SGA 3x17 Sunday
Jan. 20th, 2007 10:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficI'm very mixed about this episode. On the one hand there were some great fluff scenes (the one with Zelenka was right out of fanfic), but on the other hand, there was no dramatic arc, the structure was bizarre and all the emotional bits were stolen from other places. So it was sort of like a piece of chewed up gum that was spat into a down pillow factory and got feathers stuck all over it.
I'd been spoiled for Carson leaving, and I don't have a problem with that specifically. I like Carson – I've enjoyed his contribution to the show – but in the last season and a half it's like the writers didn't quite know what to do with him. Carson as a character really should never have been on Atlantis. He's always been a fish out of water. He's very attached to his family back home, he's a research scientist at heart and not good material for chief medical officer, he's professed anxiety over going off-world and being in dangerous situations, and he has engaged in some seriously unethical behavior at Dr. Weir's instigation that he's obviously had issues with. So, yes. He shouldn't be on Atlantis. I would have liked him to just go back to Area 51, but I've seen too much TV to expect that to happen.
As a character-death episode though, this seriously failed. It's not the worst by a long shot. (Anyone who stuck with the X-Files through season 9 will agree with me there – when the Lone Gunmen died in the episode "Jumping the Shark," they deserved Darwin awards.) But since this was the death of a doctor doing what he did best, saving lives, it begs an obvious comparison to the SG-1 episode "Heroes."
At Con.txt last year I was surprised to see that only maybe a quarter of the SGA fans there had ever watched SG-1. The reactions of other fans to this episode that I've read so far seems to fit that, cause I've only seen one person (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
icarusancalion) note that this episode borrowed its emotional arc, its plot, and some of its character moments from SG-1.
-Carson and fishing. Many shows have had characters obsessed with fishing, but Carson being so fixated on it here felt like an after-the-fact addition. I don't think we've heard him even mention it before. On SG-1, it was an eight-season long running gag that O'Neill wanted to take his team members fishing and they never wanted to go. So much so that the final shot of him on the show as a regular was fishing. O'Neill owned fishing. To make that Carson's "thing" was a cliché.
-Exploding tumors. Anyone remember the SG-1 season 1 episode "Singularity" where a Goa'uld turns a girl into a human bomb? At least in that episode they had the sense not to call it an "exploding tumor," which is a misnomer anyway since it wasn't an uncontrolled growth of cells, it was an aggregation of elements. (Tiny nitpick: if the bomb explodes when it reaches critical mass from the trace elements being drawn from the rest of the body, wouldn't removing it from the body prevent it from going off? Just a thought.) "Singularity" had the right idea with this plot: forcing SG-1 to put the young girl who's been turned into a bomb in the bottom of a missile silo to die alone. Carson's way of dealing with it? Not really well thought out.
As for the way Carson died, and the emotional impact, I felt like I was watching a retread of "Heroes." There are some basic differences: Heroes was a two-parter, so spent an entire episode on the grief of the characters; the decision to kill a character in that episode came from the writers wanting to reintroduce jeopardy to the show, not from an actor wanting to leave. But "Heroes" did a number of things right that allowed the audience to focus on the death of Dr. Janet Fraser.
-No other characters died in that episode, so when you got to the funeral scene, you weren't left wondering about all the other people who got gipped out of big funerals.
-The death itself wasn't shown until most of the way through the second episode, even though you knew someone had died. And the way it happened was much more like Wash's death in Serenity – sudden and brutal. Dr. Fraser is shot while treating a soldier on a battlefield. It's simple and effective and shows that through her everyday actions she was a hero. Carson, on the other hand, died in a ridiculously contrived fashion, complete with slow dramatic build-up, final words, pleas to change his resolve and save himself, etc. etc. The effect of this is that we feel they needed to convince us, the audience, that no, really, Carson was a hero. In Janet's case, we could just take it on faith.
-Because "Heroes" was a two-parter, we got a chance to see each of the cast members deal with their grief in their own way. In addition, we have two outside characters, intruders sent by the government to observe the SGC, who provide the window into the reactions of Daniel, Sam and Teal'c. They did not feel the need for Janet to say anything from "beyond the grave." The emotion was there, it didn't need to be added on. For Carson, on the other hand, they spend a lot of time after he dies convincing us that we should be sad about this. I've read some fan wanks of the last scene explaining Rodney's "best friend" comment, all of which make sense from a character standpoint. But, within the show, I don't buy it. I didn't see any evidence in the show before this that Rodney felt a particular bond with Carson. They had their moments, but I had no reason prior to this scene to believe that Carson was more important to Rodney than any of the other main characters. Making Rodney the primary griever felt like an after-the-fact addition, an attempt to force more emotion into this episode. And don't even get me started on the whole "guilt" thing. At heart, Martin Gero must be a thirteen-year-old fangirl. There's no other way to explain that clunky plot device. If Rodney had only gone fishing with Carson…then neither of them would have been there to deal with the crisis and a bunch more people would have died.
-The eulogy. Oh, god. Elizabeth's eulogy is one of the worst pieces of shit I've ever heard. Both Stargate series have done their fair share of funeral scenes, and the speeches are always a bit awkward, but this was the worst. There wasn't a single statement there that wasn't both dumb and blindingly wrong. By comparison, Sam's eulogy for Janet in "Heroes" makes me cry every damn time. I rewatched it before writing this, and it still made me cry. The point is the same – this person saved lives and died a hero doing just that – but the execution is so much better. Watching Elizabeth I kept thinking the writers were paraphrasing Sam's speech from "Heroes" – they were trying to get the same emotional beats, but without the device that made Sam's speech work. I won't quote it here – if you haven't, you need to watch it for yourself. The only thing Carson's funeral had going for it was that it's the only time I've seen them send a coffin/wreath through the stargate (cause they always do that) for an actual reason.
Maybe if the structure hadn't been so strange, the plot so poorly explained or the pieces so mismatched, I would have felt something when Carson died in this episode. Oh, well. I'm sure the next episode will be, "Carson, who?" so I'm not too worried.
Note: If anyone else cares about the episode "Heroes," I highly recommend Lisa Dickson's essay on it in Reading Stargate: SG-1. She goes into a lot of detail about the use of framing devices and the primary role of television as a medium in the episode and other…stuff. Plus, the episode "Heroes" has Adam Baldwin in it. And who's never wondered what it would be like if Jayne had his own SG team?
Also, this is my only Carson icon.
I'd been spoiled for Carson leaving, and I don't have a problem with that specifically. I like Carson – I've enjoyed his contribution to the show – but in the last season and a half it's like the writers didn't quite know what to do with him. Carson as a character really should never have been on Atlantis. He's always been a fish out of water. He's very attached to his family back home, he's a research scientist at heart and not good material for chief medical officer, he's professed anxiety over going off-world and being in dangerous situations, and he has engaged in some seriously unethical behavior at Dr. Weir's instigation that he's obviously had issues with. So, yes. He shouldn't be on Atlantis. I would have liked him to just go back to Area 51, but I've seen too much TV to expect that to happen.
As a character-death episode though, this seriously failed. It's not the worst by a long shot. (Anyone who stuck with the X-Files through season 9 will agree with me there – when the Lone Gunmen died in the episode "Jumping the Shark," they deserved Darwin awards.) But since this was the death of a doctor doing what he did best, saving lives, it begs an obvious comparison to the SG-1 episode "Heroes."
At Con.txt last year I was surprised to see that only maybe a quarter of the SGA fans there had ever watched SG-1. The reactions of other fans to this episode that I've read so far seems to fit that, cause I've only seen one person (
icarusancalion) note that this episode borrowed its emotional arc, its plot, and some of its character moments from SG-1.-Carson and fishing. Many shows have had characters obsessed with fishing, but Carson being so fixated on it here felt like an after-the-fact addition. I don't think we've heard him even mention it before. On SG-1, it was an eight-season long running gag that O'Neill wanted to take his team members fishing and they never wanted to go. So much so that the final shot of him on the show as a regular was fishing. O'Neill owned fishing. To make that Carson's "thing" was a cliché.
-Exploding tumors. Anyone remember the SG-1 season 1 episode "Singularity" where a Goa'uld turns a girl into a human bomb? At least in that episode they had the sense not to call it an "exploding tumor," which is a misnomer anyway since it wasn't an uncontrolled growth of cells, it was an aggregation of elements. (Tiny nitpick: if the bomb explodes when it reaches critical mass from the trace elements being drawn from the rest of the body, wouldn't removing it from the body prevent it from going off? Just a thought.) "Singularity" had the right idea with this plot: forcing SG-1 to put the young girl who's been turned into a bomb in the bottom of a missile silo to die alone. Carson's way of dealing with it? Not really well thought out.
As for the way Carson died, and the emotional impact, I felt like I was watching a retread of "Heroes." There are some basic differences: Heroes was a two-parter, so spent an entire episode on the grief of the characters; the decision to kill a character in that episode came from the writers wanting to reintroduce jeopardy to the show, not from an actor wanting to leave. But "Heroes" did a number of things right that allowed the audience to focus on the death of Dr. Janet Fraser.
-No other characters died in that episode, so when you got to the funeral scene, you weren't left wondering about all the other people who got gipped out of big funerals.
-The death itself wasn't shown until most of the way through the second episode, even though you knew someone had died. And the way it happened was much more like Wash's death in Serenity – sudden and brutal. Dr. Fraser is shot while treating a soldier on a battlefield. It's simple and effective and shows that through her everyday actions she was a hero. Carson, on the other hand, died in a ridiculously contrived fashion, complete with slow dramatic build-up, final words, pleas to change his resolve and save himself, etc. etc. The effect of this is that we feel they needed to convince us, the audience, that no, really, Carson was a hero. In Janet's case, we could just take it on faith.
-Because "Heroes" was a two-parter, we got a chance to see each of the cast members deal with their grief in their own way. In addition, we have two outside characters, intruders sent by the government to observe the SGC, who provide the window into the reactions of Daniel, Sam and Teal'c. They did not feel the need for Janet to say anything from "beyond the grave." The emotion was there, it didn't need to be added on. For Carson, on the other hand, they spend a lot of time after he dies convincing us that we should be sad about this. I've read some fan wanks of the last scene explaining Rodney's "best friend" comment, all of which make sense from a character standpoint. But, within the show, I don't buy it. I didn't see any evidence in the show before this that Rodney felt a particular bond with Carson. They had their moments, but I had no reason prior to this scene to believe that Carson was more important to Rodney than any of the other main characters. Making Rodney the primary griever felt like an after-the-fact addition, an attempt to force more emotion into this episode. And don't even get me started on the whole "guilt" thing. At heart, Martin Gero must be a thirteen-year-old fangirl. There's no other way to explain that clunky plot device. If Rodney had only gone fishing with Carson…then neither of them would have been there to deal with the crisis and a bunch more people would have died.
-The eulogy. Oh, god. Elizabeth's eulogy is one of the worst pieces of shit I've ever heard. Both Stargate series have done their fair share of funeral scenes, and the speeches are always a bit awkward, but this was the worst. There wasn't a single statement there that wasn't both dumb and blindingly wrong. By comparison, Sam's eulogy for Janet in "Heroes" makes me cry every damn time. I rewatched it before writing this, and it still made me cry. The point is the same – this person saved lives and died a hero doing just that – but the execution is so much better. Watching Elizabeth I kept thinking the writers were paraphrasing Sam's speech from "Heroes" – they were trying to get the same emotional beats, but without the device that made Sam's speech work. I won't quote it here – if you haven't, you need to watch it for yourself. The only thing Carson's funeral had going for it was that it's the only time I've seen them send a coffin/wreath through the stargate (cause they always do that) for an actual reason.
Maybe if the structure hadn't been so strange, the plot so poorly explained or the pieces so mismatched, I would have felt something when Carson died in this episode. Oh, well. I'm sure the next episode will be, "Carson, who?" so I'm not too worried.
Note: If anyone else cares about the episode "Heroes," I highly recommend Lisa Dickson's essay on it in Reading Stargate: SG-1. She goes into a lot of detail about the use of framing devices and the primary role of television as a medium in the episode and other…stuff. Plus, the episode "Heroes" has Adam Baldwin in it. And who's never wondered what it would be like if Jayne had his own SG team?
Also, this is my only Carson icon.