Originally posted by Simhavaktra
I have to agree about Sam and her Tok’ra legacy. It’s a huge, largely unexplored, aspect of her psyche. Why does it apparently bother her so much that she can use goa’uld technology? What’s she thinking inside that overactive brain of hers?
I’d have explored that more, maybe placed her in a situation where she has to use some goa’uld device to save the rest of the team, but finds herself a victim of… naquadah block – like writer’s block? – and has to work through it, probably under fire, at a cost of personal pain, revelation and soul searching, succeeding, and spectacularly, but only at a cost to herself. And, if I’d been writing it, at a cost to her relationships with the rest of SG-1, that would take time and effort, on the guys’ parts, to mend. I would also have had General Hammond insisting and ordering her to work with the ribbon device and the hand device to become proficient with them. It would have given her character opportunities to go on missions and perform duties she would never have gotten otherwise, and I have to admit to a fondness for the idea of the guys of SG-1 dealing with the fact that their astrophysicist is not only brilliant and an excellent soldier and explosives operative, even though she doesn’t like doing it, when she’s in her zone, she’s fiercer and tougher than all of them rolled together, and even the Marines are a little in awe of her for it. Not that she isn’t that fierce and that tough already, because I think she is, but I think it would have been interesting to see the guys reminded of that a bit more often, and to see Carter’s disgust and dismay if anyone tried to turn her into just a weapon, especially if she’d been enjoying running around kicking butt and blowing things up with the Marines. 
I’d also have written Carter as having more to do with the Tokra, and greater interest and input into Earth’s alliance with them because she just can’t not.
I wouldn’t have let the Carter character devolve into the place where the show puts its negative issues on display. Let ‘em share out the heavy lifting in the fouling up and personal concerns departments. Jack can worry about never having a personal life, a spouse, and a family – maybe even pine after Dr. Fraiser, for example.
Daniel can screw a translation and endanger the world. Teal’c can bellow at civilians and display a lack of professionalism. They’re all human, or near enough, so they would all have been written as possessing fortés to go with the foibles they’d have been given if I’d been writing them.I’d have let Sam talk about science and military things, and display her enthusiasm for them without any eye-rolling or ‘those looks’. She’s a brilliant scientist, and I sometimes think that all that means to a lamentable majority of viewers is that she’ll spout technobabble and save the day in some usually bizarre and spectacular way. I would have written eps where the Stargate program has to figure out how to hide the fact that their physicist extraordinaire is actually nowhere on the planet when a very real and famous physicist comes looking for her, with the President’s permission, to discuss something like a possible experimental proof of the theory of everything. (Hey, finding a way to use or manipulate all 11 theorized dimensions of reality might provide a means of defense or attack against the Ascended.
) Or what happens when the book that their physicist wrote that they’d never imagined anyone would actually read wins some very prestigious award – that they don’t dare let her accept without endangering the secrecy of the program. I’d like to have seen them explain that they never thought the book would go anywhere and they just can’t let her accept the Nobel because then, well, there’ll be questions, and interviews and background, and news coverage and all that and they just can’t have all that! And Carter standing there looking at them like they’ve sprouted extra heads in front of her, and saying “I can’t accept a Nobel that I fairly won because you don’t think I can keep my mouth shut about the Stargate during the ensuing interviews? Do you have any idea how insulting that sounds from this end, sirs?”In the same light, I’d have shown Sam to have more close friendships with the enlisted personnel and technicians who maintain the base systems and staff the labs. Somehow, I’ve always suspected that Sam and Siler are buds, and I’d like to have seen that, that she’s respected, liked, and popular with them because she respects them and what they do, and she likes them too.
I’d have let Sam ride her motorcycles, drive fast, and fly planes – maybe have her be a highly regarded amateur racer (I’d prefer an air racer – Unlimited class
who maybe takes off every year for the Reno races, and comes back with a trophy, or a few – but I’m not picky on that subject ) – whose avocation(s) rate(s) mention and display on a fairly regular basis. And I’d have written her pulling off things that left the guys’ jaws dangling a lot more regularly. Carter is cool, but sometimes it seems that only Carter remembers that. 
).
So here is some blue jello I "borrowed" from Astrogeologist. 
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