SGA: on Ford and character flaws...

[permetaform]

bascon had a short-fic/drabble writting panel; I came in late, but I managed to get this out:

There are four ways to define home, Ford thinks.

He makes his wry smiles and brings it to his team, but cracks it wider (than he ever would, for them), full of teeth. He finds her loyalty and brings it to them, his team, little parts of Wraith that he gives to them, to put inside. He finds ingenuity, in a little man who talks fast and is cowed easily, and he finds manpower (grunts), and tries not to find them familiar.

Ford creates his home, bit by bit, assembling it out of muscle and tissue and brains, all stitched together with a sickle grin (and needlepoint).

There are four ways, to define home, Ford thinks; he has, here, created them all (again), he looks at the bobble-ling heads all around him.

And smiles.

[]

So I was reading this meta on Weir by mari4212 and what registered to me both in this piece and saeva's post was how much SGC was not especially keen to having her around...

This brings home even more the idea that SGA is really a story about a bunch of misfits pushed to extremes, 'cause it's like a one-way trip and you *know* SGC was thinking, "Oh, well, you're expendable. Go ahead."

'Cause I mean, it's easy to see how Rodney and Kavanaugh won't exactly be missed and how John is all black-marked and how Beckett has extremely shady medical ethics (wherein 'Poison In The Well' is Beckett's 'Trinity') and how Heightmeyer is a psychologist like a shady, shady researcher ("Teyla/Rodney you shouldn't be freaking out for losing control of your body. Loose it again. Show me more.").

And it's not just possibly problematic writing of the show (that, for instance, Beckett is written as a shady doctor, because maybe he *is*), the patterns appear too often for that...So in a way, it was a relief to finally see where Weir was coming from, that SGC literally didn't want her around because she was a threat to the power structure and because she's really more a negotiator than a leader.

Which brings up an interesting question: What was up with Ford? Why were they so willing to let him go?

I haven't watched SG1 so I can't extrapolate from there...but perhaps I can guess from what I've seen of Ford in season 1. Please jump in if you've noticed stuff too or you have things to add from SG1!

As far as I could tell at first glance, Ford is a energetic guy, very young compared to the other characters, competent.

But this is SGA, and nothing is quite so cut and dry as appearances. 'Cause as early as ep3. (38 min.), we see Ford towards the end losing it and just slamming against the wall in this surprising rage. And I forgot which ep, but they were playing Prime-NotPrime and Ford kept losing and getting all irritated, and Ford's reaction towards being used as wraith-bait, and the little bits of reaction throughout the season that had him disgruntled or overlooked...

[lierdumoa points out: Ford freaked out in S1 and it was identical to how he reacted in S2, but with the enzyme "he was on that razor edge *constantly* instead of only in particular situations."]

And then we have Season 2 Ford. See, the man likes explosives, yanno. Ticking time-bombs, and I can't help but look back and wonder at Season 1 Ford, and wondering if I'd read the Good Boy thing wrong. If I'd mis-read their team-family dynamics. I can't help but wonder if Ford had just that One Really Bad Day that pushes a good man to do evil.

And I can't help but wonder if it's in his records that he may be closer to that snapping point than other people. I can't help but compare Ford's reaction under the enzyme to Teyla and Ronon's reaction, to McKay's reaction, and to John's reaction, and then trying to figure out relative dosages and the effects of sedatives and still still still coming back to the fact that Ford's reaction is extreme (he formed a drug gang and ate Wraiths. DUDE.) and that I wouldn't be surprised if Ford was written as an explosives expert for a *reason*.

Ticking time-bomb, heh.

Which...sorta causes one to go back and re-evaluate the S1 team dynamics once S2 Ford comes along, because John and Rodney and Ford and Teyla made a family of a team dynamic it's just...a somewhat dysfunctional one. More than anyone might've possibly guessed. (and Ford went ahead and created his own family, out of the skin of friends ::shakes head:: ah Ford.)

[edit] I'm not drawing a line saying that Ford from season 1 absolutely and straight-forwardly and conclusively leads to Ford from season 2, not at all, because I believe that he's essentially a good person who is relatively mentally stable considering the situation that they're in. However, the potential for Ford to react as he did in season 2 was always there and was referenced through in small ways through season 1, and that was what I was trying to awkwardly get at. He had that One Bad Day that throws good men into doing evil things.

Also, btw?

Zelenka. His arc hasn't come yet...but I can sorta see it coming (sideways, if I squint) ever since Siege III. And it's coming like a trainwreck.

Which, you know, will DESTROY THE BRAIN when it happens.

::is SO looking forward:: Because SGA is EVIL, it'll make me flail at the screen, I just know it.

Comments

[saeva.livejournal.com]

You may be using 'Evil' in a different sense than I think of it but I don't think that S2!Ford is evil in either a technical or narrative sense.

Again, this is SG-1 informing me, and while they're not the same show they do have many, many things in common -- starting with the writers and producers and moving on down -- so a connection can be made. And SG-1 loves it's personality alteration plots especially when a chemical substance can be involved, to the point that it's been done at least eight times in SG-1 to my recollection (completely aside from the fact that an entire race of beings in SG-1 are utterly informed by a chemical influence tendency).

To give you yet more background, in SG-1 there's a race called the Goa'uld. The Goa'uld are, large and by far, evil in the narrative sense. They're the bad guys. This is caused by two things in a general way, the first being genetic memory.

The Goa'uld remember what their parent (Goa'uld are spawning, not live birth, and self-reproducing) knew, who remembers what their parent knew, who remembers... On and on until certain traits are so reinforced that it takes an entire change in mindset to push one out of it, in which case the children of said changed Goa'uld will have the changed mindset. [And when one such Goa'uld did have a change of mindset s/he spawned -- literally -- a resistance movement.]

The second is the technology involved. Goa'uld are long-living and have extraordinary healing ability. They're parasites and when they infect a body (usually a human one) they can not only control it but they can heal it as well; also, they physically develop between spawning and parasite infestation in a sort of synthesized pouch that's forced onto a subset of humanity called the Jaffa, but that's really more than you need to know.

So, they're long-living, they heal, and so barring accident they'll live hundreds of years. They're also scavengers of technology, they don't make their own tech they steal and try to improve or adapt on the schematics. One such technology they discovered from the Ancients, or what the Ancients had left behind, and they developed the sarcophagi, which are chambers that revitalizes living people and can even resurrect a recently dead person. At a price, that price being mental stability and a sense of perspective, to the point that it horribly distorts what may once have been a relatively reasonable personality.

You can see where this sort of informs where they went with the Wraith enzyme, right? Especially since this fountain of youth technology was essentially distortive from the very beginning -- in fact, the Ancient version only required one exposure to it, while the sarcophagi require repeated exposure and will go away if you allow the withdraw to happen.

In this analogy what happened to Ford, or what happened to Sheppard in Conversion, are the equivalent of the Ancient fountain of youth box (it's in a puzzle box form, don't ask me *laughs*) whereas what's happening to Teyla, McKay, and Ronon is the equivalent of the sarcophagi. Ford has learned from what happened to him -- as he said -- and figured out a safer, more effective, less destablizing way to acheive the same physical process.

But he did so from the point of view of someone who was exposed to high, high levels of personality changing biochemistry in a single sitting (who was also then forced to go through levels of withdraw which, if allowed to complete themselves, would have killed him). That explains why his personality has taken such a larger shock or forced him to greater extremes than Teyla or Ronon's (and Rodney's dosage was heavily reduced anyway).

Oh, and, no. merryish is the one that made the comparison first, I just expounded on it. Unfortunately the link I put in that post to her post is no longer valid as, apparently, she's had to flock her journal due to real life complications. You may want to ask her if you can get a copy of it anyway though, it's worth the read.

And, you know, now I'm horribly tempted to write (probably wankily) about the different experiences SGA fans who've seen SG-1 must have from SGA fans who haven't seen SG-1.

- Andrea.

[permetaform]

You may be using 'Evil' in a different sense than I think of it but I don't think that S2!Ford is evil in either a technical or narrative sense.

Ah, bad phrasing here, pardons.

I meant it as Ford-is-an-Evil-cartoon-villian (which I don't believe), versus the idea that Ford was pushed to a narrative place he would not have normally gone.

As for the rest I'll need to chew on it I think, though the comparison between the two seem a bit non-conclusive. I'm not sure what argument you are making there.

Also I take SG1 symbolism (this does not include world creation) crossed over into SGA with a huge grain of salt, because of how different the two shows seem to be, inherently. (ie. SG1's heroes, military, & family v. SGA's misfits, civilian, & dysfunctionality)

[saeva.livejournal.com]

I'm confused as to where I've talked of SG-1 symbolism at all?

[You ever find that we, in particular, tend to have more conversations out of misunderstanding of terms...]

- Andrea.

[permetaform]

[You ever find that we, in particular, tend to have more conversations out of misunderstanding of terms...]

heh, yeah. I think it's just me though, 'cause I tend to think very laterally rather than linearly and it's hard to convey my ideas in a linear fashion.

In reference to symbolism, I mean it by visual/metaphoical/narrative symbolism that builds up to a sorta unified theme of a show (for instance Buffy:tVS and Angel:tS have opposing themes, where Buffy's was more hopeful, Angel's was more apocalyptic); it's basically a lot of my film class showing through; and it was in reference to comparing Wraith enzyme to Ancient fountain of youth box.

I think that SG1 and SGA are sort of similar to BtVS and AtS in that though there are spin-offs of the shows, they don't follow the same themes (ie. the same symbolic language); while they share a certain world and share the basic laws/logic of that world (ie. Stargates or Vampires), their themes run in different patterns.

[saeva.livejournal.com]

I'm confused because the FoY box/Wraith enzyme thing wasn't a symbolic parallel -- it was a direct plot copy. Identical in a lot of ways, like many (many) of SGA plots are. There's no symbolism about it, anymore than these lines are a symbolic connection between SG-1 and SGA:

"Of course. We are far superior [to humans]. And if you could see into the mind of an animal you would blindly feed upon, you would reach the same conclusion."

Those are two lines of dialogue from a season six episode of Stargate: SG-1, lines which have obvious copy in the treatment of the Wraith towards his human "benefactors" in 'Condemned'. And there's literally dozens of direct copies like that in the way SGA operates, unlike with Buffy and Angel. Buffy informs Angel but Angel is still very much its own show, with its own mythology and plot. SGA is far less so in comparison to SG-1, at least at this point, and almost everything it does is connected to something SG-1 did.

[I've recently been having my friends quiz me on that, naming things in Atlantis and seeing if I could trace them back to SG-1. If you'd like to join the fun, feel free to name something.]

You say above that SG-1 is about "heroes, military, & family" while SGA is about "misfits, civilian, & dysfunctionality" but I'd disagree.

While you can make the civilian/military divide -- though its not that clear cut in the personalities of Jack O'Neill and Sam Carter -- the other ones don't function at all. SG-1 is also about misfits and dysfunctionality and its message about family is nothing so much as "Damn. You can't pick your relatives."

All four members of the SG-1 team are disconnected from the world they wished to belong to -- Teal'c betrays his people for what he believes, Jack's a black ops operative in a first contact job, Sam was meant to go to NASA but got sidetracked, and Daniel, Daniel got laughed out of the only profession he ever wanted. They found themselves and each other in SG-1 but they're misfits from the outside world and their family relationships are all incredibly painful (abandonment, guilt, death, secrecy, just some of the problems they've had or enacted with family members).

One can make the argument towards SG-1 being mythic and SGA being human, which is probably the greatest divide they do have, but even there it's a difference in how the plots play out, the consequences, and not the beginnings. It's not that Sam doesn't have a Trinity -- she blew up a sun, once, and that's not even the worst thing she's done -- or Daniel doesn't have a Hot Zone -- he? managed to destroy (to dust) the planet he called home -- but that they don't have to suffer the consequences of those actions in the same way.

But the parallels are there and they're very conclusive -- SGA is using so many of the same things SG-1 did and just renaming them (actors are just the most obvious manifestation of that, though I was deathly amused to see the first incarnation of Perna, played by the same actress who played Perna, while rewatching some older SG-1 earlier today). On SG-1 the Hoff were called the Bangarians and the Wraith resistence drug was called Tretonin and designed to remove the Goa'uld ability to prey on the humans, but some of the dialogue could have been easily lifted.

I don't really have a decisive point very often, by the way, I'm just talking about anything I think you might find interesting in response to what I see you saying. I don't think very linearly myself.

- Andrea.

[permetaform]

::covers eyes:: umm, you're missing my meaning again.

I'm not arguing that the plots are canned, because they are; but I'm saying that these similar plots are used as different symbols to point to different themes. The blessing of a genre is that one can subvert the message within the genre itself by following very specific patterns; therefore showing something new while at the same time keeping the safety of the familiar. In this way, some of the best critique can arise, from within the source itself; but it does this most easily and most safely by steadfastly keeping themselves within established conventions in other ways.

It may be because I've only seen a few episodes of SG1, but it never captured me the way that just two episodes of SGA did; I have an inkling of why, but I'm still forming my theories on that.

In sum, I think the two shows are using similar plots to point to two different places; but not having seen SG1 I can't make any solid overaching comment on it's themes, just what I've noticed other's mainly picking up on.

Regarding the dysfunctionality, I wasn't referring to family dysfunctionality of the individual team members; rather, I was referring to the dysfunctionality of the team itself, in microcosm, and the expedition as a whole.


One can make the argument towards SG-1 being mythic and SGA being human, which is probably the greatest divide they do have, but even there it's a difference in how the plots play out, the consequences, and not the beginnings. It's not that Sam doesn't have a Trinity -- she blew up a sun, once, and that's not even the worst thing she's done -- or Daniel doesn't have a Hot Zone -- he? managed to destroy (to dust) the planet he called home -- but that they don't have to suffer the consequences of those actions in the same way.

err...could you re-state this? I think I see what you're getting at, but I'd hate to make assumptions that'll get us more confused.


But the parallels are there and they're very conclusive -- SGA is using so many of the same things SG-1 did and just renaming them

Yes, exactly. =) It's a stable framework from which SGA can use as point of derivation. It also follows very many sci-fi conventions from the various Star Trek and Babylon 5, that I know of, and I think some other sources that I remember others pointing out.


[I've recently been having my friends quiz me on that, naming things in Atlantis and seeing if I could trace them back to SG-1. If you'd like to join the fun, feel free to name something.]

As a point of curiosity, how were the Ancients introduced in SG1 and what is the tone of SG1 towards the Ancients?

[saeva.livejournal.com]

I am totally wasted by way of flu right now. I will so come back and answer the last question in-depth when I am not.

- Andrea.

[permetaform]

awww ::hugs:: I hope you feel better! I look forward to your response. =)