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Originally posted by Platschu View PostYou are right, Chekov and Vaselov were definately heroes. Even the colonel in "the Tomb" has also sacrified himself to defeat Marduk. The Russian scientist lady has also survived "the Watergate" adventure. Not to mention our favorite McKay who was sent to Siberia.
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This thread has metamorphed into a "Russians at SGC Program"."I was hoping for another day. Looks like we just got a whole lot more than that. Let's not waste it."
"Never underestimate your audience. They're generally sensitive, intelligent people who respond positively to quality entertainment."
"Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all."
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Originally posted by Xaeden View PostYeah, but the ones who survived were usually in a background role. If they were brought in another team to guard the gate or to show activity within SGC (coming/going through the Stargate, making a report that Sg-1 can follow up on, etc.) they were usually fine. If, however, they teamed up with Sg-1 in any significant way, they dropped like flies because they existed to create a sense of danger while simultaneously elevating Sg-1's greatness by contrasting how they got themselves killed with Sg-1 competently weaving their way through the episode's problem(s).
Of those who were brought in for a notably team up, the few that made it to the end of an episode were, for the most part, very early on in Sg-1 when they were more concerned with setting up recurring characters (e.g. Conner from "The First Commandment," but he ended up dying later on), joke characters (see: "The Other Guys"), or they were Atlantis teams. For example, I was legitimately surprised that they let two members of the all female team from Atlantis' "Whispers" make it to the end of the episode. That was very un-Sg-1 of them.
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Originally posted by Manche View PostYou are right, usually die those whose are in action with SG-1 (my favourite example is Summit where during the massive attack of Zipacna die all people present on Revanna, only survivors are three members of SG-1), but we can find a few of those who participated in action and survived (Griff and Coburn in The First Ones - and Pierce appeared several times after that, Reynolds, whole SG-13 from Heroes, major Altman from Prototype, major Hadden from Arthur's Mantle, Warren, Grogan, Harper, Ferretti). My point is that a few of them survived (maybe not so many, but we can find them, the same thing we can say about different redshirts) so it would be nice if at least one of these Russians survived, I found unrealistic that there was none who survived in action.
The problem usually comes when they team up together to try to defeat a problem that is central to the episode because then the deaths of the other Sg team members are used to try to enhance the sense of danger and show how competent Sg-1 is in comparison. Unfortunately, a number of the key Russian episodes also do that.
If "The Tomb" was written around the idea of sending Sg-1 to clean up another Sg team's screw up, I'd be surprised if anyone from that other team made it out alive. But because it was the Russians, they were able to be a bit critical of this trope as at the end of the episode Sg-1 was accused of prioritizing the lives of those they see as important (themselves).
"Camelot" gave us Russian characters we were meant to care about by showing them working closely with Daniel and Mitchell. Plus, it killed off a long serving recurring character that was reasonably to well liked, so the loss was meant to enhance the sense of danger and fear that came with the Ori. I don't think they would have done anything differently there had they made it an Air Force ship that was lost.
"Watergate" was a rehash of a rogue NID scheme, and in both cases any deaths that either group experience are meant to show the foolishness of trying to operate outsides of the bounds of the SGC. Dr. Svetlana Markov's survival may have had something to do with the fact that she was played by a well-known and beloved veteran of a popular science fiction series, so they probably wanted to leave the door open to bringing her back.
If the Russians were a larger part of the show, there would have been more of an opportunity for us to see them interact with Sg-1 in the field as in the examples you gave. If Russians are just casually introducing a problem or they're sent to try to backup or rescue Sg-1, their chances of survival would have been higher. Instead, they're usually brought in to either work with Sg-1 or to create a problem for them and in those cases their survival rate is not much worse than when there's a proper team up with another other SGC personnel or when the rogue NID are the problem. (Although, the NID/rogue NID arc was given more focus, so a few more of those people were given the chance to be a recurring threat.)
What I see as one of the flaws of Sg-1 is that they tried too hard to elevate the main characters to ridiculously heroic proportions who always knew the right thing to do in the end. Doing that meant contrasting them with the fallibility of other Sg teams, practically everyone else within their own government, the Russians, the IOA, etc., over and over again. If not using other characters to establish a larger world (again, as when an Sg team is seen coming/going or in a support role in the field), they're used to elevate Sg-1's greatness, with few exceptions. They're not a team of professionals working with other competent professionals from their own government and home planet. Rather, they alone (for the most part) stand between a series of galactic and internal threats and the survival of Earth.
Atlantis played more lip service to the idea that they were a cooperative effort with competent people from all over the world, but often utilized some of those same tropes, and surprisingly did very little in the way of elevating the voices of international characters on a regular basis. Mckay was able to say he was Canadian, Beckett was promoted from being a recurring character after season 1, and Zelenka would sometimes talk to himself in Czech, but their backgrounds were often represented in a trivial manner and, outside of them, there was very little diversity among those who had significant speaking roles.Last edited by Xaeden; 14 August 2020, 01:58 PM.
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The more I revisit Stargate SG-1, the more the anti-Russian sentiment bothers me. I can only ever recall one member of the team sticking up for Russia: Daniel.
DANIEL
I'm talking about naquadah generator technology. A clean and safe source of power.
DAVIS
Which requires refined naquadah to work. Doctor Jackson, you of all people realise the explosive power of the material.
DANIEL
Yes, so they could blow us up two hundred times over instead of just one hundred. What difference does it make?
DAVIS
The difference is it would only take one nuke to get through our anti-ballistic shield to do it. One!
DANIEL
The point is that you already owe them generator technology anyway, along with everything else we found using the Stargate.
DAVIS
No, no, no. The point is we are not giving them the generator technology and they're not giving us the DHD.
DANIEL
Can't you stipulate that we supervise how the naquadah is used? They want to monitor our use of the gate.
DAVIS
That's not the point.
DANIEL
Isn't a more economically stable Russia better for everyone?
DAVIS
We don't know who they'll turn around and sell the technology to.
DANIEL
So, all this time we've been using the gate, to save the world, we've really only been saving the good ol' US of A. Hah!
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