Always a successful mission - Good or bad?

[bcmilco]

Unnatural Selection was the episode that made me sit up and take notice of SG-1! I really liked it alot I liked the fact that the good guys didn't have a clear cut victory and they had moral issues to look at.

Those little things make the show and the characters so much more real to me.

[aAnubiSs]

I'd like an episode where the SGC finds a lonely Ha'tak. Several SG-teams and their allies are dispatched to recover it, only to find out a System Lord also found the Ha'tak and wants it. a Huge firefight takes place and they end up playing hide and seek on the Ha'tak, only after both sides taking heavy losses. This goes on and ends up with all but one SGC-member dead to report back that the System Lord was able to take the Ha'tak.

Then we would see that Ha'tak attack a nearby planet.

Fade out

The End.

// aAnubiS & IfYouWantTo.

[spg_1983]

I don't think that they do have succesful missions all the time. Look at the number of times that they barely get out with their lives and dont get the tech that they were after. Those are failed missions. "Red Sky" wasnt a failed mission but a serious screw up. The mission was to go to the planet, which they accomplished but it had bad side effects. I think the writers do a good job of balancing the number of times they succeed on their missions and the number of times they fail. As far as on going story arcs i think it would be noce to see them lose every now and again byt as far as individual episodes go i think they do a great job of making sure they don't succeed or fail to often.

[Sparki101]

I like the characters to have their pedestall yoinked from under them with great zeal and bringing them down a notch or two. I love bittersweet endings, where unanswered questions are debated for hours afterwards. So yeah, I think it is a good thing to have an episode with the hero's not winning or where the victory is hollow. It makes the episode stand out from the rest and it gives the characters more depth.

[omnian]

I'd love to see more episodes that have unhappy endings. I mean, everything nowadays has a happy ending and it just annoys me! There are only a few episodes with relatively sad endings like Divide and Conquer where Martouf dies and there's Heroes Part 2 obviously.......

There should be more cliffhangers too....I like those.

[angsty_otaku]

i really want to see them screw up...they look like the golden team where everything goes right because they're so perfect yadda yadda...it makes the show less believable (because the show is quite believable in the first place...right >.<...hey you never know ^_^; but all creatures make errors and it's time that TPTB create a situation where something does go wrong and everything is not all perfect...and yeah... >.< i ramble eh?

[spg_1983]

i really want to see them screw up...they look like the golden team where everything goes right because they're so perfect yadda yadda...it makes the show less believable (because the show is quite believable in the first place...right >.<...hey you never know ^_^; but all creatures make errors and it's time that TPTB create a situation where something does go wrong and everything is not all perfect...and yeah... >.< i ramble eh?

well like was said earlier isnt that what "Red Sky" was? In the end the asgard bailed us out but i would definately have called that a screw up and a failure. SG-1 didnt reacha solution and the whole planet was gonna die. the problem i think with having them do something too seriously bad is the questions it raises. example. say that the asgard hadnt bailed us out and there wasnt a happy ending to "Red Sky" if all those people died then i think the SGC and the viewers would start to question whether we should be going off world. If we are destroying planets in our own quest to save ourselves then are we really any better than the goa'uld? are we willing to become like the goa'uld to save ourselves? thats why i like episodes like "Red Sky" and "One False Step" because they actually show how reckless our gallavanting across the galaxy is and it makes us the viewers think about it and the the team think about it but it still has a happy ending and innocents arent hurt. If tptb are going to write episodes that genuinley(sp?) fail (and not like i said in my earlier post where they just fail to get the tech they were after) then they have to do it in a way where the consequences effect us but not innocents, otherwise, like i said we are no better than the goa'uld.

[Crazedwraith]

Thye do screw up. Alot. Well maybe it's just that i've been watching my brand spanking new season 1 box set.

The Nox- they go to recover invisble creatures, they don't.They try to capture Apophsis, THEY DIE. End result: they din't get the tech and can't ever go back to the planet.

Bloodlines- They go to get a symbiote to study and stop ry'ac beig implanted they fail at both objectives.

Lets not forget the many many misisons were entire SG teams die and SG-1 and/or Earth are put in perill for absoutly no gain. Zilch. nadda. none. nowt.

[spg_1983]

Thye do screw up. Alot. Well maybe it's just that i've been watching my brand spanking new season 1 box set.

The Nox- they go to recover invisble creatures, they don't.They try to capture Apophsis, THEY DIE. End result: they din't get the tech and can't ever go back to the planet.

Bloodlines- They go to get a symbiote to study and stop ry'ac beig implanted they fail at both objectives.

Lets not forget the many many misisons were entire SG teams die and SG-1 and/or Earth are put in perill for absoutly no gain. Zilch. nadda. none. nowt.

exactly! every time they go through the gate and get into trouble and then get out with just their lives is a failed mission. if every mission was a succses than the SGC and Area 51 would be overwhelmed with alien tech and not have enough places to put it. since that is not the case i think its safe to asume that the majority of SG teams missions are failures. since one of their primary missions is to find new tech to defend themselves, even every time a team goes off world and nothing happens and they dont find anything useful than that is technically a mission failure and would officially be reported as such.

[DarkQuee1]

We seem to be talking about two different things: the team's screw-ups, and the writers'. SE was screwed up by the writers. It was fine until the last ten minutes, when--in order to give us a happy ending--we get the proverbial "rabbit out of the hat" ("Oooh, look, we have only ten seconds before the Enkarrans are destroyed and I've just happened to find the perfect planet among 400 billion stars.") and changed the rules they'd set up at the beginning (we had a time problem: the Enkarrans could not be gathered in time. A problem that goes away if they stop the darn process long enough to fly the entire population to another planet).
the only character screw-up--Daniel's helping Lotan to destroy the bomb and thus, if the new planet wasn't found, leaving them without a defense--gets nullified by the happy ending paste-on.

The problem is not that we haven't seen screw-ups; the problem is that we haven't had sufficient consequences for the screw-ups. Red Sky is an example, as is BOB (Daniel really does help start a war at the end, one that's going to get very nasty)--the events of BOB get brushed away as of no consequence in EM (which had a screw-up of its own that will probably never be addressed, as it probably made it clear that the audience isn't looking for Unas stories).

Two episodes that do show consequences for a screw-up are "Thor's Hammer" and "Thor's Chariot."

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR SEASON 7 & 8
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And we apparently will see some consequences from Unnatural Selection in New Order.

J.

[bcmilco]

The problem is not that we haven't seen screw-ups; the problem is that we haven't had sufficient consequences for the screw-ups.

Yes, that's exactly how I feel!

[ShadowMaat]

I like happy endings as much as the next person, but I value good storytelling more. I also think that having SG-1 fail once in a while makes them a little more human, and I am definitely all for that. If the Good Guy always wins, every time, it gets a little boring. Throwing in a few failures keeps up the mystery- you'll never know HOW things are going to end and you can't smugly sit back and assume everyone will live Happily Ever After. Real life isn't like that and TV should reflect that. Not constantly all the time, but just once in a while... as a reminder. I think it enhances the storytelling process and opens up new threads of possibility.

[spg_1983]

I like happy endings as much as the next person, but I value good storytelling more. I also think that having SG-1 fail once in a while makes them a little more human, and I am definitely all for that. If the Good Guy always wins, every time, it gets a little boring. Throwing in a few failures keeps up the mystery- you'll never know HOW things are going to end and you can't smugly sit back and assume everyone will live Happily Ever After. Real life isn't like that and TV should reflect that. Not constantly all the time, but just once in a while... as a reminder. I think it enhances the storytelling process and opens up new threads of possibility.

but the thing is they do fail all the time, just not on the really big on going story arcs.
"The Nox" : they were supposed to go and capture one of the flying critters: failed and alienated the nox

"Thor's Hammer" : they were supposed to go through and make contact with the asgard : failed and destroyed the hammer leaving cimmeria open to invasion, so they are directly responsible for the death of kendra and all the others that were killed, including gairwyns husband and brothers

"Spirits" : they were supposed to go through and find SG-11 and get the trinium : not only did the fail to get the trinium they brought back aliens impersonating SG-11 who then got all through the base

"One False Step" : the SGC nearly wipes out an entire race of a planet : not technically a failure since their mission was to go through and retrieve the downed UAV which they did

"New Ground" " the team goes to make contact with the advanced humans : failed and got themselves captured

"The Serpents Venom" : the team is to prevent the alliance of Apophis and Heru'ur : failed stopped the alliance sort of but aided apophis to becoming more powerful than ever

this is just a partial list ill come up with more later

[ShadowMaat]

Yeah, but I WANT them to fail on some of the big cases. Not catastrophically, but just enough to bring them- and us- down a few pegs.

[spg_1983]

Yeah, but I WANT them to fail on some of the big cases. Not catastrophically, but just enough to bring them- and us- down a few pegs.

the problem is that if they failed on the really big big cases the repurcussions, while interesting would end the show. any time earth was in direct danger of being destroyed or invaded, if they had failed it would have ended the show and that would suck