Absolute Power (417)

[Chaka's_Mum]

What I don't get is how he could have dreamed a years worth of dream in a few hours or less.

That Shifu is one clever little chap - he probably had some way of compressing it that didn't affect how it played out in Daniel's mind. Either that or Daniel got the 'One Year Later' caption in his dream, of course...

I still wonder what Teal'c would have done.

That's a good question. Would Teal'c's Warrior mentality have enabled him to control any impulses to use the weapons in the way that Daniel did? Or would it have driven him to take control of it the very second it was ready and start issuing 'Come and get me you horrible, nasty, reptilian slitherers' ultimatums?

[Lida]

You can dream a lifetime in minutes. Time in a dream has NO correlation to actual time. So Shifu "put" the dream into Danny boy's subconscious, and his brain did the rest.

[sg1 volgman]

That Shifu is one clever little chap - he probably had some way of compressing it that didn't affect how it played out in Daniel's mind. Either that or Daniel got the 'One Year Later' caption in his dream, of course...

lol...

one year later...

daniel: "what? what's been going on this past year? where am i? AAAAAAAH! whatever i'll play along"

[Beatrice Otter]

I suppose it does come across as a bit shocking - but why shouldn't Daniel become drunk with the power he has? Okay, Daniel's behaviour completely contradicts everything he's ever stood for in the past.

Not exactly--remember Need? Didn't take long at all to turn Daniel into a power-hungry, arrogant, callous jerk. And a sarcophagus has got to be less damaging to one's personality than dumping thousands of years of cruelty and immorality into one's head. Daniel's always had a streak of intellectual arrogance to him, which given that he really is a very intelligent man is quite natural. It's a far cry from goa'uld-dom, but it does give goa'uldishness an intro to his personality. And that's all it needs. I don't think any human psyche is perfect enough to prevent it.

[Chaka's_Mum]

Not exactly--remember Need? Didn't take long at all to turn Daniel into a power-hungry, arrogant, callous jerk. And a sarcophagus has got to be less damaging to one's personality than dumping thousands of years of cruelty and immorality into one's head. Daniel's always had a streak of intellectual arrogance to him, which given that he really is a very intelligent man is quite natural. It's a far cry from goa'uld-dom, but it does give goa'uldishness an intro to his personality. And that's all it needs. I don't think any human psyche is perfect enough to prevent it.

You're right - I had forgotten 'Need'.

It seems inconceivable that the sarcophagus could actually manufacture 'evil' personality traits, so it has to be assumed that they are present in Daniel all the time - merely suppressed by his scruples and moral code. We don't normally see them overtly displayed unless they peep out during one of Daniel's arguments with Jack. After all, no matter how one feels about oneself, there's not a soul alive out there who won't feel aggrieved if people don't share their opinion on something. Everybody has that internal arrogance (except me, of course. ) - Daniel certainly isn't an exception.

I guess that Shifu is aware of those traits the moment he connects with Daniel, and shows him just how easily he could abandon his principles if the right incentive comes along. Certainly, take away Daniel's scruples, and we end up with one scary individual...

[sg1 volgman]

i wouldn't be so sure as to what the sarcophagus can do: remember, it can raise people from the dead and replace full immune systems.

on that note, what would happen if a jaffa was put in a sarcophagus?

[Lida]

People, the reason they named the episode Absolute Power, was because of the famous quote...Power corrupts, Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Everyone has their price.....

[Qasim]

Any idea who came up with that quote?

[sg1 volgman]

no but i thinkit was somewhere around the time of communist russia

[Qasim]

It was a historian called Lord Acton http://www.libertystory.net/LSTHINKACTON.html

Lord Acton's epic warning that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"

Historian Lord Acton (1834-1902) issued epic warnings that political power is the most serious threat to liberty.

Born in Naples, he was educated in England, Scotland, France and Germany, developing an extraordinary knowledge of European political history.

While he never wrote the history of liberty he dreamed about, his essays and letters abound with memorable insights. For instance: "Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end...liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition...The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to to govern. Every class is unfit to govern...Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

In his inaugural lecture as Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, Lord Acton told students: "I exhort you never to debase the moral currency or to lower the standard of rectitude, but to try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives, and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong."

This is ontopic as it is to do with the basis of naming the ep

[sg1 volgman]

oh thanks! I appreciate you taking the time.

[Madeleine]

Is it true though, that absolute power always corrupts absolutely? I don't think so. History shows plenty of dictators who have been benign and not corrupt. Not recently - in modern times the idea of Democracy is so widespread that no one who is not corrupt would even want to be a dictator. But in the days of hereditary rulers not all kings or emperors or chancellors were corrupt, and plenty of them put more into their countries than they took.

As far as the episode goes, I don't think 'absolute power' is what corrupts vision-Daniel anyway, no mater what the episode title is. I think it's the combined memories of generations of evil creatures that drives vision-Daniel to seek the absolute power that he then uses to screw Sam and Moscow. He got the knowledge that turned him evil, then he sought the power.

[sg1 volgman]

No, it doesn't always, it just means that inevitably in a dictatorship, there will be power-hungry people who don't care about the general public.

[scarlet]

I love this episode and it really helps to add another dimention to what we know about the goa'uld at this point, why they are like they are.

Daniel is the perfect person to be shown this first hand - to be shown what could happen if humankind got their hands on the sort of knowledge Shifu had locked away in his subconscious, simply because he's the person (from both his and our point of views) least likely to succumb to the 'pleasures' that this amount of power, and the abuse of it, can bring.
He's the one person we expect most to be morally centred, to remain objective, to think of others before himself - It just wouldn't have had the same impact if it hadn't happened to him.

It's the same lesson the Tollan tried to impress upon SG1 on almost every possible opportunity, the very reason they were so reluctant to share technology. Seeing first hand what could/would happen with such advancements in technology, coupled with the inherantly evil nature of the goa'uld, serves as a much more potent lesson than simply being told "You'll just end up blowing yourselves up if we give you super-weapons!"

MS was excellent - It's great to see him do something like this, that contrasts so much to the Daniel we all know and love.

Definitely a great episode, one of my favourites!

[Qasim]

But the ep shows that the concept for absolute corrruption is always a factor