Sam Carter/Amanda Tapping Discussion/Appreciation

[deepspace]

astro: Great clips, NC! Thanks so much for posting them for us!
Now, as a college professor, I have to say that I'm sorry that AT felt stupid when using food to try and help people understand the physics... Usually we teachers are proud of anything we use as a visual aid when explaining abstract concepts within our field to those outside of our field. So the donut and the fruit - they can be great visual aids... I'll use whatever's handy - and if people's eyes spark with understanding, then I'm proud of that salt-shaker-cum-volcano or that donut-cum-wormhole. And besides, it's fun! So, I'm a bit disappointed that AT thought the food-visuals were stupid... in education, we rarely have cool scale models of everthing - especially not when we want them... like when sitting in IHOP with a friend... and of course, they want me (their geologist friend) to explain the earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean. I'll gladly use whatever props are on the table.

And... when they talk about wanting to see the 4 main heroes fail... ala Red Sky... (or Gemini... both are major Carter screw-ups)... I agree with some of what they said, and disagree with other parts of it. I can understand that if you allow the heroes to fail in an episode or so, then it adds suspense and mystery to subsequent episodes... because you won't know that they are going to succeed every time... maybe they will fail again.

However, they are supposed to be heroes. That's what they are. So, if they are going to be written as failing, then it has to be written well and the episode has to be well crafted. They can try their hardest and - it's just not enough. They can give a heroic effort - and it's just not enough. They fail, but it's acceptable (as long as it doesn't happen every episode). What you should not do, however, is write the heroes as stupid (or dumbassify them as Carterslave coined). It's one thing to try your hardest and fail, it's quite another to actually screw up... Heroes can screw up - if the screw up only puts them at risk - or they are allowed to salvage things and put them right so that no one else gets hurt. But if you simply write the hero as screwing up and they put others at risk and are not allowed to rectify things... then they can very quickly lose that 'hero status'.

In Red Sky, Carter was written to symbolize a lot of human arrogance that is done everyday on our planet and has been throughout history. We juryrig something, or we take a shortcut... and we make things work...but at what cost? In Red Sky, they took a look at one possible cost and some of those ramifications. They revisited the same storyline in '48 Hours' - and again, Carter was the whipping-boy.

NC you did a really good job of putting together an audio post for the Red Sky commentary.
Astro, I agree with you about not thinking the food props were stupid. In science textbooks a lot of the time I’ve found that you will be given an analogy between the subject that is being explained and something in everyday life. It might seem like a very laymans way of explaining something, but in many ways it can give a greater understanding of what you are reading about.

[deepspace]

1st May 2005
To the editor of the Oh Yea We Say newspaper,
Dearest Royal accountant, I am submitting to you an article I have composed, which you may do with as you please. I have had way way too much time these past few days, as this will undoubtedly prove.

BLUE JELLO
an experiment by deepspace

I have made note that there are quite a number of varieties of jello. There’s ‘Royal blue’, traditionally given out by our keeper of the flame. ‘Artistic blue jello’, which is generally a reward for an achievement in photoshopping. ‘Uber blue jello’, served in small cupcakes, as a special Samandan snack. Also, ‘AU Blue’, sustainance on those occasional trips to an alternate reality. Of course, we cannot forget the ‘Mighty green’, which likes to spread itself around the kingdom, and sometimes comes in radioactive glowy flavouring. Occasionally there’s even a dash of 'Orange jello’.

Now, brought to you by deepspace’s cooking (ok, so you don’t cook jello), we have:
'Homemade jello'
It is quite pale and washy in couloring, a very... different blue to what the citizens of Samanda are used to.

Ingredients:
Blue colouring
Water
Gelatine
(please note absence of flavouring)

Boil water, mix quickly with gelatine, and proceed to add water and colouring. Refrigerate, and serve when set.

However, under no circumstances, eat!

This could alternately be named HOW NOT TO MAKE JELLO by deepspace.

yours,
Royal Page
(aren't you glad I don't work in the kitchen!?)

[Tok'Ra Hostess]

Welcome to Samanda, Simhavaktra!

Yes, the entire setup reeked like a whole kettle of trouble getting shoved into the hottest part of the fire

LOL. Good expression.

I never imagined RepliCarter deliberately planning and carrying out a Replicator coup d'etat by assassinating Fifth with the Earthlings as her weapon. That part was truly shocking, for me, at least, and, I have to admit, more than a little impressive. That is - was - one dangerous artificial intelligence!

Yeah, that was a cool twist.

(And man, was I annoyed with the blurb the ep got in the local tv listings - "Carter's emotions put the entire galaxy in danger!" Hmph. Why's it always the woman who has to have dangerous emotions? Why wasn't the analogous situation when Jack gave Anubis the Eye of Ra on Daniel's advice and Anubis promptly blew up Abydos and made a weapon that he intended to use to blow up Earth described as 'O'Neill's emotions put the entire galaxy in danger!' Bah.)

<nods> oh yeah....

That being said, I wonder now as I did when I first saw Gemini, what the Air Force advisor thought of Carter being in command of the mission to interrogate her duplicate. Surely there are policies for analogous scenarios that should have applied to this one?

I do understand why many think that Sam should not have been in charge of this situation, but given the very short timeframe that RepSam had given them, and given the complex nature of the technologies involved - so much so that the Asgard nearly died as a species trying to figure it out - I have to ask, who could Jack have sent?

Leaving emotion entirely out of the picture, who could have understood enough about the science to make an objective evaluation? You suggest

the apparently perennially cranky and suspicious Colonel Edwards of SG-11.

So, assuming Edwards was (available) assigned command, and assuming he could understand enough to make an evaluation and had decided that the risk was high enough to warrent action, to whom would he have assigned the task of redesigning the technologies to counter the Replicator threat? The Asgard wouldn't have known where to start. RepSam fed them the data necessary to readjust the satalite. Could Real Sam have made the changes? Never.

The way I see it, there were only ever two choices: destroy RepSam outright and make no changes, hoping that she'd been lying all along(and, personally, I think RepSam would have prepared for that contingency) or believe RepSam and allow her to make the necessary changes.

[fraG_fesT]

Ask Agent_Dark if he likes Sam!

*Oh, and I'm a big fan as well!*

[Agent_Dark]

Well, Agent Dark is always saying how he likes Sam Whumping, so I thought it wouldn't harm for him to be whumped also. The headache is actually explained in part 1, it's no mystery. He gets zatted by jaffa.
At first I thought you were worried I was going to cast TH as a medic because of all this Janet maiming talk going on, but now I see all you were worried about was if I was going to make her kiss him. No way!

Oh so no kiss then?

[Agent_Dark]

Ask Agent_Dark if he likes Sam!

*Oh, and I'm a big fan as well!*

Well duh!

[Agent_Dark]

but you know, i do respect them in a way. they made a decision that, in hindsight, was a bad one...but they did stick with it.

one of my main issues with red sky was that a happy ending was forced...imho it would have been far more powerful had the g'tau died. I was a bit frustrated with this 'we HAVE to have a happy ending' and had they tweaked Heroes that way, i would have been disappointed.

Does anyone know of any episode 'fixes' to Red Sky where the ending does actually go bad (preferbly Sam focused)? I can't recall ever reading one...

[Tok'Ra Hostess]

Oh so no kiss then?

Well, okay, maybe a quick peck on the cheek to bolster team morale, but it'll have to be in one of the dark recesses of the Tok'Ra tunnel where Deepspace won't see us.

[Myrth]

This is probably a dumb newbie question... but... how come there's no Amanda!Thunk thread?

She's thunk-worthy...... surely....

[Tok'Ra Hostess]

This is probably a dumb newbie question... but... how come there's no Amanda!Thunk thread?

She's thunk-worthy...... surely....

It's hard to find the threads with the search function down, but if you're willing to scroll through the 9 or 10 pages of threads in the Characters and Relationships folder you'll find the:

Sam Carter/Elizabeth Weir Thunk Thread

Women of Stargate Thunk Thread

And there was a rather enthusiastically supported AT Thunk Thread awhile back, but it may have gotten deleted for breaking forum rules about content. There was a rather high proportion of racey stuff in that thread.

[astrogeologist]

Possible Gemini spoilers -
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Yes, the entire setup reeked like a whole kettle of trouble getting shoved into the hottest part of the fire, but, while I imagined RepliCarter getting her hands on the weapon when the rest of the bugs showed up, smashing as much of Sam's psyche as she could in retaliation for what Sam did to Fifth (first and second times), her own creation, and what Sam had helped the Asgard do to the Replicators in the past, and then calmly beaming back to the rest of the Replicators to finish the research to counter the weapon and to begin conquering the galaxy, I never imagined RepliCarter deliberately planning and carrying out a Replicator coup d'etat by assassinating Fifth with the Earthlings as her weapon. That part was truly shocking, for me, at least, and, I have to admit, more than a little impressive. That is - was - one dangerous artificial intelligence!

I don't think anyone presented with an inhuman personal double would have a hope of avoiding developing very strong emotions toward that double. Whether those emotions turned toward empathy, as Sam's did in Gemini, or toward rejection, as Jack's did in Double Jeopardy, or toward some other emotion would, of course, depend on the person, the inhuman double, and the circumstances. And, equally obviously, the reaction isn't really 'honest' if the duplicate is deliberately manipulating the original, as RepliCarter was.

And man, was I annoyed with the blurb the ep got in the local tv listings - "Carter's emotions put the entire galaxy in danger!" Hmph. Why's it always the woman who has to have dangerous emotions?

I too am still pissed about that 'blurb'!

Why wasn't the analogous situation when Jack gave Anubis the Eye of Ra on Daniel's advice and Anubis promptly blew up Abydos and made a weapon that he intended to use to blow up Earth described as 'O'Neill's emotions put the entire galaxy in danger!' Bah.

That being said, I wonder now as I did when I first saw Gemini, what the Air Force advisor thought of Carter being in command of the mission to interrogate her duplicate. Surely there are policies for analogous scenarios that should have applied to this one? The real Carter got burned badly in a situation that I don't think she should ever have been allowed to be in. (Granted, I'm not the Air Force advisor that what I think counts but it stands to reason.) It seems to me that the RepliCarter situation ought to have fallen into the same category as putting someone in command of interrogating their identical twin that's joined a terrorist group or something - one would want the 'good' twin present at the interrogations because the shared knowledge / experiences provide(s) them a perspective that no one else can duplicate or anticipate, but, at the same time, one wouldn't put the 'good' twin in charge of the mission because the shared knowledge / experiences constitute(s) a vulnerability that no one else can duplicate or anticipate, and does one really want someone with a built in vulnerability to this very specific situation in command of that situation, much less someone as empathetic and sympathetic as Carter has shown herself to be? (I think that empathetic and sympathetic nature of Sam's is a very good thing, and very valuable, but every good and valuable trait can be turned to a liability under specific circumstances, and was in these circumstances.) It doesn't seem to me that the US military would answer yes on that, so very, very many bad outcomes are so very likely to occur (and did here).

I spent the rest of season 8 waiting for somebody to ask Jack what the dickens got into him, strategist that he's supposed to be, letting Sam command that mission. The idea had "bad strategy" stamped all over it from its very inception, even in the eyes of an amateur like me. After all, Jack could have have sent Sam along and still had someone else with no ambivalence or potential identification-with-self issues toward RepliCarter command the mission. For example, commanding something like the interrogation of RepliCarter would have suited the apparently perennially cranky and suspicious Colonel Edwards of SG-11 perfectly. Sure, send Sam on the mission - she'll be invaluable - but
this is a woman whose heart is at least as expansive as her intellect,

I absolutely love the way that you said that, Simha!

and her commanding officer knows this, and should know he has to take it into account. Having someone like Edwards in charge would have been much more realistic, I'd think, in terms of logical military procedure, and it would have offered all kinds of possibilities to inject some then-and-there conflict into the episode, instead of when Fifth gets here somebody's gonna get a spanking - I mean assimilated - I mean, be in trouble! - oh, wait, no, that's when your father gets here, not Fifth - ahem - I mean: when Fifth finally demonstrates his adolescent mindset by stalking his ex-girlfriend, who, despite the fact that he made for himself, has now left him because she understandably can't abide him, instead of getting on with his rightful business of Replicating when he invades this galaxy full of Goa'uld technological goodies somebody will probably get conquered!!!! conflict-to-be.

LOL - love how you wrote that!

(Of course, I'm still wondering who said what to the Asgard, too, that they just popped a Replicator-Disruptor satellite in a box and sent it on over to our galaxy without so much as a 'Are you sure about this???' note taped to the thing, much less the Asgard scientist to observe and contribute that one might expect to have accompanied the box. Whatever they said, it must have been a doozy.)

That's something that bugged me too... why where the Asgard so ready to go along with this - we didn't hear them even question anything.

In season 9, I'd like to see a situation where the SGC has to decide whether to trust a former enemy (who is not a double of Sam ), and RepliCarter is the reference to which everyone refers, and because of which, Sam's opinion is mostly discounted. But, when the decision to trust or not is made opposite to her opinion, it turns out to be wrong, and Sam has to use her empathy - as well as her scientific and military expertise - to salvage the situation and save the world, and succeeds brilliantly. (hey, I like 'Sam saves the world' stories! )

What a fantastic suggestion for a Season 9 episode, Simha! Excellent!

And I will now turn the blither generator off, to everyone's immense relief, no doubt. Simha

*This* is your first post on the Gateworld Forum! Wow! First, how cool that you chose to post on the SaGC (Sam's a Great Character) Thread! And second.. Wow! What a *great* post!

Welcome aboard, Simha! If you are brand new to the forum (and haven't been previously lurking), then you might like to check out Thread page 277 - where we have a summary post of the Ultimate Sam Episode Poll results - and if you scroll down, you will find summary collections of the comments from the folks on this thread - along with pictures, audio clips and links to other thread pages with more cool stuff on Sam and AT highlights.

And here's some Welcome Aboard Blue Jello

[astrogeologist]

We’ve had another Sam sighting! She is out there and she’s spreading her wings to visit old friends.


Sam believes her copter is a great vehicular transportation device.

The sentiment above is paraphrased from an AT remark on the Red Sky DVD audio commentary. NC, your audio clips inspired me! Many thanks for your kind comments on the Cartercopter Alpha Site Landing manip - DeepSpace, tara3583, Astrog, ChopinGal, SG-1fanintn and Sally. I apologize if I missed any names…

I wonder where she will show up next?

She's off visiting the Nox! You Go Girl!

I'm really enjoying the idea that Sam is tooling around the galaxy... zipping here and there... stopping in to visit old friends (love to tie things back to the show's roots)... Sam's having fun... Now how cool is that idea?

And that Cartercopter is just cool too!

Another great photoshopping job, Samfan!

[astrogeologist]

I should go to bed, but what the heck, here's a clip from Zero Hour.

You should read what Teal'c...







NC

Wonderful audio clip and screen caps, NC!
Great Sam highlight from Zero Hour

[astrogeologist]

I was in the mood tonight for a lighter Carter episode so I watched Avenger 2.0 and then lsitened to the commentary. Thought I would post a couple of pics. of Sam with the Carter Special!

Great pics, tsaxlady

[Skydiver]

Does anyone know of any episode 'fixes' to Red Sky where the ending does actually go bad (preferbly Sam focused)? I can't recall ever reading one...

i don't think i ever ran across one. toyed with the idea but it never went anywhere