingdom.

Has anyone tied claiming that Garbage Vortex and building on it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch

No, but someone did claim territorial sovereignty to an oil rig.
Principality of Sealand

 

[DEWLine]

And there's a comic book about someone who does try to claim one of those garbage vortices: Great Pacific, published by Image.

Anyway, back to the SHIELD discussion...

 

[LaxScrutiny]

This is ridiculous. This is a spy story and we're talking about civil law. How long would James Bond spend in prison if everything he's done were prosecuted? What is it about this particular spy story that makes it subject to a totally different set of standards than we use to assess every other spy story we've ever seen?

What makes it different is that the agents are acting as individuals, not for the agency. They are not on any mission. They are acting against orders for their own personal goals.

Sorry Christopher, but that should be completely obvious by now. For example, look at the first time they went up against Quinn, it was on orders and they were acting as professionals. In that case, yes they violated numerous laws, but they weren't doing it to satisfy their own personal needs.

If James Bond was robbing banks and killing security guards to get money to pay for his aunt's operation, you would have a point. But he doesn't, and you don't.

It is like trying to argue that The Punisher isn't breaking any laws in his crusade against the Mob because the Mob is illegal. Frank Castle is constantly breaking laws; it is still a compelling story that we enjoy reading.

In "TAHITI" the team is NOT working for the Agency. They have taken off on their own, using Agency resources, vehicle, weapons, and stolen information to engage in their own private agenda. This is DIFFERENT. They stopped being spies in this episode.

 

[LaxScrutiny]

I don't know why people keep saying that alien was alive, it looked pretty dead to me. Missing not just it's lower torso but at least one eye IIRC and some nasty facial wounds to the face and chest. Just because they were able to harvest some unknown compound from the corpse in a preserved state is hardly any reason to assume it's still alive. Some living tissue maybe, but in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, the obvious assumption is that the life-form itself has expired.

We obviously don't know the process, but they seem to be retrieving body fluid on an ongoing basis. This would indicate the alien is still alive - possibly brain dead - in order to keep producing that fluid.

It's also possible it was a corpse and there was a limited amount of body fluid available which would support your idea.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I don't know why people keep saying that alien was alive, it looked pretty dead to me. Missing not just it's lower torso but at least one eye IIRC and some nasty facial wounds to the face and chest. Just because they were able to harvest some unknown compound from the corpse in a preserved state is hardly any reason to assume it's still alive. Some living tissue maybe, but in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, the obvious assumption is that the life-form itself has expired.

I think we'll have to wait and see. But it seemed to me that they were extracting certain enzymes or fluids that would presumably be in small amounts and the body would have to produce more. It was also in some kind of chamber that looked like it was keeping it alive. I thought about the idea that the body was just being preserved by the chamber so it didn't rot, but I would think they would have taken all the GH chemicals from it right away if it was dead so they wouldn't need to keep the body. It wouldn't make sense to continuously have tubes connected to it to take the chemicals.

That being said, I don't think we've reached the end of this story line. If that is indeed Captain Mahr Vehl, I don't think he's dead even after the explosion. I think he's buried under a metric fuckton of rock, but one of his powers is phasing, so I think he will eventually be able to heal himself and get out from under it. My expectation or hope is that we either see more of him this year or that he returns next year (if there is, indeed, a next year). Given Guardians of the Galaxy is coming out in August, an alien episode makes sense.

ETA: We keep having side conversations about "who the organization was" and "whether the alien was dead." To me, these are the far more interesting conversations. It's a shame they keep dying and we keep rehashing the same argument.

 

[Mister Fandango]

What organization owned the site? U.S. Military, Area 51 style. Which is why Fury had to argue so heavily to get Coulson in there, having had the clearance to know about it and what those drugs and technology could do, and why SHIELD doctors would have been brought in and why the place wouldn't be under SHIELD's control once they were done.

As to why it was all but abandoned, no idea. Maybe they were focusing on the ship he had likely crashed in or on his nega-bands/exo-suit at another site, and part of the guards' duty was to regularly switch out the vials of compounds they were extracting. Clearly someone was actively managing them as we could see fluids going in and out of the stasis chamber.

Who was the alien? Like I originally suggested much earlier in the thread, Captain Mahr Vehl. With all the same ideas you cited as your own in the previous post.

As to why he was in the state he was in? Any number of reasons, but most likely he crashed (or was shot down) and was severely wounded in the process. Maybe beyond what his ability to heal was capable of at the time. From there, there's all kinds of possibilities to consider, not all of which are malign or as evil as you keep suggesting. For example, maybe he actually asked his rescuers to extract the drugs, offering them a portion of it for their own use/research in exchange for making a super-concentrated version of it that would allow him to heal the rest of his body. Or maybe the government was just as paranoid as they're often portrayed about alien "invaders," especially after NYC, and they did effectively imprison him and do disturbing research on him, keeping him in the stasis we saw him in precisely because he has the power to phase through any other type of prison they could come up with. Maybe a little bit of both, maybe none of the above.

But it's pretty clear that the place was, in no way shape or form, HYDRA for all the reasons specified earlier (namely, Fury wouldn't have handed it back to them when he was done, and mentioning of that would certainly have been in any of the same files that referenced the place to begin with). If it was Centipede, I'm sure the guards would have had some kind of augmentation if they were defending something of that value, and why would the Clairvoyant need to learn about it if that were the case? etc.

 

[bbjeg]

What organization owned the site? U.S. Military, Area 51 style.

Do you know who S.W.O.R.D. is?

 

[Reverend]

I don't know why people keep saying that alien was alive, it looked pretty dead to me. Missing not just it's lower torso but at least one eye IIRC and some nasty facial wounds to the face and chest. Just because they were able to harvest some unknown compound from the corpse in a preserved state is hardly any reason to assume it's still alive. Some living tissue maybe, but in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, the obvious assumption is that the life-form itself has expired.

I think we'll have to wait and see. But it seemed to me that they were extracting certain enzymes or fluids that would presumably be in small amounts and the body would have to produce more. It was also in some kind of chamber that looked like it was keeping it alive. I thought about the idea that the body was just being preserved by the chamber so it didn't rot, but I would think they would have taken all the GH chemicals from it right away if it was dead so they wouldn't need to keep the body. It wouldn't make sense to continuously have tubes connected to it to take the chemicals.

That being said, I don't think we've reached the end of this story line. If that is indeed Captain Mahr Vehl, I don't think he's dead even after the explosion. I think he's buried under a metric fuckton of rock, but one of his powers is phasing, so I think he will eventually be able to heal himself and get out from under it. My expectation or hope is that we either see more of him this year or that he returns next year (if there is, indeed, a next year). Given Guardians of the Galaxy is coming out in August, an alien episode makes sense.

ETA: We keep having side conversations about "who the organization was" and "whether the alien was dead." To me, these are the far more interesting conversations. It's a shame they keep dying and we keep rehashing the same argument.

Well there you're getting into definitions of what constitutes "dead" and "alive" which is a tricky one since the more our medical science develops, the more blurry the line gets.

That's extremely pertinent given that the episode centres around Coulson having been most definitely dead and brought back, as it turns out with the aid of something harvested from this "dead" body.

So yes, I don't see any reason why it may not manage to rebuild itself in time, but at the same time that needn't mean it's currently "alive" as we understand the term. Conversely, there's no reason to presume he/it *will* come back either. I mean it wasn't that substance alone that brought Couson back, it only repaired his tissue damage. It took a much more invasive procedure to get his brain and central nervous system going again. Even if once it's out of that pod the body will be able to regenerate--in defiance of the principles of conservation of mass...but we'll let that slide since so is the Hulk--in all likelihood what will be left is an anatomically healthy brain dead vegetable...which is still buried under a mountain of rocks.

I'm not discounting the possibility that this thing will come back later, it probably will one way or another. I just feel that if they're really setting up Sky as Captain Marvel, it'll be sufficient to simply say she got her abilities from that thing and have done with it. I guess I just don't see Mahr Vehl as being worth bothering with...and if I'm totally honest, I'm not crazy about the idea of the first "true" female super hero in this franchise being an inferior derivative of a male counterpart.

It'd be nice if she could find her identity on her own without patterning herself after the "real" Captain Marvel.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Keep in mind that SHIELD doctors were only really brought in at the very end of the process. There's no evidence that SHIELD doctors performed most of the operations. I'm not sure it was abandoned so much as not in use. Hard to say for sure, though.

The biggest reason I don't think the whole scenario is as benign as you say is that it was framed as creepy. Everything from Coulson's horrified face to the music cues suggest something bad was happening. It obviously wasn't Centipede simply because Centipede didn't know about it. But I really don't think anything is obvious beyond that.

ETA: This was to Mister Fandango.

There are persistent Carol Danvers rumors in Avengers 2. That's the only reason I can't say Skye is Captain Marvel. Otherwise, this does seem to be a good subtle take on that precise origin story. The other reservation I have is that Skye is already an 0-8-4. To say that Kree blood gave her superpowers is to set aside that story for this story in a way that doesn't entirely make sense.

 

[Mister Fandango]

What organization owned the site? U.S. Military, Area 51 style.

Do you know who S.W.O.R.D. is?

Yes, and people have declared that off-limits when I first mentioned it way earlier in the thread because it probably belongs to the X-Men franchise due to its creative origins.

And if it was SWORD, why were they housing it on Earth rather than on a space station, moonbase, or something along those lines?

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I'm curious about SWORD. There's a good argument that it's off limits. On the other hand, it was invented by Joss Wheddon.

I think it's more plausible than the US military, though. I just don't think we're going to have them as real power players. I think the Peruvian military is something they can get away with, but a lot of American viewers are going to feel weird having the American military on the show.

 

[Mister Fandango]

What I'm actually confused about is why the Clairvoyant couldn't have learned any of this. Fury, the doctor, and the two guards likely all knew what was going on at the very least, and there had to have been many others in the know. I could understand why getting into Fury's head would be hard (I'm sure he has some Wolverine-type mental walls in place), but the others?

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Because I don't think he actually has any psychic powers. It reinforces my belief that it's someone like MODOK and he's essentially data-mining in a Total Information Awareness type way. This is one event with literally no available information. It's a total blackhole.

The other alternative is just that there's a mole in SHIELD. Either way, the mole clearly doesn't have the full information. If, two weeks from now, we find out that the Clairvoyant knows everything that Coulson knows, it'll obviously be different.

However, even under my theory, he should at least have known of that location. I certainly think anything Fitz can do, the Clairvoyant can do better. The only counter to that Fitz found the location through abstract, creative thinking. The Clairvoyant could have seen the "encrypted" location of Guest House and not thought it represented a picture of an actual location.

That fits well with wikipedia's description of MODOK's powers and abilities

George Tarleton is subjected to a mutagenic process that grants him superhuman intelligence, including a computer-like memory, the ability to scour and retain large databanks of information very quickly and solve abstract mathematical problems nearly instantaneously. He also has the ability to calculate the mathematical probability of any given event occurring; an ability so strong that it borders on precognition. However, his creativity remains at average human level.

 

[Mister Fandango]

The problem is that there was a data trail, and I'm sure there are files hidden away somewhere with more detailed information. I mean, it only took the wonder twins a few seconds to "hack" into SHIELD's systems and find the information they were after, and all the drugs and whatnot were in the file Coulson had. So someone like MODOK should have been able to pick up all that same data in no time. Considering the resources he has at his disposal, including all the augmented super-spies, and the fact that the base only had two dudes defending it... yeah. I just don't see how that works, either.

As for psychic powers not existing, we know that's not true. Just because they can't mention the X-Men doesn't mean they don't exist. It is odd how adamant Coulson is on the subject, though.

I have to admit, I have a hard time taking MODOK seriously. Not just because of the way he looks, but because of Marvel themselves.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I didn't say psychic powers didn't exist, I said the Clairvoyant doesn't have psychic powers. I think this for pretty much the reason you said - he would know more information if he did.

I was editing my post rapidly there so I'm not sure you caught everything. My theory was that he got to the picture of the mountain but couldn't solve the puzzle. And I don't think there's a data trail beyond what we've seen (certainly, not one online or accessible to a SHIELD mole depending on the theory). If you want to believe otherwise, that's fine, but I'm trying to offer an explanation, not say "it makes no sense."

 

[bbjeg]

What organization owned the site? U.S. Military, Area 51 style.

Do you know who S.W.O.R.D. is?

Yes, and people have declared that off-limits when I first mentioned it way earlier in the thread because it probably belongs to the X-Men franchise due to its creative origins.

And if it was SWORD, why were they housing it on Earth rather than on a space station, moonbase, or something along those lines?

They could have been S.W.O.R.D. year one. S.H.I.E.L.D. (in Captain America: TWS) looks like they just acquired Stark tech. Space fortresses may be far ahead.