A critical look at 'Critical Mass'

[trinityofone]

I felt kind of out of the loop for parts of this episode, 'cause I don't watch SG-1, and thus spent a lot of those scenes going, "Am I supposed to know who you are?" (Though I do persist in having a BRILLIANT THEORY that that bald(ish) SG-1 gateroom guy is actually Gunther from Friends.) But overall: points for intensity, and for keeping me consistently curious (not just unsure: curious) as to who had planted the bomb. So in that sense, it was a good hour of sci-fi action television.

Character-wise...

Well, there are problems. Some of them are interesting problems: namely, that Elizabeth--and not just Elizabeth, but John too--was willing to resort to torture. Everything Kavanagh said about her, though malicious and pig-headed, was also on some level right, and everyone's treatment of him was simply abominable. It's of course kind of a cheat that Ronon didn't actually get to do anything to him, but I understand why they (the writers, etc.) didn't actually go that far, because if Ronon had tortured a prisoner--and an innocent, one of their own people, no less--Elizabeth would be open to some pretty nasty reprisals, wouldn't she? As it stands, I hope she gave Kavanagh a damn handsome apology, and, I don't know--a kidney? An 'I almost got tortured for a crime I didn't commit and all I got was this lousy t-shirt' novelty tee? What can you possibly do to make up for something like that? It's an important question, and I don't care how morosely Elizabeth fiddles with her watch (what was the significance of that watch? Am I being stupid/forgetful?), it's a question I don't think we're ever going to see satisfactorily addressed.

(Gratuitous Rodney squee the first: I loved how uncomfortable the idea of torture made him, how he was the quiet, almost helplessly dissenting voice there. [Anyone who was still wondering whether or not his remark in 'Condemned' about the electric chair was a joke? I'd say this was a big YES.] Oh Rodney, you are so humane and Canadian! You show those over-hasty Americans!)

Caldwell. Okay, I really like Caldwell, and I hope that my admittedly sketchy knowledge of how the Goa'uld work doesn't make me wrong in hoping that he can be all successfully unimplanted by whatever Hermiod is doing, and also, that he wasn't a Goa'uld for very long. Because I want the Caldwell we saw in, say, 'Aurora,' to be the genuine article. But I'm confused about the timeline here: I know the Daedalus makes frequent trips back and forth, but when was he supposed to have gotten infected and done all that wacky stuff on Earth? What the heck is the Trust?

Okay, so I'm going to just keep talking about each of the characters here, because I'm too lazy to give this any kind of narrative flow. Bullet points, whee!

•Cadman. I may be in the minority here, but I like her. I like her a lot better than, say, Katie Brown, because unlike our trembling flower of a botanist, Cadman doesn't put up with any of Rodney's crap. (Which, IMO, secretly means that she gets him. This is good.) Loyal McKay/Sheppard 'shipper that I am, I have to admit that I do continually keep an eye out for a girl for Rodney, 'cause you know Shep's going to keep hooking up with stock alien women Ancients, and I want Rodney to get laid, dammit. McKay/Cadman could be fun. She tap dances! He plays piano! *insert requisite 'Duet' pun here*

And yeah, I'd feel bad for Carson, but I'm just not seeing sparks there. But Cadman...Cadman gets under Rodney's skin! *insert dirty insertion joke here*

•Teyla. Nothing all that interesting there, which is too bad, 'cause I like Teyla. But I didn't hate the Spontaneous Concert as much as I thought I would during the first few wincing seconds--the song played nicely over the montage, and was reasonably pretty. Pretty cool, though, that along with Wraith-sensing abilities, Teyla's got a built-in microphone in her throat.

Also, I understand why Teyla didn't think she was ready for the ritual. Nothing, no amount of time, could prepare you for that dress.

•Ronon: so wishes he were Jayne. That is all.

•Zelenka continues to be the most adorable person in this galaxy or any other. I loved him all Lost Boys'd up. (Not those Lost Boys, the other ones. The ones that flew, not the ones that were high. Right.) But could he please have an actual storyline soon? I mean, I don't want to get greedy--especially if my greed for more screentime means someone will hurt him: perish the thought! But c'mon: Zelenka! We all want more Zelenka, dammit!

•Rodney and John. They actually seemed almost periphery in this episode. But they were easy with each other, and I like that John has apparently taken 'What Would McKay Do?' to heart, right down to the mannerisms. We need more scenes of just them chatting. We need more scenes of just the two of them, period.

Overall, I guess I'm ambivalent. The most interesting issues here will probably be swept under Teyla's mysteriously appearing Persian rug; I can't imagine we'll see the fallout, and that's really what's crucial: not just raising the question, "What makes us different?" but answering it. No supposedly profound fade to black. Deal, people, you have to deal! And I want to see it.

(Oh, and because I apparently let that thread drop, gratuitous Rodney squee the second: just...the arms, the hands, the shoulders, the eyes...what do you want from me? Why isn't this man getting regularly sexed? The women of Atlantis must take hormone suppressants or something.)

Comments

[djinanna.livejournal.com]

The Trust ... er, the explanation needs to start with the NID.

The NID are a super-secret "if you've heard of us, we have to kill you" intelligence agency that (may actually be real but no longer so secret but that's besides the point) runs Area 52 (SGC being Area 51 - or maybe it's the other way around, my memory and numbers are not mixy things, but it's whichever one is supposed to be out there hiding the Roswell alien stuff).

The NID had its regularly scheduled covert agenda, but there was also a small but hyperactive secret group *inside* the NID who believed in doing *anything* to defend Earth against "the alien threat" - meaning *any* and *all* aliens, not just the hostile ones. They wanted to take Teal'c and vivisect him, for example, back when the show first started. And they, along with their government shill then-Senator (and later Vice President) Kinsey, kept pushing for alient tech weapons to be found, and to take over SGC because Hammond & company had "screwed up priorities".

Eventually, the subgroup of NID turned into the Trust. They were using the second Stargate in Area 51 (52? the not-SGC but Roswell spot) to go on missions to steal alien tech from unsuspecting planets. Eventually, SG-1 & company busted them. Some of them. Then the Trust turned up with even more alien tech, including a spaceship with Asgard beaming tech and other stuff. The Trust was all set to commit collateral-damage genocide on Teal'c's people, the Jaffa, in order to wipe out the Gou...however that's spelled.

The NID/Trust have been a running subplot from early on. Though the Trust was a later development.

Now ... when we first met Rodney, he was working for the NID over in Area 51 (or is it 52). He was the #1 *theoretical* authority on Stargates, because he was over in New Mexico with a 'gate that wasn't (supposed to be) in use, while Sam was the #1 practical authority as she'd been actually doing stuff with working 'gates.

The John de Lancie character (Col Frank Simmons) was an NID guy who came to SGC with McKay, trying to promote the NID's "let's take over SGC" agenda while McKay worked with Sam doing whatever they were doing in 48 Hours -- trying to save Teal'c? -- and continued to be a pest for a while in other contexts.

Anyway, recently on SG-1 (last season? the season before?), we found out that the Trust had been infiltrated by Gou...however you spell it. They kidnapped Daniel (not for the first time) and put a "snake" in Kinsey and were infiltrated important government officials world-wide (Russia in particular was the focus of an episode about this). And then they fled into space on their ship, except they keep coming back to cause more trouble.

Um ... there's probably lots of stuff I'm forgetting. But SG-1 tends to contradict itself more often than Joss'verse vampire lore, so *shrug* that's the important bits. I think.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

Ouch, I am so out of the loop. But thank you, that helps a lot!

*will continue to scrupulously avoid touching this in fic*