My problem is that it was just Amanda Tapping portraying Dr. Wier. There wasn't anything that she did or said that Dr. Wier couldn't have done. That makes me think that if they had time to retool season 4's scripts to accomidate Carter's qualities and strong points, this thread wouldn't exist.
I never though Carter was a good character to begin with. Zero personality, not interesting in the least. A walking deus ex machina that just happened to be female.
I like Carter! She had a small-town personality with near-obsession with being a professional. She wasn't a deus ex machina, she often served to show the characters their mission - what they had to do to solve the plot. She hardly ever solved things by herself, and when she did it was threw ingenuity rather than technobable. I could relate with her very much! Atlantis didn't destroy her character. In season 4, she rescued Atlantis in deep space, oversaw construction of Midway station, was responsible for the destruction of the Asurian Replications, determined who was responsible for the Hoffian plague, and led a rescue mission when Michael's lab imploded. She was a lot more hands-on than Weir ever was, and with her scientific expertise Carter was able to see problems and find solutions that in previous years nobody would have seen until it was too late. I'd say she was responsible for rescuing Atlantis and Pegasus from many mistakes and doing so compentently. Destroy her character? No, unless you don't like the show in the first place (in which case you are transferring your distaste for the plots to the characters).
I loved Carter on Sg-1 and I liked Atlantis for the most part just not season 4. I wil admit that I did not what seson 4 not due to Carter, it was a boycott in suppoert of Paul "Carson" who was killed of, which i think they got the point people were not happy. So I came back when he came back, but have since watched the rest of season 4. I just do not feel like Carter was the same Sg-1 Carter, they wrote her way different and she did things way non Sam like, which to a point is understandable but it just didn't work for me. It was like if they had Kate Mulgrew (Janeway) reading lines of Benjamin Sisko. they just would not look right or sound right comming from Mulgrew/Janeway.
I agree completely. Sam in SG1 was just likeable. It doesn't matter that some stories may have not been great, she always shone through because... well... she was Sam. But in Atlantis, she just didn't radiate anything to like. It was like the spark wasn't there... and I wonder if Amanda Tapping didn't enjoy it without her regular cast mates.
thats true too. I mean when a show has been on for nearly a decade with the same faces you just get used to them being there. You all grow togather, they become more than co workers. Granted Don S Davis had left and so did Richard Dean Anderson, and they killed Terry's character Janet but Amanda stil had Chris and Michael around her and she was getting used to Claudia, Beau, and Ben. Then the show ends and you get tosses into another Stargate show for one season with a stranger cast, its going to be hard. Its like starting from scrap "season one" and yet its going to be your only season.
It's also just a job. Sometimes a new job can be awesome. She already know Hewlett and had worked with some of the cast previously as well... so it couldn't have been all THAT bad. Further, didn't both Stargates shoot on the same studio lot? Couldn't the casts have mingled during setups, lunch hour, etc.? My point is, it wasn't like she was Joe Crybaby coming to set for the first time EVAR!!!!111 when she started on the show. She had a passing familiarity with it. As for it being her only season, she could have just as easily renegotiated her contract to come back if she had wanted to. She didn't. End of story.
I have only seen a couple of episodes of season 4 so far, and Carter is definitely a different character on Atlantis. But I guess that she would have to act differently with the weight of command on her shoulders. But I need to watch more episodes before I make up my mind about what I think of her character.
Exactly! She was little more than an all-knowing goddess of science doubling as a GI Jane. A high tech version of MacGyver, I imagine, without the humour. (I presume he had some.) A fix-it-all like one of those genius Star Trek chief engineers. I wish they'd given her more of a love life. So yeah, her fiancé was lame, but at least she was going through something for a bit. In what episode was she Rodney MacKay's ex-wife in another universe? That was the funniest. In another alternate reality episode, she was married to that bland ambassador and trying to have kids and broken up about having been sterilized. So it seems that for her character to expand, she had to get out of her usual SG1 self. It sounds like it didn't happen on SGA, unfortunately. (Season 4 not just yet aired here.) Now if they felt they could only pair her up with insignificant men so as not to cast a shadow on Jack, why not develop that relationship in the show? It's barely hinted to, when he's retired, that she's not available. What a disappointment.
In SGA she was as much a cardboard character as Beltran in VOY. Doesn't seemed to have ruined her character in continuum, though.
as it wouldn;'t, its an sg-1 movie with the sg-1 cast Haven't seen these movie syet but I would imagine that being sg-1 movies, you would get more sg-1 sam back.
I thought Sam was great in Continuum. I'm glad Amanda Tapping has her own series now, Sanctuary. It's a good series that I believe will do well. I didn't think there was anywhere else to go with her character on Atlantis though.
I finished watching season 4 today and, though I liked Carter better in SG1, I still liked her in Atlantis. She was a different Carter in Atlantis but that was understandable since she had the command. She couldn't just submerge in science like she could before. I haven't watched the movies yet. Where are the movies in the stargate timeline?
Ark of Truth is set before the events of Atlantis S4. This is made perfectly clear, and there's no real argument on the matter. Continuum is a bit of a gray area. Officially speaking, it takes place during Atlantis S5 since the S5 premiere has a referance to Carter returning to Earth to witness Ba'al's extraction ceremony. However, things in Continuum don't add up to this. Most notably, Teal'c has short hair in Continuum, despite having long hair in S4's Midway. And Carter's a Lt. Col. in the movie for some reason.
Well, originally, Continuum was supposed to take place immediately after Ark of Truth. The last scene of Ark was actually supposed to be a minute longer, and the dialing sequence would be interrupted by the Tok'ra dialing in to say they'd found the last Ba'al. As for the rank thing, IIRC, Carter and Mitchell both have the insignia of full colonels. Their rank in the credits is a typo.
I was just watching the episode Trio and again I got disapointed with the rol of Carter, it seems like she has not clue of anything, she seems unable to solve problems anymore, it's like she depends of McKay on everything related with science. She is just there waiting that McKay come up with a solution for the problem. That's definetely not the Carter that we all know from SG-1. She just got more stupid, she can't solve problems anymore.
^"Trio" wasn't exactly a nuclear physics competition. Carter makes McKay look like a total idiot in that episode. If it was a nuclear physics competition, McKay would win but his experiment would probably be a lot more dangerous than anything Carter would mess around with. McKay is a fraction smarter than Carter, but he takes dangerous, arrogant risks. Carter is wiser.