hth | numfar, the dance of bitterness!

Everyone over on

advent_atlantis is having fun talking about the things they love about SGA, and I am over here being sad and angry because I can't think of ten things. I can't. I don't have ten things. I have, like, *forty* things that piss me off, but not ten that make me happy, and this is an uncool way to feel about one's primary fandom.

I think I started to get really sucked down last week when I was putting off writing by going through the vid folder on my computer, and I watched "Hello" for the millionth time (I have no link handy, but go to

merryish and find it!), and the thought occurred to me: *that's* the show. That's the one they should be doing, all dark and slick and gorgeous, with these embattled refugees under seige from terrifying, blood-sucking insect-aliens on one side and the incomprehensible technology they need to survive and can't totally control on the other. And there would be action and gallows humor and people who loved each other like they were the last people on Earth, which they would basically be, and it would have that edge-of-the-universe Wild West feel but with geeks and Regular Guys from our own reality out there just trying to be smart enough and mildly crazy enough to hang on with teeth and toenails against everything from human evil to the laws of physics. It would be the beautiful, beautiful love child of CSI and Battlestar Galactica, or possibly West Wing and Firefly.

Somewhere in my head, that's the show that exists.

Part of my bad mood is that it's summer rerun season and I have a lot of time on my hands, so I'm re-acquainting myself with all my old favorite shows -- Buffy and Due South and Sports Night, and I'm finally getting through the nine thousand episodes of Homicide we have in the house that I've never watched, and I'm just kind of in outrageously bitch-snob mode where I'm not appreciating the *special* charms of shows whose chief ambition is to fuel their own franchises. I want Atlantis to *want* something, to be about something, to have something to say to me. If they would just give me one fucking episode that's supposed to *do* something to me, one single "I Only Have Eyes for You" or "The Deal" or "April Is the Cruelest Month" or "Shadow of Two Cathedrals" or "Flesh and Bone" -- even a "Donut Run" or a "Duane Berry" -- I would forgive so damn much.

And some of it is just doing so much writing myself lately, and being reminded how much of what you write, when you're the writer, isn't about your execution, but about the decisions you make. You do ten different things in every scene, and you either *know* why you're doing it that way and not another way, or you just throw words around and hope you hit something, and SGA bears all the marks of something that's written with the second method. And it pisses me off, because these people have the greatest fucking job on earth. They get to make up stories for a living, and they are blowing it. They're not being writers, they're just being dumb fanboys throwing bullets and bimbos and faux-aliens in funny hats at the screen and hoping we'll keep watching, and hey, maybe if we don't, the SG-1 fans will take over for us when they transplant all their fucking characters in, like this is the goddamn Muppet Show and Carol Channing will be on next week.

Anyway, in the spirit of my rage and pissiness, here's the list of things that SGA could, but won't, do to impress me:

1. Promote one goddamn female character to minor-but-significant status, on the lines of a Zelenka or a Lorne. I like Novak and I love Cadman, but if they need to start from scratch, so be it. This woman MUST NOT be in charge of anything in particular, because I'm not a *cruel* person, I don't intend to keep forcing them to write Strong Independent Leader Women until they learn how to do it right. Just a woman who's part of the mission and has her own skill set and a sense of humor and some acting chemistry with one or more of the leads. This woman also MUST NOT have a romantic subplot with anyone important for at least two seasons, preferably three. This will give them time to figure out if there's any useful reason for her to have a romantic subplot, or if it's just a knee-jerk temptation to sex up the show because that's what women are for. (It can only be Katie Brown if she stops looking like she's about to get startled and faint, and it can only be Heightmeyer if-- No, it can't be Heightmeyer, because therapists suck on practically every show. Have these people ever actually *met* a professional psychologist before? Anyway, not the point.)

2. Send the team to some planets that are actually inhabited by somebody weird and interesting. (Bonus points if the aliens try to Make Them Do It, because how hilarious would it be to see them try to get out of that in canon? Even knowing that the episode *would* end with them finding a way out of it, it would be so very worth it.) For "weird and interesting," read "not Europeans circa Year Whatever, AD who happen to own a quirky piece of Ancient technology." If they can't just make shit up, at least steal from one of the ten gazillion other cultures in the history of Earth! (That's what most of us who pretend to be making it up are doing, anyway.)

3. Quit making them trust people they don't know. The next time a plotline revolves around one of our heroes taking candy from strangers in the Pegasus Galaxy and finding out at the second commercial break that they were being deployed as the tools of far smarter people who've lived here longer and actually know the score, I will throw something through my television screen. I swear to God I will not be responsible for my actions.

4. Severely curtail contact with Earth. I'm not totally opposed to the Daedalus, although I think an extended plotline dealing with its disappearance would provide good stuff. In the Wild West analogy, the Daedalus is the Wells Fargo Wagon or the Pony Express, or possibly the slow boat into Ellis Island. They can continue to use it, and even build some interesting plots around it. But it has to be *gone* some of the time, and even some of the times that they really wish it was there. Also, no goddamn crossovers. I know the Ori are crap villains and the SG-1 guys are probably bored as fuck, but that is *no excuse.* If we MUST, absolutely MUST combine forces, how about Rodney and Teyla and Zelenka go to *Earth* and save people over there? Why do *our* guys have to look like the chumps who are always calling for backup?

5. Let Rodney fucking shoot something. "Coup d'Etat" is way, way too fucking late in the run of the show to be making funny jokes about how Rodney almost sort of maybe would have shot something he aimed it, if he hadn't missed. If they really do let him in the field with a P-90 at his side when he can't hit the broad side of a barn, they're all idiots. Rodney's a combat veteran now. It should be a nonissue that he can fire a gun with a reasonable chance that the bullet will strike the person he's aiming at. Also, this person should not be Sheppard. Which you'd think would go without saying, but, "Long Goodbye."

6. Give Teyla a bimbo of the week. Okay, himbo, because I definitely don't trust these people to do girl-on-girl without icking me the fuck out with their late-night cable vibe. Why can't she go to a planet with a hot guy in distress and make eyes with him, and hey, what the hell, maybe even get laid?

7. Stop wrapping up the episode with a "What have we learned?" convo in Weir's office between Elizabeth and Sheppard. Just...resist the urge. Do not do it. There is no information that must be conveyed in this setting and cannot possibly be staged in a more entertaining way.

8. Let someone in the Pegasus Galaxy, native or transplant, have a genuine religious conviction that is not a misinterpretation of the effects of Ancient technology or the insidious plot of a controlling alien and/or semi-megalomaniacal Ascended being, and that you also do not ridicule by dressing them in pink and making them weasely and dull. Christ, even X-Files managed to have a character with religious sentiments that received some moderate amount of respect, and X-Files is pretty much a low-watermark for theological sophistication. For extra credit, have a military chaplain on base, like the actual military puts in actual bases, particularly when the troops see, you know, horrible mind-bending violence and looming, unnatural death. Note: do not make the chaplain sanctimonious or weasely. Or wear pink.

9. Give Teyla or Ronon a plotline that actually hinges in some way on the differences between their worldview and the Earthlings'. This will, yes, involve making something up about the Athosians and/or the Satedans that makes them different in some fundamental way from Earthlings in cool barbarian leathers. Even Star Trek could occasionally manage this job, although they usually had to make characters non-human before admitting they might not think and act just like us. Try. Try hard. Take a night class in anthropology, if necessary. Resist the urge to have anyone convert anyone else to the wiser and better way of doing things. Just let people not all be exactly the same. Let them be hard to understand, and love them anyway.

10. Whatever they are planning to do with Ronon this season that will offend and annoy me, they MUST NOT DO IT. Abort, abort! I don't know how much disappointment I can handle, and I have two long WIPs that revolve around shit I made up about Sateda that I will be consumed with rage and despair if I have to discard in order to accomodate some dumbshit theory they thought was clever but actually wasn't. In the case of Ronon, they should think of me as their public defender; they must say nothing, and let me do the talking.

There's my freaking top 10 list.