Originally posted by Dani347
Ok, so we agree on the whole "SG-1 would do something" part of things, right? You just think that what they did was incredibly stupid; you say that SG-1, and Carter in particular, trusted Replicarter. Here is where we really disagree. I don't think that any of SG-1, not Sam, not Jack, and not Teal'c, ever trusted Replicarter. They tried to use her. That was the premise for the whole story. Replicarter wants to be destroyed at the beginning of the episode, but SG-1 won't do it. They want to use her to learn about the replicators' movements and intentions. Then, they want to use her to gain both a modified and unmodified disruptor to use against whatever replicators were coming. And then, even in the end, when Carter wanted to bring her back to the SGC, it was still to use her ability to link with the replicators and her knowledge of their construction (and her own) to fight them.
In other words, SG-1 thought they'd found themselves another Reese, a means of studying and finding a way to defeat the replicators. I don't see SG-1's decision here as any different than Daniel's decision in Menace. Daniel wanted to keep Reese alive, whereas Jack wanted to shoot first and ask questions later. Daniel wanted to believe that she wasn't evil, that she wasn't malevolent, and that she would help them fight the replicators. Similarly, Sam and the rest of SG-1 wanted to keep Replicarter alive to use her in the exact same way. But, just as there was no way of knowing for sure that Reese would have been able to stop the replicators, or whether she would actually have done it, likewise here there was no way for SG-1 to know whether or not Replicater was different from the other human form replicators they'd encountered or whether or not she'd be willing to help them.
Essentially, Gemini is SG-1 taking the other option, doing the exact opposite of what they did in Menace and Unnatural Selection. Rather than shoot first and ask questions later, like last time, here they tried to manipulate the unstable element and took the chance on an unknown quantity. Shooting Reese dead lead to the events of Unnatural Selection, where SG-1 (Jack in particular) again went with the "don't take a chance" course of action when he left Fifth behind. That decision resulted in another bad set of circumstances, which played themselves out in New Order.
Lost amidst the great debate about whether or not SG-1 was stupid in Gemini is the episode's true intention. Here SG-1 went down that other path, the one they ignored in Menace and Unnatural Selection. The delicious, well executed irony is that bad, even worse things happened. So, I guess what I'm saying is that I see Gemini as a sequel to Menace, one where the "other option" is explored. I don't think Jack or Daniel was "wrong" in Menace. And I don't think anyone was "wrong" in Gemini. I just think that there's no good, sure fire way of dealing with the replicators. Or something like that.
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