Within the Serpent's Grasp (121)

[fems]

Kinsey would probably be acting similar to Samuels and demanding he be allowed through the gate, as there should be someone to lead humanity on the Alpha Site should Earth be destroyed...

Falcon Horus maybe you could pretend alien chainmail sleeves can wrinkle? It's probably not the same material as we would use on Earth, since everything seems to be made of naquadah, trinium and/or an alloy of both or some other unknown alien mineral/metal everywhere but on Earth!

[Falcon Horus]

Kinsey would probably be acting similar to Samuels and demanding he be allowed through the gate, as there should be someone to lead humanity on the Alpha Site should Earth be destroyed...

He probably would.

Falcon Horus maybe you could pretend alien chainmail sleeves can wrinkle? It's probably not the same material as we would use on Earth, since everything seems to be made of naquadah, trinium and/or an alloy of both or some other unknown alien mineral/metal everywhere but on Earth!

Great, now I'm imagining slaves ironing the hauberks. Actually, it's a pretty hilarious visual.

[garhkal]

While he may have been like Samuels, i would still like to have seen what his initial reaction would have been.. and whether he gave daniel a "you told me so" glance or such.

[Lt.Colonel John Sheppard]

One of my favorite Season Finales from the series.

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

Season 1, disk 5.

This is the only episode on this disk that I like (I hate one of the others so much that I've never even managed to watch it all the way through). I really like this one.

Jack is competent and serious. Daniel has clearly been learning weapons. Sam puts her team above her career. And Teal'c--is Teal'c: focused on the goal.

This is pretty much the only cliff hanger I really like. Probably because the form was so heavily over-used for the rest of the series (I mean, seriously, every season does not need to end on a cliff-hanger, nor is one required half-way through).

I like that neither Sam nor Teal'c had a clue how fast the ship was traveling. Yes, TPTB seemed to forget in later episodes that these ships were as new to Teal'c as they were to the rest of the team, but that doesn't affect this episode.

Sure, there are problems (how did Skara go from being some random Goa'uld to being Apophis's son? Why did the sarcophagus heal Daniel's clothes as well as his flesh?), but overall this is tight, action filled and well written. Definitely a worthy ending to the first season.

Seaboe

[Lunaeclipse]

Season 1, disk 5.

Sure, there are problems (how did Skara go from being some random Goa'uld to being Apophis's son? Why did the sarcophagus heal Daniel's clothes as well as his flesh?), but overall this is tight, action filled and well written. Definitely a worthy ending to the first season.
Seaboe

Skaara didn't go from being a random Goa'uld to being Apophis' son... They were told before they were chosen that Apophis had come to chose who would be the "Children of the gods"... This told me, when he was chosen, that he was not going to be an average Goa'uld... and I assumed because it was a planet associated with Apophis and because it was Apophis who had come that he would be his son...

... The joke is that some Sarcs fix clothes as well, which seems to be the case in this one because it fixes Klorel's outfit as well...

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

But the couple he goes off with in Children of the Gods is not Apophis and what's 'er face who inhabits Sha're. So somewhere along the line TPTB changed their minds concerning who inhabited Skaara.

Seaboe

[Lunaeclipse]

But the couple he goes off with in Children of the Gods is not Apophis and what's 'er face who inhabits Sha're. So somewhere along the line TPTB changed their minds concerning who inhabited Skaara.

Seaboe

I just took that to mean that they were his 'minders/advisers' so to speak... and the guy who helped choose him to be an early version of Zapacna, although with a different actor...

[SF_and_Coffee]

If the idea is that most Goa'uld symbiotes who take even female hosts are not queens, and it is understood that only the queens are actually female and thus capable of spawning, then the Goa'uld couple with whom Klorel/Skaara left the planet were not his biological parents (and indeed, were both biologically male or male-equivalent, regardless of the genders of their host bodies).

This would make them foster parents. I have very little trouble imagining a system of fosterage among the Goa'uld, in which the many, many larvae produced by the relatively few queens are, once implanted in hosts, sent off for a period of instruction and settling-into-adulthood under the careful tutelage of those whom the System Lord trusts (as these newly-mature Goa'uld are biologically his offspring, and his queen's). Fosterage was common in medieval Europe's feudal society (for example, in medieval Ireland as well as elsewhere), and the Goa'uld are essentially feudal in organization, so it isn't at all surprising that they might well have developed a similar system for the polishing of their newly-matured offspring.

Ergo, Klorel (the Goa'uld inhabiting Skaara's body) would be the biological son of Apophis and Amaunet, but spend some time fostered in the household of whomever that other couple was (most likely minor nobles in Apophis' court hierarchy).

[Lunaeclipse]

If the idea is that most Goa'uld symbiotes who take even female hosts are not queens, and it is understood that only the queens are actually female and thus capable of spawning, then the Goa'uld couple with whom Klorel/Skaara left the planet were not his biological parents (and indeed, were both biologically male or male-equivalent, regardless of the genders of their host bodies).

This would make them foster parents. I have very little trouble imagining a system of fosterage among the Goa'uld, in which the many, many larvae produced by the relatively few queens are, once implanted in hosts, sent off for a period of instruction and settling-in (to adulthood) under the careful tutelage of those whom the System Lord trusts (as these newly-mature Goa'uld are biologically his offspring, and his queen's). Fosterage was common in medieval Europe's feudal society (for example, in medieval Ireland as well as elsewhere), and the Goa'uld are essentially feudal in organization, so it isn't at all surprising that they might well have developed a similar system for the polishing of their newly-matured offspring.

Ergo, Klorel (the Goa'uld inhabiting Skaara's body) would be the biological son of Apophis and Amaunet, but spend some time fostered in the household of whomever that other couple was (most likely minor nobles in Apophis' court hierarchy).

and because Zapacna shows up in Pretense I assume that it was Zippy in COTG...

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

Sure, we can come up with explanations for all of this stuff--and most of the other times TPTB screwed up--but IMO that doesn't make it less of a screw up. I've never thought TPTB had the whole thing planned out from the beginning; that's just not how TV works. They do one thing (as they did in the pilot) and then another, better (sometimes) idea comes along, so they do that, even though it doesn't match what happened earlier.

Seaboe

[SF_and_Coffee]

I enjoy looking for ways to make logical, in-universe explanations for certain things and in that way make the possible "screw-up" disappear. In those cases where I can't find a logically consistent way to do that, I just decide which of two (or more) competing items to discard as "oops, they really goofed on that".

Although I don't have any trouble imagining that the arc moving from COTG to "Within The Serpent's Grasp" was already thought-out at the time COTG was written and somewhere along the way someone simply forgot to mention explicitly (or TPTB weren't thinking when they cut footage) that all of those Goa'uld really were Apophis' offspring.

[fems]

It was pretty clear (to me, anyway) that Apophis was the one God on Chulak and thus it were his children that were going to get chosen. He probably just felt it was beneath him to move through the crowd of unruly humans to choose a host and thus had some of his underlords inspect them for him.

Also, considering Amaunet had just matured it's not too far-fetched to imagine any other Goa'uld had, whether they were all from the same batch and father or not. Therefore, I thought the reveal in WtSG was no more than logical.

[Lunaeclipse]

Sure, we can come up with explanations for all of this stuff--and most of the other times TPTB screwed up--but IMO that doesn't make it less of a screw up. I've never thought TPTB had the whole thing planned out from the beginning; that's just not how TV works. They do one thing (as they did in the pilot) and then another, better (sometimes) idea comes along, so they do that, even though it doesn't match what happened earlier.

Seaboe

What is your whole reason for believing that it was a screw up and not an intentional thing?


Personally I don't believe that it is far fetched for royalty to have a nanny or a few people look after their children... it's been done in history...

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

What is your whole reason for believing that it was a screw up and not an intentional thing?

What, you think what I've already said isn't reason enough? Fine. My "whole" reason for thinking it's a screw up? There are a number of things in the pilot that differ from the series; this is just one. I happen to believe that television writers have limited interest in continuity in this much detail, and that they're more interested in good drama than keeping track of petty details. You're free to disagree.

Seaboe