SG-A – Vegas (5x19) – (Discuss – Grade | SPOILERS!)

[Hermiod]

I thought the wraith have known where earth was for a long while, wasnt a hive ship on the way when SG1 was taking care of the Ori?

In fact didnt they end up colliding the bad guy ships to take care of both problems?

Those two ships were the only ones who knew, they weren't interested in sharing. They stole the information from Atlantis' computers. Once they were destroyed, Earth's location was a secret again.

 

[cylkoth]

I thought the wraith have known where earth was for a long while, wasnt a hive ship on the way when SG1 was taking care of the Ori?

In fact didnt they end up colliding the bad guy ships to take care of both problems?

No, the Wraith never made it to the Milky Way. Their hyperspace engines can't traverse the void between Pegasus and MW. SG1's Pegasus Project, the Odyssey (in Pegasus) took out a Wraith hiveship in front of an active stargate in order to send enough power thru to make the wormhole jump from a regular gate Teal'c had placed next to the supergate. Teal'c lured an Ori vessel in front of the S-G, and used the kawoosh to destroy it.

 

[Kpnuts]

Sorry, that was rubbish, boring, and pointless.

Their predictable over obsession with style over substance meant we were treated to ENDLESS slow, 'edgy', stylized shots of everything with storyline thrown in as an afterthought.

Literally NOTHING happened in the first half hour. It was so mind numbingly boring I was tempted to switch over. Even the ending seemed like it was written at the last minute. And the whole, the signal is amplified in the other realities... PUHHHLEASE.

I wouldn't mind if it wasn't the penultimate episode... But it is. And now, instead of a (IMAGINE THAT) two hour finale, as it should be, we're instead given this 1 hour waste of time, with half the cast... And the series will be wrapped up quickly in 40minutes.

As usual, nice one TPTB and Mallozi! You've done it again.

 

[Kpnuts]

I think John is gay in this reality, the field medic was a "he" and he was involved with him.

Yeah I got that. Maybe it's a good thing the show is ending.

What does one have to do with the other?

WOW...that was probably the BEST episode of Atlantis EVER. The last 20 minutes went too fast and could have been stretched out into another hour. But WOW. That was good,,,

Really? Lots of slo-mo, stylised nonsense with abot 20 minutes of ACTUAL (pointless, rehashed AU) content is the best episode of SGA ever?

It used to be standard that if you had a character who you implied was gay, that character had to commit suicide or otherwise die by the end of the story "to make up for it." Funny how the SG:A writers accidentally resurrected a bigoted element of fiction that went out of fashion in the 1950s.

It's more likely this Shep felt he had lived though the Gulf war when he should died, os he felt he was living on barrowed time so to speak.

You completely missed the point of what they were saying

 

[Kpnuts]

double post

 

[DWF]

You completely missed the point of what they were saying.

I don't think so.

McKAY: Let's go back further, shall we? You were a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan but were dishonourably discharged for disobeying orders and trying to rescue a field medic trapped behind enemy lines. You were shot down – obviously survived, but unfortunately the crash killed four American soldiers along with eight civilians.

Now while we don't know what happened to the medic it's clear that this Sheppard was living with the guilt of surviving, it's no wonder that died in the end.

 

[Kpnuts]

Now while we don't know what happened to the medic it's clear that this Sheppard was living with the guilt of surviving, it's no wonder that died in the end.

What are you talking about??

Temis was making a very interesting point about past storytelling methods for gay characters; and how 20 odd years ago if a gay character was ever introduced... he or she would have to either be the bad guy, or be killed by the end of the episode to "make up for it"; ridiculous as it sounds. Temis then mentioned that it was funny how the writers "accidentally resurected that bigoted element of fiction"... which they did, assuming AU Sheppard was gay.

And then for some reason you brought up Sheppard living in guilt and that's why he died. That wasn't the point Temis was making.

 

[DWF]

Now while we don't know what happened to the medic it's clear that this Sheppard was living with the guilt of surviving, it's no wonder that died in the end.

What are you talking about??

Temis was making a very interesting point about past storytelling methods for gay characters; and how 20 odd years ago if a gay character was ever introduced... he or she would have to either be the bad guy, or be killed by the end of the episode to "make up for it"; ridiculous as it sounds. Temis then mentioned that it was funny how the writers "accidentally resurected that bigoted element of fiction"... which they did, assuming AU Sheppard was gay.

And then for some reason you brought up Sheppard living in guilt and that's why he died. That wasn't the point Temis was making.

No she was complaining that they used Shep for another cliched storyline of a jittled gay lover. But in the end they didn't give the sex of the medic and if they did it was a she so the old cliched storyline complaint doesn't work no matter how you cut it.

This Shep did die of guilt not some supposed cliched gay storyline that didn't exist in the first place.

 

[firehawk12]

Did I miss something?
Where's this gay subtext?

I thought the "life changing moment" was that the Sheppard in "our" reality saved the medic and the one in this reality didn't.

 

[biotech]

Plus they said "she" when describing the medic, so Shep is one of those gay men that goes out exclusively with women.

I wouldn't have a problem if they had made Shep gay, but lets not insist they did when they clearly didn't.

 

[biotech]

I thought the "life changing moment" was that the Sheppard in "our" reality saved the medic and the one in this reality didn't.

I think considering the time period involved Shep was already on an SG team by then and wouldn't have been anywhere near afghanistan.

 

[the_wildcard]

Sorry if I am jumping late on this post, but I just saw this ep recently and I didn't realize it was Neil Jackson guest starring as the Wraith until I came into this thread.

Wow, I haven't seen that guy since Blade, the TV show on Spike! I don't remember him being so big though.

 

[Hermiod]

Did I miss something?
Where's this gay subtext?

This is science fiction. There's always a gay subtext and if there isn't the fans will invent one.

For further reference see O'Brien, Miles ; Bashir, Julian

 

[firehawk12]

I thought the "life changing moment" was that the Sheppard in "our" reality saved the medic and the one in this reality didn't.

I think considering the time period involved Shep was already on an SG team by then and wouldn't have been anywhere near afghanistan.

Wait, am I confusing war hero team leaders?

Was Cam the one that "disobeyed orders" to save someone in Afghanistan?
I vaguely remember a flashback episode that actually featured one of the characters fighting in Afghanistan to save the some guy... I just assumed that it was Shep and that it was an Atlantis episode.

Anyway, if Shep came on board during Atlantis and the series follows real world dates, it would have been 2003/4... which gives him plenty of time to do a tour in Afghanistan... or at least see action there.

Here it is:

John Sheppard is an experienced and talented pilot in the US Air Force, though his reputation was somewhat tarnished when he disobeyed a direct order in Afghanistan in an unsuccessful attempt to save the lives of several servicemen. He has experience flying AH-1 Cobra, AH-64 Apache, OH-58 Kiowa, UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters and CV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft.

That's from Wikipedia. So if he was unsuccessful in both realities, I suppose in "ours" he decided to mope around in Antarctica rather than quit and move to Vegas.

 

[firehawk12]

Did I miss something?
Where's this gay subtext?

This is science fiction. There's always a gay subtext and if there isn't the fans will invent one.

For further reference see O'Brien, Miles ; Bashir, Julian

See, I'm pretty good at seeing these things. 300 was practically gay porn for me. But with this episode, I didn't see it at all. They even had him brush off that female doctor/nurse, which I took as a one night stand type of thing.

 

[Etched]

I thought the "life changing moment" was that the Sheppard in "our" reality saved the medic and the one in this reality didn't.

I think considering the time period involved Shep was already on an SG team by then and wouldn't have been anywhere near afghanistan.

Wait, am I confusing war hero team leaders?

Was Cam the one that "disobeyed orders" to save someone in Afghanistan?
I vaguely remember a flashback episode that actually featured one of the characters fighting in Afghanistan to save the some guy... I just assumed that it was Shep and that it was an Atlantis episode.

Anyway, if Shep came on board during Atlantis and the series follows real world dates, it would have been 2003/4... which gives him plenty of time to do a tour in Afghanistan... or at least see action there.

Here it is:

John Sheppard is an experienced and talented pilot in the US Air Force, though his reputation was somewhat tarnished when he disobeyed a direct order in Afghanistan in an unsuccessful attempt to save the lives of several servicemen. He has experience flying AH-1 Cobra, AH-64 Apache, OH-58 Kiowa, UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters and CV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft.

That's from Wikipedia. So if he was unsuccessful in both realities, I suppose in "ours" he decided to mope around in Antarctica rather than quit and move to Vegas.

In "our" universe Sheppard disobeyed a direct order to go back and save the crew of a downed chopper, in the episode Phantoms we see him trying to rescue the only surviving member of the crew Holland, he fails but he doesn't get anyone else killed so so they just pack him off to Antartica with a slap on the wrist. In VegasVerse he screws up big time gets a bunch of people killed and is thrown out of the USAF.

There was no mention of him being involved with Holland or anyone else and remember "our" Sheppard was married to Nancy at some point where VegasShep hadn't been, so whatever the divergent point between their lives was the incident in Afghanistan wasn't it.

 

[Kpnuts]

Now while we don't know what happened to the medic it's clear that this Sheppard was living with the guilt of surviving, it's no wonder that died in the end.

What are you talking about??

Temis was making a very interesting point about past storytelling methods for gay characters; and how 20 odd years ago if a gay character was ever introduced... he or she would have to either be the bad guy, or be killed by the end of the episode to "make up for it"; ridiculous as it sounds. Temis then mentioned that it was funny how the writers "accidentally resurected that bigoted element of fiction"... which they did, assuming AU Sheppard was gay.

And then for some reason you brought up Sheppard living in guilt and that's why he died. That wasn't the point Temis was making.

No she was complaining that they used Shep for another cliched storyline of a jittled gay lover.

No, you missed the point completely. Temis was just bringing up an old storytelling convention from years back and saying that IF the writers made AU Shep gay, they would have accidentally stumbled upon it.

Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[Hermiod]

No, you missed the point completely. Temis was just bringing up an old storytelling convention from years back and saying that IF the writers made AU Shep gay, they would have accidentally stumbled upon it.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Yeah, that's what I thought she was saying as well. I don't think it's even worth bothering about because there is even the slightest bit of evidence in the episode that aired that this version of Sheppard was gay. So, if I hear people start to say "they only killed him because he's gay!" and all the same nonsense I heard around the time they killed Tara off in Buffy, I wouldn't be too impressed.

 

[SalvorHardin]

I'll just say it for the record that McKay clearly says "she" when talking about that medic so I fail to see how all this gay Shepard thing started.

But what the hell...Carry on if you wish. It's funny


Oh and I liked the episode overall, even though the directing was annoying at times.
And I've never watched any CSI so I didn't get the references to it.

And as for the MU I believe it was not the same universe Rod came from.
I believe there was another thread here with a quote from one of the Stargate people saying so.
Besides this McKay was nothing like Rod.

 

[Kpnuts]

I find it funnier how uptight and wound up certain people get at the very thought of AU Sheppard being gay