schneefink | SGA 3x05 Progeny

I'm procrastinating on homework. And housework. Everything, really.

Ronon is a show-off. Now I know where the blaster-twirling in My Home and Native Land comes from.

Elizabeth just spontaneously goes with them on the mission to an unknown planet with an unknown advanced society. Nobody knew before, nobody saw her in the locker room, nobody plans anything for who is in control of the city in her absence, and nobody cares. *facepalm*

We saw that side of her in "Condemned", too: Elizabeth likes to have adventures. And later, when she emphasizes "leader to leader": Elizabeth likes to be a leader. Or she wants to think of herself as a leader, because actually, she's more of a negotiator. We'll see more of that later.

"Fortunately, I'm very good with complexity." "And scope." Heh.

So I can understand that they are annoyed that these Ancients don't fight the Wraith (for all they know! or maybe they have reasons!) and that they're interested in their history with the Ancients, but please. This is your idea of first contact negotiation? Even Elizabeth?
Headcanon: Teyla held back because Elizabeth was there. I bet the writers just forgot.

I don't like Niam. He's boring and unsympathetic and a bit creepy. They should have got a better actor.

"You said earlier that your brothers' greatest weakness was their arrogance. May I suggest it runs in the family."
Oh, Elizabeth. A good line, but not a very good negotiation.

"How much lower would you like 'em?" Apparently it's the episode of lines, but everything else rushed. I'm still not really interested at this point, but I should be. Ronon gesturing for Rodney to stand back and eating himself, heh.

"You left us no choice", really? I wonder where the hallucination starts.

John, I appreciate the good view, but you really should get to the chair and start ordering the evacuation before you take a look out of the window. Radek explaining the self destruct only makes sense considering it's a hallucination, and that John imagines Rodney would offer to flip a coin is kind of sweet.

Other people watch vids and think "that's from this episode!" I watch the episode and think "oh, that's that one great scene in this vid!" Heh. For this episode it was (among others) Welcome to the Black Parade, wonderful vid.

I have found my headcanon for Teyla's nightmare, but not Rodney or Elizabeth yet. I'm not even sure if I've read a version for Elizabeth... Hm. Will have to look. But really, "intimate" - dear writers, what were we supposed to think?

Niam and his two loyal minions at his side, who are both female, a head shorter than him, almost identically-looking, faithfully repeat what he says - was this really necessary? *sigh*

John and Rodney, awww.

Arrogant cruel Ancients (and creepy Niam.) This section was well done (okay, except that "the most effective form they knew of" is old, overweight Oberoth. Hah.)
Niam must know what they got from mindprobing Elizabeth, and he still has a crush on her. Sweet.

I'm just going to assume that John's strange behavior is because he's still rattled from being mindprobed.

Teyla as the voice of conscience, what a surprise. Sure, Niam, but what about his friends? Family? That he has known for thousands of years? And he's willing to give it up for these people he doesn't know, just because he's not 100% sure his plan will work? Giant crush.

At least they stole a Jumper.

Ronon, you could maybe have stunned Niam? You know, the guy who helped you escape, thereby dooming his friends and family? (That the others can arbitrarily re-set Niam doesn't make any sense, but whatever.)

"There is nothing more annoying than people who won't admit their own mistakes." Zelenka, heh!

All in all, this was mediocre. I can't say exactly why I didn't like it better.

I wanted to do 3x6, too, but this is long enough. Maybe later, and now I could try doing some actual homework.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh, man, the only reason I care about this episode is that it inspired Already Seen (http://in-wintertime.livejournal.com/6407.html). Always gives me chills.

Whoa. *shivers* Very good and very creepy. Thanks for the rec.

Homework shomework. Watch SGA. As an episode, I agree, not the best one. BUT the Asurans are a very interesting villian/people. I don't think SGA totally used them to best effect or wrote them well (like the replicators in SG1) BUT they made me think a lot. Robotic AI races tend to.

what is their motivation? why strive to live? in BSG it was to serve their version of God and procreate. In the matrix it was survival. In terminator it was survival. And the replicators? the asurans? yeah... never really covered or explored.

The Asurans had the potential to be very interesting, but the show didn't deliver. What is their motivation is exactly the problem. One fraction is motivated solely by revenge and the other by their search for Ascension? Not very convincing. What did they do for 10 000 years?
Fandom could have done it better, but I'm not sure whether the Asurans were even interesting enough that someone bothered.

Exactly! I think in general AI robotic races have trouble with interesting, real motivations. You'd think sci fi would have given us more than the 'I want to be a real boy' story line.

I might bother one day... probably more as an exercise to give an AI race actual depth and reality. Eh, if I ever get round to it.

Now you got me thinking... Apparently they still had their original aggression programming. How did that work? Didn't they ever attack the Wraith? It doesn't make any sense. So there must have been some who were fighting against the programming, in different ways, and exploiting every loophole in their code they could find. And they're smart.

Also they have separate personalities, but regularly "exchange information" and can apparently transmit code and everything. The same people live together for 10 000 years. Could be a potentially interesting society, but difficult to write, I imagine.

Yep. And how are new individuals created? Is a new 'life' created and then allowed to develop at its own pace with access to all their information? A personality that forms through its own efforts. Is it truly a society where your experiences define who you become? Or are they created with a purpose in mind - soldier, scientist, leader, teacher? What if someone doesn't like their assigned role, is that possible?

And in a homogenous society with no real differences of opinion (other than revenge vs Ascension) how do real, unique personalities develop? Especially if they never leave Asur.

I also wondered - why keep on looking like the Ancients if you hated them so much. Especially Oberoth. I know for a tv show its easier to have human actors rather than special effects the whole time, but... I would have found them rather more interesting if they used their 'fluidness' to exist in other forms, life forms or something unique. 10 000 years and they've created nothing new. Does that frustrate them, that they can only reproduce or copy, but never create?

See... I've been thinking about it. :)

Very interesting! I hadn't thought about the personalities. There must be certain limitations and certain holes in the base code. They know the code and what they can access inside out, and I bet there's a fraction constantly working on how to crack it (because I don't believe they wouldn't try.)

Have they found a purpose for themselves? I can imagine that they're constantly trying to, now that they're trying to avoid their original purpose, to be a weapon. But the fact that they did try to avoid fulfilling that purpose suggests that they can surpass their programming in certain ways. How does it feel, to know that your programming might force you to do things you do not want to do?

...I bet the writers never thought this through. Argh.

Nope. SGA writers didn't think a lot of things through, in all honesty. That's the problem with writing in a panel. Too many chefs definitely spoil the creative soup, imho.

I don't think the number of writers has to be a problem - if you have good communication, a clear idea of where you're going and if you talk things through with each other, you can use other writers for brainstorming, poking holes, beta etc. But these particular writers didn't manage that.

The 10,000-year thing tripped the writers up a LOT. *g* I often got the impression that they had no idea how long 10,000 years actually is, or how much a society or group of societies would change in that length of time. The difference between Earth circa 8000 BC vs. Earth today is just staggering -- the amount of cultural drift, the rising and falling of civilizations in that time.

Of course the Asurans aren't human, so it wouldn't work quite the same. But I'm finding you guys' discussion completely fascinating, particularly since I think you two have put more thought into Asuran society in a few LJ comments than the writers did in the entire process of creating the episode. :D

They had some (a tiny tiny) excuse with the Wraith destroying civilizations regularly, but still. Humans are smarter than that, writers! At least most of them *cough*

For a long time I thought about writing a "what if Chaya had been awesome?" story, where she encouraged her people to study science, and when the Earthers arrive the people from Proculus have build giant spaceships, wiped out the Wraith (maybe even have a tentative alliance with the Asurans?), and half the galaxy worships Athar. Athar, who never leaves her planet and who doesn't allow anyone who ever left it to visit (so Proculus basically became a planet full of priests and priestesses, a last-resort sanctuary while the main population lives elsewhere), suddenly expresses the wish to visit the new arrivals, even though they aren't very technologically advanced or anything. (She just wants to visit Atlantis again, which for some strange reasons her people haven't managed to find.) And somehow Teyla would have got a large role. But I suspect that I wouldn't be interested in writing it anymore if I actually watched the episode with Chaya ^^

Yes, that is sadly entirely possible. It reminds me of the good old days when I read a lot of Asimov's short stories :)

I didn't like this episode much even when I originally watched it in my "squee! SGA!" phase. It had a few cute moments, but the episode as a whole had too many things that didn't make sense, and their betrayal of Niam at the end really rubbed me the wrong way.

It wasn't at all convincing that it was necessary to betray Niam like that. I had to do a lot of head-tilting and "maybe..."-reasoning to make sense of the characters in this episode.

Maybe it would have been better if the Replicators hadn't immediately tried to attack Atlantis. That was a bit much too fast and the threat didn't really come across for me. Instead they could have explored the Replicators more, but I'm not sure if they even had more in mind than what Elizabeth summed up with "family issues".

Something else that didn't make any sense: the MALP just disappeared. This probably happens quite often, but I do think they try to recover them. Otoh, Jumper > MALP, but still.

SGA 3x05 Progeny

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