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So I'm moving to North Carolina in ONEWEEKOMFGPANIC!!11! and have very little time for nuance and profound thought. On the other hand, neither do the writers of SGA, so we're even, yes?
A) the IOA problem
Picture this. You are hired by the IOA to run a delicate and dangerous classified research operation, because of your sterling credits as a diplomatic negotiator. You proceed to do not one single thing as a diplomatic negotiator that requires any skills whatsoever, AND help destabilize one of the galaxy's most advanced civilizations by attempting to betray the guy who wins, who mainly forgives you because he was expecting you to do so all along, AND THEN your city springs a security leak which, oops, requires you to phone home and let them know that a giant ship full of malevolent people-eaters may be on Earth's doorstep in two weeks.
Do they fire you instantaneously? They do not. They convene a review board to figure out WTF IS GOING ON IN ATLANTIS and request the honor of your presence. You arrive in an aggrieved huff and want to know how you are supposed to operate if you have to be here answering silly questions by guys in suits who weren't there at the time you made these decisions. At least, you insist, you *decided* something. You are the Decider. They send a guy to Atlantis to figure out wtf is going on, and your ill-tempered thug of a military commander threatens to knock him out if he keeps, you know, asking all those damn questions. You both continue to insist that nobody has any right to suggest it could be anybody's fault that things are going to hell in the Pegasus Galaxy. These things just happen! Why play the blame game? Accountability is for pussies in bad suits, not action heroes like yourselves. Eventually, through the course of an episode where you DO NOTHING and make NO DECISIONS of any kind, the investigator inexplicably decides that the kids are all right after all, because at least your thug seems to know when to press the red button, and really, what more do you need? He goes away, leaving everything exactly the way he found it.
Bzuh? What the hell just happened?
Hey, if the IOA thinks things are swimming along just beautifully on Atlantis, so be it. Personally, I wouldn't vote for Elizabeth Weir for dogcatcher and I continue to be stunned stupid by the amount of loyalty she apparently commands from everyone around her, but hey. They don't seem to think that anyone else could do any better, so that's their decision. What I object to is the totally offensive and mean-tempered tone of the whole thing, where we the viewers are expected to interpret the IOA reviewers as Bad Guys hellbent on spoiling our party out here on Atlantis even though they clearly can't understand a thing about it, even though we're in constant communication with the IOA and the military is there checking up on things via the Daedalus in every other episode -- we're not exactly in the wilderness out here, and I don't see why the folks back home don't deserve to have a say in how things are running. They do foot the bills, yes? Elizabeth isn't the freaking Sun King; she was hired to do a job, and she has bosses with every right to review her performance, and yet everyone goes on like you burn in *hell* if you look at her cross-eyed.
Ultimately, the buck stops somewhere. Elizabeth and John have this whole cowboy-diplomacy mindset, where it's just them and their friends who get to do everything and decide everything -- but not to assume any consequences, because at least they made a decision, and apparently any decision at all will do in a pinch. Personally, I'm pro-democracy enough to be *pleased* by the idea that there's a review process, and that if things start going totally pear-shaped, the people who work for the governments on Earth who are the ostensible sponsors of this grand adventure have some recourse and some ability (even if apparently they don't want to exercise it at this time) to change the way things are going. The whole Dirty Harry mindset on SGA has just come to nauseate me; nobody there works for anyone but themselves, and if I were in charge of the IOA, I'd recall every last one of them and decide from scratch whether or not to reconstitute the program at all. What exactly has Earth gotten from the Atlantis station so far, other than the threat of Wraith?
B) the Wraith problem
I have, as I've said before, no strong feelings one way or the other on the theoretical morality of the retrovirus. I don't see how it's that different, in the long run, from building a bomb that vaporizes Wraith -- either way, you're pretty much ending the Wraith threat without the consent of the Wraith. Either way, it's a weapon; there's a strong emotional resistance in most of us to the *thought* of the experimentation it requires and the idea of biological warfare, but on the other hand, I do dig the idea that if we have to invent a new weapon, we're at least inventing one that can't be used against anyone *but* the Wraith, unlike a new conventional superweapon, or the nukes we're so very fond of on this show.
However, my conditional acceptance of the retrovirus program was always based on the mad hope that it would, you know, WORK. It doesn't. It absolutely is not effective, because *the effects are temporary.* The next time someone says "as long as they keep taking the injections," I'm going to kick my tv out the window, because it's the most fucking stupid thing to say imaginable. We DO NOT HAVE the resources to force them to take their medication until the day they die, and it's insane to imagine they'll all do it voluntarily, as anyone who's tried to keep a loved one on their heart pills or their antipsychotics once they start feeling "fine" again can vouch for. They will not keep taking the injections, and as we learned in Misbegotten, it doesn't take more than one person reverting back to a Wraith to tip everyone else off that they're being played. As long as the effects of the retrovirus are temporary, the Wraith are still basically Wraith. The "cure" does not work. Maybe someday it will. Right now, it does not.
Releasing the weaponized retrovirus in the season premiere was a last-ditch defense, and in that limited form, it succeeded. The hive ship crashed to a stop, and our heroes didn't die. I am all for this. But since the retrovirus is useless as a long-term solution, that means that Misbegotten requires a NEW long-term solution. The retrovirus isn't it, because it *doesn't work.* I don't think Atlantis is a bunch of Nazis for developing it, but I do think they're a bunch of morons for acting like it's supposed to solve anything.
Basically, the retrovirus as it stands functions like the stun setting on Ronon's gun. It saved everyone's lives by taking the Wraith out of the game at a critical moment, and it allowed Atlantis to take the Wraith prisoner on a remote planet. All well and good. But now they have this detention camp that no one will admit is a fucking detention camp. These people aren't rehabilitated humans, or we'd let them have a Gate and get on with their lives. They're prisoners of war that we have no intention of ever, *ever* allowing to leave that camp, for obvious reasons. I can't stand the ignorant prattle about how we'll just let them live out their lives in peace -- what the fucking FUCK? We'll "let" them grow potatoes until they get old and die off on their own? You're offering to "let" them die in prison for the protection of the outside world, and the terms of that won't change whether you give them enough medication to keep them looking like humans or not.
Let me be clear, that isn't even what bugs me. The Wraith are not candidates, so far as I can tell, for rehabilitation and parole. They're too dangerous, and I'm not morally opposed to letting people get old and die in prison, if I think the alternative is to let them out so they can keep killing. That is, at times, the entire point of prison. I just can't bear the fact that nobody seems willing to discuss this choice in honest terms. There's this silly Pollyannaish attitude that, hey, maybe everything will be okay for them after all! There are no Wraith *women* in this penal colony. They can't establish any kind of viable culture or civilization, because there won't be any more of them. They're going to stay right where they are until the day they die, one by one. Imagining that there's much of an upside to this from their point of view is ridiculous. Maybe they'd prefer it to being carpet-bombed into oblivion right here and now and maybe they wouldn't, but let's not act like there's any opportunity for a genuinely mutually satisfying resolution to this problem.
I'm not sure what I was supposed to feel when our heroes finally figured out that their prisoners were far too dangerous ever to be allowed to contact the outside world, and that there's no good way to prevent that from happening. Am I supposed to feel sad that we executed them? I don't feel any more or less sad than I would've if we'd blown up the hive ship an hour and a half ago. There's no way to prevent 200 Wraith who know about Atlantis and may well still know how to get to Earth and really hate us now from being a threat; they simply are a threat. The retrovirus was supposed to make them stop being Wraith, but we know now that's not what it does; it makes their Wraithness and their memories go temporarily dormant. They are a clear and present danger to Atlantis for as long as they live; you either live with that danger, or you kill them. There's no happy ending involved with letting them live -- life without parole and with the constant threat that another hive ship will find them and spring them is not great for them and it's not safe for us. Killing them is also not so great for them, but if we're at war with the Wraith -- and everyone seems to agree that we are -- then killing them is what war is *for.* Let's not bullshit about that. How was I supposed to feel when they died? Killing them is what war is for. I don't love that, but I can live with it. It would have saved us all a lot of grief and dead bodies if we'd just gone ahead and killed them while they were in stasis on the hive ship. The retrovirus doesn't work, we don't have the resources to imprison them forever safely, and killing them is the very definition of war. If you want to be a hard-line pacifist, this may be the wrong galaxy for you to hang your hat in, you know what I mean?
I'm just bored with the pretense that we can stop treating the Wraith like Wraith once they've had their shots. As long as a missed treatment will make them revert to Wraith, the bottom line is, they're *Wraith.* Hell, even on Buffy, it would have taken complicated brain surgery to make Spike revert to maneater status; in this scenario, it takes twisting your ankle on a walk through the woods and not making it back in time for supper. It takes *nothing.* It could happen accidentally or deliberately at the drop of a hat. They're just doped-up Wraith, unless the treatment is permanent, and we have to deal with them by deciding what we plan to do with captured Wraith. Obviously we plan to kill them; I would, John Sheppard *certainly* would, and I imagine most of you would, too, under the circumstances. So let's do it and move on. Whatever illusions we had that the retrovirus might be used to help the Wraith surely ended when we realized it doesn't work as promised, and that reverted Wraith hate us more than ever before, for obvious reasons. Just use it as the damn weapon that it is and get on with your lives.
A) the IOA problem
Picture this. You are hired by the IOA to run a delicate and dangerous classified research operation, because of your sterling credits as a diplomatic negotiator. You proceed to do not one single thing as a diplomatic negotiator that requires any skills whatsoever, AND help destabilize one of the galaxy's most advanced civilizations by attempting to betray the guy who wins, who mainly forgives you because he was expecting you to do so all along, AND THEN your city springs a security leak which, oops, requires you to phone home and let them know that a giant ship full of malevolent people-eaters may be on Earth's doorstep in two weeks.
Do they fire you instantaneously? They do not. They convene a review board to figure out WTF IS GOING ON IN ATLANTIS and request the honor of your presence. You arrive in an aggrieved huff and want to know how you are supposed to operate if you have to be here answering silly questions by guys in suits who weren't there at the time you made these decisions. At least, you insist, you *decided* something. You are the Decider. They send a guy to Atlantis to figure out wtf is going on, and your ill-tempered thug of a military commander threatens to knock him out if he keeps, you know, asking all those damn questions. You both continue to insist that nobody has any right to suggest it could be anybody's fault that things are going to hell in the Pegasus Galaxy. These things just happen! Why play the blame game? Accountability is for pussies in bad suits, not action heroes like yourselves. Eventually, through the course of an episode where you DO NOTHING and make NO DECISIONS of any kind, the investigator inexplicably decides that the kids are all right after all, because at least your thug seems to know when to press the red button, and really, what more do you need? He goes away, leaving everything exactly the way he found it.
Bzuh? What the hell just happened?
Hey, if the IOA thinks things are swimming along just beautifully on Atlantis, so be it. Personally, I wouldn't vote for Elizabeth Weir for dogcatcher and I continue to be stunned stupid by the amount of loyalty she apparently commands from everyone around her, but hey. They don't seem to think that anyone else could do any better, so that's their decision. What I object to is the totally offensive and mean-tempered tone of the whole thing, where we the viewers are expected to interpret the IOA reviewers as Bad Guys hellbent on spoiling our party out here on Atlantis even though they clearly can't understand a thing about it, even though we're in constant communication with the IOA and the military is there checking up on things via the Daedalus in every other episode -- we're not exactly in the wilderness out here, and I don't see why the folks back home don't deserve to have a say in how things are running. They do foot the bills, yes? Elizabeth isn't the freaking Sun King; she was hired to do a job, and she has bosses with every right to review her performance, and yet everyone goes on like you burn in *hell* if you look at her cross-eyed.
Ultimately, the buck stops somewhere. Elizabeth and John have this whole cowboy-diplomacy mindset, where it's just them and their friends who get to do everything and decide everything -- but not to assume any consequences, because at least they made a decision, and apparently any decision at all will do in a pinch. Personally, I'm pro-democracy enough to be *pleased* by the idea that there's a review process, and that if things start going totally pear-shaped, the people who work for the governments on Earth who are the ostensible sponsors of this grand adventure have some recourse and some ability (even if apparently they don't want to exercise it at this time) to change the way things are going. The whole Dirty Harry mindset on SGA has just come to nauseate me; nobody there works for anyone but themselves, and if I were in charge of the IOA, I'd recall every last one of them and decide from scratch whether or not to reconstitute the program at all. What exactly has Earth gotten from the Atlantis station so far, other than the threat of Wraith?
B) the Wraith problem
I have, as I've said before, no strong feelings one way or the other on the theoretical morality of the retrovirus. I don't see how it's that different, in the long run, from building a bomb that vaporizes Wraith -- either way, you're pretty much ending the Wraith threat without the consent of the Wraith. Either way, it's a weapon; there's a strong emotional resistance in most of us to the *thought* of the experimentation it requires and the idea of biological warfare, but on the other hand, I do dig the idea that if we have to invent a new weapon, we're at least inventing one that can't be used against anyone *but* the Wraith, unlike a new conventional superweapon, or the nukes we're so very fond of on this show.
However, my conditional acceptance of the retrovirus program was always based on the mad hope that it would, you know, WORK. It doesn't. It absolutely is not effective, because *the effects are temporary.* The next time someone says "as long as they keep taking the injections," I'm going to kick my tv out the window, because it's the most fucking stupid thing to say imaginable. We DO NOT HAVE the resources to force them to take their medication until the day they die, and it's insane to imagine they'll all do it voluntarily, as anyone who's tried to keep a loved one on their heart pills or their antipsychotics once they start feeling "fine" again can vouch for. They will not keep taking the injections, and as we learned in Misbegotten, it doesn't take more than one person reverting back to a Wraith to tip everyone else off that they're being played. As long as the effects of the retrovirus are temporary, the Wraith are still basically Wraith. The "cure" does not work. Maybe someday it will. Right now, it does not.
Releasing the weaponized retrovirus in the season premiere was a last-ditch defense, and in that limited form, it succeeded. The hive ship crashed to a stop, and our heroes didn't die. I am all for this. But since the retrovirus is useless as a long-term solution, that means that Misbegotten requires a NEW long-term solution. The retrovirus isn't it, because it *doesn't work.* I don't think Atlantis is a bunch of Nazis for developing it, but I do think they're a bunch of morons for acting like it's supposed to solve anything.
Basically, the retrovirus as it stands functions like the stun setting on Ronon's gun. It saved everyone's lives by taking the Wraith out of the game at a critical moment, and it allowed Atlantis to take the Wraith prisoner on a remote planet. All well and good. But now they have this detention camp that no one will admit is a fucking detention camp. These people aren't rehabilitated humans, or we'd let them have a Gate and get on with their lives. They're prisoners of war that we have no intention of ever, *ever* allowing to leave that camp, for obvious reasons. I can't stand the ignorant prattle about how we'll just let them live out their lives in peace -- what the fucking FUCK? We'll "let" them grow potatoes until they get old and die off on their own? You're offering to "let" them die in prison for the protection of the outside world, and the terms of that won't change whether you give them enough medication to keep them looking like humans or not.
Let me be clear, that isn't even what bugs me. The Wraith are not candidates, so far as I can tell, for rehabilitation and parole. They're too dangerous, and I'm not morally opposed to letting people get old and die in prison, if I think the alternative is to let them out so they can keep killing. That is, at times, the entire point of prison. I just can't bear the fact that nobody seems willing to discuss this choice in honest terms. There's this silly Pollyannaish attitude that, hey, maybe everything will be okay for them after all! There are no Wraith *women* in this penal colony. They can't establish any kind of viable culture or civilization, because there won't be any more of them. They're going to stay right where they are until the day they die, one by one. Imagining that there's much of an upside to this from their point of view is ridiculous. Maybe they'd prefer it to being carpet-bombed into oblivion right here and now and maybe they wouldn't, but let's not act like there's any opportunity for a genuinely mutually satisfying resolution to this problem.
I'm not sure what I was supposed to feel when our heroes finally figured out that their prisoners were far too dangerous ever to be allowed to contact the outside world, and that there's no good way to prevent that from happening. Am I supposed to feel sad that we executed them? I don't feel any more or less sad than I would've if we'd blown up the hive ship an hour and a half ago. There's no way to prevent 200 Wraith who know about Atlantis and may well still know how to get to Earth and really hate us now from being a threat; they simply are a threat. The retrovirus was supposed to make them stop being Wraith, but we know now that's not what it does; it makes their Wraithness and their memories go temporarily dormant. They are a clear and present danger to Atlantis for as long as they live; you either live with that danger, or you kill them. There's no happy ending involved with letting them live -- life without parole and with the constant threat that another hive ship will find them and spring them is not great for them and it's not safe for us. Killing them is also not so great for them, but if we're at war with the Wraith -- and everyone seems to agree that we are -- then killing them is what war is *for.* Let's not bullshit about that. How was I supposed to feel when they died? Killing them is what war is for. I don't love that, but I can live with it. It would have saved us all a lot of grief and dead bodies if we'd just gone ahead and killed them while they were in stasis on the hive ship. The retrovirus doesn't work, we don't have the resources to imprison them forever safely, and killing them is the very definition of war. If you want to be a hard-line pacifist, this may be the wrong galaxy for you to hang your hat in, you know what I mean?
I'm just bored with the pretense that we can stop treating the Wraith like Wraith once they've had their shots. As long as a missed treatment will make them revert to Wraith, the bottom line is, they're *Wraith.* Hell, even on Buffy, it would have taken complicated brain surgery to make Spike revert to maneater status; in this scenario, it takes twisting your ankle on a walk through the woods and not making it back in time for supper. It takes *nothing.* It could happen accidentally or deliberately at the drop of a hat. They're just doped-up Wraith, unless the treatment is permanent, and we have to deal with them by deciding what we plan to do with captured Wraith. Obviously we plan to kill them; I would, John Sheppard *certainly* would, and I imagine most of you would, too, under the circumstances. So let's do it and move on. Whatever illusions we had that the retrovirus might be used to help the Wraith surely ended when we realized it doesn't work as promised, and that reverted Wraith hate us more than ever before, for obvious reasons. Just use it as the damn weapon that it is and get on with your lives.
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no subject
Date: 2006-07-25 01:50 pm (UTC)From:Well, they supplied us with this ultraconvenient plot device for that problem, in that the drug both causes amnesia (so that they have nothing immediate to be pissed at us for) and seems to turn Wraith not just into humans but (judging by Michael, at least) into sweet-tempered, patient, good-humored, kindly humans. Which is, I don't know, our natural state? So within the parameters of Atlantisworld, they don't have to be into it, because they'll never know, and we can live in harmony with them because they really are great neighbors.
So you take them and shoot them up with this chemical that's going to make them die in maybe another fifty or sixty years (and that's if they're lucky) and you're calling it a *cure*?
But from the relentlessly human-centric pov of the Stargate universe, it is a cure, because human is the very best thing to be. Look at it this way: if you had to choose between living your regular allotted human lifespan and gaining immortality at the cost of becoming a strange hybrid hive creature who eats humans alive, you'd probably decide immortality wasn't worth the cost, right? (Please say yes. *g*) Most humans would make that choice, and we would generally consider one who didn't to be deeply damaged, even sociopathic. So by Stargate logic, if the retrovirus offers two options, humanity or Wraithness, choosing to be a Wraith would be deranged, while choosing to stay human is correct, and under those terms having the choice is a kind of cure.
but? NOTHING the SGA team has come up with so far is *any better* and it's ridiculous for them to pretend that it is, just so they can-- what? Feel good about themselves? I don't even know!
That's what bugs me. I do think a lot of the ideological pretzels they're tying themselves into have to do with feeling good about themselves. The only character who's been allowed to openly say, "why not just kill them?" is Ronon, and he's always functioned as a shadow-personality for Atlantis, just alien enough to displace scary impulses onto someone we can portray as a savage in order to show that, although maybe we're not unsympathetic to that savagery, we don't let ourselves sink to it. It's Critical Mass all over again: Earth humans are *less* responsible for torture if the blood is on Ronon's hands, and Earth humans are *less* responsible for the extermination of 200 Wraith if Ronon was the only one who really wanted it to happen that way, and the rest of us were just trapped by cruel circumstance, and we all had our somber faces on when it happened.
The character I find interesting is Sheppard, who I think knows it's all an absurd pretense and would be happy to kill them out of hand, but doesn't quite feel in a position to say so. It's kind of fun to watch him struggle with his impatience over this nonsense about curing the Wraith. I really think Sheppard has dealt with his self-image earlier in life and is more willing than the rest of our main cast to confess that he can be a stone killer if the tactics warrant it. Elizabeth, Carson, and Rodney aren't there yet.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-25 04:32 pm (UTC)From:See, some people argue that the retrovirus creates a new person with an entirely new personality, whereas I think it creates a Wraith in a human body and no memories, but the *same* core personality as before. Judging by Elia, we know that Wraith are *capable* of feeling love, loyalty, empathy, guilt about doing bad things-- if Wraith didn't actually feel humanlike emotions, if they were born sociopaths or were just killing machines like sharks, Elia wouldn't have turned out like she did no matter who raised her. So I don't think we can say that human!Michael's personality wasn't *his personality* even before the retrovirus. Like, I doubt we humans come off as good-humored and kindly to... I don't know, mink. Or mice. So maybe Wraith *are* naturally sweet and nice. To other Wraith.
(Not that this means we shouldn't kill them if they're trying to kill us. I'm just sayin'.)
But from the relentlessly human-centric pov of the Stargate universe, it is a cure, because human is the very best thing to be.
Oh, yeah, I get why Carson calls it that, I just can't believe *Michael* hasn't ever brought it up as a sticking point. "Oh, I can be human and 'live a full life?' That sounds great, Teyla, but I'd rather live out my *natural* full life. Y'know, the one where I don't actually ever get old and die."
Look at it this way: if you had to choose between living your regular allotted human lifespan and gaining immortality at the cost of becoming a strange hybrid hive creature who eats humans alive, you'd probably decide immortality wasn't worth the cost, right? (Please say yes. *g*)
Well, yes, of course. But, that would be me choosing to change from what I naturally am into something unnatural, whereas for Michael it's the opposite: he just wants to stay the way he naturally is. Like, you could come up and tell me, "we both agree, animal cruelty is a big problem, so I've figured out how to give you the ability to photosynthesize," and I'd be like, "Great!" and then you're like, "Also, it will cut 60 years off your life, and give you permanent amnesia for the three years you have left, and *also* cause total deafness," or something else that's the equivalent of losing your natural Wraith telepathy.
And I'd be like... well, actually? Never mind. Turns out I don't care about animals *quite that much*. I mean, I doubt even a hardcore PETA-card-carrying animal rights activist would take that deal. Nobody would!
And then the other thing is, of course I wouldn't choose to be a vampire who has to kill humans in order to extend my own life, but to the Wraith, humans aren't "human," they're not sentients, just like dolphins or apes aren't given the same rights as people even though they're smart and can talk and feel emotions, etc. So if you told me I could gain immortality by becoming a cow vampire who has to regularly murder cows to drain their life force... well, I kind of already do that, in the sense that I like cheeseburgers, so sign me up!
... Okay, maybe not if I had to kill the cows myself and it was obviously a very prolonged and painful way for them to die... but then again, I don't make sure every burger I eat comes from a free range organic farm, either. So I'm aware that from, say, the hardcore vegan's point of view I'm not much different from a Cow Vampire who kills her victims personally. (And at least the Cow Vampire can't pretend that her cheeseburger just magically appeared without anything having to die for it.)
(Sometimes I have a feeling that if I keep talking about this so much, I might talk myself into vegetarianism by the time SGA is over. Which would be sad, because mmmm, bacon. *sighs*)
no subject
Date: 2006-07-25 04:34 pm (UTC)From:It's Critical Mass all over again: Earth humans are *less* responsible for torture if the blood is on Ronon's hands, and Earth humans are *less* responsible for the extermination of 200 Wraith if Ronon was the only one who really wanted it to happen that way, and the rest of us were just trapped by cruel circumstance, and we all had our somber faces on when it happened.
(And then their "whee!" faces two seconds later, ugh.)
I think my favorite moment in "Misbegotten," actually, was that moment in the tent when Ronon is thinking about what will happen if the Wraith revert and have nothing to eat except each other. It's subtle, but he's like, "Oh, COME ON. What happens if the Wraith are forced to cannibalize each other? It's my best day ever, that's what!"
Seriously, how perfect and poetic is that if you're Ronon? It's not just a Wraith being killed horribly, it's a Wraith suffering the exact same horrible death that he's inflicted on countless humans for thousands of years; it's the laugh-a-minute, feel-good flick of the millenium, and Ronon would TiVo it and watch it EVERY DAY.
Now that I think about it, it's the one moment in that whole show where I could actually sympathize with someone's feelings AND understand the logical reasons why they felt that way. (Even Michael lost some points for "Wahh, why do I still have guards on me? I wanted you to trust me!" Bitch, please, even Ronon had guards on him for days and days, okay? You don't just get to wander around Atlantis without guards, don't be dumb.) Which is kind of sad, and definitely a comment on the SGA writers-- I mean, the 'shadow' shouldn't *be* the only one I can really get behind-- but oh well.
The character I find interesting is Sheppard, who I think knows it's all an absurd pretense and would be happy to kill them out of hand, but doesn't quite feel in a position to say so. It's kind of fun to watch him struggle with his impatience over this nonsense about curing the Wraith. I really think Sheppard has dealt with his self-image earlier in life and is more willing than the rest of our main cast to confess that he can be a stone killer if the tactics warrant it.
Well, there's that *and* his personal guilt about all the people now dying because of *him*. And you can say, yeah, those people would have died anyway, but who knows-- maybe the Genii would have come up with something, maybe the Hoffans would have-- who knows. I think it's something John thinks about a lot.