Unending (1020)

[hedwig]

Daniel and Vala have a kid, the kid does the reverse time trip instead of Teal'C and you're left with a kid handing Sam a crystal and then we all have no idea wtf happened...

There is a theory that in the scene where Vala is crying in Daniel's arms, it's because she lost a baby, but it is never explained in the episode.

[Mnikolic]

Didn't at least one of the writers want Daniel and Vala become a couple?

Of course, they messed up again and the two got the Sam/Jack treatment.

[enibas5]

Ending my little SG-1 marathone with "unending", of course.
It took several re-watches 'til I finally came to appreciate that very last episode of SG-1.
Today I can say: Well done! Can't think of any last ep. that would have pleased the majority of fans. Everyone was expecting s.th different; some wanted an ending with action and a closure to the Ori storyline - others a highly emotional final.
The idea, they finally came up with was a good one. The execution however, could have been better. Watching it now, I appreciate the depressing atmosphere of this plot. The plot itself gave the writers a way of giving the fans at the very end, what they were waiting for: Daniel and Vala in love. which actually makes me wonder, which show the user watched, who posted before.

I also do not understand at all this rumor:

There is a theory that in the scene where Vala is crying in Daniel's arms, it's because she lost a baby, but it is never explained in the episode.

There is absolutely nothing within that ep. to support this assumption - not the slightest indication. It is nothing more as wild phantasy at its worst, which is something that differs from "interpretation". I do not at all appreciate stuff like this. "Oh, a woman is crying - let's just say, she lost her child". Gee, I find that soooo odd.
If they would have had s.th. like that in mind, a 2 sec. take of showing Vala being pregnant, preceeding the crying-scene would have done the trick.
But explanations like that are obviously needed, since it does not seem enough to be stranded on a ship in space for decades to shed some tears. (no offense to you, hedwig - I know, you just quoted the rumor).

Anyway, I liked the character development within this ep. and how they were finally getting on each others nerves, which is probably quite an appropriate analogy to how the real life cast members had grown close, but also had to struggle to have the same people around and doing more or less the same routine for the past 10 years.

Unfortunately the production team did not bother to get special make-up artists for the old-age conversions. Or maybe, they had different people working on it. While Carter's make-up was really good, everybody else looked just awful. Moreover there are no rules that demand old men to look disheveled and generally turn ugly while aging. One would also assume, that the ship was capable of producing hair-scissors...
I just do not understand, why they let the characters look like that - so that it is actually no pleasure to look at them at all. Looking at the worst make-up job for Claudia Black, actually distracted from the character and her fate.

The heavily critizised Daniel/Vala scene leaves me unsettled. On the one hand, the monologue was well written and not out of character, taking into account, that every character may have an outburst, if provoked long enough. Those outbursts always seem out of character - because they are. It is the very character [no pun intended] of an outburst to be out of character, as long as they are not part of it - as with Mitchell.
On the other hand, I do not like that part of the ep. either. As I said before, it was not the written word, that was out of character, but MS overacted. Way too much gesturing, especially when it came to the part of the "doing your sexy thing". Very obvious hand/arm gestures were never part of Daniel's way of communicating with other people. That always was O'Neill - not Daniel. He would help hilmself with gesturing to explain s.th., if words were not understood, but otherwise were big gestures never part of his personality. That way, this whole monologue came across as a well rehearsed monologue on a thespian stage to present to the audience - stressed by the fact that Vala was not even facing Daniel as he spoke.
That strikes me every time I watch it and I do feel sorry, that the director did not correct this.

Obviously a lot of people missed Jack to be in the last episode. Well, I did not. I always loved O'Neill and was initially drawn to Stargate because RDA was in it. But his previous Cameos, including "The Shroud" were so bad that I am sure, at this point to have im in the show would have turned out to be really disappointing for everybody involved - including the fans. Very obviously, he could not do O'Neill anymore - could not get a hold of his character. There was noone to blame for that, but it had to be recognized and accepted. I think, it was a good choice to have only the present SG-1 members and Landry in that episode.
Besides that, they honored RDA several times throughout this ep. by quoting his well known saying: "Life is too short". That was a distinct homage to him and his merits.

But I wished, they had done something special with the final credits. Somewhere I read they did. But my version of this ep. does not show special credits out of the ordinary.

[garhkal]

I too heard that someting special got done with the credits.. Maybe it was on the Blue-ray release.. Like most things these days seem to be.

[Anja]

I had problems with that last ep - took me some sessions to fully get it. Interesting developments of the characters and an amazing jump back in time.
In our imagination they will go on - new adventures, new cultures and new technologies.
We have more than 200 eps to rewatch!!
Thanks to the writers, the producers, the cast and...and...and...

[meenamjah]

I don't know... the stupidly idiotic treatment of the asgard seems to overshadow everything else in this episode. one of the all time fail writing, as far as I'm concerned.

[Anja]

Even the Asgard aren't perfect - but I wouldn't call it 'all time fail writing'.

[Sqrl]

Even the Asgard aren't perfect - but I wouldn't call it 'all time fail writing'.

Agreed. 'all time fail writing" is just not strong enough.

After having done another rewatch recently I again felt compelled to seek out this thread and vent some frustration.

/rant

I and many other fans have thought of dozens and dozens of solutions and variants to those solutions that would have achieved the goal within a few weeks or months at worst.

But truly what makes this episode so awful is what is done to the characters. With few exceptions, each member goes off to suffer their situation alone coming together only to eat and snip at each other. For a group that has been through as much as they have it just falls flat on such a fundamental level. I am genuinely baffled as to how others come away with a positive impression from the episode in spite of that glaring flaw...and frankly I would love to "get it", but each time I re-watch looking for redeeming qualities the best I manage is to sort of get it (while ignoring the plot holes and obvious solutions anyways) up until the point that Daniel goes on his tirade against Vala. His opening salvo is fine, but he just goes on and on and on and its painful not only for how hurtful it is but because of what an utter betrayal these lines of dialogue are to one of the most empathetic characters on the show. Daniel at his most frustrated would never go on half that long and probably wouldn't choose words that would cut half so deep.

In the interest of time I'll just speed through the rest rather than go in depth.

Mitchell - The guy who is always pushing the "never give up" attitude and "I don't know the meaning of the word quit"...this is the FIRST guy to completely snap? I mean puh-lease....

Sam - Also gives up ...which again....not at all like her...But on top of this she apparently cannot think up one of the dozens of previously mentioned solutions in spite of being, as jack calls her "One of this countries national treasures". Which given her resume is not exactly an overstatement of the facts. Unfortunately, the same cannot even remotely be said for the writers.

Teal'c - WTH was he doing!!? He was pretty much only in other people's scenes during the time bubble. I mean whats up with this? I just don't get it.

Jack - Where are you?

More problems - Supposing SG-1 were to get trapped in this field does anyone actually believe they would spend 50 years sulking and being moody? Daniel and Vala are the only ones who even attempt to have a normal life with sam and her Cello maybe being a slight exception. So we are told they give up but they just stay in a state of misery for the rest of their 50 years? Again - this is completely out of character. For this episodes concept to work they needed to move past that and show them having some scenes establishing that their bond was not only still there but stronger than ever, and montage shots of X-mas and laughing at dinner are not what I am talking about.

Even more problems - At the VERY LEAST Sam would have wanted to find a way to transmit as much information as she could back to the SGC. This idea never even came up really. Nor did the idea of adapting the transporter pattern buffers to a format similar to the stargate (assuming they aren't already based on the stargates) and storing them in the buffer of the gate on the planet in order to remove the need for the transporters to re-integrate them in such a short time window, let the gate do the hard work and just send patterns down (note the transmissions can be 100% sent while the dilation field is still in place).

/sigh

In the end the glaring character issues are just far to overwhelming to overcome the redeeming qualities that I do like about the episode (I have listed them in this thread previously). I am both genuinely baffled and genuinely jealous of those who liked this episode. Baffled because I don't see how anyone thinks these are the characters we loved for 10 seasons, and jealous because in spite of that you folks got a series finale that you find enjoyable and I most certainly did not.

In the end I have decided that based on what we see in the episode this is an alternate timeline where everyone is a bunch of quitters. Hence the Asgard and all of SG-1's reactions to their problems is to blow themselves up or quit in spite of obvious solutions or workarounds to both problems.

In short, I have no problem accepting this episode as Canon....for an alternate reality SG team. Because frankly it is far more believable to me that Teal'c stopped dying his hair for the movies than that these characters as portrayed in this episode are the members of SG-1 I have watched for 10 seasons (multiple times of course).

/end rant

I can't bring myself to not watch the final episode when I do a rewatch, its still part of the series unfortunately and unlike this alternate SG-1 I am no quitter!

so.....I might be back in a few years when i get the itch to watch the series again...

Until then, take care folks!

PS - Yes even you crazy people who liked this episode =D

[hedwig]

I think the point of the episode is "giving up". The Asgard gave up. Each member of the ship eventually gave up, thus we get to see that in each of them. Landry dies. It would be harder to understand them eventually giving up if they were on earth, in a city or town, with lots of people around them. But on the ship, there's only the 5 or 6 of them spending years and years alone with each other, and that has got to suck. At some point, each one would reach a breaking point, and in my opinion, I think this is what was being shown.

[siles]

I think the point of the episode is "giving up". The Asgard gave up. Each member of the ship eventually gave up, thus we get to see that in each of them. Landry dies. It would be harder to understand them eventually giving up if they were on earth, in a city or town, with lots of people around them. But on the ship, there's only the 5 or 6 of them spending years and years alone with each other, and that has got to suck. At some point, each one would reach a breaking point, and in my opinion, I think this is what was being shown.

Actually the only one who didn't seem to give up was Teal'c. Another one would probably have been Jack if he gad been there.

[mparsons1981]

Just coming to an end of a rewatch, and got to this episode.

It's all going well until Daniel's rant 23 minutes in.

I don't know what the writers were thinking here. This entire speech from Daniel is so out of character, he's being so unnecessarily cruel.

Maybe, some (by no means all) of what he says to Vala may be correct, but there is no way he would ever speak to her like this, even if at this point, they are a few months into the problem of the episode, and are dealing with the stress of the situation.

It's a shame, because this scene otherwise, i think its a fine episode, and a good end to the series.

[caseyatbt]

The other question I thought of is are they able to produce tretonin for 40 years so Teal'c won't die. I thought that they got shipments from the Tokra.

[photoglyph]

I've often wondered what the cast feel about this episode. I think I've only seen it once on it's initial airing, and it didn't grab me. I should watch it again but I think it's just not a great episode to go out on. Doubtless, I built it up in my mind to some great climax but it just seemed 'ok' to me.

[Bhousden]

I think it's just not a great episode to go out on.

You must be kidding, right? Acquiring knowledge to defend Earth against any and ALL threats was the mission of Stargate Command and 10 years later they finally have a weapon that can destroy ships designed by ascended beings.

[Platschu]

VALA
(whispering in Daniel's ear)
I'm gonna go crazy, and I'm taking you with me.