S10: Critique & Contemplation

[jckfan55]

I don't know where this certainty comes from, we have to agree to disagree. My impression of Sam (like when she was passed over for leading the unit in season 3 when O'Neill "left in anger") is that she passively accepted most command decisions made above her. She never seemed to aggressively pursue rank or even wave it around. The only time I can even recall her "using" rank is making a nasty remark to (I'm forgetting his name, the black mustache ship captain guy in Atlantis) when he had talked down to Rodney in season 4 of SGA.

Sam was never a passive character. Uncertain at times, sure, and often hampered by her position in a male-dominated hierarchy, but she was never willing to let people overlook her. In season three she knew she wasn't qualified to lead the team, she admitted didn't have the experience so she did what any responsible officer would do and stepped back, which is why I have such a hard time believing she would follow a man who has no experience when she wasn't willing to lead after having three years under her belt.

^what you said. It made total sense in the military hierarchy that they'd never give command of SG1 to someone who had just been promoted to major. She got that.

[jckfan55]

Sam was like a Daniel in the sense that she stuck to what she thought was right regardless of rank. She seemed to pay scant attention to it. So I took issue with the assertion that the "real Sam" would have had a cow and fought tooth and nail to control SG-1. If anything that scenario sounds even more wildly "not Sam as I know her" than what we saw.

I must have missed that comment. That would have been unlike Sam, but so was the "yeah, whatever" way she left and then came back to SG1. No *good* reason was presented on screen for either, imho.

[Ashizuri]

Sam was like a Daniel in the sense that she stuck to what she thought was right regardless of rank. She seemed to pay scant attention to it. So I took issue with the assertion that the "real Sam" would have had a cow and fought tooth and nail to control SG-1. If anything that scenario sounds even more wildly "not Sam as I know her" than what we saw.

I also think that the fact that every weekend, leave time, and break showed Sam tinkering with technology in the lab (and O'Neill ordering her to "get a life") very much validated Sam moving to Area 51 to do R&D after SG1 broke up and Daniel was leaving for Atlantis and Teal'c was leaving for Jaffa politics and O'Neill had been promoted away from SG-1. She said many times throughout the show that what she always wanted was more time to work on science & research & technogadgets. I failed to see how that was "wildly out of character" for Sam.

I didn't mean to imply that she would have freaked out or had a cow, but I don't think walking away from it would have been as easy for her as the show made it. She fought long and hard to be respected and get where she was...to lead for one year and walk away because she was ready for a change? It just didn't work for me...especially as TPTB then had her taking command of Atlantis, and then taking command of the Hammond. Eh, different strokes.

^what you said. It made total sense in the military hierarchy that they'd never give command of SG1 to someone who had just been promoted to major. She got that.

Yup, yup. And in getting that she wasn't ready to lead then I really can't picture her willing to follow some one with even less experience.

[Skydiver]

in a lot of ways the general stories of season 9 and 10 weren't BAD, as much as they were poorly executed.

talion for example. we're supposed to believe that teal'c went all sociopath to avenge the murder of his mother, that meant so much to him that we never learned her name and hadn't heard from her since season one? maybe if they'd have had him avenging ryac or kar'yn the audience would have bought into mister killer jaffa on a vendetta

stronghold, most of what 'broke' that episode was cam's temper tantrum at the end. had him not do it, or had sam jump his butt for breaking cover. I mean, in the original version cam was supposed to just stroll in after being gone all week and command the mission.

the one where daniel and vala swapped places with harrid and salis, did they even CARE that their actions got those folks killed? if they did, we never saw the remorse

It was little things like that, little tweaks that made many of the stories simply unbelievable.

adn speaking of continuity, moving jack's cabin from minnesota to silver springs colorado for convenience????? that's akin to moving area 51 from nevada to utah cause it's easier to spell.

it's little things like that that just slap you in the face if you're a long time viewer.

[Duskofdead]

I must have missed that comment. That would have been unlike Sam, but so was the "yeah, whatever" way she left and then came back to SG1. No *good* reason was presented on screen for either, imho.

I got kinda buried in responses (and big ones) so I can't point out offhand exactly where the comment was but yes the statement was made that it strained all credibility because Sam would NOT allow someone like Cam to lead SG-1. Whereas I feel it would be vastly OOC for Sam to not give anyone her superiors placed in command a fair chance. I never saw her grasp for rank or pull an "Oh no you di-int" on anyone.

[Khentkawes]

adn speaking of continuity, moving jack's cabin from minnesota to silver springs colorado for convenience????? that's akin to moving area 51 from nevada to utah cause it's easier to spell.

Just out of curiosity... what makes you think they moved the location of Jack's cabin? I don't recall them mentioning specifically where it was in the episode.

They did refer to the "Silver Creek" Sheriff department... but according to google, there's a "Silver Creek" in Minnesota. So, I'm just wondering if I missed something in the episode that indicated that the cabin was in Colorado?

[Duskofdead]

Personally, I think the Ori could have been amazing. They were close enough to the Goa'uld in their actions to not be completely jarring and had the potential to be quite terrifying. They dipped more into the fantasy realm than I personally appriciated, but I could have over looked that. But they flat to me, they weren't fleshed out beyond their need for believers. It was never even explained how the thoughts of the followers turned into energy.

Well ascension, period, was metaphysical. It starts to blur the lines between so called "sci tech" and so called "fantasy." Some people never liked ANY of the story arcs involving ascension related issues. I loved them. To me, while I'm not a devout religious person of any sort, I do very much believe there is the potential in us for more than the hard science will ever fully explain. Can you quantify compassion? Can you explain trust as a chemical process? These sorts of questions, good sci fi can and does explore, even if only indirectly. Right and wrong, equally, are always a part of sci fi-- good and evil, even though one could say that has more to do with a theological or ethics debate than a show about "science fiction."

I agree the Ori were not the single best way to tell this story-- I think "Threads" was the best episode and definitely is in my top 5 of best Stargate episodes ever, period. But I liked that they explored the issue of having great power and using it, something people long expressed frustration at races like the Asgard and Ancients (and even Nox and Tollan) refusing to do in situations where their direct intervention could have "saved the day" so easily.

This is very true, and quite possibly the major flaw in the design. They created a new series and changed the existing characters and universe to fit the story as opposed to changing the story to fit the characters once their request for a new series was denied. YMMV.

This is exactly what I feel happened. That is why I said (I can't remember in which thread, but I remember it bugged someone, hehe) that I treat the end of Season 8 as the end of the first show. Essentially, it is. The rest of the show after that is a different story with a different cast. If people want to view 9 and 10 as simply the smooth continuation of 1-8 and judge it and the finale accordingly, they are free to do so, but they are (obviously) just setting themselves up to be disappointed. Because 9 and 10 quite obviously are "half-spinoff, half-continuation", not quite an all new series, but definitely halfway there. And given the cast changes and the fact that the story of 1-8 was over, there was no helping that.

[Ashizuri]

I got kinda buried in responses (and big ones) so I can't point out offhand exactly where the comment was but yes the statement was made that it strained all credibility because Sam would NOT allow someone like Cam to lead SG-1. Whereas I feel it would be vastly OOC for Sam to not give anyone her superiors placed in command a fair chance. I never saw her grasp for rank or pull an "Oh no you di-int" on anyone.

I assume it was me when I said:

She [Sam] NEVER would have agreed to be led by a person with no off-world experience.

And I do think it was beyond what I, and many others, were willing to accept as canon since we saw Sam support Hammond's decision to put Makepeace in charge of the team in season 3 becasue she did not have enough experience.

I never implied that it was because or her grasp for rank or that she'd snap her fingers and throw a tantrum, but if she didn't think she as qualified or experienced enough to lead SG-1 after three years how did they expect us to accept that she would accept Mitchell as qualified even though he'd never seen the gate.

Mitchell's promotion to leader of SG-1 was a thank-you for crashing an X-302/shooting down an alkesh/apparently saving SG-1 in some unexplained manner and I do not think Sam would accept that.

Clearly we disagree on this matter.

[EvenstarSRV]

So many excellent shows have bombed ratings that I reject ratings as a direct reflection of show quality. Marketing and advertising and even politics (imagine being a GREAT show, but getting bumped so that you are in a timeslot competing with Dancing with the Stars..) affect ratings.

I would agree that ratings do not reflect a subjective aspect like quality, there are several highly-rated shows that I haven't cared for. But I think ratings do give a pretty good indicator about the feelings of the general viewership. If a show's ratings are going down, then even if many think the current stories are high in quality, it's apparently not a sentiment that's shared by a significant portion of viewers. And vice-versa.

Continuity is *always* a complaint in any show, but (I think) particularly sci fi, and particularly long-running shows. I've never seen a show with 100% perfect continuity. But I think the freer you get with your fresh storytelling, the more you probably have to introduce events that will leave the most stringent fan with a bunch of nitpicks.

For me, there are degrees in breaks of continuity, ones that are usually just casualties of writing a serialized TV show, and ones that contradict pretty firmly established aspects of canon. Like Jack's cabin magically moving from Minnesota to Colorado, or the SGC going from having a training program for new recruits and putting a guy in charge of SG-1 who'd never seen the Stargate before. The former I can pretty easily overlook, the latter comes across as sloppy writing to me.

This I disagree with. Seasons 9-10 were more directed with fewer stand alone episodes. In fact 9-10 and Ark of Truth are like their own separate series with a very specific story arc that dominates the whole storyline. SG-1 in earlier seasons constantly visited planets, aliens and technologies which were then rendered utterly irrelevant for the rest of the show. 9 and 10 did less of that. So I don't know why you'd make a vague statement that 9 and 10 "lacked detail" or whatever. It focused more on an in depth story and less on just sorta throwing out episodes willy nilly. You may not have LIKED that storyline, which is a separate issue from whether or not there was detail.

While S9 and 10 were more arc-driven, I'd disagree that the storyline was in-depth. The writers never moved the Ori much beyond all-powerful beings in search of more believers. And the other main storyline, the Lucian Alliance, didn't get much beyond a rather incompetent gang of criminals dealing in space corn. And one main reason I disliked the storylines was the lack of detail.

My point has always only been this: You can't please everyone, and with seasons 9 and 10, they were in an awkward position to try to cook something up that everyone who enjoyed seasons 1-8 would have all liked. The end of season 8 had so effectively wrapped up the story that most people had grown to love, that introducing a whole new arc in 9 and 10 was an uphill battle. They were going to alienate some viewers no matter what route they went. If they'd gone with your suggestions, I'd categorize S9 and S10 as having the same cheap flaws that the middle to end of SGA did.

I agree you can't please everyone, this whole forum speaks to that, but I think you can write stories that have general appeal to your viewership. The large drop in ratings in S9-10 suggests to me that the new storylines failed to do this for any number of reasons, depending on your personal preferences.

Like I said all of these impressions are subjective. And if you'd been happy with whatever they did in 9-10 I might have been very unhappy, and vice-versa. I just take issue with these universal statements like "all fans agree" that they made horrible bad moves in 9 and 10. I think just as many people would have been unhappy with most alternatives I can think of.

I don't believe any of us here have said that 'all fans agree' to such and such. We've given our personal opinions concerning the decisions made in S9-10, which after all, is kinda the point of discussion boards like this.

I also think that the fact that every weekend, leave time, and break showed Sam tinkering with technology in the lab (and O'Neill ordering her to "get a life") very much validated Sam moving to Area 51 to do R&D after SG1 broke up and Daniel was leaving for Atlantis and Teal'c was leaving for Jaffa politics and O'Neill had been promoted away from SG-1. She said many times throughout the show that what she always wanted was more time to work on science & research & technogadgets. I failed to see how that was "wildly out of character" for Sam.

I would say that the fact that Sam chose to pursue a military career alongside her scientific one suggests that she does care to an extent about rank and military advancement. If she didn't care at all, then I would think she'd be happier retiring and working with the SGC as a civilian, which never happened.

That being said, I thought it make sense that Sam would seek a more 'normal' job after serving on the front-lines for 8 years straight, same with Teal'c going back to Dakara and Daniel wanting to go to Atlantis. But because I understood the reasons they left, I expected equally good reasons for them to return to SG-1, which I didn't feel the writers provided.

I didn't mean to imply that she would have freaked out or had a cow, but I don't think walking away from it would have been as easy for her as the show made it. She fought long and hard to be respected and get where she was...to lead for one year and walk away because she was ready for a change? It just didn't work for me...especially as TPTB then had her taking command of Atlantis, and then taking command of the Hammond. Eh, different strokes.

Yup, yup. And in getting that she wasn't ready to lead then I really can't picture her willing to follow some one with even less experience.

Exactly, if Sam cared so little for rank, why wouldn't she just go back to Area 51 after the Ori were gone? Why accept command of Atlantis and then the Hammond, if what she always wanted to do was just play with her gadgets?

[Duskofdead]

I assume it was me when I said:

And I do think it was beyond what I, and many others, were willing to accept as canon since we saw Sam support Hammond's decision to put Makepeace in charge of the team in season 3 becasue she did not have enough experience.

That's fine. Ultimately that still comes down to you and some other individual viewers not liking how x or y were handled. And I'm sure if we took a survey on every episode we'd find a great number of people didn't like a great number of things throughout the show. My point here is people start talking about the amorphous "us" who "all agree" and then list things like "bad writing" or "inconsistencies." And then when I ask for specifics things start coming up that we do not, in fact, all agree on.

It seems like a fine line I'm drawing. What I'm saying is individual viewers are always going to disagree on what they like and dislike, I find it without much meaning for people to start making general statements we can't confirm like "we didn't like that they did x" or "most of us felt that they should have been truer to y." I think any change after the end of season 8 was going to be big enough to negatively ruffle a lot of feathers. That's my honest opinion. I can ALWAYS see ways the show can be better, even parts of the show none of you are mentioning in this thread. I can see ways 9 and 10 could have been better, just like many parts of seasons 1-8. But I do also think that a lot of the things people throw around against 9 and 10 would have just been different complaints made by different people almost any other direction the show went at that point. Because it was such a different show given the changes by the end of season 8.

I never implied that it was because or her grasp for rank or that she'd snap her fingers and throw a tantrum, but if she didn't think she as qualified or experienced enough to lead SG-1 after three years how did they expect us to accept that she would accept Mitchell as qualified even though he'd never seen the gate.

Because she didn't even want the job.

Mitchell's promotion to leader of SG-1 was a thank-you for crashing an X-302/shooting down an alkesh/apparently saving SG-1 in some unexplained manner and I do not think Sam would accept that.

Clearly we disagree on this matter.

See above. Sam wound up being pulled back into SG-1, but leading an SG unit clearly was not her priority. She'd left SG work altogether at the time of season 9. Being on an SG team was clearly something Mitchell had fantasized about for years. He seemed as shocked as anyone when Landry told him "you're going to LEAD SG-1." Sam was not interested in a leadership position. And I see nothing in her personality to say for her to be credible she must have insisted on running SG-1, after leaving SG-1 altogether.

There's a definite difference between "who would be utterly ideal for the job" and "who wants the job."

[EvenstarSRV]

Just out of curiosity... what makes you think they moved the location of Jack's cabin? I don't recall them mentioning specifically where it was in the episode.

They did refer to the "Silver Creek" Sheriff department... but according to google, there's a "Silver Creek" in Minnesota. So, I'm just wondering if I missed something in the episode that indicated that the cabin was in Colorado?

The Sheriff's truck had Colorado license plates.

This is exactly what I feel happened. That is why I said (I can't remember in which thread, but I remember it bugged someone, hehe) that I treat the end of Season 8 as the end of the first show. Essentially, it is. The rest of the show after that is a different story with a different cast. If people want to view 9 and 10 as simply the smooth continuation of 1-8 and judge it and the finale accordingly, they are free to do so, but they are (obviously) just setting themselves up to be disappointed. Because 9 and 10 quite obviously are "half-spinoff, half-continuation", not quite an all new series, but definitely halfway there. And given the cast changes and the fact that the story of 1-8 was over, there was no helping that.

For me, I watched most of S9 and 10 mixed with reruns of the previous 8 seasons. The show was still called Stargate SG-1, and not knowing any of the behind the scenes stuff at the time, I did not expect the half-spin-off we ended up getting.

[Khentkawes]

The Sheriff's truck had Colorado license plates.

Ah! That's why I never noticed. I tend to pay more attention to dialogue than props.

Thanks for taking the time to explain where this idea came from.

[slurredspeech]

And I'm sure if we took a survey on every episode we'd find a great number of people didn't like a great number of things throughout the show.
...

What I'm saying is individual viewers are always going to disagree on what they like and dislike,...

Oh, yasureyoubetcha. I'm also sure you can find ten people who liked that one season of that one show that never really got a shot at the second season because... well, ten people liked it.

Dig up anything and I'll bet you my right arm you'll find people who liked it. That doesn't make it good.
Sure, there's an individual aspect to quality of everything, but there's also an objective dimension. Ratings being one of them, and as unperfect as they are, like EvenstarSRV said "But I think ratings do give a pretty good indicator about the feelings of the general viewership. If a show's ratings are going down, then even if many think the current stories are high in quality, it's apparently not a sentiment that's shared by a significant portion of viewers."

She'd left SG work altogether at the time of season 9. Being on an SG team was clearly something Mitchell had fantasized about for years. (...) Sam was not interested in a leadership position. And I see nothing in her personality to say for her to be credible she must have insisted on running SG-1, after leaving SG-1 altogether.

There's a definite difference between "who would be utterly ideal for the job" and "who wants the job."

I really really eagerly wanted to go into space as an astronaut. Unfortunately, I'm crap at everything the position would require of me to excel at. Perhaps they'll let me go anyway? NASA? Anyone?

Look, that's just ridiculous. Carter wouldn't have said no to leading SG-1. She had led SG-1 for a season! And Mitchell wasn't qualified in any way, and no amount of willingness on his part is going to convince me he deserved it more than Sam. Just. No.

ETA: Anyone remember Zero Hour? And how Sam was hurt/displeased when she thought O'Neill didn't trust her leadership skills when he insisted SG-1 go on a mission the next day so another SG team could provide back-up?

Oh, she cares. And anything in S9 suggesting she doesn't is inconsistent with the character.
IMHO. Not the opinion of the Forum. Obviously. Gah.

[Duskofdead]

I would agree that ratings do not reflect a subjective aspect like quality, there are several highly-rated shows that I haven't cared for. But I think ratings do give a pretty good indicator about the feelings of the general viewership. If a show's ratings are going down, then even if many think the current stories are high in quality, it's apparently not a sentiment that's shared by a significant portion of viewers. And vice-versa.

I agree with you. And I mentioned a slew of factors that I believe contributed on top of/in addition to, or even in many cases, INSTEAD of the reasons given here by heavy duty fans on a Stargate message forum. I think people here who are mad into Stargate underestimate how fickle the casual viewing audience is. I literally watched a couple eps of season 9 with people who went "Huh? Where's McGuyver? This blows." That was the extent of what disinterested them in the show. It's not really relevant if that isn't the reason people here blast 9 and 10. It is relevant as one of many factors as to why the show didn't do well in the mass audience.

I think people overestimate the general IQ of the viewing audience to point at ratings for seasons 9 and 10 and go "Hah! You see? People who watch Stargate are not fools. They noticed the lapse in the formerly exacting high standards of Stargate episode writing!" I'd also point out that 9 and 10 had a heavily ongoing story arc -- something that equally made BSG a difficult show for people to just "tune in and like" later on.

For me, there are degrees in breaks of continuity, ones that are usually just casualties of writing a serialized TV show, and ones that contradict pretty firmly established aspects of canon. Like Jack's cabin magically moving from Minnesota to Colorado, or the SGC going from having a training program for new recruits and putting a guy in charge of SG-1 who'd never seen the Stargate before. The former I can pretty easily overlook, the latter comes across as sloppy writing to me.

I think it all comes down to how much you want to focus on one detail that doesn't really make sense and make it a big deal. I've seen people complain about things just as ridiculous as the moving of Jack's cabin or Carter saying Colorado Springs doesn't have a zoo (it does). One of my favorite fantasy books has a slew of 1-star reviews (out of five) with the only problem mentioned with the book being that one of the characters' hair color is incorrect. There is no accounting for what kind of small anal detail will totally turn people off.

Unless Cam's inexperienced fundamentally changed the storyline somehow, I see it as a minor detail and the sort of continuity break made all the time in sci fi. Besides, do we know the first thing about what "qualifies" people to be on SG teams or serve on Earth battlecruisers? I have no idea where 99% of those people came from. We saw that episode dealing with SG trainees but I'm assuming that was a newish thing-- clearly there were SG teams prior to extensive training programs about gate travel, otherwise we have a chicken and the egg problem.

While S9 and 10 were more arc-driven, I'd disagree that the storyline was in-depth. The writers never moved the Ori much beyond all-powerful beings in search of more believers. And the other main storyline, the Lucian Alliance, didn't get much beyond a rather incompetent gang of criminals dealing in space corn. And one main reason I disliked the storylines was the lack of detail.

The Goa'uld, the Wraith, and almost no other big bad guy ever in Stargate did more than what you say the Ori did.

I agree you can't please everyone, this whole forum speaks to that, but I think you can write stories that have general appeal to your viewership. The large drop in ratings in S9-10 suggests to me that the new storylines failed to do this for any number of reasons, depending on your personal preferences.

I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong. I just think it's erroneous for people to point at the ratings as some kind of hard proof of their assertion that seasons 9 and 10 sucked. Ratings are far too fickle and nonspecific to back up ANY claim as evidence other than "the ratings went down." In other words people shouldn't take their subjective interpretation of what was disliked about 9-10 and try to say the ratings are proof they are right. It's an attempt to move opinion into objective fact, and a weak one.

I don't believe any of us here have said that 'all fans agree' to such and such. We've given our personal opinions concerning the decisions made in S9-10, which after all, is kinda the point of discussion boards like this.

I think almost everyone here has tried to present their view in general terms as one "most/many" fans agree with. What I have maintained is that almost anything they did in 9-10 was going to ruffle a lot of feathers. People seem to generally dispute that, and when I ask for specifics, people give things I consider as small nitpicks or suggestions that I think would have (at best) pissed off just as many people and (at worst) been even worse than the Ori storyline.

That being said, I thought it make sense that Sam would seek a more 'normal' job after serving on the front-lines for 8 years straight, same with Teal'c going back to Dakara and Daniel wanting to go to Atlantis. But because I understood the reasons they left, I expected equally good reasons for them to return to SG-1, which I didn't feel the writers provided.

An all powerful ascended enemy isn't good enough? Anubis wasn't even fully ascended and he was the most dangerous threat up until that point. I mean seriously if the Ori were not a good enough reason to recall all the "best vets" to the SGC I wonder what, exactly, you feel would have been a plausible alarm for them to return. Evil furlings, perhaps? Okay I'm being snarky.

Exactly, if Sam cared so little for rank, why wouldn't she just go back to Area 51 after the Ori were gone? Why accept command of Atlantis and then the Hammond, if what she always wanted to do was just play with her gadgets?

You're conflating. She doesn't care about rank and she never showed interest in SG-1 in leadership of an SG team. That doesn't mean she had no interest in working with the SGC or on an SG team on important threats to Earth. Two totally separate things.

[Duskofdead]

Oh, yasureyoubetcha. I'm also sure you can find ten people who liked that one season of that one show that never really got a shot at the second season because... well, ten people liked it.

Dig up anything and I'll bet you my right arm you'll find people who liked it. That doesn't make it good.
Sure, there's an individual aspect to quality of everything, but there's also an objective dimension. Ratings being one of them, and as unperfect as they are, like EvenstarSRV said [I]"But I think ratings do give a pretty good indicator about the feelings of the general viewership. If a show's ratings are going down, then even if many think the current stories are high in quality, it's apparently not a sentiment that's shared by a significant portion of viewers."

Stop straw manning, again.

I never said 10 people saying something is good is proof it's good. A nd if you are going to insert assertions I have never made, there is no point in discussion with you. Please do not reply to me if you are going to misrepresent my argument.

I said taking your personal opinion and pointing to nonspecific amorphous ratings dips which are based on a ton of factors and claiming it as objective proof of your subjective opinion is a very bad, erroneous argument, no matter how many times you make it.