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Always a successful mission - Good or bad?

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    Always a successful mission - Good or bad?

    In the audio commentary to Revisions Martin Wood talks about the fact that SG-1 never really screw up and that he would have liked to not have a happy ending for Red Sky.

    What's your opinion? Should SG-1 fail every now and then? Does there always have to be a happy ending? Can't a show that's been successful for seven seasons now be allowed to show its heroes lose a major battle? Or are the minor screw ups that often happen enough?

    For illustration; a minor screw up is the ending of Learning Curve - Jack can't save Merrin from her fate but at least the children are treated decently in the end. A major screw up would have been if the planet from Red Sky had been destroyed.

    #2
    I'm a happily ever after type person so I don't really want to see them screw up a mission big time. I think there have been enough small issues that have arisen as consequences of their previous missions to show that it's not all sunshine and roses. Like the Gou'ald attacking the protected planet after they destroyed Thor's Hammer and their lack of follow up caused problems in Double Jeopardy etc.

    It was, is, and always will be GREEN

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      #3
      I think there are episodes that showed how the team failed. Perhaps not at the very end, but they certainly met irredeemable consequences.

      Heroes II
      The Sentinel

      to name a couple off the top of my head.

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        #4
        Scorched Earth was nearly a screw-up ep, but got changed. I'd have liked to see an alternative ending on the DVD; good as that ep ended up I did find the bittersweet original idea very interesting.

        Beast of Burden was one where Daniel in particular messed up, and knew it right after every bad decision he made. At the end he couldn't make it right, only less wrong. It was a really good ep, and served Daniel's story-arc well at the time.

        Other times there are huge missed opportunities. Memento, for instance:

        Teal'c & Jonas - "Your God is a fraud, and you have dedicated your life to a falsehood."

        Loyal Worshipper - "Oh. Well. Nice weather for it"


        Hmmm. That could have been a fascinating starting-point for allsorts.

        I like to be surprised by happy endings as well as by sad endings. If the default option is Success, then it's a good thing to not use default too often, to keep things unexpected. Over seven years, on balance Stargate succeeds.
        Last edited by Madeleine; 29 April 2004, 12:57 PM. Reason: Spelling. D'oh.

        Madeleine

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          #5
          With the original ending of Scorched Earth - where the Enkarrens are saved at the cost of the Gadmeer - wouldn't have been a screw up. I think that if there had been no other choice whatsoever then, and only then, we should have chosen in favour of the Enkarrens. True, the absolute right thing to do if looked at utterly objectively would have been to save the Gadmeer race. But it wasn't an objective, rational desicion to make. In the end, we would have had to come down in favour of the Enkarrens, because we knew them, had made friends with them, and could emotionally relate to them.

          What about the ending to The Other Side? Could that be seen as a 'screw up', knowingly allowing someone to die, no matter how bad we knew they were?
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            #6
            red sky would have been so much better, in my opinion, had it not been a happy ending.

            I always imagined it as earth trying to evac them, finally falling back on 'hey, freyr said to follow us' but they ignore jack & co, because they just got done telling the g'tau that freyr is a fraud.

            sg-1 goes home, opens the gate weeks/months later to find everyone dead....and they died not just because of what sam did, but because sg-1 destroyed their faith by debunking their gods. earth playing god killed a planet.

            imho, it would have been much more dramatic than the 'gee, happily ever after'

            No, i'm not saying that every eps should end on a down note, but in this case, it would have been far more dramatic rather than cliche
            Where in the World is George Hammond?


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              #7
              I love to see an episode every once in a while were the good guys loose. It's a nice reminder that we're all fallible and that sometimes no matter how hard we try we can't always fix everything.
              ~BCM =)

              Open Source Initiative (OSI)
              The GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program

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                #8
                Originally posted by bcmilco
                I love to see an episode every once in a while were the good guys loose. It's a nice reminder that we're all fallible and that sometimes no matter how hard we try we can't always fix everything.
                My thoughts exactly! I'd especially like to see how our characters deal with such an occurence afterwards.

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                  #9
                  Failure does happen on occasion, think about Full Circle. Anubis gets the eye of Ra and destroys Abydos. Futhermore as a consequence of Daniel attempting to stop him he is desended (is that the right word?).

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                    #10
                    There have been a few screwups over the years... the one where they sabatage the meeting between Apophis and Her-ur (however the hell you spell it) didn't go exactly to plan, and in fact made things worse.

                    Putting Ba'al incharge of the force against Anubis didn't go too well either...

                    And then of course theres the time O'Neill spent as a Tok'ra. Probably could have turned out better...

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                      #11
                      Originally posted by Feli
                      My thoughts exactly! I'd especially like to see how our characters deal with such an occurence afterwards.
                      Yes that would be great!
                      ~BCM =)

                      Open Source Initiative (OSI)
                      The GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program

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                        #12
                        Unfortunately SG-1 is known for killing the show right after the climax. If I ever have a word with Peter DeLuise and the rest of the gang I will bring that up.

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                          #13
                          Originally posted by Apophis
                          Failure does happen on occasion, think about Full Circle. Anubis gets the eye of Ra and destroys Abydos. Futhermore as a consequence of Daniel attempting to stop him he is desended (is that the right word?).

                          true. but that is about the only consequence we see to Anubis getting his death star. Daniel's decision was great for the short term, but really wasn't that good in the long run. And there really were no consequences beyond fallen and homecoming, not even a mention that anubis had been using his super weapon to attack other planets or the such.

                          There were no real consequences to the people of Abydos, they were all ascended and are living happily ever after in glowville.

                          It's not totally the writer's fault, Full Circle was originally supposed to lead into Lost City, however both stories were weakened a bit by the need to stick 20 more episodes between them.
                          Where in the World is George Hammond?


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                            #14
                            I think it provides for powerful drama when the good guys don't always win and even more when they screw up. This series is set in present day and let's face it, we screw up all the time in dealing with other cultures, even here on Earth. I still want SG-1 to be the good guys, just not perfect.

                            I would have loved to have seen them not be able to "fix" things in Red Sky, been forced to made a choice in Scorched Earth. Full Circle would have been a much better episode if all the inhabitants of Abydos hadn't been ascended. Sure it would have been sad but it would have been interesting to see SG-1 (and the descended Daniel) dealing with that tragedy. When they do make mistakes, there doesn't seem to be much fallout from them. [Edited to add: oops, posting at same time as Skydiver, she made the same point about Full Circle, much better than I did!]

                            I think Brad Wright is good at writing ambivalent endings (Unnatural Selection and Lifeboat) that don't always have all the loose ends tied up with a pretty bow at the end. That's one of the reasons I always look forward to a Brad Wright episode.
                            Life is hard...and it's harder if you're stupid

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                              #15
                              I would like to see them screw up everyone once and awhile...they are only human. Well 3/4ths of them are! I'm sure Jaffa screw up too. It would probably cause some major controversy though, just as in Unnatural Selection when there was a huge debate on whether or not Jack did the right thing.

                              I personally believed he did, but I know others did not. That kind of screw up I thought was great, though I guess technically it wasn't a screw up. However I would have enjoyed the alternate ending in Red Sky, where the planet couldn't have been saved.

                              Ace
                              "Good Morning Dr. Silberman. How's the knee?" - Sarah Connor 1994

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