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    Daniel: Best Character Growth / Development Episode

    In our series of Polls to find the top Daniel ep, we've identified the best
    Loopy Daniel episodes as Legacy, Lifeboat and Absolute Power; the best eps for Daniel the Scholar and Explorer as Torment of Tantalus and The First Ones; the best Daniel the Hero as Meridian and Reckoning pt II; and the best Whumping eps as Evolution pt II and Prometheus Unbound.

    Here are some more for you to choose from
    72
    Serpent’s Song
    0.00%
    0
    Fallen
    0.00%
    0
    The Gamekeeper
    1.39%
    1
    Threads
    13.89%
    10
    Secrets
    0.00%
    0
    Orpheus
    6.94%
    5
    Full Circle
    6.94%
    5
    Past & Present
    0.00%
    0
    Forever In A Day
    40.28%
    29
    Maternal Instinct
    23.61%
    17
    Heroes pt II
    6.94%
    5

    Madeleine

    #2
    oh my that is a hard question... but had to go with Forever in A Day.. cuz it shows daniel as he works through his grief after his wife is killed, one chp of his life closes and in a way another begins.
    sigpic

    Comment


      #3
      Hard choice for me as well, and I narrowed it down to The GameKeeper and Forever in A Day, however, I went with Forever in A day....
      sigpic

      Comment


        #4
        ooh! it was a tough tie between forever in a day and threads!! i went with threads though, as it was more development about HIS character and not development of his relationship with sha're both on my fave eps list though!

        Comment


          #5
          Gotta go with Threads, it's like the cumulation of all his years in learning, training and communication, and he applied it all in the dinner.

          .
          sigpic
          sig.by : lilferret

          Comment


            #6
            I am the odd man out; I went with my first instinct and chose Maternal Instinct.
            sigpic

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by Kliggins
              I am the odd man out; I went with my first instinct and chose Maternal Instinct.

              I went with Maternal Instinct too. In that episode Daniel started out searching for the Harsesis because it was Sha're's last wish that he find the boy and take care of him; and he believed he could do that. To come to the realization that he isn't cut out for the task takes a lot of growth IMO.


              SueS

              Comment


                #8
                I’ve been dreading this one. Not because it was going to be a particularly tough choice – Daniel’s little ode on a ballpoint pen alone would have been enough for ‘Forever In A Day’ to snag my vote – but because I actually have to try to put into words what makes this episode is so unutterably special, when usually I just avoid trying to talk about it at all. It’s my “How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?” episode: The minute I start trying to put any of it into words, the nuns in my head start singing about clouds, and the pinning down thereof, and, really, they’re no help at all.

                Michael Shanks, on the other hand, has been a great help. I just love some of the things he’s been saying in recent interviews, about Daniel being this "little child of the universe” and how the search for the Ancients is, for Daniel, about the search for God, the search for answers to his existence.

                That’s Daniel as he’s lived in my head and, where L-Jade went with ‘Threads’ as the “culmination of all his years of learning,” I’ve set my sights more on the beginning. And, the way I look at it, ‘Forever In A Day’ is the episode really sets Daniel on that path, the one that takes the holy grail of the stolen bride out of the foreground and opens up the view to include the universe entire and sets about searching, not for Daniel’s wife, but for Daniel’s place. “The meaning of life stuff” is no longer an abstract or ancillary pursuit – some concept Daniel’s interested in (however passionate that interest) – it’s Daniel’s whole story. The meaning of life, the meaning of his life.

                ‘FIAD’ is also the episode where Daniel went from being my favourite character on ‘Stargate’ to my favourite character anywhere, period, and where Michael Shanks became, for me, the sweet and perfect embodiment of what C. Day Lewis described as “the huge, weak power of grass to split a rock.”

                It would have been so easy, for writer, actor and director alike, to haul off and hit on all the outward effects of grief, wring the angst out of the scenes like a little kid torturing the last drop of Colgate out of the toothpaste tube. But the story, in all its mystery, requires something different. It needs the grief, utterly, but beneath the surface, without the adornments. That's a tall order.

                Michael knows when to “go big,” knows when to take the stage and work that room, baby, and the show knows when to stand back, give him space and let him own the place. But he knows even better when to go small and pull the audience in, draw them in close, deep down under his skin, and curl them up next to where it hurts (or, as in ‘Maternal Instinct,’ where it wonders).

                He understands the power of stillness, how a pebble dropped into the still surface of a glassy pool has a more shattering effect – creates more drama – than a rock hurled into wailing waters, and how the calm allows you to get closer, close enough to see every detail of the ripples, and to see yourself reflected through them. Close enough to smell the sweat and the tea on the breath, to trace the tear tracks, to see the fine little lines under the eyes, hear the tiniest hitch in the breath and see just how thin and brittle the veneer of composure really is.

                Michael wraps this translucent veil of control around Daniel’s pain, carries lines and scenes the way you carry yourself on a frozen pond when the ice has begun to creak, or ease yourself down the hallway trying not to rattle a nerve-rending migraine. The tension itself is agonising and completely heartbreaking.

                What’s so perfect about this is how that tension plays so deftly into the inherent mystery of the episode, how the stillness enhances its dreamlike quality, creates the sense of unreality so crucial to the story and lends it an elegiac tone.

                The camera work is in complete sympathy, the extreme close-ups underscoring the isolation and the intimacy – and can I just say I have never seen a camera adore an actor the way the camera adores Michael here? It gazes on him as lovingly as Daniel gazes upon Sha’re (and sweet, sweet mercy he is just so indescribably beautiful to look at in this episode, has your heart doing back-flips even while he shatters it into a million little pieces). God, the whole thing is this brilliant, three-way relationship between the story, the actor and the camera.

                Um…where was I?

                What’s even more perfect about this is that it is such a Daniel kind of grief, the withdrawn and self-contained pain of the child – the “little orphan” – who’s learned he has no one to grieve with but himself. It isn’t about being uncomfortable around “feelings;” Daniel’s always encouraging others to talk about theirs, and is right there to listen and help when they do. It’s isn’t a closing off that says, “Move along, there’s nothing to see here, nothing to deal with,” but simply a closing in that says, “I can deal with this on my own, I always have.”

                He’s alone with this, even with Sam standing right there at his bedside, and she knows it, and what’s so painful for her is that it’s not that he won’t let her in, but that, in a way, he can’t even see her there. Where someone like Jack throws up a wall, bars the door and boards up the windows, Daniel withdraws, and into a place where there are no doors because there’s never been any need for them, no one’s ever tried to come in and he’s learned not to expect them to.

                Four years later, in ‘Heroes,’ he still hasn’t learned to. While Sam is all out in the open with her grief, crying and snuffling and mangling tissues and biting the heads off reporters and seeking out friends and stocking up on those hugs – in short, letting it out and getting what she needs from others – there’s Daniel, tucked away in the darkest corner of a darkened room, working through it, quietly, by himself.

                And, with that in mind, then, what’s sooo especially cool about ‘Forever In A Day’ is that Sha’re gets in. That most exceptional girl gets in, which just might be the most beautiful thing about the whole beautiful episode. She finds a way – an extraordinary way – to get into that place with Daniel and give him everything he needs but has never learned to ask for.

                What I like, too, is how you can look back on ‘FIAD’ from the vantage point of ‘Maternal Instinct’ or ‘Threads’ or a handful of other episodes and come up with new angles on what Sha’re might have been up to. It might have been all about the child, about making sure Daniel took care of the boy. But, given that the child was in just about the safest hands imaginable, maybe it was less about that than it was about getting Daniel to Kheb. Maybe what she wanted was to bring Daniel face to face with Oma, so that Oma could see who and what he was and take him under her wing as well, and so Daniel could have his first real brush with the Ancients and – wife or no wife, child or no child – choose for himself, for his own sake, to stay the course. I still wonder if this, as well as the proper good-bye and the chance to work through the pain of losing her with her, was part of Sha’re’s gift, and like to think that it was.

                Oh, right, and the whole forgiving Teal’c thing. Gah! See?! I knew this would happen. I’ve been babbling away this long already and I haven’t even begun to touch on the subject of Teal’c, and what a major stepping-stone this episode is in Daniel’s most unlikely and remarkable friendship with him; how Daniel’s anger was allowed to play a little more openly than his grief, which seems fitting, since that anger was more about Sha’re and the choices that were taken away from her and the chances she should have been given but wasn’t (because Daniel is always more outspoken when life takes an unfair swing at others than he is when he’s the one who’s been struck); and how staggering it must have been for Teal’c, in those final moments in that tent, thinking he’d sacrificed the friendship in order to save the friend, to hear Daniel tell him he’d done the right thing.

                Yeah, the nuns are laughing it up. Let ’em. This little series of polls is going to be their undoing. ‘Maternal Instinct’ is the closest runner-up for me in this one, and I’ll be late for work if I start futzing around with that one. Maybe when I get home, though. I’ll send those nuns packing yet.

                Tucker

                Comment


                  #9
                  i voted heros pt2, but Forever in a Day was really good too
                  Save us from danger, save us from evil
                  Servatis a periculum, Servatis a maleficum

                  Comment


                    #10
                    It was a tough choice between Maternal Instinct and Forever In A Day, but I went for Maternal Instinct

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Originally posted by Tucker Case
                      I’ve been dreading this one. Not because it was going to be a particularly tough choice – Daniel’s little ode on a ballpoint pen alone would have been enough for ‘Forever In A Day’ to snag my vote – but because I actually have to try to put into words what makes this episode is so unutterably special, when usually I just avoid trying to talk about it at all. It’s my “How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?” episode: The minute I start trying to put any of it into words, the nuns in my head start singing about clouds, and the pinning down thereof, and, really, they’re no help at all.

                      Michael Shanks, on the other hand, has been a great help. I just love some of the things he’s been saying in recent interviews, about Daniel being this "little child of the universe” and how the search for the Ancients is, for Daniel, about the search for God, the search for answers to his existence.

                      That’s Daniel as he’s lived in my head and, where L-Jade went with ‘Threads’ as the “culmination of all his years of learning,” I’ve set my sights more on the beginning. And, the way I look at it, ‘Forever In A Day’ is the episode really sets Daniel on that path, the one that takes the holy grail of the stolen bride out of the foreground and opens up the view to include the universe entire and sets about searching, not for Daniel’s wife, but for Daniel’s place. “The meaning of life stuff” is no longer an abstract or ancillary pursuit – some concept Daniel’s interested in (however passionate that interest) – it’s Daniel’s whole story. The meaning of life, the meaning of his life.

                      ‘FIAD’ is also the episode where Daniel went from being my favourite character on ‘Stargate’ to my favourite character anywhere, period, and where Michael Shanks became, for me, the sweet and perfect embodiment of what C. Day Lewis described as “the huge, weak power of grass to split a rock.”

                      It would have been so easy, for writer, actor and director alike, to haul off and hit on all the outward effects of grief, wring the angst out of the scenes like a little kid torturing the last drop of Colgate out of the toothpaste tube. But the story, in all its mystery, requires something different. It needs the grief, utterly, but beneath the surface, without the adornments. That's a tall order.

                      Michael knows when to “go big,” knows when to take the stage and work that room, baby, and the show knows when to stand back, give him space and let him own the place. But he knows even better when to go small and pull the audience in, draw them in close, deep down under his skin, and curl them up next to where it hurts (or, as in ‘Maternal Instinct,’ where it wonders).

                      He understands the power of stillness, how a pebble dropped into the still surface of a glassy pool has a more shattering effect – creates more drama – than a rock hurled into wailing waters, and how the calm allows you to get closer, close enough to see every detail of the ripples, and to see yourself reflected through them. Close enough to smell the sweat and the tea on the breath, to trace the tear tracks, to see the fine little lines under the eyes, hear the tiniest hitch in the breath and see just how thin and brittle the veneer of composure really is.

                      Michael wraps this translucent veil of control around Daniel’s pain, carries lines and scenes the way you carry yourself on a frozen pond when the ice has begun to creak, or ease yourself down the hallway trying not to rattle a nerve-rending migraine. The tension itself is agonising and completely heartbreaking.

                      What’s so perfect about this is how that tension plays so deftly into the inherent mystery of the episode, how the stillness enhances its dreamlike quality, creates the sense of unreality so crucial to the story and lends it an elegiac tone.

                      The camera work is in complete sympathy, the extreme close-ups underscoring the isolation and the intimacy – and can I just say I have never seen a camera adore an actor the way the camera adores Michael here? It gazes on him as lovingly as Daniel gazes upon Sha’re (and sweet, sweet mercy he is just so indescribably beautiful to look at in this episode, has your heart doing back-flips even while he shatters it into a million little pieces). God, the whole thing is this brilliant, three-way relationship between the story, the actor and the camera.

                      Um…where was I?

                      What’s even more perfect about this is that it is such a Daniel kind of grief, the withdrawn and self-contained pain of the child – the “little orphan” – who’s learned he has no one to grieve with but himself. It isn’t about being uncomfortable around “feelings;” Daniel’s always encouraging others to talk about theirs, and is right there to listen and help when they do. It’s isn’t a closing off that says, “Move along, there’s nothing to see here, nothing to deal with,” but simply a closing in that says, “I can deal with this on my own, I always have.”

                      He’s alone with this, even with Sam standing right there at his bedside, and she knows it, and what’s so painful for her is that it’s not that he won’t let her in, but that, in a way, he can’t even see her there. Where someone like Jack throws up a wall, bars the door and boards up the windows, Daniel withdraws, and into a place where there are no doors because there’s never been any need for them, no one’s ever tried to come in and he’s learned not to expect them to.

                      Four years later, in ‘Heroes,’ he still hasn’t learned to. While Sam is all out in the open with her grief, crying and snuffling and mangling tissues and biting the heads off reporters and seeking out friends and stocking up on those hugs – in short, letting it out and getting what she needs from others – there’s Daniel, tucked away in the darkest corner of a darkened room, working through it, quietly, by himself.

                      And, with that in mind, then, what’s sooo especially cool about ‘Forever In A Day’ is that Sha’re gets in. That most exceptional girl gets in, which just might be the most beautiful thing about the whole beautiful episode. She finds a way – an extraordinary way – to get into that place with Daniel and give him everything he needs but has never learned to ask for.

                      What I like, too, is how you can look back on ‘FIAD’ from the vantage point of ‘Maternal Instinct’ or ‘Threads’ or a handful of other episodes and come up with new angles on what Sha’re might have been up to. It might have been all about the child, about making sure Daniel took care of the boy. But, given that the child was in just about the safest hands imaginable, maybe it was less about that than it was about getting Daniel to Kheb. Maybe what she wanted was to bring Daniel face to face with Oma, so that Oma could see who and what he was and take him under her wing as well, and so Daniel could have his first real brush with the Ancients and – wife or no wife, child or no child – choose for himself, for his own sake, to stay the course. I still wonder if this, as well as the proper good-bye and the chance to work through the pain of losing her with her, was part of Sha’re’s gift, and like to think that it was.

                      Oh, right, and the whole forgiving Teal’c thing. Gah! See?! I knew this would happen. I’ve been babbling away this long already and I haven’t even begun to touch on the subject of Teal’c, and what a major stepping-stone this episode is in Daniel’s most unlikely and remarkable friendship with him; how Daniel’s anger was allowed to play a little more openly than his grief, which seems fitting, since that anger was more about Sha’re and the choices that were taken away from her and the chances she should have been given but wasn’t (because Daniel is always more outspoken when life takes an unfair swing at others than he is when he’s the one who’s been struck); and how staggering it must have been for Teal’c, in those final moments in that tent, thinking he’d sacrificed the friendship in order to save the friend, to hear Daniel tell him he’d done the right thing.

                      Yeah, the nuns are laughing it up. Let ’em. This little series of polls is going to be their undoing. ‘Maternal Instinct’ is the closest runner-up for me in this one, and I’ll be late for work if I start futzing around with that one. Maybe when I get home, though. I’ll send those nuns packing yet.

                      Tucker
                      Elegantly put, Tucker----a genuine treat to read!

                      Well, anything I write now will sound pedestrian, but here goes!
                      I also had a hard time deciding between "Forever in a Day" and "Threads", but in the end I voted for "Threads". Both episodes were classic examples of character growth and development for Daniel, but "Threads" really seemed like a culmination (I think L-Jade said this, too) of everything Daniel's life had been leading to over the years.

                      To me, "FIAD" was Daniel evolving from a "kid" (an extremely brilliant "kid") into a man. "Meridian"-through-"Full Circle" took Daniel the Man far beyond all of that into a totally different sphere of ascended being. But "Threads" took him even further beyond that to a place where he could see past the almost hero worship he had before of the Ancients. He was able to look at them and their ways firsthand and arrive at his own more realistic, not-so-enamored-of-them conclusions, which, in my opinion, took a great deal of character......
                      Last edited by SimilarCadence; 01 June 2005, 11:40 AM.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Whoa, TC! If everyone took the time to look - really look - at the characters the way you do then this forum would be full of nothing but happy thoughts.
                        Thank you!
                        Gracie

                        A Cherokee elder sitting with his grandchildren told them,
                        "In every life there is a terrible fight – a fight between two wolves.
                        One is evil: he is fear, anger, envy, greed, arrogance, self-pity,
                        resentment, and deceit. The other is good: joy, serenity, humility,
                        confidence, generosity, truth, gentleness, and compassion."
                        A child asked, "Grandfather, which wolf will win?"
                        The elder looked the child in the eye. "The one you feed."


                        Comment


                          #13
                          I was torn between Orpheus and FIAD. FIAD was amazing to see how he worked thru his grief and came to forgive Tealc. I chose Orpheus because it is reflects on who he was and why he left and also on who he has become. I think it really shows how much he has changed over the past 7 years. How he has come to realize that the grass isn't always greener on the other side. That he finally feels at home at the SGC. I just love the scenes between him and Tealc. How they are both having to deal with Big chances in their lives. I think they both realize that the search for meaning in one's life is more of an internal journey.
                          sigpic
                          Sig by the Multi Talented KASS. : )

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Originally posted by SimilarCadence
                            Elegantly put, Tucker----a genuine treat to read!

                            Well, anything I write now will sound pedestrian, but here goes!
                            I also had a hard time deciding between "Forever in a Day" and "Threads", but in the end I voted for "Threads". Both episodes were classic examples of character growth and development for Daniel, but "Threads" really seemed like a culmination (I think L-Jade said this, too) of everything Daniel's life had been leading to over the years.

                            To me, "FIAD" was Daniel evolving from a "kid" (an extremely brilliant "kid") into a man. "Meridian"-through-"Full Circle" took Daniel the Man far beyond all of that into a totally different sphere of ascended being. But "Threads" took him even further beyond that to a place where he could see past the almost hero worship he had before of the Ancients. He was able to look at them and their ways firsthand and arrive at his own more realistic, not-so-enamored-of-them conclusions, which, in my opinion, took a great deal of character......
                            I was also torn between FIAD and Threads, but I felt that in Threads, Daniel hasn't learned anything. He stomps and pouts like a temperamental child, and although we share his frustration with the unwillingness of Oma to help, I feel that he still doesn't understand ascension, despite having been there before. FIAD is a much deeper story, and as TC said, MS plays the pain and the grief so well, in that beautiful, understated way, and we see Daniel eventually start to look at the bigger picture rather than think just about Sha're or himself.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Originally posted by Tucker Case
                              I’ve been dreading this one. Not because it was going to be a particularly tough choice – Daniel’s little ode on a ballpoint pen alone would have been enough for ‘Forever In A Day’ to snag my vote – but because I actually have to try to put into words what makes this episode is so unutterably special, when usually I just avoid trying to talk about it at all. It’s my “How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?” episode: The minute I start trying to put any of it into words, the nuns in my head start singing about clouds, and the pinning down thereof, and, really, they’re no help at all.

                              Michael Shanks, on the other hand, has been a great help. I just love some of the things he’s been saying in recent interviews, about Daniel being this "little child of the universe” and how the search for the Ancients is, for Daniel, about the search for God, the search for answers to his existence.

                              That’s Daniel as he’s lived in my head and, where L-Jade went with ‘Threads’ as the “culmination of all his years of learning,” I’ve set my sights more on the beginning. And, the way I look at it, ‘Forever In A Day’ is the episode really sets Daniel on that path, the one that takes the holy grail of the stolen bride out of the foreground and opens up the view to include the universe entire and sets about searching, not for Daniel’s wife, but for Daniel’s place. “The meaning of life stuff” is no longer an abstract or ancillary pursuit – some concept Daniel’s interested in (however passionate that interest) – it’s Daniel’s whole story. The meaning of life, the meaning of his life.

                              ‘FIAD’ is also the episode where Daniel went from being my favourite character on ‘Stargate’ to my favourite character anywhere, period, and where Michael Shanks became, for me, the sweet and perfect embodiment of what C. Day Lewis described as “the huge, weak power of grass to split a rock.”

                              It would have been so easy, for writer, actor and director alike, to haul off and hit on all the outward effects of grief, wring the angst out of the scenes like a little kid torturing the last drop of Colgate out of the toothpaste tube. But the story, in all its mystery, requires something different. It needs the grief, utterly, but beneath the surface, without the adornments. That's a tall order.

                              Michael knows when to “go big,” knows when to take the stage and work that room, baby, and the show knows when to stand back, give him space and let him own the place. But he knows even better when to go small and pull the audience in, draw them in close, deep down under his skin, and curl them up next to where it hurts (or, as in ‘Maternal Instinct,’ where it wonders).

                              He understands the power of stillness, how a pebble dropped into the still surface of a glassy pool has a more shattering effect – creates more drama – than a rock hurled into wailing waters, and how the calm allows you to get closer, close enough to see every detail of the ripples, and to see yourself reflected through them. Close enough to smell the sweat and the tea on the breath, to trace the tear tracks, to see the fine little lines under the eyes, hear the tiniest hitch in the breath and see just how thin and brittle the veneer of composure really is.

                              Michael wraps this translucent veil of control around Daniel’s pain, carries lines and scenes the way you carry yourself on a frozen pond when the ice has begun to creak, or ease yourself down the hallway trying not to rattle a nerve-rending migraine. The tension itself is agonising and completely heartbreaking.

                              What’s so perfect about this is how that tension plays so deftly into the inherent mystery of the episode, how the stillness enhances its dreamlike quality, creates the sense of unreality so crucial to the story and lends it an elegiac tone.

                              The camera work is in complete sympathy, the extreme close-ups underscoring the isolation and the intimacy – and can I just say I have never seen a camera adore an actor the way the camera adores Michael here? It gazes on him as lovingly as Daniel gazes upon Sha’re (and sweet, sweet mercy he is just so indescribably beautiful to look at in this episode, has your heart doing back-flips even while he shatters it into a million little pieces). God, the whole thing is this brilliant, three-way relationship between the story, the actor and the camera.

                              Um…where was I?

                              What’s even more perfect about this is that it is such a Daniel kind of grief, the withdrawn and self-contained pain of the child – the “little orphan” – who’s learned he has no one to grieve with but himself. It isn’t about being uncomfortable around “feelings;” Daniel’s always encouraging others to talk about theirs, and is right there to listen and help when they do. It’s isn’t a closing off that says, “Move along, there’s nothing to see here, nothing to deal with,” but simply a closing in that says, “I can deal with this on my own, I always have.”

                              He’s alone with this, even with Sam standing right there at his bedside, and she knows it, and what’s so painful for her is that it’s not that he won’t let her in, but that, in a way, he can’t even see her there. Where someone like Jack throws up a wall, bars the door and boards up the windows, Daniel withdraws, and into a place where there are no doors because there’s never been any need for them, no one’s ever tried to come in and he’s learned not to expect them to.

                              Four years later, in ‘Heroes,’ he still hasn’t learned to. While Sam is all out in the open with her grief, crying and snuffling and mangling tissues and biting the heads off reporters and seeking out friends and stocking up on those hugs – in short, letting it out and getting what she needs from others – there’s Daniel, tucked away in the darkest corner of a darkened room, working through it, quietly, by himself.

                              And, with that in mind, then, what’s sooo especially cool about ‘Forever In A Day’ is that Sha’re gets in. That most exceptional girl gets in, which just might be the most beautiful thing about the whole beautiful episode. She finds a way – an extraordinary way – to get into that place with Daniel and give him everything he needs but has never learned to ask for.

                              What I like, too, is how you can look back on ‘FIAD’ from the vantage point of ‘Maternal Instinct’ or ‘Threads’ or a handful of other episodes and come up with new angles on what Sha’re might have been up to. It might have been all about the child, about making sure Daniel took care of the boy. But, given that the child was in just about the safest hands imaginable, maybe it was less about that than it was about getting Daniel to Kheb. Maybe what she wanted was to bring Daniel face to face with Oma, so that Oma could see who and what he was and take him under her wing as well, and so Daniel could have his first real brush with the Ancients and – wife or no wife, child or no child – choose for himself, for his own sake, to stay the course. I still wonder if this, as well as the proper good-bye and the chance to work through the pain of losing her with her, was part of Sha’re’s gift, and like to think that it was.

                              Oh, right, and the whole forgiving Teal’c thing. Gah! See?! I knew this would happen. I’ve been babbling away this long already and I haven’t even begun to touch on the subject of Teal’c, and what a major stepping-stone this episode is in Daniel’s most unlikely and remarkable friendship with him; how Daniel’s anger was allowed to play a little more openly than his grief, which seems fitting, since that anger was more about Sha’re and the choices that were taken away from her and the chances she should have been given but wasn’t (because Daniel is always more outspoken when life takes an unfair swing at others than he is when he’s the one who’s been struck); and how staggering it must have been for Teal’c, in those final moments in that tent, thinking he’d sacrificed the friendship in order to save the friend, to hear Daniel tell him he’d done the right thing.

                              Yeah, the nuns are laughing it up. Let ’em. This little series of polls is going to be their undoing. ‘Maternal Instinct’ is the closest runner-up for me in this one, and I’ll be late for work if I start futzing around with that one. Maybe when I get home, though. I’ll send those nuns packing yet.

                              Tucker
                              WOW that is just amazing. You really got a great understanding of Daniel's character. Do you write fic?

                              I had a hard time deciding between Orpheus and FIAD. I voted for Orpheus. If I had read your post first I might just have voted for FIAD.
                              sigpic
                              Sig by the Multi Talented KASS. : )

                              Comment

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