Sam Carter/Jack O'Neill Ship Appreciation Thread

[Stef]

Has no one mentioned "...But we're secretly related!" ??

Ugh. Sadly, that sentence hits too close to home for one of my shows!

Okay, so I haven't watched all of seasons 1-8. What episodes would you guys say are crucial for me to watch in order to fully appreciate the J/S ship? Any that made you a shipper? I've seen all of season 1, the first half of 2, most of 8 and then some sprinklings in between (including D&C, WoO, and BTS).

-Stef

[Lady eliza]

I'll jump in on this.

For Jonas: I thought he had some good story lines. That's why I enjoyed him. Even though Daniel wasn't around, the stories were still enjoyable for me, and that eased my misgivings about "the new guy."

For Cam: Well, at the risk of sounding like a total idiot, I have to admit that I needed more time to...well...mourn Jack. Know what I mean? Suddenly, my favorite character (THE pivotal character) was gone and I was supposed to automatically love his replacement? Maybe the over-kill on his character was the writers trying to show Jack/RDA fans just how likeable Cam was, but it put me off. I feel better about him in season 10, but in S. 9, I got so frustrated with Cam and Daniel dropping "Jack lines" and trying (I felt) to recreate the old dynamic. Almost every episode, I would click the TV off and say, "I miss Jack." I wasn't getting storylines that I could say, "I miss Jack, but WOW! That was still a great episode!"

As always, MHO. Take it. Leave it. Whatever you want. And I'm not sure any of that made sense, anyway.

It did. I do know what you mean. I felt that Cam's (and Vala's to a point) characters were forced. I was used to and still am to a point, Jack in command. I missed that dynamic and it should have been Sam with Jack's lines. I liked s10 more than s9, though I do like the Arthurian tales and avalon and camelot and castles.

Not to pick nits, and I'll admit I sometimes find Cam's character a little too down home for my tastes, but I'm not sure I'd characterize the first part of S9 as completely Cam-centric. In Avalon I we meet him and see his efforts to "get the band back together", leading to Vala's arrival and the beginning of the Arthurian arc. In Avalon II Daniel and Vala do the body-swap, so that's mostly them. Origin is focused on the conclusion of the body-swap and the intro of the Ori; The Ties that Bind is a little comic relief as they all go in search of a way to get rid of the bracelets, and The Powers that Be is where we get Vala's backstory about Qetesh and the first sign of the power of the Priors and the threat they pose. After that come Beachhead and Sam is back. As best I can recollect, we don't get a full-blown Mitchell episode til Babylon w/Cam and the Sodan warriors.

Not that I don't think the whole season was "off" somehow; but I think that's a consequence of what they were trying to do. And I still think TPTB would have been better-served to have left SG1 behind and repackaged it under a different title. I think people might have accepted the whole premise a lot better that way.

Ok, I do accept that. I would have liked it better if they had to work hard to get into the team though or at least have some animosity there, especially where the areas that they are good in and can use, weren't- avalon and in the caves for example, now Jack would have known that Teal'c could only read certain languages. Mitchell didn't. I don't even know if he did his own research on what they could do until later. I stand corrected if he DID. It just didn't seem like he had to me. The basic stuff but not the other things. I don't mean to sound/be judgemental, it's just that it really bugged me, even though he was learning the ropes.

If they had been gently broken in for us, THEN I would have accepted them more.

[Terrah]

Ugh. Sadly, that sentence hits too close to home for one of my shows!

Okay, so I haven't watched all of seasons 1-8. What episodes would you guys say are crucial for me to watch in order to fully appreciate the J/S ship? Any that made you a shipper? I've seen all of season 1, the first half of 2, most of 8 and then some sprinklings in between (including D&C, WoO, and BTS).

-Stef

2nd half of S2
1969 (Not crucial)
Out of Mind

from S3
Into the Fire
Point of View
A Hundred Days
Crystal Skull (Not crucial)
Nemesis

There are more for cute little shippy moments.

[Luvnjoe]

I can't get past the fact that they gave the flag-ship team to a newbie who had never see the gate before! ( plus all the stuff you wrote Rachel.)

Why, oh why, didn't they have him as a member of SG-20 or something. At least we would know he'd been through the gate and had some experience.


I just can't get past this, so no matter how they wrote Mitchell after his introduction, the damage had been done, as far as I'm concerned.

Ditto to this. They had Sam leading the team all through season 8, so...*insert T'ealc-like eyebrow raise here*

Has no one mentioned "...But we're secretly related!" ??

NNNooooooo! My eyes! My eyes! The words are burned into my cornias! Make them go away! *Is horribly traumatized.*

[Luvnjoe]

2nd half of S2
1969 (Not crucial)

Out of Mind
from S3
Into the Fire

I would add "The Light." Which season is that? 4? I really can't keep track of seasons very well.

[Terrah]

I would add "The Light." Which season is that? 4? I really can't keep track of seasons very well.

Yes season 4

[gater62]

Ugh. Sadly, that sentence hits too close to home for one of my shows!

Okay, so I haven't watched all of seasons 1-8. What episodes would you guys say are crucial for me to watch in order to fully appreciate the J/S ship? Any that made you a shipper? I've seen all of season 1, the first half of 2, most of 8 and then some sprinklings in between (including D&C, WoO, and BTS).

-Stef

To me, Children of the Gods-all that sexual tension in the briefing - wow! Then just watching the different episodes, you can find all kinds of "looks" between Jack and Sam that make you think-do those two have a thing or what! What sealed it for me though was 100 Days with Sam through the whole episode, but the ending just made me cry!

Okay that was really unclear!

[AstraPerAspera]

2nd half of S2
1969 (Not crucial)

Out of Mind
from S3
Into the Fire
Point of View
A Hundred Days
Crystal Skull (Not crucial)
Nemesis

Definitely:
Entity
2010
2001
Meridian
Revelations
Redemption 1 & 2
Abyss
Unnatural Selection
Metamorphosis
Evolutions 1 & 2
Grace (MUST SEE)
Chimera
Death Knell
Loat City 1 & 2

[Terrah]

I would add "The Light." Which season is that? 4? I really can't keep track of seasons very well.

I think we need to come up with a definitive collection DVD Box set and someone here to make the cover artwork lol.

[Luvnjoe]

Okay, family! The whole "what would Jack do for Sam" discussion earlier this week inspired a vid. It actually wasn't the project I started out doing, but this one just wouldn't leave me alone. Just a bit o' fluff and fun.

So, here it is. http://s200.photobucket.com/albums/a...t=500miles.flv Enjoy. Or not. But if you watch it and don't enjoy it, don't tell me. Just kidding, of course. Feedback is always welcome. I must note here that the resolution did not turn out great. Hmmmm...if you have suggestions for that, let me know.

[Caladria]

Ugh. Sadly, that sentence hits too close to home for one of my shows!

Okay, so I haven't watched all of seasons 1-8. What episodes would you guys say are crucial for me to watch in order to fully appreciate the J/S ship? Any that made you a shipper? I've seen all of season 1, the first half of 2, most of 8 and then some sprinklings in between (including D&C, WoO, and BTS).

-Stef

Out of Mind/Into the Fire (S2 ender/S3 opener two parter)
A Hundred Days (S3)
Small Victories (S4)
2010 (S4)
Entity (S4)
Paradise Lost (S6)
Metamorphosis (S6)
Grace (S7)
Chimera (S7)
Death Knell (S7)
Lost City (S7)
Affinity (S8)
Threads (S8)

And those are just the ones I think of as really shippy. There's loads of litte moments in S4 especially that I just didn't put in (Tangent, Serpent's Venom - both of which are team episodes with bits of ship in there). Cos it was the little moments that made me a shipper, and then WoO went for the jugular and really grabbed me (how many metaphors can I put into one sentence?)

In fact, yeah - watch S4.

[antoa]

An army!

That is all.

[jz9]

On Mitchell...

I actually really like Mitchell as a character and always have. Setting aside the decision to write the new male lead as the SG1 leader (which I'll never be happy about) and the whole breaking up of SG1 (which came a bit out of left field and had no set up story-wise although made sense from the events of the end of S8), I actually thought Avalon did a fair enough job of introducing him (helped by the fact we got unexpected little cameos from Jack and Sam) and I thought BB did a great job of playing Mitchell as a guy who had expected to join a team and learn from the best, who was so excited at being part of that, and who got his feet yanked right out from under him, and who desperately wants to get the team he wanted to join back together.

I fully expected that the beginning of S9 would be Mitchell-centric. He was the new lead, a new character. I fully expected that there would be stories centering around him and building his relationship with the rest of the team present to embed him. I actually thought that given AT was on maternity leave (and oh, congrats by the way B!) that they would have utilised the opportunity of her absence to showcase Mitchell; that once she came back, there would be a return to the more balanced team episodes. What I was slightly taken aback by was how much the stories post Avalon II focused on Vala, who at that point, was only supposed to be there to be as a temporary stop-gap as CB was covering AT's maternity leave.

Effectively, we got Avalon I and II introducing Mitchell, he was relegated to sub-plot in Origin, team player in The Ties That Bind and bit part player in The Powers That Be. Beachhead even focused more on Vala's exit than it did on Sam's return. I like Vala but I couldn't understand why when they had a new character with Mitchell they were spending so much time exploring a character who from everything I knew at the time of watching was meant to be temporary.

Of course, once Vala left, there were a couple of episodes focusing on Mitchell because the poor thing had been ignored, and the stories focusing on the others just seem particularly weak - The Fourth Horsemen which is supposed to be a Sam story, IMO, is the worst two-part episode they have ever written.

Neither was the writing of Mitchell very consistent and there was a return to writing the others as archetypes rather than as the rounded characters I knew and loved (Sam was far too often simply, Science Girl, Daniel - Geek guy, Teal'c - alien warrior with big guns), and the friendship and relationships between the original three rarely showcased to pander (IMO) to the new audience they thought they were capturing with the refreshed show.

I'm not a fan of the writing or production decisions in early-mid S9. I can understand why they wanted the new male lead to be SG1 leader as typically the lead is and I can understand that by breaking the team up and Mitchell getting them back together, it was meant to make Mitchell more endearing to the audience (boy did they misjudge that) because the audience was meant to identify with Mitchell; I even understand why they wanted to write Mitchell differently to Jonas.

They had already done the 'newbie struggling to be accepted' thing with Jonas but the problem was that they didn't set up the background relationships strong enough to make their acceptance of him and more importantly his command realistic. Yes, they were grateful he saved their butts in Antarctica; yes, they may have known him through the 302 programme but seriously if they knew him well enough to know his skills and accept him as a commander shouldn't Sam have known his sign-name was Shaft?

But I have to say some of the episodes in the back half of S9 are great and written/produced with much the same quality as much of SG1 as a whole. I actually think S10 was a very good season and I was impressed with the writing again in S10 (although there was the one or two epis just like always that were abit meh), and both Vala and Mitchell were much more consistently written in S10 (IMO). My only issue with S10 is that while I expected the beginning to be Vala heavy (and it was), I wasn't quite expecting the back end to be the same and by the virtue of the stories they told to finish the season it was. But hey. At least there was some good Mitchell, Sam, Daniel and even Teal'c moments within the rest of the season that made up for it - and of course, the return of Jack even if (200 aside) it was only 1 episode on SG1

Well said.

[Lady eliza]

Sorry, I know this is OT, but is anyone else excited by the Endeavor lift-off this evening? I confess, I'm a space junkie...would love to go into space! This time there's a teacher on the mission--Barbara Morgan--the first teacher since Christa McAuliffe, who died in the Challenger disaster (she was Christa's backup on that mission). Anyway, they're due to lift off in a little over 90 minutes. Just thought I'd share

I watched it. I'd love to go into space as well and meet aliens. Providing they didn't try to kill me of course! You can go on the nasa website to watch watch the launch replays.

Yes season 4

Ahem....In The Line of Duty was pretty shippy and angsty.

[Lady eliza]

Rachel, that was very well said.