Order or Chaos

[coolcatkim22]

I often grouped characters in this series whether their actions were based mostly on rules or based more on their emotions. Of course, no character is clearly on one or the other, some character who are extremely emotion I would call one of the most logical characters in the show. Regardless, some fall on one side more than the other, kind of like an alignment chart but simplified.

I've been using these groups to explain any time the show became unbalanced. What I mean is, whenever the actions of the teams became too passive, immoral, stupid, or in other words, they seem to be no question of what they were doing. I feel that happens because there's not enough characters with opposing views.

So, I wanted to ask you guys what you think. Whether you think I'm right and where you think each character lies on (I have not included SGU characters on this chart since I don't feel I know the characters well enough).

Also keep in mind, this is not about how emotion or logical they are, but rather on whether they act based on logic or feelings.

Logical/Lawful/Thinking Characters	Emotional/Chaos/Feeling Characters
Jack O'Neill Daniel Jackson Janet Fraiser Jonas Quinn Carolyn Lam Rodney McKay Carson Beckett Aidan Ford Elizabeth Weir Richard Woolsey	Samantha Carter Teal'c George Hammond Vala Mal Doran Cameron Mitchell Hank Landry John Sheppard Ronan Dex Teyla Emmagan Jennifer Keller

[Stargatefan99]

I'm not sure why, but I feel there should be a middle category; characters like McKay are both controlled by emotions and fear, but also logic and science. I think categorising them forgets that these characters are meant to be real people, with grey elements to their personality that causes difficulties in categorising them. In the same way, I would say that Daniel has always followed what he feels to be ethically and emotionally right, so he could be on either side.

It's a hard call really

[garhkal]

Plus there has often been times some straddle BOTH of those spectrums. Daniel sure does!

[jelgate]

Plus there has often been times some straddle BOTH of those spectrums. Daniel sure does!

I for one think Jack let's his emotions get the best of him

[garhkal]

I for one think Jack let's his emotions get the best of him

Too true.. Jack seems to be more the logical side, who lets his emotions out occasionally, while Daniel seems to be more emotionally ruled but logic has come to the forefront many a time.

[jelgate]

I honestly rarely see Jack run by logic.

[coolcatkim22]

I'm not sure why, but I feel there should be a middle category; characters like McKay are both controlled by emotions and fear, but also logic and science. I think categorising them forgets that these characters are meant to be real people, with grey elements to their personality that causes difficulties in categorising them. In the same way, I would say that Daniel has always followed what he feels to be ethically and emotionally right, so he could be on either side.

It's a hard call really

That's why I said that everybody's a bit on both sides, but everybody tends to lean one way or the other. If people didn't, everyone would constantly be changing sides all the time because they would be mentally split on the decisions they have to make.

Take Mckay for instance. Yes, he does act on his emotions on occasions but what does he rely on more, his emotions or logic? In most situations he often comes in conflict with the other members because they want to go act rashly (like bomb a place or invade a ship) and he's usually the one saying no, let's not do that it's not smart. In many situations yes, he acted on fear a lot, but his fear usually came from assessing the situation and determining what was logically the worse outcome that he feared would happen.

I for one think Jack let's his emotions get the best of him

Like when? Most of the time he's emotionally guarded or emotionally distant from the things that happen. The only time he really gets irate is when someone like Maybourne or Kinsey try to take charge and even then, what does he do? He complains, sometimes makes a threat, but ultimately does nothing.

The only time he did take action, that he did something against the rules without his teammates, was in "Chain Reaction" and at the end he felt terrible for having to break rules to bring Hammond back. And by rules, I mean his own internal rules. I'm not just talking about logic in this chart, but also lawfulness, which is tied to this.
Jack has always done things based on his own set of rules: don't leave your people behind, stand by your friends, don't take people's crap, etc. He doesn't do things that fall outside he own internal set of rules and that's what makes him logical. Not because he's actually using logic, but because he throws away his emotional involvement so that he can follow the plan.

[Anja]

IMO it is impossible to classify people by Order or Chaos.
The characters are human beings and thus do have emotions which cannot always be controlled - if so they would be robots or insects, drive by orders/instincts.
If one of the characters had acted only in one way or the other, he/she wouldn't have been likable at all and not very convincing.
So it is almost impossible to judge between black and white here, those who act both ways are most convincing and "real".

[Ulmo]

First of all, I always thought Teal'c was a logical man. He is very old (over a century), and very experienced. He had the benefit of awesome health and a lot of experience from self and others who taught him. The combination allowed him to be at peak mental health throughout most of his life. This allowed him to make logical decisions that were fast and educated. As a Glould's First Prime, this both allowed him continual mental upkeep and practice at fast action. This can often be interpreted by slow and stupid bureaucratic societies like USA (both corporate and governmental) in the 2010's as "impulsive" when nothing could be further from the truth.

Samantha Carter was always cast as an emotional character because of the Hollywood formula that female = popular in TV programs. Thus, they were under orders to write scenes that were dumb and sappy. If you remove the veneer of that Hollywood crap, Carter's character was basically a fantasy tail version of Teal'c's mental abilities and the current state of art of science from Earth's perspective. Besides the fantasy fantastic simpleton imaginarily semi-to-fully-unrealistic scifi stuff, she basically was formed around a persona of logic and science, and I believe that's not only how she was meant as a character but how most people saw her in the program.

Like Sam, Daniel Jackson was very logically oriented. However, I think that more than anybody else, he looked at his emotions as a barometer of how well his logic was working, and was happy to display it to anybody, albeit in his admittedly masculine and logical fashion. I always found it revealing that he was able to think scientifically faster than many others like Carter and McCay, because he understood not only the general scientific level abilities of the respective parties, but their motivations and what it would take for them to achieve those motivations; that requires both scientific understanding and social understanding of the topics of study. I believe Daniel took from both logic and feeling to synthesize both understanding and logic.

Jack O'Niell was someone who had to make decisions. He came across as both emotional and logical, with pretty simple metrics. This was of course one of the charms of his character in the serieses.

The various Generals running SGC are a confounding bunch. They are almost thrown in as extras and fillers where they couldn't get one of the core characters in a story to play the right role. The generals often made completely confounding decisions based upon any sense of normal or consistent logic; it's as if this were a TV program or Movie and they were just making the General of the moment do what was necessary to show a good TV show. Ahhh, that's exactly what they were. Having said that, they did a great job of giving them really wonderful personalities and engaging stories. On top of all of that, they did try, as much as possible, to give each General their own line of logical progression that made real sense as much as possible in both the role they played in the organizations, the larger storylines, logics, and other facets of the Serieses. The writers were only forced to veer from those main lines as necessary for each particular story being explored. Any fan of these Serieses would be happy to realize that every character, the Generals most of all, were just props, actors, characters, in a neverending quest to bring us intriguing stories. Often, the positions that requirement put the writers and stories in made them self-inconsistent, but we allowed them those errors. One could have asked for them to do better, but alas, one has to ship the product at some point, and I've been extremely satisfied with what they delivered. I especially liked a lot of the Generals, of course Hammond most of all, and did miss him when he actually died and died in the serieses.

Vala was just another formulaic Hollywood character. Having said that, they inadvertently gave her a pivotal role in her time there, and makes many of the very top quotes and scenes of the entire Serieses and Movies (a role shared also by prettymuch every time Daniel has an interracial conversation and many other scenes similar). This dichotomy is just there. She was cast as extremely emotional but came to purpose as things moved on and stayed right on logic for a good portion of the storylines. Unfortunately, her formulaic purpose in the show ended up causing quite a bit of extremely annoying things to happen to the stories that probably annoyed many fans (me included).

I never paid much attention to Cameron's character.

John Sheppard seemed like a stand-in for some dude in storylines. He didn't have a very compelling character. I agree about his emotional point of view. Ronan Dex was similar to John in these ways. Ditto Teyla, & Jennifer.

I have to disagree with you about Elizabeth Weir. I thought she was similar to John, Ronan and Teyla, in being more emotional. Ditto Aiden Ford.

Now, to round out the list, looks like you said Richard Woolsey was logical, for which I agree. Ditto Carson Beckett, Rodney McKay, Jonas Quinn and Janet Fraiser. I don't remember who Carolyn Lam was.

[Anja]

Carolyn Lam was the doctor after Dr Fraiser's death, she was Landry's daughter.