![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficI finally watched the series finale of SG-1
I've always preferred series finales that were about the characters rather than the plot. They could have spent the last episode on the Ori, but I'm glad they didn't. Frankly, I've never cared about the Ori. They could've revealed the Stargate program to the world, which is what they planned on doing for the series finale back when they thought the show would be ending in season 5 or so, but I'm glad they didn't do that either. They explored the idea in "The Road Not Taken" and left it at that. I have to say I've always disliked series finales that broke all the toys—there's a part of me that wants to believe the characters can go on as they have been.
"Unending" was a perfect sort of compromise—we see the rest of these characters' lives, lives that they spend pursuing their hobbies in each others companies—but then take that back so that they are as they have been. "Unending" was particularly perfect because this view of the future was dark and despairing. It harkened back to the classic sci fi existential angst that we saw a lot of in the early days of the show.
This episode felt to me like a bookend to the season 1 episode "The Torment of Tantalus," particularly for Daniel. In that first episode, Daniel wants to risk being stranded alone on a barren world so that he will have time to decipher a database—meaning of life stuff. The irony is that in "Unending" he has all the time in the world and all the knowledge he ever wished to have access to, but can never do anything with it. In "The Torment of Tantalus," when Daniel emphasises the importance of this knowledge, Jack tells him it "all means squat unless we get out of here." Ernest, who has been stuck alone there for fifty years tells him knowledge is meaningless without someone to share it with. At that point, Daniel doesn't seem to get that. He still wants to stay.
(I rewatched "Torment of Tantalus" after "Unending" and holy cow they all look like babies. Ten years is a loooong time, especially for our Daniel. Oh, the floppy hair days.)
The Daniel we see in "Unending" has finally learned the futility of knowledge for knowledge's sake. We see him spending his days with the database, but as he tells Sam, he does it to stave off cabin fever. And he's not taking notes. We've never seen him not taking notes before. He's just reading the Asgard database, not even trying to preserve it even for himself.
The situation in "Unending" is classic sci fi: they finally have all the technology they ever wanted (and how many episodes have we had where they desperately tried to get this technology?), but they can't use it. They have the knowledge to become the most advanced race in the galaxy, but no time to learn from it. They're given the legacy of an entire race, but can't preserve. And then, once Sam has activated the time dilation field, they have everything they could ever want except a way out. At the moment when they are about to be killed, more time seems like a gift—even if they can't escape the blast, who would say no to a chance to live out their lives before the ship is destroyed? Over the episode, though, I think they all learn that time isn't a gift. Mitchell, at least, I'm sure would willingly have taken down the field and gone out in a blaze of glory if it weren't for the others.
Ironically, "Unending" gives us what everyone wants in a series finale—the belief that the characters we've followed for so many years live out the rest of their lives together—but shows us how awful that would be.
Series finales are hard on slashers. There's no way they're going to give us what we want (unless they're due South), and they often finally consummate some other relationship for the characters. It's particularly hard when that other relationship works. I completely bought Daniel/Vala. Heck—I liked it. It was kind of perfect for Daniel.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
butterfly has posted about this, but Vala brings Daniel full circle. In Daniel's rant at her, he acknowledges that he's spent the past decade, the entire run of the show, trying to get over the loss of his wife, Shau're. Though Vala is very different from Shau're, both of them were hosts to the Goa'uld. Shau're died; Vala lived. I think Daniel expected to have to help Shau're heal after that experience, but she died. So he meets Vala and has spent two years trying to help her heal, in his ornery way. She completes his emotional arc, allows him to do what he wanted to do as the good husband. She also bears a certain physical resemblance to Shau're.
I was taken aback by Daniel's speech, I have to say. But I liked it. I like that when he finally feels cornered, he lashes out and he's vicious. Since his descension, Daniel has often be an almost detached spiritual guru; possessed of infinite calm and perspective. It was nice to see that fire he had so much of in the early run of the show. I think it was necessary for him to lash out like that and for Vala to finally break down for him to be able to start a relationship with her. They both had to confront each other without any of the games for it to work. And I have to sympathize with Daniel spending all this time feeling like Vala was humiliating him with her advances—he hides it well, but it's clearly taken its toll.
But where does that leave Daniel and Jack? That was the one thing I felt was missing from this episode—some mention of missing Jack. Butterfly hypothesized that Jack was to Daniel like RayV was to Frasier—the friend that brought him to the point where he could be in a relationship with RayK. I'm not sure I agree with this entirely, but "Unending" is almost enough to make me see Jack and Daniel as better friends than lovers. I can't think of another time when a show has talked me out of my OTP.
In the episode commentary, Amanda Tapping says she and Chris Judge were playing a Sam/Teal'c relationship. It's not blatant like Daniel and Vala, but if you pay attention, they are holding hands at one point and Teal'c is the one who comforts Sam. It may be a case of limited options, but I like this. I much prefer seeing Sam end up with Teal'c than with Jack. It also makes Teal'c as the only one who remembers even more poignant. He's always been the most taciturn of the bunch, but he shows so much emotion in the last scene (yes, I know, that was all Chris tearing up) that you can see how much a relationship with Sam would have meant to him, though he will never tell her.
This also leads me to believe that Cameron was the most depressed of the bunch because he didn't get any for fifty years. :)
Of course, "Unending" was not a new concept. The last time they really thought the show was ending we got the two-parter "Moebius"—another story where the team gets stranded and lives out the rest of their lives together. In that case the prospect was even more bleak, since Daniel was the only survivor of SG1 and was left with alternate universe versions of his former teammates, all in Ancient Egypt. That also had the irony of giving Daniel something he would have, at one point, wanted more than anything—to go back in time and see Ancient Egypt—but fills him with despair when he finally gets it.
In conclusion, the back half of season 10 and particularly "Unending" has convinced me I should maybe get the DVDs. I have the DVDs up through season 7, the last season I thought good enough to be worth owning. But I can't just buy season 10 without seasons 8 and 9. Well, crap. Looks like I just have to get the entire series. And hope the movie they're filming, "The Ark of Truth" or some such nonsense, doesn't fill me with hate the way the Pretender movies did.
And dude—does this mean they can finally build ZPMs?
Huh--this icon is suddenly incredibly appropriate. I guess the show kind of is dead 10 now.
I've always preferred series finales that were about the characters rather than the plot. They could have spent the last episode on the Ori, but I'm glad they didn't. Frankly, I've never cared about the Ori. They could've revealed the Stargate program to the world, which is what they planned on doing for the series finale back when they thought the show would be ending in season 5 or so, but I'm glad they didn't do that either. They explored the idea in "The Road Not Taken" and left it at that. I have to say I've always disliked series finales that broke all the toys—there's a part of me that wants to believe the characters can go on as they have been.
"Unending" was a perfect sort of compromise—we see the rest of these characters' lives, lives that they spend pursuing their hobbies in each others companies—but then take that back so that they are as they have been. "Unending" was particularly perfect because this view of the future was dark and despairing. It harkened back to the classic sci fi existential angst that we saw a lot of in the early days of the show.
This episode felt to me like a bookend to the season 1 episode "The Torment of Tantalus," particularly for Daniel. In that first episode, Daniel wants to risk being stranded alone on a barren world so that he will have time to decipher a database—meaning of life stuff. The irony is that in "Unending" he has all the time in the world and all the knowledge he ever wished to have access to, but can never do anything with it. In "The Torment of Tantalus," when Daniel emphasises the importance of this knowledge, Jack tells him it "all means squat unless we get out of here." Ernest, who has been stuck alone there for fifty years tells him knowledge is meaningless without someone to share it with. At that point, Daniel doesn't seem to get that. He still wants to stay.
(I rewatched "Torment of Tantalus" after "Unending" and holy cow they all look like babies. Ten years is a loooong time, especially for our Daniel. Oh, the floppy hair days.)
The Daniel we see in "Unending" has finally learned the futility of knowledge for knowledge's sake. We see him spending his days with the database, but as he tells Sam, he does it to stave off cabin fever. And he's not taking notes. We've never seen him not taking notes before. He's just reading the Asgard database, not even trying to preserve it even for himself.
The situation in "Unending" is classic sci fi: they finally have all the technology they ever wanted (and how many episodes have we had where they desperately tried to get this technology?), but they can't use it. They have the knowledge to become the most advanced race in the galaxy, but no time to learn from it. They're given the legacy of an entire race, but can't preserve. And then, once Sam has activated the time dilation field, they have everything they could ever want except a way out. At the moment when they are about to be killed, more time seems like a gift—even if they can't escape the blast, who would say no to a chance to live out their lives before the ship is destroyed? Over the episode, though, I think they all learn that time isn't a gift. Mitchell, at least, I'm sure would willingly have taken down the field and gone out in a blaze of glory if it weren't for the others.
Ironically, "Unending" gives us what everyone wants in a series finale—the belief that the characters we've followed for so many years live out the rest of their lives together—but shows us how awful that would be.
Series finales are hard on slashers. There's no way they're going to give us what we want (unless they're due South), and they often finally consummate some other relationship for the characters. It's particularly hard when that other relationship works. I completely bought Daniel/Vala. Heck—I liked it. It was kind of perfect for Daniel.
butterfly has posted about this, but Vala brings Daniel full circle. In Daniel's rant at her, he acknowledges that he's spent the past decade, the entire run of the show, trying to get over the loss of his wife, Shau're. Though Vala is very different from Shau're, both of them were hosts to the Goa'uld. Shau're died; Vala lived. I think Daniel expected to have to help Shau're heal after that experience, but she died. So he meets Vala and has spent two years trying to help her heal, in his ornery way. She completes his emotional arc, allows him to do what he wanted to do as the good husband. She also bears a certain physical resemblance to Shau're.I was taken aback by Daniel's speech, I have to say. But I liked it. I like that when he finally feels cornered, he lashes out and he's vicious. Since his descension, Daniel has often be an almost detached spiritual guru; possessed of infinite calm and perspective. It was nice to see that fire he had so much of in the early run of the show. I think it was necessary for him to lash out like that and for Vala to finally break down for him to be able to start a relationship with her. They both had to confront each other without any of the games for it to work. And I have to sympathize with Daniel spending all this time feeling like Vala was humiliating him with her advances—he hides it well, but it's clearly taken its toll.
But where does that leave Daniel and Jack? That was the one thing I felt was missing from this episode—some mention of missing Jack. Butterfly hypothesized that Jack was to Daniel like RayV was to Frasier—the friend that brought him to the point where he could be in a relationship with RayK. I'm not sure I agree with this entirely, but "Unending" is almost enough to make me see Jack and Daniel as better friends than lovers. I can't think of another time when a show has talked me out of my OTP.
In the episode commentary, Amanda Tapping says she and Chris Judge were playing a Sam/Teal'c relationship. It's not blatant like Daniel and Vala, but if you pay attention, they are holding hands at one point and Teal'c is the one who comforts Sam. It may be a case of limited options, but I like this. I much prefer seeing Sam end up with Teal'c than with Jack. It also makes Teal'c as the only one who remembers even more poignant. He's always been the most taciturn of the bunch, but he shows so much emotion in the last scene (yes, I know, that was all Chris tearing up) that you can see how much a relationship with Sam would have meant to him, though he will never tell her.
This also leads me to believe that Cameron was the most depressed of the bunch because he didn't get any for fifty years. :)
Of course, "Unending" was not a new concept. The last time they really thought the show was ending we got the two-parter "Moebius"—another story where the team gets stranded and lives out the rest of their lives together. In that case the prospect was even more bleak, since Daniel was the only survivor of SG1 and was left with alternate universe versions of his former teammates, all in Ancient Egypt. That also had the irony of giving Daniel something he would have, at one point, wanted more than anything—to go back in time and see Ancient Egypt—but fills him with despair when he finally gets it.
In conclusion, the back half of season 10 and particularly "Unending" has convinced me I should maybe get the DVDs. I have the DVDs up through season 7, the last season I thought good enough to be worth owning. But I can't just buy season 10 without seasons 8 and 9. Well, crap. Looks like I just have to get the entire series. And hope the movie they're filming, "The Ark of Truth" or some such nonsense, doesn't fill me with hate the way the Pretender movies did.
And dude—does this mean they can finally build ZPMs?
Huh--this icon is suddenly incredibly appropriate. I guess the show kind of is dead 10 now.