SGA; recs and question

[permetaform]

First the recs, 'cause these have been piling up and I need some form of sanity and not being afraid of my bookmarks. ::wry grin::

Assume that these are all SGA and all some form of Sheppard and McKay.


#435, The Atlantis Local Stitch'n'Bitch Chapter by rageprufrock - Wherein John is held close to the righteous female bosom of knitted products, Rodney is too curious for his own good, and plans fail in a spectacular way. (random thought: huh. I just realized this has a lot of what cereta mentions in her post on masculine and feminine spaces. huh.)

The Boys Of Summer by seperis - reads like the first breath of fresh air and feels like sun shining.

Advantage by resonant8 - Aliens make John into Rodney's slave and its both exactly what you expect and entirely surprising all at once.

Beauty by blinkiesays - Skip the notes on this one, the story reveals itself well enough on it's own and it reads like a melody.

The Lending Library by iphignia939 - The summary explains it all: "Naturally, when several hundred people moved to another galaxy, they brought porn." XD

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Stargate Question: Has anyone out there seen a plentiful amount of SG-1?

I'm very curious as to SG-1's interpretation of the Ancients; ie.
both the text and subtext of the Ancient's place/position in the SG-1 universe.

For instance, in SG-1 how were the Ancient's introduced? How are their technology viewed in SG-1, textually and subtextually? How did the SG-1 characters feel about the Ancients and Ancient technology?

Comments

[turtlespeaks.livejournal.com]

I think jmtorres pretty much explained the history, now I'm explain how they are perceived and how that bleeds over into Atlantis.

The Ancients, as they have come to be known, have played pretty much a back seat roll in SG-1 for most of the show's running. They were important as a historical link to the Gua'ould technologies (because the Gua'ould keep stealing it), but they were mostly over in the corner in terms of importance. Daniel Jackson, since about season 2 (and arguably season 1), has been obsessed with learning all her can about the Ancients. He is the foremost authority on the language, and he has has the most experience with their culture, both through the discoveries and through his ascension.

In "The Fifth Race" Jack gets the entire database of the Ancient knowledge downloaded into his brain, which nearly kills him, but during that time he manages to make a program on the SGC comptuers which adds a collection of unknown gates into their gate database, which completes the Earth, umm, directory of gates in existence in the Milky Way Galaxy, all the other gates they had were ones that the Gua'ould had discovered. So now the SGC has one of the most complete collection of gate adresses in the Galaxy thanks to the knowlegde of the Ancients. After that, we slowly learn that the Ancients existed on earth, they they were super smart, very powerful, and died out from a horrible plague. Those that didn't die out in a plague ascended and now hang over us all in a higher plane of superiority and non-intervention. Mostly, though, they are supremely unhelpful.

In season 7, when Daniel is kicked out of the "Oma Desala Fan Club" (as Jack calls it) he becomes obsessed with finding the lost city of the Ancients, because they believe that a) Anubis (half ascended Gua'ould) is looking for it as well and they must stop him before he is able to get a hold of that technology, and b) Jackson's overlaying need to find out as much as he can about them and ascension and all that jazz. All through season 7 we find more clues about where this "Lost City" is and the technology that The Ancients once possessed.

Finally after the database is downloaded into Jack's brain, again, he super hot-wires a Gua'ould cargo ship, goes off to get a ZPM, and then happily tells the SG-1 team that "Terra Atlantis" was in fact, on Earth (Go Team Ancients!) flies all the way back to Earth, and blows Anubis out of the sky with a the last of the Ancient squid missiles.

Insert expedition to Atlantis!

Since then they have struggled around all through season 8 trying to clean up the remaining Gua'ould problem and occasionally crashing into more Ancient technology (like the puddle jumper time machine, hooray for crossover!). Also Daniel Jackson gets to find out more about how the ascended Ancients view the universe, and why the ascended beings are the way they are by the end of season 8. He also spends the better part of season 8 begging Jack O'Neill to let him go join the Atlantis expidition team, which he nearly got to twice, but both times he missed his chance. jmtorres explained all you need to know about season 9.

Overall, through the show they are mostly perceived as very smart, very wise, very good, but, mostly, very useless in a crisis situation. But, you know, still good!

[permetaform]

Oh neat! Thank you for such a detailed overview, this helps alot to fill in those spaces I had not knowing SG1.


He also spends the better part of season 8 begging Jack O'Neill to let him go join the Atlantis expidition team, which he nearly got to twice, but both times he missed his chance.

XD I *love* cross-show references!


Overall, through the show they are mostly perceived as very smart, very wise, very good, but, mostly, very useless in a crisis situation. But, you know, still good!

Huh! That's interesting, 'cause there's both textual and subtextual undermining of the Ancients all throughout SGA. I was wondering if this was unique to SGA or if it was present in SG1 as well.