Stargate Relationship-Writing-Fail Essay

Apr. 12th, 2010 05:10 pm
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[Edit, 2023: Found this while checking through old entries to see which icons I hadn't been using, and...there is a lot I would have done differently, or not at all, now. I'm leaving it up for archival purposes, at the moment, but please be aware.]



Ladies, gentlemen, nonbinaries, and time-traveling cyborgs, it's time for the analysis I think I promised of the epic (deliberate)romancefail in both of the first Stargate series, and what I as a writer have learned from watching. This is a bit long, so I am generously providing you with a ~table of contents~. Throughout the text, you will see occasional, um, red things that look like hyperlinks (unless you are viewing this in style=mine, in which case you will see occasional things that look like whatever sort of hyperlinks you have). And other red (or whatever) things that are hyperlinks. Basically, if it looks like a link and it's a section header, it's not a link. Otherwise, it probably is, and you should maybe click it if you want to go wherever it's saying it goes. (You can try clicking the headers, too, but it's not going to do anything. Or it shouldn't--if it does, I may have messed up the HTML, which is well within my capabilities--so, uh, let me know?)

 TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1: Romance: you're doing it wrong.2: Romance: you're doing it right. By accident.3: Not-Romance: you're doing that wrong, too.
[or go to the end or the edits list]

1: Romance: you're doing it wrong.
I joke--mostly joke--that the reason that the only Stargate character we ever see get married did so by accident is that this is how the writers managed it. I am not one of those people who thinks sci-fi fans can't get involved in relationships (the contrary, actually), and I would hope everyone would know better than to think I think so, but, just in case, I'm stating it outright. I don't joke that the Stargate writers can't possibly have ever been in relationships because they're sci-fi writers, I joke that the Stargate writers can't possibly ever have been in relationships because they are so incredibly bad at writing them.

It's like the blind men describing the elephant. They never saw the elephant. If you knew they'd been looking at an elephant, and they told you it was a rope, you would know they had no idea what they were talking about.

Yes. It's really that bad a lot of the time.

Ladies, gentlemen, nonbinaries, and time-traveling cyborgs, what is one of the main doctrines of writing? "Show, don't tell." This sort of implies that you're supposed to, um, show the things happening, as opposed to having someone say "THINGS HAPPENED." We should know that A and B are in a relationship not because they stand around and talk about it—or, worse yet, because A has a conversation with C about how s/he has ~*feelings*~ for B (SAM CARTER I AM LOOKING STRAIGHT AT YOU. ANGRILY.).

If A and B are in a relationship, they should act somehow relationshiply towards each other--whether this is tenderly, or passionately, or both, or neither but something else, depends on A and B. When this affects the plot of the episode, it should do so because that's how they react to a situation, not because the episode was constructed that way in order to allow them to (HOLY GODDAMN HELL I HATE "DIVIDE AND CONQUER" SO EFFING MUCH). I admit this is a bit of a fine line to draw, and a lot of examples could be argued either way, but... in short: it should be a thing even when it isn't the point.
1.1: Our Manly, Heterosexual Air Force Hero and the Girl on His Gate Team. Who Is Not The Girl, Just a Girl.
There are actually a lot of parallels between the "relationship" that the Stargate writers tried to set up between Jack O'Neill and Sam Carter and the one they tried for between John Sheppard and Teyla Emmagan. ...starting with the fact that both are incredibly stupid in their own ways and would never, ever happen (fortunately, the writers somehow managed to realize this at some point after seasons of wtf).

But, really, in a way, there are a lot of moments--especially early on--where John is sort of "the other galaxy's Jack O'Neill" (flyboy, check; Ancient gene, check; similar and boring first name, check [apparently "Jack" is canonically short for "Jonathan" and not "John", but the fact that it is much more often a nickname for "John"...]; smartass remarks, check; air of not getting along with authority if authority doesn't deserve to be gotten along with, check; simultaneously friendly and reserved, check; "hey, let's work with this random alien!", check...). Kami calls the helicopter scenes in SGA 1x01 "Rising Part 1" "the helicopter of protagonisthood" or something along those lines--I can't remember the exact term, but it's definitely a "Hey Look, Audience, You Are To Associate These Two Or Something."

Teyla is not "the other galaxy's Sam Carter", but, like Sam, she's badass and definitely not The Girl. (Teyla gets major style points for establishing this, not by making a speech about reproductive organs, but just by being Teyla. And also by kicking everyone's ass on a regular basis, while being incredibly polite about it. See also: "being Teyla".) There's an element of the unusual about her--not because she's an Air Force officer and an omnidisciplinary scientist and pretty, but because she's an alien. Sam combines military ability with academic ability/importance; Teyla, with political ability/importance (not that the show ever seems to address her role as a leader of her people). Oh, and also they're the girls on the Gate Team-1s.

There are also differences in the attempted relationships, which I will address in the individual sections. I mostly made this its own section so I could talk about The First Kiss.

Writers? Dearest, darlingest, preciousest writers? If you have to get your OTP to have their first (and, of what I've seen so far, only [real]) kiss due to a mind-altering and extremely harmful alien influence that's the episode's effective villain... you've got a problem.

Ladies, gentlemen, nonbinaries, and time-traveling cyborgs, I direct your attention to SG-1 1x04 "The Broca Divide" and SGA 2x08 "Conversion".

In "The Broca Divide", SG-1 (the team, not the show) have brought back a histaminalytic virus that basically turns everyone in Cheyenne Mountain who isn't on strong antihistamines for allergies into... some sort of pre-Homo sapiens sapiens hominids. (It's first season SG-1, guys, don't expect normal science.) It appears to eliminate or virtually eliminate language abilities, drastically increase violent impulses, and... just... it's not nice. The people on the planet where the virus originates consider it a horrible, frightening curse.

Sam is the first main character--possibly the first one of our protagonists?--to experience the effects of this horrible, frightening curse. While infected, but before it has any noticeable physical effects (like altering her appearance, because heaven forbid we get to see s1 Sam Carter looking less than gorgeous at all times), Sam tracks Jack down in the locker room and kisses him.

(Very shortly afterwards Jack also starts showing symptoms of the virus, and beats the crap out of Daniel because he thinks Daniel is interested in Sam, who is HIS WOMAN *GRUNT; CHEST-THUMP* or something idiotic like that. This is Jack O'Neill--you know the guy: witty, charming, not likely to attack one of his closest friends for no reason. The point, in case you haven't gotten it yet, is that this virus is not a nice thing.)

In the episode before "Conversion", John got injured by someone who'd been accidentally injected with a retrovirus that was intended to remove the iratus bug components of Wraith, but had the opposite effect--i.e. it turned them into human-iratus bug hybrids. Or, um, something vaguely scientific like that. Near the beginning of this episode, the viewers learn that John apparently got some of the retrovirus into his system. Sure enough, he starts mutating into a giant bug that feeds on life energy. [Point of clarification: we never actually see whether the retrovirus got far enough to effect John's cellular respiration processes. The iratus bugs and the Wraith both do, however, so it is likely that, had the retrovirus progressed sufficiently, John would have become unable to take nourishment from anything other than human beings. WHEE.]

The iratus traits John gets first are a sort of super-endurance and other physical abilities--think starting to become Superman, or something roughly along those lines. Very strong, very fast, very tough, and able to effortlessly defeat Teyla in stick-fighting practice, which she usually absolutely kicks his ass at. (And everyone else's ass, except Ronon's--the only time we've seen them spar onscreen, he won, though, to be fair, she was distracted unexpectedly at the time.) He interrupts the sparring to back Teyla against a wall and kiss her, without any sort of conversation or anything like that.

Teyla, quite understandably, looks freaked the hell out when he realizes what he's doing and backs away. So does John, but the camera sticks on Teyla for a bit. She's sliding slowly down the wall, gasping for breath--if they were intending with their directorial and/or acting choice to make that look like she's overwhelmed by lust, they did a terrible job, because she looks scared. Understandably. She's a very capable and thoroughly awesome person, who just ended up effectively defenseless in a completely isolated place with someone whom she had previously trusted implicitly acting aggressively towards her. It actually works a lot better as a rape metaphor--and as it is I'd argue it's sexual assault--than as something romantic and not creepy as hell.

(Oh, and then John sort of generally goes around Atlantis being batshit insane and attacking people in a more obviously violent way, and I did mention the part where he's turning into the thing the series villains evolved out of, right? So, again: not a good thing in the slightest. Just in case you had somehow missed that.)

[[ETA 10/24/10]] Okay, so apparently when I acted as if this was patently obvious I was being naïve. I was doing a little research at the Gateworld forums, and--because I clearly hate myself--started reading the comments on the podcasts. At this podcast, on "Relationships in Stargate", an individual going by the username of "sheylayes" ["Sheyla" is one of what TVtropes calls a "Portmanteau Couple Name" for Sheppard/Teyla] made the following remark (all spelling & grammatical errors sic):
Sorry guys, but I really don’t see shep/weir. I really could not feel the love at all! The writters were not able to show that. The scenes didn’t look like the love was real…However, Teyla and Sheppard that was love all about. They were always ready to do anything for eachother. And the kiss scene wow that was inside him all the time. The kiss with weir was not him…was an alien. Well, I miss the show so much. Just hope they do a movie for real.
("The kiss with Weir" is a reference to 2x16 "The Long Goodbye", in which alien consciousnesses possess John and Elizabeth to work out their marital problems, or something. Kami and I still haven't gotten past "Conversion", because life is annoying like that. It is, from what I can tell, in no way indicated--and here (and only here!) I agree with sheylayes--that this is actually intended as, well, anything to do with John and Elizabeth themselves. I haven't bothered to address John/Elizabeth in this essay because, in my opinion, it is neither intended by the writers nor believable by accident.)

The other kiss to which sheylayes referred to was, presumably, the one in 2x08 "Conversion", to which a substantial amount of energy has already been devoted in this essay.

I hesitated to cite the quote at all, and hesitated more over identifying the speaker; but I feel that without citation to clearly indicate that, yes, this is a real opinion, I weaken what little academic strength this essay has (not to mention the intellectual property issues associated with quoting someone without any attribution); and, with the citation, the speaker is clearly identified anyway. I wish to clearly and unambiguously state, however: this is not intended as a personal attack. This is not intended to encourage personal attacks. This entry is very unlikely to ever come to the attention of any of the people on the thread at Gateworld, whatever their positions, and therefore unlikely to hurt them. If I thought in any way that this was more likely to cause harm than otherwise, I would have found a different way of addressing the point; if I change my mind at some point in the future, I will edit this entry again to reflect that.

End Srs Bsns. Return to relationshipfail analysis.

In order to argue that John wanted the kiss in "Conversion", you must assume the following:
  • For whatever reason, he only acted on this want when he was under strong alien influence. (This is not too hard to assume, I grant you. John Sheppard has massive issues whoever you're shipping him with. I use "shipping" in the inclusive way, as opposed to the "shipping vs. slashing" way.)
  • He didn't care what Teyla thought about it, or consider that it might in any way be uncomfortable for her under the circumstances.
  • He also wanted everything else that he did deliberately/"deliberately" (as opposed to as an accidental consequence of his increased physical abilities, like beating Ronon in a footrace and Teyla at stick practice) while under the influence of the virus. Everything. What we saw of this onscreen:
    1. kissing Teyla
    2. smashing one of the glass walls of Elizabeth's office when she refuses to let him go on a mission because he's compromised
    3. attempting to strangle Elizabeth
    4. violently attacking, and at the very least temporarily incapacitating, a total of six of his men
    5. (attempting, while coming off of a potentially toxic dose of an inhibiting agent, to flee Atlantis into the forests on Planet Giant Bug--it is unclear precisely what the state of his mind is at this point)
Arguing that John kissed Teyla in "Conversion" because he wanted to requires the argument that the retrovirus acted to suppress his inhibitions against doing so [i.e. against doing something he wanted to do], given the fact that he never--to the best of my knowledge--does so again.

Arguing that the retrovirus suppressed his inhibitions implies that, as it acted as a disinhibitor in that case, it has a generally disinhibiting effect [which I use to mean "prevents him from keeping himself from doing things in general that he wants to do"]. (The kiss, alone of the items I mentioned in the numbered list above, happened before either John or anyone else on Atlantis knew for a fact that there was something wrong; it can't be argued that he did so because he thought he was dying and would never get another chance, or anything similar.)

Arguing that the retrovirus has a generally disinhibiting effect means that the things he does later in the episode are also things he wants to do, but has not permitted himself to do.

Arguing that the things he does later in the episode are also things he wants to do, but has not permitted himself to do, means believing that, among other things, John believes that the appropriate response to being refused authorization to get more of his people killed is to make a potentially-lethal attack against his civilian commander. (This also brings up the issue that, in other episodes, John is strongly opposed to sending people to die where others have failed--see 2x06 "Trinity", where he initially firmly refuses to allow Rodney to return to Doranda (John: "Try again? Are you serious?" Rodney: "Yes." John: "A member of your team is in the morgue.").)

I would, instead, argue that the outbreak of temper in Elizabeth's office, his subsequent violent attack against her (particularly given the specific provocation for the attack), and his still-further-subsequent violent attacks against the men under his command and protection--a responsibility I have never seen him take less than seriously, despite his frequent lack of respect for his superiors--are wildly out of character for John.

I do not, therefore, consider it likely that the retrovirus magically changed properties (though this is Stargate, so who knows) and went from being a general disinhibiting agent to something with effects similar to, what, steroids? Something causing an excess of violent and primitive emotions.

My argument is that the retrovirus removed something, instead of revealing something. He kissed Teyla in an attempt to begin a mating process, instead of as a confession of love (nonverbal, but I am absolutely sincere when I say that "nonverbal" is the most comfortable way for John Sheppard to say things)--why Teyla, and not Elizabeth later, is unclear but not inexplicable.

It is possible that Teyla's partially-Wraith DNA seemed similar enough to John's confused human/iratus DNA that the instinct was that this was "his species", while Elizabeth was not close enough to "his species" for the iratus instinct to consider her a likely potential mate. An alternate explanation is that the retrovirus had enhanced his senses--which seems highly likely to at least some extent, given his ability to see in the dark--to the point where he could detect pheromones and other hormones, and that Teyla was ovulating at the time, while Elizabeth was not, thus making it pointless to attempt to impregnate Elizabeth. (Or, assuming his senses were not yet acute enough for that, a closely-related alternate explanation is that they were acute enough to detect minute amounts of blood and related fluids, and that Elizabeth was menstruating, thus, again, making it (almost certainly) pointless to attempt to impregnate her.)

...I feel incredibly wrong for having written that last paragraph. Brainbleach is on that table over there.

In any case, Teyla's reaction to the kiss, and the rest of John's behavior in the episode, as well as everyone else's behavior in the episode and their reaction to the retrovirus as the primary threat of the episode, combine to make it seem, at the very least, unlikely to me that this was in fact a romantic moment. [[End ETA 10/24/10]]

Dr. Janet Frasier, head doctor at the SGC, and Dr. Carson Beckett, in charge of Atlantis's medical department, spend their series' respective OMG FIRST KISS OF THE WRITERS' OTP episodes frantically racing against the clock to find a cure. For similar instances of some protagonist or other desperately struggling to accomplish something, see: every episode of both series, pretty much. Observe, in these other episodes, how the thing that the protagonist(s) are trying to stop, prevent, or undo is the villain of the episode (if sentient) or otherwise the threat/problem of the episode (if not sentient, or if abstract). In no cases are Our Heroes™ trying to stop something good. [Um. Actually given the occasional moralfail of the writers... let's... just let that one slide. The writers didn't intend them to be actively trying to do the wrong thing, anyway.]

In summary: dearest, darlingest, preciousest writers, WHY THE ABSOLUTE EFFING HELL IS THIS SUPPOSED TO BE A GOOD THING?
1.1.1: Jack O'Neill and Sam Carter: the epic forbidden romance of Stargate SG-1.
*gags* *rinses mouth* Okay, saying that makes me cringe. In case the sparkles didn't clue you in. Jack/Sam is the longest, most involved, most plot-centric, least believable romance I have ever yet seen them try to sell us. Guess what? I'm not, absolutely not, no way in hell, buying.

Problem One: the actors have no believable chemistry [your mileage may vary].

Problem Two: the characters have no believable chemistry.

Problem Three: due to Problem One and Problem Two, the writers feel obliged to tell instead of show, and sometimes to do weird things to the plot.

So, uh. Yeah. *dusts off hands* I'm done here, time to move on to complaining about John and Teyla.

...wait, what, you want more evidence?

AS LONG AS I DON'T HAVE TO REWATCH ANYTHING, OKAY.

Also, I apologize in advance for the glitter text. It's self-defense.


1.1.1.1: Jack, Sam, and Conflict: you know that phrase "fight like an old married couple"? Well, they... don't.
I can only think of one episode so far where Jack and Sam have gotten into any kind of actual, lengthy disagreement--4x09, "Scorched Earth". For those not following along on a big list of all the episodes ever, that's the one with the terraforming ship with the preserved alien civilization. (On a sidenote, there's a fascinating essay on just how disturbing the relationship between Sam and Jack in that episode is here: "Scorched Earth – an SG-1 Essay" by Fabrisse. Read it. I mean, if you don't mind going "oh, crap, this show has problems and it doesn't even realize it!" So, yeah. Go read it.)

In that episode, Sam argues that they shouldn't destroy the ship. She and Jack have quite a passionate fight about it--at least, verbally. The screencaps of the sequence in the Gateworld gallery of the episode start about here, and if you click through them you'll notice that they're both rather closed-off. There's an invisible line between them the whole time, except when Sam hands Jack the detonator or whatever that little gadget is called. They're both standing straight up, arms entirely within their own personal space. (The screencaps come really close together--I've never seen them miss even one name in the guest-starring X Y and Z credits, and some names in the guest-starring credits stick around for three caps. I think it's automated. So, no, the screencap where they stop arguing and start kissing passionately is not just not in the gallery, it is impossible to find.)

I looked for caps of other people arguing, strictly for purposes of comparison, but that was the only full-body argument scene I could find, period. I would bet that the (many) arguments, say, Jack and Daniel have are characterized by much more open body language, but since I can't actually find any proof of this, I'm not actually going to state it as a fact.

(What I really wish I had were photographs from the musical Wicked, for the song "What Is This Feeling"--that, o Stargate people, is how you block an antagonistic scene where the viewers are on the edge of their seats screaming "just kiss her already!")

In any case, the way to block an argument where there is simmering sexual tension often goes approximately as follows: Personal space boundaries? What are those? A and B don't stand there like two closed-off blocks of wood, they are dynamic! They lean into each other! It is close! personal! in-your-face! open! The arms are not folded, neither do they sort of dangle awkwardly at the sides! Gesture! Move! LEAN. HOLY HELL PEOPLE DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU HOW TO DO YOUR JOBS. There should never, ever be an invisible straight line clear down the middle of the argument, and the people should not just be standing there.
1.1.1.2: SG-1 4x10 "Beneath the Surface": [insert your favorite lame joke about subtext here].
For those of you ladies, gentlemen, nonbinaries, and time-traveling cyborgs without eidetic memories, "Beneath the Surface" is the episode where SG-1 ended up memorywiped and working in some sort of underground power plant as slave labor. It is also the episode about which one of the producers used the phrase "particular emotional beat" to describe the, um, Jack/Sam wtf. (Kami didn't believe me at first when I said that that phrase was actually used. Even though I said I was quoting verbatim.) [source]

Clearly, you say, once they started regaining their memories--of course they started regaining their memories, it was a one-episode plot--but before they remembered the non-fraternization regs, Sam and Jack would confess their feelings and maybe even act on them.

And you would be right! A good ways into the episode, the following conversation occurs:
Jack: Would it mean anything if I told you I remember something else?
Sam: What?
Jack: Feelings.
Sam: Feelings?
Jack: I remember feeling... feelings.
Sam: [smiles] For me?
(Kami: o_O That conversation is, like, 33% made up of the word 'feelings'.)
Jack: [teasingly] No, for Tor. ["Tor" is the name Teal'c was given in his new... self.]
Sam: [laughs; snuggles up to Jack]
Jack: I don't remember much, but I do remember that.
Sam: So...
Jack: So... I'm just saying.
Sam: Well, then I feel better.
Which is very romantic. Especially with the snuggling! TRULY THEIR EPIC FORBIDDEN ROMANCE IS ALIVE AND WELL.

Uh, right? Right?

Yeah, not so much, really. The snuggle is the most awkward, chemistryless snuggle I have ever seen in my life. Jack, who has just confessed to remembering having felt feelings*, spends the entire snuggle with his arms crossed in front of him. Sam does move one hand from in front of her to behind Jack, but at the angle she's leaning I think she's got the palm pressed on the ground for balance, and isn't using it for either embracing his torso or groping his ass, and she keeps the other hand in front of her. It's more a resting-head-on-shoulder than a snuggle.
* Is that grammatically correct? I hate verb tenses.

Don't believe me? Have a look. The Gateworld gallery sequence starts here, where Sam still has both her hands visible, and continues for a ridiculously long period of time. Furthermore, their expressions aren't particularly romantic, though I suppose you could argue that either way.

I'm not even done mocking the hell out of "Beneath the Surface", either. Their memories come back very slowly at first--dribs and drabs, flashes of words and images, initially in dreams. Tiny flickers of speech patterns. Sam herself never, as far as I could tell, explicitly admitted to remembering Jack, nor to feeling anything special for him. (Hah, you thought I was going to say... something else... didn't you? With glitter?) The only Jack-related memory we see her get back before the very end is when she accidentally, automatically calls him "sir".

[In 4x18 "The Light" she refuses to call Jack by his title or any other honorific, but at the time she was undergoing a neurochemical meltdown as a result of withdrawal from an odd alien effect. Left unchecked, the withdrawal ultimately induced suicidal depression, then, if the sufferer was prevented from acting on said impulses, actual death as a result of, well, said neurochemical meltdown. Before that, it caused extremely uncharacteristic examples of anger and general incivility. I would argue that her actions at the time may have been at least as much picking a fight as anything else. Just in case anyone was going to bring that up.]

There are lots of things the writers could have done with Sam's returning memories, even if they didn't want to have her recall any explicit emotional connection to Jack. They could have not done the "sir" thing, for one. They might have had her remember, or half-remember, his actual name, or something about him. Alternately, they could have had her dream about him--she dreamed of the Stargate, and of Stargate-related alphabet soup terms.

Oh, wait.

They couldn't have Sam dream about Jack, because they already used the dreaming-about-Jack card for Daniel.

...I'm just saying. In a stating-the-facts way. 99% of the time I don't actually believe in Jack/Daniel, but that doesn't stop me from thinking it makes a hell of a lot more sense than Jack/Sam. Hell, Jack/Teal'c makes more sense than Jack/Sam, even. Which... yeah. But, anyway, belief is not a mandatory prerequisite for shipping, so I am being very careful to not claim anything about the fact that Daniel's returning-memory dream involved Jack and the Stargate, because there are platonic explanations for that.

So, um. The memorywipe episode? Not so much with the epic forbidden romance. More the opposite, actually--Jack recalled some sort of apparent romantic interest in Sam, who was glad to hear it. They then... sat next to each other for a while. (In 3x11 "Past and Present", in which a planet full of people have lost their prior memories as a result of an event that occurred about a year before the episode started, one of the women there explains to Daniel that none of them have been able to be intimate because they're afraid they might regain their memories and discover that they were committing adultery and/or incest, or just sleeping with someone they would never have wanted to. Had they addressed this here in "Beneath the Surface", it would have been an interesting and consistent callback, and would have made sense as a reason to avoid anything other than sitting and leaning. As it was, this is very, very much something that literally occurred to me a few seconds ago, as I was about to say "there's no reason they shouldn't have at least kissed!")
1.1.1.3: "I care for her. More than I should.": well, freakin' DUH.
Ah, 4x05 "Divide and Conquer". Truly a marvelous episode, if by "marvelous" you mean "almost physically painful". It's almost as bad as 1x17 "Solitudes", which I was about ready to start gnawing my own limbs off to escape from. Pretty much the only thing that keeps "Divide and Conquer" from being actually that bad is that at least in the meantime Sam got less annoying. (It was really weird, actually--I went from actively disliking Sam to being totally fine with her literally between one episode and the next (specifically, 3x09 "Rules of Engagement" and 3x10 "Forever in a Day"), and I have no idea how or why.)

"Divide and Conquer" has some ugly, ugly, ugly implications. In it, Jack and Sam fail what is basically a more complex version of a lie-detector test, which suggests that they have been given false memories to cover up a time when they were programmed as Goa'uld assassins. (It actually makes sense in context.) The period of time which they seem to remember differently consciously than subconsciously was from 4x03 "Upgrades"--specifically, a point in time when Sam was trapped behind a force field in a Goa'uld ship which they'd rigged to explode in a few moments, and Jack stayed to try to get her out (by attacking the control panel) instead of going to save his own life.

As it turns out, they are not the programmed things, they are simply... "lying", i.e. concealing their personal feelings for each other.

I'll break this down for you, just in case:
  • Jack stayed to try to get Sam out because he loves her in a romantic way.
  • Sam didn't want Jack to stay--in a situation they had no reason to believe was survivable--because she loves him in a romantic way.
Therefore, by implication:
  • Jack would not have stayed to try to get Daniel or Teal'c out.
  • Sam would not have wanted Daniel or Teal'c to leave her to die so that at least they would live.
(Daniel and Teal'c, incidentally, went against Jack's direct orders, and remained well within the area that would be destroyed when the ship blew up, refusing to leave without Jack and Sam. This was another thing I just remembered as I was typing this--I was about to say, "This could be further suggested to imply that no member of SG-1 would take stupidly heroic risks for any other member of SG-1 unless he or she was romantically interested in the other one." And SG-1 runs on stupid heroics, at least half the time--most of the episodes probably wouldn't even happen if they followed normal protocol. Or they'd all be dead.)

(I actually think the implications are worse now that I've actually remembered that detail. The other way was just stupid; this makes Jack and Sam look like utter selfish asshats.)

And it's bad writing. It's really bad writing, against characterization--three and a half years before this, roughly (official statements indicate one year is about one season on the show), back while the characters had much weaker bonds to each other, SG-.75 apparently left Daniel to die. That's 1x12, "Fire and Water" aka the best episode ever because it has Daniel lecturing on ancient near eastern history while in wet clothes I AM SORRY FOR BEING SO SHALLOW BUT IT'S TRUE. Before they realize that their memories have been altered, and that Daniel is actually, um, still on the planet and not dead (as far as they know), they're all grieving. They were in shock when they returned from the planet, though that may have been a side effect of the memory-alteration. Sam breaks down in sobbing hysterics when she realizes what really happened. And, most relevantly, Jack goes completely batshit, smashes up General Hammond's car with a hockey stick, and plans to resign from the SGC.

Yeah, he deals well with leaving people to die.

Again, this was three and a half years, roughly, before "Upgrades"--three and a half years in which they got closer and closer as a team, and saved the world several times, and underwent extremely upsetting experiences together, and were among the very few people in the world who could understand each other.

To the writers implying that Jack would have been totally fine leaving anyone on SG-1 to die as long as he wasn't romantically interested in them, and that Sam would have been fine with anyone on SG-1 dying while trying to save her when she knew (well, believed) that there was no chance at all that they'd succeed as long as she wasn't romantically interested in them, I've got one word for you: BULLSHIT.

The people of SG-1 (team, not show, though show to an extent) are not that reasonable. Which is actually why I think it's so unintentionally telling that Jack says he cares for Sam more than he should, instead of that he loves her, or anything else like that--of course he cares for her more than he should. He cares for Daniel more than he should, too (handy hint: most military commanders, especially those with actual wartime experience, don't go mental and start breaking their CO's stuff and decide to resign when they lose a man). And Teal'c? He invited Teal'c to join SG-1 in the same episode that Teal'c betrayed Apophis to save SG-1 (having previously taken Daniel's wife and Jack's protegé off to become Goa'uld hosts), which is just so far from standard military policy that I'm pretty sure it couldn't see it with a telescope.

Trying to make this about eros, not the blend of philia and agape that I would argue the Stargate protagonists form for each other, cheapens it.

(In anticipation of an argument someone could make on reading me arguing the opposite way in section 2.2: the "Upgrades"/"Divide and Conquer" scenario was something which I would hope any hero or heroine of any story I'm watching or reading, especially one which is actually designed to give us an Us and a Them, to do for a close friend and comrade. The "Trinity" scenario was something which, quite frankly, was stupid. Inaction in "Upgrades" would have been abandoning a friend to die; inaction in "Trinity" would have been continuing as normal, or as close to normal as is possible under the circumstances.)
1.1.1.4: Science vs. Fishing: opposites, uh, attract?
This one's a short section (all together now, ladies, gentlemen, nonbinaries, and time-traveling cyborgs: "thank goodness!"). The general gist of said section is that Jack and Sam don't actually have anything in common other than that they are both Air Force officers who work in the Stargate program.

The exchanges where Jack invites Sam to go fishing with him at his cabin in Minnesota, and she refuses, saying she'd rather work on some science experiments (3x22 "Nemesis" and 4x13 "The Curse") are just... seriously, have any of these writers ever been involved with anyone? I paraphrase, but this is approximately how the conversation goes, both times:
Jack: Hey, Carter, do you want to come cross-country with me for vacation and fishing?
Sam: Oh, no thanks, sir, I'd rather stay here and do science experiments, now that I have some time to relax.
Jack: Science experiments are a really weird thing to do for fun, Carter.
Sam: Yes, sir. I like it, though. ...Enjoy your, uh, fishing trip.

So, okay. Two things.

First, they really don't have anything in common. I'm not sure Sam has a social life at all; she's also refused on at least one other occasion (I can't remember the episode, but Jack and Daniel(?) bet on it, and claimed that the bet was about the results of a curling game when asked). Jack is a lot less serious and all-business than Sam. I really, honestly don't think they have much of anything at all in common. Furthermore, they don't seem to understand how the other can enjoy the things the other does, in fact, enjoy.

Second, she'd rather do science than go on vacation with him--possibly just him--to a cosy, isolated spot that looks rather gorgeous from what we've seen of it.

...I'm just saying. To Sam, science > Jack. This, ladies, gents, nonbinaries, and cyborgs, is a bad sign for a relationship.
A few more miscellaneous thoughts, just before we close this section:

I'm willing to forgive the demi-sexist idiot Jack turned into during his, um, flirtatious banter with Sam in 1x03 "Emancipation" because, and only because, it was only the third episode. Later episodes don't get as much of that excuse, but they also have somewhat fewer problems, to a lesser degree, so.

In 1x17 "Solitudes", when Jack is dying, he calls Sam by his ex-wife's name. When we first met his ex-wife, in 1x06 "Cold Lazarus", she looks enough like Sam from some angles that I thought she was Sam for the first few seconds. I'm just saying, that's a little... not the best foundation for a relationship.

4x20 "Entity" has Sam possessed by a computer-like sentience, which picked Sam because "you" (thanks to the vanishing of the t/v distinction in modern English, it's unclear whether "you" refers to everyone at the SGC, or is a "thou" directed at Jack, to whom the entity is speaking, or somewhere in between) care about her too much to kill her to destroy the entity. It was cringe-inducingly awkward--this is the sort of thing that the writers do to show the epic forbidden romance, and the fact that if it had been anyone else the entity was speaking through (even Daniel, though I would have snickered rather a lot and pretended the opposite) I would have instantly assumed the entity was intended to mean "you" and not "thou". See my previous complaint about eros vs. philia/agape.

Jack and Sam hardly, if ever, touch. This could go either way--it might be that they're afraid that if they touch casually they won't be able to stop [there's a brilliant SGA fic, "Eight Ways John and Rodney Gave Themselves Away" by [livejournal.com profile] trinityofone where one of the ways (the way Elizabeth figured it out) is that they very noticeably avoided touching in public, so it would be complete hypocrisy for me to argue--since, as I said, the fic is brilliant--that the exact same thing for a pairing I think is stupid means the opposite. Also, I seem to recall a fic somewhere that explains either Daniel or John's very definite personal space bubble as him being so incredibly sensitive (*ahem*) to tactile stimuli that it's a bad idea to have people touching him all the time. So, you know. Reasons could exist.]. On the other hand, some of the moments of Jack touching Daniel people affectionately are just adorable, so, uh.Whenever Jack and Sam have any sort of actual even slightly cute or chemical moment, it looks like an accident, like the writers forgot they were supposed to be involved. When this happens, and it isn't weirdly forced, they can be kind of cute.

1.1.2: John Sheppard and Teyla Emmagan: if it ain't {is} broke, don't fix it.{?!}
This is shorter. This really is. I promise. A lot shorter, even. The problem with John and Teyla boils down to the fact that I don't believe it. The actors have chemistry, the director did a good job with the blocking and music and such (check out the scene in SGA 1x01 "Rising, Part 1" where he puts the pendant on her--fantastic), all that.

It's just... I don't believe it, and I'm glad that most of the time they're not horribly awkward about it. Of course, that makes the moments when they are utterly painful, but...

Teyla is wicked awesome. She is also calm, controlled, really badass, and mature. John, who is sekritly twelve and is more stupidly (yet awesomely) heroic than actually badass, is really not the sort of person I can imagine her choosing as a partner. There are a lot of incidents where she has this... "oh, Earthlings" facial expression. Or where she is very obviously doing what Kami and I have decided is going to her mental happy place because listening to John and Rodney be sekritly twelve is just too much of a strain. (It's a very difficult expression to find in screencaps, because, Teyla being Teyla, she doesn't hold it visibly for long. This cap from 1x13 "Hot Zone" isn't far off, though--it's from a scene which Kami and I noted at the time had her reacting that way, and it's almost at the right time, say a second off one way or another.)

The other thing about John, in relation to Teyla, is that--I had a bit of a hard time articulating this, when Kami and I first started trying to figure it out, but the way I finally figured it is something like this: if John were a farmer or a scholar or something, the fact that she can (when he's not all drugged-up on alien bug DNA or whatever) kick his ass without even trying wouldn't be a big deal, because it wouldn't be what he was supposed to be doing with his life. Since, however, he's career military, that translates into, um, something it's difficult to see her settling for, since it's that she can regularly seeing him being somewhat lolfail at something he's supposed to be good at.

(John is also awesome, I'm not saying he's not, I'm just saying that [assuming that he's attracted to women and Teyla's attracted to men] she's a lot more likely to go "does not meet standards" about the other than he is. Also, Teyla+sticks=OTPish win.)

It doesn't make sense. There's nothing incredibly wtfy about it the way there so often is about Sam and Jack; we don't know for a fact that they have nothing in common other than their job; even if their job is all they have, it's a lot more absorbing for John (see: living in another galaxy) than I think it can possibly be for Jack and Sam... But... it really, really doesn't make sense. Just because it isn't obviously wrong doesn't mean it's right.

...that, and John is the only character on either show so far to come across to me as an honest-to-goodness Kinsey 6*. You know that quote from Good Omens (novel by Sir Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman about the apocalypse, which is somehow bloody hilarious--if you haven't read it yet, go do so ASAP), "gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide"? John. Well, to me, anyway. I'm not proposing it as actual evidence because that's not actual, uh, general consensus, but I do feel sort of obliged to point it out. (And yes, I know there are girrrls in the show with whom he gets glowy or whatever. I say, my reaction of sheer "what the hell" to that is part of where the Kinsey 6 opinion came from--it's just so bizarre to see him with someone female in that sort of context.)
* blah blah outdated science blah questionable research methods blah 1950s blah blah YES I KNOW OKAY IT IS CONVENIENT SHORTHAND. Less convenient when I feel compelled to footnote it in explanation.

Anyway, I am very glad the writers never actually went and hooked them up, though Teyla's SURPRISE HUSBAND was, from what I could tell, sort of wtf all on its own.
1.2: Rodney McKay and Some Nice, Sweet Girl: because this makes perfect sense.
Rodney's type--and I address this later--was established when he was a minor antagonist on SG-1 as being kind of ridiculously interested in Sam Carter. In SGA 1x17 "Letters from Pegasus", he goes on to rave enthusiastically about (a) short-haired blondes and (b) his nightly fantasies about Sam (oh, Rodney, you really are terrible with people. *squishes affectionately*). The only pre-Katie girl in actual SGA itself we've seen him go for so far was Allina from 1x16 "The Brotherhood". She was (a) intelligent and (b) part of a cult determined to keep him from his ZPM, not that Rodney knew that at the time. But, um, not so much with the nice. Sam herself is not exactly what one would call sweet. (I think, actually, the writers were so determined to keep her from being The Girl that, especially in early seasons, they surgically excised her compassion and gave it to Daniel, but that's another essay.)

Both of Rodney's actual girlfriends are very sweet, somewhat fragile people. In theory. I haven't actually met Jennifer yet, but Kami's seen some s5 episodes which are currently (re-)airing in Australia, and I hear that "sweet" sometimes turns into "incredibly freaking obnoxious", due to writerfail. But Katie's adorable, in a clueless way. I kind of want to give her a hug and tell her everything is going to be okay.

Sidenote: I have no idea whether this is actual canon, and if so where it appears, but if it's fanon it's the most widespread piece of it I have ever seen--Rodney may or may not consider botany one of the "soft sciences", and therefore scorn it. It is clear in SGA that he thinks medicine is not actually as awesome as 'real' science--he's called it "voodoo" multiple times. Sam, of course, is an astrophysicist or something like that (same as Rodney, apparently?), when she's not being an omnidisciplinary scientist for budget and plot reasons.
1.2.1: Katie Brown, who is adorable and optimistic
Poor Katie. I read the script for 4x13 "Quarantine" yesterday while I was trying to figure out when she had come to Atlantis, and... she just has no idea what to do with Rodney when he's freaking out. (And poor Rodney, because she has no idea what to do with him when he's freaking out.)

I react badly to extreme stress, and there are some responses that make it a lot worse. From what I can tell, one of Rodney's DO NOT WANTs is general, platitude-like "everything's going to be fine", which seems to be Katie's response to disaster. Their scenes in "Quarantine" were painful, because I sort of got both perspectives, and... there was no way it was going to end well. The Pegasus Galaxy is a high-stress environment, but I don't see Rodney ever leaving it for srs, as much as he complains about it, because... really, if he meant even a fraction of what he'd said about it, he would have left with the Daedalus when it first showed up. So whoever he ends up spending his life with (be it a romantic partner or simply a very close friend or group of friends) is going to have to be able to deal with him when he's like that, and help him deal with the situation. Katie and Rodney were spiralling down together, making each other worse.

Also, she's really just too damn sweet for him. Rodney is not exactly Mr. Sunshine--whether you believe he has an inner heart of gold or not, on the outside, 99% of the time, he is a whiny, snarky, rude person with terrible people skills. (Don't get me wrong. I adore Rodney. Doesn't mean I can't recognize that he has some distinct issues when it comes to interacting with people.) He needs someone who will (a) not put up with his flaws when they're interfering with life, (b) not mind them whether or not they're interfering, and (c) not sort of emanate waves of white-picket-fence-and-2.5-kids.

(Actually I'm not sure why I imagine Katie with kids. She's certainly passionate about her work, so it's not like I see her becoming a housewife. But she's that sweet kind of normal, that makes you think white-picket-fence-and-2.5-kids, you know?)

Also also: botanist. (It is sort of my mental canon that the day Sam Carter got to Atlantis and Rodney completely crashed and burned at trying to be suave, he tried to get Katie to talk math in bed, and she just stared at him in a completely clueless fashion, and then tried, really awkwardly, because he wanted her to and it wasn't like it was a problem as such, just really weird, and she wanted him to be happy.)

(It is also sort of my mental canon that Rodney might have a bit of a math/physics fetish. In case you hadn't figured that out from the previous parenthetical.)

(...yes, I'm weird. You're just figuring this out now?)
1.2.2: Jennifer Keller, who sort of had a thing going with Ronon
Depending on how they [Jennifer and Ronon, that is] actually interact onscreen, this one might get invalidated. However. While I was reading the "Quarantine" script, they interacted really really well on paper.

Kami, who saw a s5 episode where Rodney and Ronon had a spectacularly and painfully wtf-awkward conversation about their Shared Affections For Jennifer, said that it was so bad that she started mentally shipping the two of them because it was the only way she could distract herself from the wtfness of the conversation.

From what I can tell, Jennifer is supposed to be ... basically Carson Beckett but a girl and not Scottish. Very nice, a little bit apprehensive about the Big Scary Pegasus Galaxy, that sort of thing. She is also completely brand-new at the whole being-in-charge-of-a-medical-department thing (again, from what I can tell).

Okay. See the section on Katie Brown for me addressing the "sweet/nice" thing.

Secondly: she is how young?

Thirdly: Rodney does not respect her field. We've seen this over and over and over with his interactions with Carson.

Fourthly: um, I don't know about you, but if my so-called best friend (see "Section 3: Not-Romance: you're doing that wrong, too.") exploded messily and got replaced by some random newbie, I would not be 100% comfortable with the random newbie.

Fifthy: also Jennifer is years younger than Rodney. Like, a lot of years. I seriously think she's probably supposed to be around fifteen years younger than he is. Which is a little weird.

There may be a vast expansion on this section when I actually get around to watching Jennifery episodes, because I have heard there's some truly appalling character derailment of Rodney once he and Jennifer hook up. SO MUCH TO LOOK FORWARD TO.
1.3: The Writers and Sam Carter: making the audience weep since 1997.
It isn't that Sam Carter is the only recurring character on SG-1 (the show, natch, not the team, since everyone on the team is a recurring character (except that one time they had Rothman in the episode that didn't happen [3x10 "Forever in a Day"] or that time they had Makepeace in the episode that did happen [3x18 "Shades of Grey"--and can I just briefly adore them for being Canadian? thanks], but my point remains))--uh, the only character on SG-1 to have (in)significant others.

The movie, in fact, was (partly) about Daniel and Sha'uri: boy meets girl, girl is freaking awesome, boy loses girl, boy sticks girl in an alien device, boy gets girl back, boy and girl live happily ever after. Except, um, not, because there was Stargate SG-1 after Stargate, and we all know what happened to her, so not so much with the happily ever after after all, which is a real shame because she was amazing and I love her. (For those not getting the awesomeness that is Sha'uri/Sha're, there are two excellent essays on her here (on Sha'uri in the movie) and here (on Sha're in the series), both by [livejournal.com profile] sg_fignewton, if you'd care to go take a look. Blah blah I stand on the shoulders of giants blah not going to reinvent the wheel every paragraph of this essay because it is appallingly long already blah okay?)

s1 gives us Sha're as destination and goal--obviously relying on her relationship with a non-Sam member of SG-1--as well as Jack trying to relearn how to relate to his wife (1x06, "Cold Lazarus") [and yes, I'm aware that the episode was more about him and his son, but you couldn't watch that episode and not take away some sort of "Jack and Sara have some unresolved issues going on and cared about each other very deeply"]. Also on the subject of Jack and Sara, while he was dying in Antarctica in 1x17 "Solitudes", he thought Sam was Sara, and when she answered him as if she were it seemed to bring him some sort of peace, though that might just have been the massive internal injuries and general imminent death giving the illusion of peace. We also get Teal'c's reunion with his wife in 1x11 "Bloodlines".

"But, Kate," you say, "isn't what you're suggesting some sort of indication that Sam isn't super-special? You haven't even gotten to the Alien Girls of the Week! Or later seasons!"

Give me a chance to finish, okay? I also bring up Kynthia of 1x08 "Brief Candle" (married Jack without his knowledge--what was I saying about the writers and accidental marriages, again?), the eponymous Hathor of 1x13 (who chemically hypnotized and raped Daniel, as well as chemically hypnotizing every other man on the base), and... that's it for s1.

s2 gives us Shyla of 2x05 "Need" (who seduces Daniel, gets him addicted to the effects of the Goa'uld sarcophagus her father owns, and intends to marry him), then reminds us in 2x08 "Family" and in 2x09 "Secrets" that Teal'c and Daniel, respectively, are married and care deeply about their wives.

s3 returns Sha're to us in one more episode, 3x10 "Forever in a Day", where she dies (see the second essay I linked in the paragraph on the movie), and then, in a moment of spectacular poor taste, uses the very next episode, "Past and Present", to involve Daniel with an Alien Girl of the Week named Ke'ra, who--well, she definitely kisses him at random without asking, and it's spectacularly faily and awkward and insensitive and just no, writers. In 3x17 "A Hundred Days", Jack gets stranded on an alien planet and forms what's actually under the circumstances a fairly believable relationship with an Alien Woman of the Three Months named Laira. I actually liked them together.

s4. Anise and Freya (Anise, incidentally, is the Tok'ra symbiote; Freya is the host--no it makes no sense, I know), introduced in 4x03 "Upgrades", admits in 4x05 "Divide and Conquer" to a very complicated attraction--Anise is "intellectually" interested in Daniel (intellectually, my ass), and Freya is interested in Jack. Between those two episodes, in 4x04 "Crossroads", Teal'c meets some special woman from his past, and they have a brief interlude. In 4x10 "Beneath the Surface", Daniel seems to be involved, while memorywiped, with someone known as Kegan. 4x13 "The Curse" introduces us to Daniel lecturing on Egyptology while wearing a very nice suit Daniel's ex-girlfriend, Sarah. (Sidenote: really, Stargate writers? Really? Did you forget you already had a Sara?)

I'm excluding all the ambiguous instances, incidentally--places where it looks like there might be some sort of flirtation or interest, but it's, um, ambiguous.

I also feel obliged to mention Vala Mal Doran in this list, though she doesn't show up for I'm not even sure how many seasons.

The tally:
Jack: one ex-wife, three girls-of-the-week [I exclude Hathor, though her influence over him was sexual, since it wasn't personal]
Daniel: one wife, six girls-of-the-week [I include Anise, yes.], later one serious recurring girlfriend or whatever Vala is
Teal'c: one wife, one girl-of-the-week
(Jack also gets one alt-reality fiancée and one alt-reality widow; see below)

"Kaaaate," you're saying, "I don't see what any of this has to do with Sam!"

Hold your horses, ladies, gentlemen, nonbinaries, and time-traveling cyborgs, and keep your shirts on (unless you'd rather not, I guess, or unless you cyborgs don't do the clothes thing). I just wanted to establish that I am fully aware that Sam is far from the only person to have persons-of-the-week. (She's also the only member of SG-1 who's never been married.)

Her relationship with Jack in our universe has already been addressed. It got its own section. It got over three and a half thousand words of its own section, in fact, not counting the segment comparing the Jack/Sam and John/Teyla wtf.

In 1x03 "Emancipation", two episodes after Daniel has lost his wife (who is, um, still alive out there, and whom Daniel joined the SGC in order to find and rescue), he is inexplicably fawning all over Sam. "Emancipation" pisses me off so much in a sort of general writerly stupidity way--it's the one with the not-Mongols, and Sam getting put in a really weird blue dress and kidnapped and sold into slavery, if you're having a hard time remembering. However, this isn't the general SG-1 recap, so I won't go into details here. Daniel and Jack are not the only ones to be fawning--all the aliens seem to think she's the most gorgeous female they have ever seen, omg. And then with the kidnapping and the selling and all that. Apparently she is worth the price of six women.

1x05 "The First Commandment" has a renegade SG-something member who's having delusions of godhood and killing people try to set Sam up as his goddess and consort.

1x16 "Enigma" introduces Narim, a member of a super-advanced civilization known as the Tollan, who decides Sam is the most wonderful person ever. She gives him a cat and offers to explain how beds work (*ahem* no, seriously); he almost breaks his people's Serious Laws to talk to her about physics more advanced than any we mere humans know, and then when he departs gives her an emotion recording of his Epic And True Love for her. (Which, apparently, actually is Epic And True--did I cover the bit where the Tollans were only on Earth for a very short period of time? Realism what?)

1x19 "There But for the Grace of God" flings Daniel to a parallel universe where General O'Neill--in charge of the SGC--is engaged to Dr. Samantha Carter, who has stupid hair. (I'm sorry, she does.) Uh, also, Earth is for-srs doomed, and Teal'c is leading the invading forces. And Daniel doesn't exist in this universe. I wonder if there could be a connection. (Actually, there's an essay as such on the subject of the Jack/Sam AUs here: "But for the One – Story Notes" by PhoenixE. I haven't read the story, but the essay makes some excellent points about Daniel and the universe in which our show is set.) "TBftGoG" also introduces the wtf tell-don't-show at lolrandom:
[Dr. Sam and General Jack kiss. Daniel, utterly bemused, looks at Catherine Langford.]
Catherine: I take it they're not engaged in your reality?
Daniel: ...no.
[Everyone goes back to the plot.]
Good job, Stargate writers, that didn't look or sound enormously forced at all! It was subtle! Delicate! Realistic! Totally and completely uncontrived! The genuineness of the engagement shone through our screens, as Dr. Sam and General Jack clearly appeared to be involved even before the random kiss and "oh hey engaged"! </sarcasm>

2x11 and 2x12 "The Tok'ra", parts 1&2, introduce us to Martouf and Lantash (Martouf, host; Lantash, Tok'ra symbiote), who had been involved with the Tok'ra symbiote who briefly inhabited Sam. Sam is kind of confused about the whole thing, but they wish to get to know her better. It's, um, a bit less creepy than it sounds, not that that's saying too much--but I liked Martouf, for what that's worth, so they somehow managed not to fail too epically at it.

For a while, the Tok'ra are basically the SGC's "well, we're in trouble, maybe the Tok'ra can come save our sorry butts", which is probably partly due to Sam's father's new status as a Tok'ra host, partly to Anise and Freya's interest in Daniel and Jack, and partly to Martouf and Lantash's interest in Sam and what she has left of Jolinar.

The Tollan are also... well, they're not allies, because they have this thing about humans, but they're definitely extremely useful in theory, and they do continue to interact with SG-1 to an extent.

3x02 "Seth" may or may not have had Sam briefly become part of a harem. It's ambiguous, and the plot got back underway before anything happened, either way.

3x06 "Point of View" gives us another alternate reality where Jack O'Neill and Dr. Samatha Carter are--in this one--married. Well, widowed, as the case may be; alt-Jack is dead and Earth is (SURPRISE!) doomed. (Also SURPRISE!: Teal'c is still working for Apophis, leading the attack on Earth; Daniel is not at all connected to the SGC, and is quite possibly dead.) In this one, it isn't dropped in at random--Dr. Sam spends practically the whole episode weeping over alt-Jack, when she's not sciencing or breaking due to entropic cascade stuff. (See the essay I linked above, under 1x19, for a discussion of the alt-realities.)

3x12 and 3x13 "Jolinar's Memories" and "The Devil You Know", remind us of Sam's plot-important and touching relationship with Martouf. (This is one of the things they somehow, against all odds, did right.)

3x15 "Pretense" reminds us that Narim also exists. He's still courting Sam.

4x05 "Divide and Conquer" has Martouf die at Sam's hand (well, zat gun) as a result of plot, and Sam appears to be overwhelmed with grief at his death.

4x16 "2010" gives us a future Sam from what turns out to become a different reality, but starts as our own reality, who's married to an ambassador named Joe Faxon, who, in our reality, also exists and sacrifices himself for Sam (5x10 "2001"). Actually, I'm not entirely sure Jack isn't also interested in her in that reality--he certainly seems to hate her husband, and she certainly seems to think she can persuade him to participate in the episode's plot better than anyone else can.

In future episodes, Sam
a) meets Rodney McKay [see section 2.1]
b) gets engaged to her brother's friend Pete Shanahan, which lasts for quite a while (7x15 "Chimera" to 8x18 "Threads")
c) according to Amanda Tapping and Christopher Judge, got into a relationship with Teal'c during the series finale (10x20 "Unending") [see section 2.6]
d) goes to Atlantis [see me flipping the fuck out in the next section, 1.3.1]

Final tally:
Our reality: 1 alien civilization; 1 fiancé; 2 multiple-episode, multiple-season quasi-boyfriends; at least 3 multi-episode admirers; 1 separate and distinct instance of wtfsensitivityfail (Daniel's reaction in "Emancipation"--really, writers?).
Alternate realities: 1 fiancé, 2 husbands, 1 admirer (maybe, depending on your interpretation of "2010"), 1 whatever Teal'c was in "Unending".

*ahem*

It's not just that she has more people after her than anyone else, in more realities. It's that they recur more often, possibly solve more problems than they cause [the only person with even close to the number of __s of the Week to Sam is Daniel: two of his girls-of-the-week are episode villains; one almost gets him, Jack, and Sam killed (Anise, "Upgrades"); two get Goa'ulded and try to kill him and others and are recurring antagonists.], and... yeah.

...we're not even getting into the writers' adoration with Sam as not expressed through Boys of the Week. I could mutter darkly about proportional screentime and the like, but it's irrelevant to this argument. Also irrelevant to this argument: gender roles as portrayed stereotypically in SG-1, where it's apparently not okay for a female to have a one-night episode stand, but it's fine for a male to.
1.3.1: Radek Zelenka and the Interchangeable Female Leader of Atlantis
I think I scared Kami when I found this out. I was reading through the transcript for SGA 4x13 "Quarantine" the day before yesterday, and I discovered that, um... well, here, you can see for yourself. Basically, "Quarantine" is about a mechanical glitch that sends Atlantis into freakout mode and isolates everyone in little quarantined areas. Sam and Zelenka are stuck in a transporter, which had me sort of mentally rolling my eyes to begin with, not because I actually thought the incompetent morons in the writing department were going there, but just because. They science. It's cute, actually, in an "eee science!" way. I approve of sciencing. Anyway, the transcript passages come copied verbatim, except for my altering the names for essay-internal consistency, from the Gateworld transcript I linked, and are all I know about the episode--I haven't seen it; I can't tell you whether it's actually as bad as it sounds. Uh, well, the "[...]" isn't verbatim, but you could probably figure that out.
TRANSPORTER. As Sam continues to work on the computer tablet which is now plugged into the crystal tray, Zelenka sighs. The small space has become hot and so he takes his jacket off. Sam looks at him.
Sam: Oh, that's a good idea.
(She puts the tablet down, unzips her own jacket and takes it off. Zelenka, who has just dropped his jacket to the floor, turns back to find himself staring down Sam's cleavage. Still looking down at the tablet, Sam is unaware of it as he looks awkward and turns away. She drops her jacket to the floor, pushes up her sleeves and pulls her collar out and flaps it for a moment to get some air inside her top.)
Sam: Okay, much better.
(She picks up the tablet again. Zelenka pulls his own top away from his chest and flaps it to try to cool himself down – not just from the heat.)
Zelenka: Yes, much better(!)
[...]
VENTILATION FLUE. Dragging himself along the narrow shaft, Zelenka mutters to himself.
Zelenka: “I'll have the power off in no time.” (In Czech) Jesus, that's unbelievable. I'm such a moron. She'll think I'm a total idiot.

me: I THINK I HAVE TO GO AND LIKE KILL THE WRITERS OR SOMETHING.
Kami: *is terrified*
me: Freaking absolute and utter hell.
Kami: *is really, really terrified*
me: Uh, Zelenka spends the whole episode drooling over Sam Carter. Or something like that.
Kami: ...
me: WHAT.
me: THE.
me: FUCK.
Kami: D:
me: I MEAN SERIOUSLY WERE THEY HIGH. OR DO THEY HAVE SOME LITTLE BUTTON IN THEIR HEADS GOING "ZELENKA MUST HAVE AN UNREQUITED CRUSH ON THE CHICK RUNNING ATLANTIS." I mean, what the fuck.

(Sam-related writerfail is pretty much the only thing about Stargate that gets me swearing like that. I do apologize to any of you who were offended.)

Look. Writers. Dearest, darlingest, most precious and beloved and adored writers, you managed to get one thing--ONE! THING!--right, relationshipwise, in SGA. EVERYTHING ELSE YOU EPICALLY SCREWED UP. NOW YOU ARE TAKING THAT ONE THING AND BREAKING IT IN THE MOST SENSELESS, IDIOTIC, SAM-ADORING WAY EVER.

I discuss Zelenka's feelings for Elizabeth in section 2.3.1, but, to summarize here as to why this is phenomenally epic-faily even for epic fail, it goes like this:
Sam Carter took over command of Atlantis a few months ago, after Elizabeth disappeared, in a taken-by-enemies way [see also: Sha're]. From what I can tell, there was initially no confirmation that she was dead, or even effectively dead. (In fine point of fact, there was never an official statement that she was finally and absolutely, irrevocably dead.) She was gone, she was currently not on their side [see also: Sha're], but she was not dead [see also: Sha're], and this was only a short while ago [see also: SG-1 1x03 "Emancipation". The writers just ooze sensitivity when it comes to Sam and recently-bereaved guys.].

THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL THIS IS NOT STUPID.

SERIOUSLY. WERE THEY DRUNK AT THE TIME. THAT IS AN ACTUAL, SINCERE, HONEST QUESTION. I AM NOT IMPLYING THAT THEY WERE ON ANY ILLEGAL SUBSTANCES, BUT I AM NOT SURE THEY WERE IN FULL POSSESSION OF THEIR SENSES.

2: Romance: you're doing it right. By accident.
Really, I think the reason there's so much slashfic in the Stargate fandoms is that they're just so spectacularly bad at writing relationships of any sort that the romances don't come across as romantic and the friendships... do. That, plus the fact that most of the main characters are male... well. Slash.

(This is not to say that the female characters they have aren't more than slightly awesome. It's just there aren't many of them--and, actually, stopping and thinking about it, and realizing just how few there are, is kind of a shock. Kami and I were discussing SGA non-canon het at some point when we were partway through s1, and we were trying to figure out who the (named) females on Atlantis were. We thought of three: Elizabeth Weir, Teyla Emmagan, and Dr. Simpson from 1x04 "Thirty-Eight Minutes". Later on in s1 there's also Miko, from 1x17 "Letters from Pegasus", as well as some medics, and one doctor or something with lines and the two scientists who die at the beginning of 1x13 "Hot Zone".)

In any case, there are a lot of accidentally (or something) romantic interactions in SGA, and, to a lesser extent, in SG-1. In addition to those, there's one--which I'm going to address first because it happened, chronologically, first--which was deliberate, but which they weren't paying any attention to anyway.

To an extent I am going to be arguing that these exist, but only to an extent. I'm not actually trying to convince anyone of them, I'm just focusing on the points that to me display the writers' ability to actually have any idea what in God's green ninety hells they were doing, if, y'know, they hadn't been attempting to wander around in the blue eighty hells doing something else. Or, uh, something along those lines.
2.1: Sam Carter and Rodney McKay: she makes way more sense than either of his canon girlfriends.
Not "way more sense than anyone", but "way more sense than either of his canon girlfriends". Just to clarify. I haven't seen them interact at all yet, but I find it completely believable that Rodney does, in fact, have the feelings for her that it's apparent he does (see SGA 1x17 "Letters from Pegasus", of the episodes I've seen so far--also, his interactions with her in SG-1, and the really spectacularly awkward exchange between him and Sam in SGA 4x03 "Reunion", which I haven't seen but I went research-transcript-hunting for).

Rodney is an intellectual elitist. He's arrogant, which he gets away with because he actually is just about as brilliant as he says he is. (Quote from 5x16 "Brain Storm": "I'm Dr. Rodney McKay, all right? 'Difficult' takes a few seconds; 'impossible', a few minutes.") When he's insulting people, he goes for their intelligence--which, granted, when most of the people he works with make their livings from of their mental abilities, and to a quite literal degree live for that (I would for damn sure not just wander off to another galaxy for the sake of my job, not on what's potentially a one-way trip, nor would I stay there once the life-sucking aliens showed up), is a fairly good way of hitting something important to the person without much effort. But still, I don't think anyone's actually in doubt about the intellectual elitism thing.

Sam is brilliant. Whether or not she started off as brilliant, or whether that was one of those Sam things the writers did, as Stargate SG-1 progressed, there became fewer and fewer science things she couldn't do, regardless of, um, whether or not they actually had anything to do with her field. (Remember her field? She's a theoretical astrophysicist. That's how she's introduced in 1x01 "Children of the Gods". She then proceeds to do everything else even vaguely scientific ever that isn't archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, or midwifery. Daniel gets to do those.) She is the expert on the Stargate, or at least she was at the beginning of SG-1, and I see no reason at all why the writers would change that, given their collective crush on her.

In addition to her intellect, she's (as of around mid-s3 of SG-1) a pleasant person, good at what she does and everything else, competent, level-headed (most of the time), and quite attractive. Exceptions to the last-named point on the list include that horrible shot of her in aqua eyeliner they have in the credits, but most of the rest of the time she's definitely pretty. (I think, actually, she's one of the people who looks better not in tons of makeup and the like, which is convenient if you're an intergalactic explorer, soldier, and scientist.)

So, no, I don't find it at all weird that Rodney is interested in her. Unlike his canon girlfriends, it makes sense: she's smart, she's hot, she's protagonist-quality capable, she's sure as hell not sweet. (Kami tells me that in SGA 5x06 "The Shrine" Jennifer went into some sort of nonfunctioning breakdown or something over Rodney's fate. I direct you, for comparison, to SG-1 2x07 "Message in a Bottle", where Sam was frantically sciencing to try to save Jack's life when he got weird-alien-deviced, or 3x17 "A Hundred Days", where Sam basically goes "he's stuck on the other side of a blocked and buried wormhole and it might take a year for my not-boyfriend's spaceship* to get there to pick him up? screw that! I'm building a particle beam generator all by myself if I have to break the goddamn laws of physics to do it!" and, lo and behold, succeeds. Sam Carter: she doesn't screw around wasting time with the wailing and gnashing of teeth.)
* Well, the Tollan, the episode said--Daniel contacted them and the Tok'ra, and the Tollan said they could get there in about a year--but, come on, the only person of the Tollan we'd ever met who didn't actively view humans with a sort of contempt was Narim.

...I feel sort of unclean. I just made a long argument apparently in favor of Sam/Rodney.

Um. But, anyway, this was Not To Be, because Rodney was an SG-1 character before he was one of the heroes of SGA, and as an SG-1 character was subject to the following laws of the universe:
  1. Sam Carter is golden. Anyone who disagrees with Sam Carter is a heretic who must be shunned, and, if they dare disagree a second time, must be tarred, feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail. By which I think I apparently mean "traded to the Russians for a DHD"--I'm torn between commending Daniel for his diplomatic talents, and smacking him upside the head for trading poor Rodney. (And I really wish I knew the context of that one, as opposed to just having read it in passing...)
  2. There is no point in paying a guest actor good money to stand there and agree with any of the protagonists. Therefore, any scientist who is there on a consulting job must disagree on some point with Sam Carter.
  3. See 1. Any scientist who is there on a consulting job is wrong and evil and wicked.
    4. (Now I feel really unclean. Back in a second, sending a shipment of coffee and chocolate off to the Pegasus Galaxy as an apology.)
  4. Jack O'Neill and Sam Carter were Meant To Be. Even though Amanda Tapping apparently thinks this is total bull [seriously, anyone who can find me that quote about 10x20 "Unending", I will love you forever, because I kind of need it. Or need to know I imagined it and therefore stop referencing it]. Our universe is Silly and Bad and Wrong because there are military regs preventing this, but in every universe where Sam was just Doctor Samantha Carter, as opposed to Captain Major Lieutenant Colonel Colonel Doctor Samantha Carter, decorated hero, the Right And True Way Things Were Meant To Be can happen. (For those of you just tuning in, that means basically everyone dies and Earth gets either taken over by the Goa'uld or is only prevented from being taken over by the Goa'uld by a literal deus ex machina brought about by, uh, our SG-1 from the universe with military Sam.)
  5. Anyone who both disagrees with Sam Carter and dares to wish something other than the Epic and Destined Love of Jack and Sam... tarred, feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail is too good for him.
It's, um, kind of hard to fight those universal laws. Which sucks for Rodney. IT'S OKAY RODNEY I STILL LOVE YOU. IN A NONCREEPY WAY, REALLY.

Additionally, I would argue that he isn't Sam's type.

(You did know this was coming, right?)

I've read some fanfics where it was done well, and I'm not actively opposed to the pairing, but I personally don't see it ever actually happening. Sam and Rodney do have more in common than Sam and Jack do, but... he's really not her type.

(I can hear you staring at the screens going "But, Kate, how do you know what Sam's type is, if you pull out the ironic sparkle text whenever you mention Sam-n-Jack, but haven't actually seen her with anyone in any other episode?")

I'm glad you asked! The answer to that, ladies, gentlemen, nonbinaries, and time-traveling cyborgs, is that there are some things both of Sam's, um, not-boyfriends have had in common--and she didn't tell either of them that she wasn't interested (she actually implied that she was interested in Martouf, when she stated that she wasn't sure whether her interest was her own or leftover from Jolinar. I think that was in 2x12 "The Tok'ra, Part 2"?). Martouf and Narim were both quiet, cheerful, pleasant fellows. They were intelligent without being arrogant about it. They seemed like nice guys--maybe a tiny bit bland, but Sam might have been looking for stability by that time.

Let's go through that list as applied to Rodney, shall we? It'll be quick. Quiet? Hell no. Cheerful? Nope. Pleasant? Only when he actively wants to be. Non-arrogantly intelligent? No way. "Nice guy"? Absolutely not. Bland? Not in the slightest, thank goodness.

When I get back from adding another couple of pounds of chocolate to the Pegasus Galaxy shipment of apologies, I'll discuss how even if we accept Jack as Sam's type, Rodney still doesn't match.

Okay. Jack is probably even less like Rodney than Martouf and Narim are. I grant you, he and Rodney do share a disrespect for illegitimate authority, but given that Sam is pretty much a by-the-rules girl, herself, I don't think that would attract her to either of them. He's... oh, for heaven's sake, if you've ever watched any of both shows you know they're nothing alike; I'm not even sure where to start. Just... just take my word for it, okay, I can't believe I'm even trying to explain this.

(To the person who's inevitably going to say "but they're fundamentally alike despite the drastic circumstances in that they [worldview]": do they react the same way to whatever worldview this is? Thought not.)

(...if I'm wrong about that "thought not", do let me know; I am open to correction and new learning experiences.)

And yes, I am fully aware (as of about three seconds before I revised this section to incorporate the new material, but still, fully aware) that there is a scene in 6x02 "Redemption Part 2" where the following exchange occurs:
Sam: [takes Rodney's hand]
Rodney: ...Let me know if I can help.
Sam: I will. Thanks. [kisses his cheek]
Rodney: That means you don't hate me.
Sam: Maybe. Too bad for you.
Rodney: Why?
Sam: [walking away, grinning] I was more attracted to you when I did.
Before you interpret that as something along the lines of true love forever and ever, ladies, gentlemen, nonbinaries, and time-traveling cyborgs, answer me this: is hating someone and being attracted to them the actual foundation for any solid romantic relationship, or anything other than random, somewhat dangerous, sparks flying? I would argue not. (Or, you know, she might have made the whole thing up to screw with his head--their interactions don't look too attracted on her part anyway, on paper.)

On a final thought, before I stop beating this dead horse and send it off to the glue factory be decently buried, I think it's entirely possible that the non-Rodney-hating Sam enjoys the intellectual stimulation of Rodney's company--from what I can tell, he's one of the very few people who's actually something in the neighborhood (one way or another) of being her intellectual equal--and it's not as if she couldn't deal with him, if she wanted to. It's just the circumstances that would cause her to want to would have to be carefully explored. Which they were not.

Which is all well and good, because, if you look at the next section, Rodney is totally involved with his co-star on SGA anyway. (NO I DO NOT MEAN ELIZABETH WEIR, I HAVE NO IDEA WHY PEOPLE SHIP THEM, OMG.) (Nor do I mean Teyla! See the objections for Teyla/John, above, which apply on Teyla's part just as well to Rodney!)
2.2: John Sheppard and Rodney McKay: okay, I lied about the slash goggles, but seriously.
Yes, yes, I did promise at the beginning of this essay that I was going to attempt to keep the slash goggles off, but... there are, in all of what I've seen so far, two and a half (the half being Daniel/Sha'uri-or-Sha're, and it's only a half because there was a year of it we never saw) couples, out of all the people on both shows in all the possible permutations, that I actually really believe are happening to any extent. This doesn't stop me from shipping other pairs, reading about other pairs--hell, writing other pairs. But I don't actually believe in them, as the show gives us information. They're more of an exploration of possibilities and/or awesome.

John/Rodney I believe in. I believe in it a lot. I've already mentioned at least once in this essay that John does not strike me as even remotely not gay. Which, you know, doesn't in and of itself mean he's interested in Rodney, or vice versa, of course. It's more the everything that implies it.
Kami: OH GOD WHERE DO YOU BEGIN.
me: I AM NOT EVEN SURE.
Kami: IT'S SUCH AN EPIC PILE OF "LOL THE WRITERS ACCIDENTALLY TRIPPED AND FELL INTO IMPLIED SEXING WITH THOSE TWO AND THEN THRUSTED [sic] A FEW TIMES."
me: EXACTLY.

...okay. This essay is not "this is why these people are in a romantic relationship", this is "why, if you assume these people are in a relationship, it works so much better than the romantic relationships the Stargate writers actually intended". So, um, if you don't agree with me about this--or any of the rest of the things from here on until section 3--that's fine. My job here isn't to convince you, it's simply to place some points on the table, and draw some lines, and come away with a pretty picture of writerfail and eyelashes.

...did I say "and eyelashes" out loud? Oops.

So, place your disbelief and/or your OTP goggles/slash goggles/het goggles (any and all as applicable) at the door, and let's go on. Keep in mind that this is just up to 2x08--I am not even attempting to address any of the later episodes that sort of up and hit people over the head, from what I can tell from the fic I've read. (Just a short list: 3x14 "Tao of Rodney", 4x04 "Doppelganger", 4x09 "Miller's Crossing", 4x13 "Quarantine", 5x06 "The Shrine". Possibly more. These are the ones I've heard enough about to definitely go "um what were they... thinking.")


2.2.1: 1x14 "Sanctuary": I'm sorry, you dropped your jealousy on the floor, and it kind of fell into the Slash Ocean. I hope you didn't want it for hetly purposes.
"Sanctuary" is the episode where we meet our first Girl Of The Week. Her name is Chaya, and she literally has cleavage up to her collarbone--apparently being an ascended Ancient pretending to be human gives you weird mutant abilities. She wanders back to Atlantis with AR-1 [AR-1 = Atlantis Recon 1 = the Pegasus Galaxy version of SG-1 (the team, not the show, obvs.)] under false pretenses, claiming to be a priestess of the deity of her planet, who she actually is.

It's, um, complicated.

Hilarity ensues: John is charming (she has access to some sort of epic, epic Wraith-shooting abilities that basically defy the laws of physics), Elizabeth is diplomatic (though the conversation about Earth religions and wars and such is kind of awkward, as you can well imagine), Carson is intrigued (no diseases, no other problems--a medically perfect specimen! and she claims her people are too! ALSO THERE ARE NO STDs. OH SHOW, HOW NICE OF YOU TO POINT THAT OUT.), Rodney is... incredibly jealous and suspicious, what.

Kami and I watched that back in February sometime. It's now late March. It wasn't until a few days ago that I realized Rodney's really kind of epically obvious jealousy was probably supposed to be for, um, the alien chick he spent the whole episode going "BAD BAD BAD WE CAN'T TRUST HER BAD BAD" until he was accidentally right.

(Seriously. The look on his face, and the tone of his voice, when she tells him that yes she was indeed lying to them all and he says well of course he knew it all along--he's stunned. He totally did not know.)

The way it reads, though? At least, to us, though admittedly we were wearing the Slash Goggles at the time, but it's not like they didn't hand 'em out at the door when we walked into the theatre or whatever. It's not "I am jealous because the hot girl is interested in Major Sheppard instead of me", it's "I am jealous because the alien chick WHO IS BAD BY THE WAY TOTALLY WE CAN'T TRUST HER AT ALL gets to have starlit picnics with John, and I don't!"

He starts off insulting her backwards, sideways, and forwards--which even Rodney, bad as his people skills are, knows is not how you act towards a girl you want to like you--goes on to practically make shit up to get her out of Atlantis, lurks in the hallways right next to the balcony where John and Chaya are having their starlit picnic...

And no, I am not kidding. Do you want me to pull out the transcript quotes? 'cause I can do that. Stargate: I AM NEVER MAKING THE HOMOEROTIC IMPLICATIONS UP. Well, rarely. Not this time.

Up until Chaya shows up, Rodney is fairly open about the whole "apparently their deity does cool stuff for them". I'm not saying he believed, but he was polite--almost as diplomatic as Teyla, actually. (...I want you to reread that last clause. Rodney McKay was almost as diplomatic as Teyla about an alleged deity--and he seems to be an atheist, and definitely didn't believe it was an actual deity.)
Zarah: Well then, glory to Athar for bringing you here safely.
Ford: Athar?
Zarah: The provider and protector of all. Surely you know.
Teyla: Athar is known by many names among the stars.
Rodney: Is... Athar around? We'd love to talk to him. We're... friends.
Zarah: Athar is friend to all. And with us always. [puts his hands together] Even now.
Rodney: Of course. [hand gesture] Hi Athar.
Teyla: What Dr. McKay means is that we wish to offer our thanks.
See? Then they meet Chaya, who starts making eyes at John. Here, have a sampling of Rodney's remarks to her:
Rodney: [completely skeptical and annoyed] Oh please.
John: [whispering] Rodney. Best behavior.
Rodney: This is as good as it gets, Major. Chaya, the only reason we are alive is because of a powerful energy weapon that emanated somewhere on the surface of this planet. It destroyed the ships that were shooting at us. That weapon is what's keeping the Wraith away.
Chaya: No, Dr. McKay. It was Athar who protected you.
Rodney: [disgustedly] Athar.
[...]
Chaya: Major. We have relayed your request to our divine mother, and though she does not doubt the righteousness of your mission... I am afraid she cannot countenance any other people but hers settling here.
Rodney: And you really had to chant all that time to come up with that.
John: McKay.
Teyla: Is there any way we can ask Athar to reconsider?
Chaya: Athar understands and sympathizes. These Wraith are a scourge among our stars, but she has to place the lives of her people first.
Rodney: Well, I think we both knew what you were going to say long before you even went in there.
Chaya: [kind of pissed off--see, it's working!] We prayed for Athar's guidance.
Rodney: And what did Athar say? You're hiding behind your religion to justify your complete and utter selfishness.
John: Rodney...
Rodney: If Athar existed, she would be ashamed of herself.
Whoa, Rodney, who died and made you Jack O'Neill? [There's a running thing in SG-1--if they get to a Goa'uld planet, Jack will start preaching effective atheism, and everyone who's not evil will, within the space of the episode, change their minds about their alleged god.]

They return to Atlantis (John actually sent Rodney back to the 'jumper with Ford even before he, Teyla, and Chaya returned since Rodney was being so completely antagonistic). Rodney tries to tag along while John gives her the tour of the city, keeps trying to interrupt, is sort of highly suspicious in general for no real reason--
Elizabeth: You want to send her back?
Rodney: All I know is she's not who she's pretending to be.
Elizabeth: You know this because?
Rodney: [defensively] What, I'm not allowed to have intuition?
Elizabeth: [giving him a look that sort of implies that he is hopelessly left-brained and antisocial] You? No.
Rodney: Oh.
Elizabeth Weir, ladies, gentlemen, nonbinaries, and time-traveling cyborgs: world-class diplomat, former professor, generally awesome, and pretty much completely right in this instance. Rodney doesn't do intuition, or random, most of the time. In 1x04 "Thirty-Eight Minutes" he insisted on going through every circuit in the 'jumper as the seconds ticked rapidly down because he might miss one, and in order was as good as anything else.

And then there's the picnic, and John is kind of adorably awkward and kisses Chaya, and then walks through a door--apparently another scene, though the first time I watched it it looked like the same one--and practically runs into lurking-Rodney, who claims to be suffering from insomnia, then immediately leaps into an accusation of John Kirking his way through the galaxy and basically tells him to stop being involved with Chaya because it will only end in disaster. (I'm just going to pause for a moment while you recall the historical origins of slash fanfic and start snickering.)

Then the meeting, where Rodney scans Chaya, finds nothing, gets caught, and Chaya admits he's right, thereby short-circuiting John's "NO SERIOUSLY WTF" reaction.
Elizabeth: He's right?
Rodney: [stunned look] I'm right?!
(Seriously, that is not the face of a man who expected to be right. And this is Rodney McKay, who always expects to be right.)

Then he accuses John of being Kirk again, and then a bit later on John and Chaya have glowy metaphysical sex (Kami: ...eww, what.). Because apparently Chaya fell instantly in love after thousands of years--true, deep, epic love (oh God, I'm going to have to go get the ironic glitter text again, aren't I), which could only be expressed through glowy metaphysical sex. BECAUSE EVERYONE KNOWS YOU FALL IN TRUE DEEP EPIC LOVE INSTANTLY.

Basically, this episode can read one of two ways: John is an idiot (bringing a girl back to Atlantis to have sex with her, without thinking about um security or anything like that--and if Chaya had been the sort of Alien Girl of the Week that SG-1 tended to run into, they would have been so epically screwed) and Rodney is a creepy stalker (it's kind of wtfly over the top for a girl he just met, if she's the one he wants), or the writers accidentally made sense, while tripping and falling into the sex implications. And thrusting a few times. (I mean, John is still kind of stupid either way, but at least if he's involved with Rodney it's not as stupid a stupid--he's an adult, he should be able to keep it in his pants.)

...given the previous displays of, um, writerly talent and awareness of social nuance by the writers [see section 1], of course, I'm going to go with the idea that their intent was to have John be an idiot heroically Kirk-like (with his epic and doomed romance with Chaya, who loves him deeply and Rodney be a creepy stalker "normal red-blooded male" or something, but hey, that's my point--their writingfail results in really obvious, rational alternate implications, that make a lot more sense than the probable intent.
2.2.2: 2x06 "Trinity": the one even IMDB lists in the keywords as having, and I QUOTE, "homosexual subtext".
No, really.

For those just tuning in, "Trinity" is the one where Rodney blows up five-sixths of a solar system. (It's not an exact science.) More specifically, it's the one where Rodney discovers an experiment, left over from when the Ancients were fighting the Wraith in the Final War or something equally epic, we're not quite sure, and gets one of his team killed in the process, then convinces John to go back and let him try.

I'm actually not quite sure why this is inherently more subtexty that most of the rest of SGA, but, whatever, let's go with it--this is one of the episodes that I knew allll about before I'd ever seen it, from the sheer amount of John/Rodney fic written about it, so that does make some sense, I guess. Then again, to me just about every episode of SGA is inherently subtexty, and if Rodney didn't have those peskily nonsensical canon girlfriends I could totally believe he and John got together as early as during or right after the pilot episode, so, uh, I do admit to being a little biased here.

(Kami points out that it's even theoretically possible that they had a one-night-stand-that-wasn't before we ever see them together onscreen, since Rodney seems to know who John is--it's "Major, think about where we are in the solar system", not "You there, think about where we are in the solar system", and if you expect either of us to believe that Rodney McKay was paying sufficient attention to someone theoretically going "Major Sheppard is flying General O'Neill in today" when there was science to be done to even be aware Major Sheppard existed, let alone deduce that the guy who'd just opened up the universe for him was the aforementioned Major Sheppard (or if you expect us to believe he worked John's rank out from the uniform somehow or something like that, with the distraction of OH HEY CHAIR)--this is Rodney McKay, guys. He's not exactly the best with people. Or names. Or other things he doesn't consider important. QED, he already knew John in some capacity.)

"So what does this have to do with writerfail?" I'm sure you're asking, and you're probably especially confused after that digression. Well, ladies, gents, nonbinaries, and cyborgs, it... only sort of does. I do--on rereading the script, and setting aside the various other fascinating angles (see section 2.5 for a discussion of "Trinity" as a production vehicle for "oh no these people are totally not doing it" and section 2.3.1 for a discussion of the way one scene in "Trinity" is given another layer of poignancy and depth)--see where the people who go "NO REALLY, EXTRA BONUS SUBTEXT" are coming from.

Let's take a look, shall we, and discuss the concept of trust--specifically, trust for another over one's own better judgment. I gave you "Sanctuary" above to show an episode which makes vastly more sense if one assumes that Rodney has an interest in John; "Trinity" is... much more comprehensible if one assumes that John has an interest in Rodney.

One final point, before we start: yes, Rodney sounds off about how marvelous he is all the time, and most of the time he's right. However, everyone on Atlantis is very good at their jobs (Rodney's general insults and the popular fan perception of Kavanagh notwithstanding), and Zelenka especially has been portrayed about someone who definitely knows what he's doing. [Technically, actually, Rodney is a theoretical astrophysicist, if I understand his background right; Zelenka is apparently an engineer, though other episodes have him working out all sorts of theoretical stuff with Rodney, and the science montage in "Trinity" before the disaster showed him to be as apparently capable of understanding the device as Rodney was. See also: device, i.e. applied science.]

[(And yes, Rodney does possibly imply in 2x04 "Duet" that he has another degree in mechanical engineering, but it's just vague enough in context that--especially given that he was introduced in SG-1 as an astrophysicist--he might have been speaking of Zelenka. Regardless of who he meant, people clearly think of him as an astrophysicist, when they're not thinking of him as "the guy who pulls a miracle out of his ass about once a week".)]

Right, now that we've got that established.

Random Scientist Guy dies in a messy and disgusting way, which is the fate of most Random Scientists (they're the Stargate version of redshirts--Random Military Guys seem much less likely to die than Random Scientist Guys, incidentally). At the briefing of the people in chargeish of Atlantis, everyone expresses the following opinions:
Representing the command structure:
Elizabeth Weir: "The answer's no."
Steven Caldwell: "I'm [...] looking for a rationale that would allow Dr. McKay to continue his very important work."
John Sheppard: "Try again? Are you serious?"
Representing science:
Radek Zelenka: "Rodney, we don't even know what went wrong."
Carson Beckett: [gives a disturbing medical summary amounting to "this is weird and freaky and I have no idea what it is or how it could have caused as much damage as it did"]
Rodney McKay: "We won't know for sure until we [...] try again. [...W]e have a responsibility to understand what happened and learn from it."

For those not following along at home, that's three against (John, Elizabeth, Zelenka), one neutral but warning (Carson), two in favor (Caldwell and Rodney).

Rodney's desperation to go back is based on a determination not to have let anyone have died pointlessly, as well as in a stubborn refusal to admit there are things he can't do; Caldwell's wishes for Rodney to return and figure this out are, as he later explains to Elizabeth, based on the benefits that Earth/possibly just the US/possibly Earth's allies will gain if there is in fact an inexhaustible energy source.

Elizabeth and Zelenka's opposition is based on the fact that apparently nobody has any idea what they're doing, with regards to this technology; John's seems to be from a combination of that and the fact that someone died (John, understandably, does not seem to deal well with people he's supposed to support/protect dying). Carson wasn't actually consulted for his opinion on whether Rodney should be allowed back or not, but he did basically warn them that the effects were extremely dangerous and it would sort of be a bad idea in general to have the same thing happen again.

I would further mention that Caldwell is not on good terms with John, from what I've been able to tell--most of the outright animosity seems to be on Caldwell's side, but boy is it there (see 2x08 "Conversion")--and that John and authority figures don't seem to get along too well in general. His support of the plan would probably not be much of an incitement to John to agree.

The meeting ends with Rodney not being allowed to go back to try to figure out how Project Arcturus was supposed to work. He shows up, in the next scene back on Atlantis (we cut away in the meantime for Ronon and Teyla's wacky Pegasus adventures), at John's room that evening to present an argument in favor of him being allowed to work on the project, in which he
a) cites a scientific precedent (Harry K. Daghlian)
b) says he has a plan, which amounts to "I'll try harder this time, I swear"
c) mentions the universe might get um accidentally ripped
and concludes with (verbatim): "Elizabeth will listen to you. I have never asked this of you before, but I think I've earned it. Trust me."

John goes to Elizabeth and argues that Rodney be allowed to try this. Elizabeth is strongly opposed, and argues with Caldwell over it (see section 2.3.2 for a further discussion of this conversation), before returning to the topic.
Elizabeth: Can Rodney guarantee that the same thing won't happen?
John: Nobody can do that.
Elizabeth: Then what's changed?
John: According to him, it's the Ancients' calculations that were wrong, not his.
[Elizabeth and Caldwell get into another argument.]
Elizabeth: [...] I know Rodney McKay, and there are times I have to protect him from himself!
John: I can do that. Let me go back with him--just him and me. You can activate the Stargate any time you want to contact us by radio.
Elizabeth: He really sold you.
John: He asked me to trust him.
I should probably also mention that I kind of wanted to punch Caldwell in the face during that conversation, so, you know, if I'd been there and hadn't been me (i.e. someone who thinks Rodney is one of the most adorable woobie scientists ever), I would probably have come down on the opposite side of the argument just to piss him off. Technically Caldwell outranks John, I believe--I think he's a full-bird colonel--but he isn't John's commanding officer; John is the military commander of Atlantis, and I get the impression he reports in the military chain of command directly back to the head of the SGC, who is at this point... uh... hell... General Landry? Not, in other words, Caldwell.

Certainly if I were asked whether John is more loyal to Caldwell or to Elizabeth, I'd say "Elizabeth" without a second thought. That's in addition to the fact that he is under her command, where he isn't under Caldwell's--Elizabeth is in charge of the Atlantis mission. So, he personally likes her more, he is professionally supposed to do what she says, and he wasn't too thrilled with the idea of going back to Doranda (the planet) in the first place.

(This space intentionally left devoid of conclusion, as I have connected enough dots to let you finish the picture yourselves, and I always feel awkward stating the obvious.)

John and Rodney head off to not destroy the fabric of space-time itself, and Zelenka finishes doing math and figures out what went wrong; he informs Elizabeth of this; Elizabeth is Not Happy, she and Zelenka radio in and explain that everything is quite probably going to end horribly and kill everyone on the planet at least, maybe more.
Rodney: [to the radio--Elizabeth, Zelenka, anyone else on the channel] Yes, congratulations, you've solved the mystery of how the Ancients screwed up ten thousand years ago. It doesn't mean that I will do the same. Look, I don't know how else to say this, but none of you are capable of understanding this on the same level that I do. And Zelenka, that includes you.
Elizabeth: Rodney, I cannot afford to lose either one of you. Now tell me: can you do this?
Rodney: Yes.
John: Are you sure?
Rodney: Yes.
John: Are you sure you're sure?
Rodney: I said yes!
John: Because if you're wrong ...
Rodney: I'm not!
[beat, during which they look at each other]
John: [to Elizabeth] I'll call you back after the test--how does that sound?
Elizabeth: You'd better.
Rodney: [to John] I won't let you down.
"Here, this extremely capable scientist has just given an opinion on something that's more his field than yours, suggesting you are wrong, and providing further evidence to support this in the form of 'the people who built the frickin' Stargates' " [there's a running thing in what I've seen so far of SG-1 where the Ancients are viewed with something a lot like awe--they're the Gatebuilders, and this is Impressive and Deserving of Capital Letters] " 'also couldn't do it.' So, what do you have to say?"
"I can do it."
"...Okay, cool."

...Yeah, um, no. I wouldn't do that.
me, to a few of my friends: "If you had two people, both highly qualified to have opinions about something, discussing a weird sci-fi gadget which had proven deadly a very short while before, and one of them said that it was probably going to kill anyone who tried to activate it again, and the other (who was personally invested in the experiment) said it wouldn't, would you be a bit hesitant?"
unanimous consensus: YES.
And I didn't even remember to mention "you were initially opposed to the whole project".

As it turns out, John was not right to believe Rodney could, and most of the solar system went boom, and Caldwell saved their asses--he's not a bad guy, when he's not trying to impose his worldview on other people--and it all sort of ended in fail. Rodney has a lot of people to apologize to. His apology to John is the last scene in the episode.
Rodney: [...] I saved you 'til last 'cause, um, honestly, I would ... I would hate to think that recent events might have permanently dimmed your faith in my abilities, or your trust. At the very least, I hope I can earn that back.
All together now, give Rodney the hug he so desperately needs. If John hadn't promised to probably eventually forgive Rodney, I would have had to mail myself out to the Pegasus Galaxy and hit him a few times. Or more than a few. Rodney's little woobie face, omg.

...er.

So, anyway. What the writers were presumably trying to do in this episode was, um, show the evolution of a friendship, or something like that. But, uh, see above for the total absurdity of the situation. I see Rodney as totally unable to admit he's wrong until the last minute; I don't see John that way--stupid risks, yes; suicide missions, when necessary (see 1x20 "The Siege Part 2"); this, no. The stupid risks are all for some greater purpose, not for the lols; the suicide mission was to save everyone on Atlantis--people he was in that galaxy in the first place to protect--from unavoidable circumstances, not as a first choice, or a choice where there were any alternatives.

As it is, this is probably a combination of "let's show the evolution of a friendship!" (Friendship evolved into It's Complicated! It's Complicated used Makeup-Sex! Writers are confused! Writers hurt themselves in their confusion!) (I'm sorry. I couldn't resist.) with "okay, so we need to get them both back to the planet, therefore they will go WHETHER IT MAKES SENSE OR NOT." What it comes across as is more an example of the spectacularly bad judgement some people can show towards the wishes of their significant others.

But this totally isn't even in the least bit gay, no, because two episodes later John kisses a girrrrrl. (I talk about the 2x04 "Duet"--2x06 "Trinity"--2x08 "Conversion" arc in section 2.5, actually, because it's a lot more relevant there, but I did feel it bore mentioning here, and it did actually make me wonder whether they get opinion feedback on episodes while writing the one two weeks later.)

I'll just... be over here... beating my head against a wall, okay?

I could, in theory, go through every episode of the series and analyze it like these. There are four main problems I see with this:
  1. I wouldn't actually be convincing anyone. Probably everyone who is willing to be convinced will be able to take these two sections and extrapolate from there, and everyone who isn't willing to be convinced wouldn't be anyway.
  2. If I did actually convince anyone, it would be convincing them against the actual intention of the creators. Yes, SGA is spectacularly and inexplicably slashy. No, they weren't being enlightened, modern, culturally sensitive, trendy, or anything else like that. No, really, they weren't.
         This is Stargate, not [insert TV show not written for straight white males who want to see things blow up on a weekly basis]. They are not known for their cultural sensitivity. If you're not horribly appalled by really disturbing production undercurrents in shows you like to the point of no longer being able to watch said show (I presume you like Stargate if you're reading this?), check out this essay on GateFail 2009 by Cate [Cate, not Kate; she is NOT me. Just to be clear, on the microscopic chance anyone was confused].
         The writers didn't put two of their male main characters in a romantic relationship on purpose. Setting aside all other considerations, would they have invested so much (see esp. section 1.2.2) in giving Rodney girlfriends if they didn't actually want that to be the case?
  3. I am not qualified to do so. I have never directed a production of any sort--live theatre, filmed-for-TV, filmed-for-movie. I have never written a screenplay, let alone had one used in any production of any level of professionalism. And my acting experience is limited to being in the back row of the chorus in a middle-school production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. There's an episode-by-episode analysis of Star Trek: the Original Series (found here, if you're interested) with a similar purpose, but the writer of that was actually qualified to discuss acting and directing, and, also, was explaining choices which [she presents a very compelling and completely believable argument that] were the creator's actual intention.
  4. Sections 2.2.1 and 2.2.2 of this essay come to close to four thousand words together--nearly two thousand words per episode.
    Stargate Atlantis has one hundred episodes.
    I do not want to write literally hundreds of thousands of words of episode-analysis, for no real reason, without pointing out anything other than careless writing, on a subject I am not qualified to discuss in depth anyway.
I realize this might sound frivolous, for which I apologize, but, seriously? No. Just no. Unless I am getting paid actual money for it, at which point it becomes ~journalism~ or ~literary criticism~ or something, and also a way for me not to have to work at McDonalds, and I would suddenly become vastly more amenable to the idea. (Seriously, if you want the epic-length slashy analysis of all of Stargate, make me an offer. It would be approximately the most awesome job ever. I can even write it in your choice of Properly Academic Styles, if you'd rather!)
2.2.3: "Something has to have kept Colonel Sheppard from shooting you all this time!": or, how John seems to be one of the only people on Atlantis who actually likes Rodney. At all.
The quote at the beginning of this section (that one right up there ^ ) is from 2x03 "Runner"--John's 2IC, Major Lorne, was more than a little fed up with Rodney at that point, and... expressed this exasperation verbally. To be fair, Rodney was not having one of his more endearing moments at the time. (I am fairly sure that a lot of the SGA fans who don't like Lorne base their dislike on his treatment of Rodney, though I may be wildly wrong here.)

In any case. Rodney sort of tyrannizes the science department, insults everyone's intelligence, considers medicine voodoo, tends to try to make everything be about him, pushes even (professional diplomat) Elizabeth and (Zenly badass) Teyla to the "..." point sometimes--Elizabeth more visibly than Teyla, but Teyla has her moments--, and sort of generally goes around being (as is stated a few times in a few ways in 2x14 "Grace Under Pressure") petty, arrogant, and bad with/to people. Which even he admits.

Weirdly enough [if you follow the writers' intention], though, John doesn't seem to mind this. They have a rather adorable way of interacting, starting all the way back at the beginning of the first season. I've said multiple times in the past, to various people, that if it weren't for the canon girlfriends for Rodney I could easily see him and John hooking up at any point from the first time they met onwards. There's... sparkage. Certainly, by 1x03 "Hide and Seek", they're bantering charmingly (well, I'm charmed, anyway); John, given a choice of anyone on Atlantis for his gate team, picks Teyla (because Teyla), Ford (who seems to be one of the higher-ranking military persons in that first group of people), and... Rodney (...because... why, exactly? Atlantis is filled with brilliant scientists, some of them presumably actual applied scientists instead of theoretical astrophysicists, most probably without deadly food allergies and hypoglycemia, many probably at least competent with other human beings and not excessively prone to complaining).

Of course, none of the other scientists make constant hand gestures (except Zelenka, but he hadn't even been written yet) and do adorable woobie facial expressions all the time (they left the other woobie scientist back in the Milky Way) and have absolutely preposterously long eyelashes (Carson has eyelashes, but they're nowhere near that epic), so, you know. One takes the clouds with one's silver linings.

...On rereading that last paragraph, I realize I have left out various important Rodney-related facts which I just take for granted--he may be petty and arrogant and bad with people, but only about the little things. When it's actually important, he shows himself to have compassion, bravery, and all sorts of other good traits. (See esp. 1x03 "Hide and Seek" (where he walks into an energy-devouring cloud to get it out of Atlantis--it makes sense in context), 1x11 "The Eye" (where he stepped between Elizabeth and a crazy guy pointing a gun at her who had already stabbed him through the arm to make him talk), 1x12 "The Defiant One" (where he is actually incredibly supportive of one of his allegedly-moronic underlings, and then risked his life to sort of epically come to John's rescue at the last minute), the alternate reality in 1x15 "Before I Sleep" where he died trying to accomplish the impossible and save everyone else on Atlantis...) When it's important, you can rely on Rodney very nearly all the time (see 2x06 "Trinity" for the unfortunate exception--and his appearances on SG-1, but he was the Designated Antagonist in those, so they don't count).

This concludes this screen's installment of Squeeing About Rodney. Thank you for your patronage. Please keep all extremities within the vehicle until it has come to a full and complete stop.

Anyway. Rodney has lots of good traits, but it's easy to miss them if you aren't looking, because he is arrogant and rude and self-centered and constantly talks about how wonderful and important he is (whether or not this is because he's trying to convince other people, or trying to convince himself, is unclear). Miko, from 1x17 "Letters from Pegasus", has her admiration of Rodney used for comic relief; pretty much every other character who has an opinion of Rodney has a neutral, negative, or "well his work is good..." reaction.

John picked him for his gate team--spending lots of time together, facing near-death experiences, that sort of thing.

Go, John!

Now, I'm not saying that this is a sign of romantic interest, since, obviously, it's more an example of "well we contracted this guy to be a main character, so he's going to be one." But... really, show? You couldn't have tried a little harder to make it make sense? Not that I'm complaining, it's awesome this way. But.

Rodney seems to like people who like him, which is a fairly normal human reaction to things, probably amplified in his case by the fact that very few people do. It makes a lot more sense in his case, and is something that could quite usefully be explored--whether or not the show ever got around to doing it, let alone doing it well... I have grave doubts.

2.3: The Manyish Suitors of Elizabeth Weir: because she's Elizabeth freakin' Weir, duh.
Ah, Elizabeth. I love you; you are amazing; I kind of want to be you when I grow up. Elizabeth, ladies, gentlemen, nonbinaries, and time-traveling cyborgs, is the leader of the Atlantis mission until she turns into a Replicator, which is basically an evil robot made up of zillions of teeny lego-like bits. I'm not really sure how that works either. Then the producers screw around some more with her storyline, the actress gets fed up and refuses to come back because she's stopped trusting them to actually do anything with the storyline [source], and it all sort of dribbles off into fail. Which is a shame because I really love Elizabeth.

She is also, for the first two seasons at least, one of two female characters in a title-credits-character role. I'm not sure if this changes for s3, but she and Teyla are the only consistently recurring females thus far. (I hear s4 will give us three, shock!) Teyla was chosen by the writers for John (see section 1.1.2), leaving Elizabeth as the only perceptually-unattached* female in Atlantis, apparently--certainly the only one with anything even remotely resembling a character arc. Also, she is awesome.
* that is, Teyla is unattached, but the writers seem to be Saving Her For John. Elizabeth is actually in a serious relationship with a man back on Earth until 2x02 "The Intruder"--we see him in 1x01 "Rising Part 1" and in 1x09 "Home", as well as in "The Intruder" when he tells her he's found someone else--but it's easy to forget that in-between, as she never mentions him to anyone else, and as he is, y'know, in a different galaxy.

Since she's also quite pretty, it's not in the least surprising that there are male people interested in her. What is surprising is that the writers somehow managed not to screw it up (until Sam Carter came to Atlantis). They managed not to screw up either one. (I discount the weird glitch of flirtation between her and John at the end of 1x04 "Thirty-Eight Minutes", because that was (a) bizarre and (b) an anomaly.)
2.3.1: Radek Zelenka, who seems to want to give Elizabeth the whole galaxy
This is one of those pairings that I don't actually believe in but I desperately wish I could, partly because Zelenka is made of awesome (although confusingly is yet another SGA recurring character with an R-name, hence the last-name basis in this essay), and partly because the writers actually wrote it right. For once. (Actually, there are times when I wonder whether David Nykl and Torri Higginson ad-libbed the whole thing.) Unfortunately, they've so far provided no canon evidence that Elizabeth reciprocates his affections, which is the kind of sad and unfair that just does not belong in my escapist sci-fi, dammit.

...Anyway. The evidence, I am sure you are requesting--and for once, ladies, gentlemen, nonbinaries, and time-traveling cyborgs, I am filled with joy to pull out the quotes, the analysis, the scenarios, as this time it is (a) believable AND (b) deliberate, as well as (c) absolutely dear. Zelenka/Elizabeth is my SGA happy place and there really needs to be more fic of them.

Evidence! Right. There's actually surprisingly little, but it has a very high rate of adorableness-per-second.


2.3.1.1: 1x16 "The Brotherhood": "You are the loop."
It commences, as you have doubtless guessed, in 1x16 "The Brotherhood", which I had to transcribe all by my very own self because there are no reliable-looking transcripts anywhere online (handy hint: if a transcript has parenthetical "lol"s from the transcriber, coupled with grammatical errors, it is very easy to be wary of said transcript). To my subsequent exasperation, I learned after I was done that the dialogue did, in fact, match precisely.
HALLWAY. Elizabeth and Zelenka are walking from an unknown place to an unknown place. Apparently we ended up on The West Wing at some point, and meetings are now held in hallways?
Elizabeth: [surprised] I didn't know we had deep-space sensors.
Zelenka: Yes, well, no-one did. From what I can tell they've been running silently in background along with our other primary systems.
Elizabeth: In the background(?)
Zelenka: Yes.
Elizabeth: So why the sudden leap to the foreground?
Zelenka: Excellent question.
Elizabeth: ...We don't have an an answer for that yet, do we.
Zelenka: [pause, shakes head] Not as of yet, no.
Elizabeth: Okay, well, keep me in the loop.
Zelenka: [laughs] You are the loop. [smiles, sort of to himself]
Elizabeth: (Now) isn't that a nice thing to say. [It's a little hard to tell--if she says "now", she slurs it into the "isn't": "n'isn't".]
Zelenka: [looks over at her, then away.]
Elizabeth: Hm. [sounds amused]
(They continue walking for a bit.)
Elizabeth: ...You're more than welcome to continue walking with me, but if there's something that you need to do...?
Zelenka: Yes, yes (yes). [stops, turns attention to tablet]
Elizabeth continues on; he looks up after her before she leaves the frame completely, then turns and heads off in another direction. Back in a minute, I am drawing sparkly hearts all over this scene. It's so real. Look at it!

Point: The first bit ("I didn't know... / No-one did.") is really pretty ambiguous, though I would argue that given the context and something sort of indefinable about tones of voice it could be interpreted partly as "Well, it's really not as if we were trying to keep secrets from you--I didn't know either, it's fine that you didn't." I would not, however, argue that that's the exclusive interpretation; the rest of their interactions in this episode, and in fact a lot of their interactions in general (see also: 1x04 "Thirty-Eight Minutes"), are entirely professional.

That's actually another part of what I love about this. They didn't try too hard. For once in their lives, the writers learned the meaning of "subtle". 99% of the time, Zelenka's interactions with Elizabeth are professional: she trusts him to do the work he's supposed to do, and he does his best to do his job and keep her informed of anything relevant to her. The remaining 1% of the time, there is heart-clutching adorableness in a way that I cannot see ever going to trainwreck into partiality and general disaster the way, oh, SG-1 4x09 "Scorched Earth" can be interpreted to (see this essay, already linked in section 1.1.1.1).

They are actual grown-ups, you guys. This is so exciting. It's like a black swan: you think it's a creature of legend, and then OH HEY THERE IT IS. I may have to start using the term "rara avis" to describe the writers actually writing actual relationships or something.

Point: Everything from "keep me in the loop" to the end of the scene. The sparkly hearts must be drawn, omg. LOOK AT IT IT'S ALL SUBTLE AND LOVELY AND DEAD-ON.

Other people who might be presumed to belong in the loop: Rodney (Zelenka's boss, the head of science), John (military commander of the city--mind, at this point they didn't know about the Wraith fleet incoming, but it's still the sort of thing that could be definitely relevant to the defense of the city), various science minions who would be trying to figure it out. Maybe Bates (head of security), later on, if it became relevant.

Elizabeth, honestly--much as I love her--isn't necessarily important to this scenario. She's a diplomat; when we first meet her in SG-1 she's on her way to lecture on political science at a university. She's a leader, but she's not qualified to help with the science on this, nor to make the tactical decisions that might become necessary. But--the loop? The loop is apparently all her. She's the one who matters. It's her opinion--opinion, not informed/policy decision--, it's her input. He wants her to know what's happening. (We'll get back to this in 1x19 "The Siege Part 1" and a few other places, actually.)

And then he doesn't want to leave. Even though they're not talking about anything important. Or anything at all. He just wants to spend a few more minutes with her. What I said before: heart-clutchingly adorable omg. And she's so polite about it, in a "...don't you have a whole new Ancient subsystem to analyze?" sort of way that doesn't even go as far as that into "please go away now" territory.
2.3.1.2: 1x19 "The Siege Part 1": because bringing a girl flowers is so passé.
While everyone in Atlantis is preparing for the titular siege, Zelenka is trying to create a self-destruct that will, as a last resort, keep the city from being used by the Wraith to get to the Milky Way. It's true that Rodney and John are offworld, and therefore not able to provided scientific and/or strategic input, but he explicitly states during the conversation he has with Elizabeth when he shows her the simulations that it's not yet finished. This isn't a "here's what we're going to do", it's a "here's my thought process so far, but it isn't good enough."

He could, under normal circumstances, take it to Rodney and they could spend the next however many hours/days/weeks talking science to each other and waving their hands around. Or, I suppose, to one of his minions. Someone who has a background in whatever it is he's using to do this--programming, mechanics, physics, engineering, whatever it is.

Elizabeth can understand what he says about the self-destruct, but not before he has to actually explain it to her over the course of the scene: the self-destruct (now with Bonus Sinking Action™!) isn't enough -- Atlantis is a spacecity, not just a watercity -- the Wraith want the city intact -- if it has any bits left, they can reverse-engineer something -- also, if they get to the Ancient databases, things will be Very Bad. It helps the viewers that he has to do this, of course, but she isn't herself familiar with any of the science. She provides no new information.

They're working on a tight time schedule. Rodney is unavailable because he's trying to restore an Ancient snowflake of death--some sort of space-based battle station. John is unavailable because he's scouting evacuation sites. The clocks are frantically ticking. And Elizabeth is being kept in the loop.

(I would note, I guess, that there isn't any apparent better use of either of their time, right now. Zelenka presumably already tried everything he could get from his minions, and Elizabeth doesn't seem to have any specific duties at this point in the preparations. Still, in theory Zelenka could have been trying other simulations. Maybe. Or trying to find out whether there was anything in the database for this. Or something.)

Furthermore, there's one exchange in the scene that has always baffled me until I was writing this essay and thought to ask Kami, who knows computers.
Zelenka: [...] I'm more concerned about Ancient database--its ability to back up data. It's incredibly redundant.
Elizabeth: 'Incredibly redundant'!
Zelenka: [laughing] Yeah, that one never gets old. But seriously [...]
She didn't get it, either, but went and Googled around to see if she ought to be able to.

Turns out it's a language joke--a subtler form of the Department of Redundancy Department. Also apparently, the Stargate people have made similar and slightly more obvious redundancy jokes before, so, yes, it probably was deliberate--not to mention it makes no sense if it wasn't.

This just makes me happy. Yes, they're possibly facing imminent death, but they're not freaking out about it.

They then, um, spend very significant portions of the rest of the episode wandering around together. (If they're not in the same room for the whole scene, one is joining the other, with one brief exception: the scene where John and Ford report to Elizabeth on Bates's condition; Zelenka is, very explicably, absent in this instance.) Excuse me, I have to go draw more sparkly hearts. It's so very sweet, and fond, and--I'm not saying that it's inherently shippy, I'm just saying that it's the sort of thing I really like to see in my romances: people who rely on each other (not to an unhealthy extent) and who take pleasure and comfort in each other's company.

It is also unlike the rest of the Stargate romances in that it's not being rammed down the viewer's throat. It wasn't until I started this essay, got to this section, and went through the entire transcript for this episode that I realized that they were spending all this time together. (It was also at this point that the fics I've read where they hooked up during the siege finally made sense. I mean, sort of made sense. Apart from the bit where they failed to explain Elizabeth's subsequent interactions with her fiancé-thingy in 2x02 "The Intruder", but, um, details.) Nobody said "My goodness, you two have spent this whole episode in each other's pockets, haven't you", or anything like that. It was just... there, and the shared joke and relief were just there, and the "here, look, see what I made!" was just... (say it with me, ladies, gents, nonbinaries and cyborgs) there.
2.3.1.3: 2x02 "The Intruder": the scene that made me give in and start writing fanfic it was that adorable.
I am going to try very hard to keep my flaily keysmashing of joy from interfering with your reading experience, but it's going to be hard. This scene, oh dear mercy. Okay. "Intruder" is sort of all mixed-up flashbacks and current events, and in the flashbacks we see what happened when Atlantis reconnected with Earth, and then in the current plot they're dealing with a sentient computer virus, which, whatever.

Elizabeth's fiancé (...or something like that--certainly long-term serious boyfriend, at the very least, but not husband, I don't think) Simon is a medical doctor. She wanted him to join the expedition. He put her off, and put her off (incidentally causing one hell of a paperwork problem, I'd imagine, because she kept on trying to convince people to not finalize anything until he'd agreed). Finally he basically said, "sorry, not interested."

Which... is his right. I mean, Elizabeth didn't tell him about the expedition until she was gone, when she did it by a videotaped message that said that if he was seeing this, she guessed he'd been given the security clearance--which means that if he hadn't, he might never have known where she went. (...Writers, you really suck at this thing, because I don't think this is what you meant to imply. Unless there was a second videotape without any classified information, just saying that she was going off for an unspecified period of time as part of something she couldn't tell him any more about?) So I could see some... resentment.

Of course, justified "you went off to another freaking galaxy and you never even said goodbye in person!" resentment wasn't addressed. Instead, it's Simon stalling and going "omg I am so important look at me" (...I exaggerate), and then telling Elizabeth (a) he's not going and (b) he's dating someone else while at a really nice dinner she ...made?, which is just all kinds of tacky, good job, Simon. And why, you ask?
Simon: You're the adventurer, not me.
Elizabeth: But I'm not--I mean at least I wasn't, not before. Look, the first time I stepped through that Gate, I was terrified. I knew I wasn't prepared for what I was getting into, but I took a chance.
Simon: I know, and I'm proud of you for that.
Elizabeth: Simon...
Simon: There's something else. [long pause] I met someone.
Elizabeth: [catches her breath and turns away]
Simon: [to her back] You were gone for a long time, Elizabeth.
Which is a very good way of saying "it's not me, it's you" so that it almost sounds like the opposite.

Now. The thing is, there's nothing wrong with being afraid of going to other planets--I mean, I'd be terrified, I don't know if I'd get up the courage to go. But... Elizabeth was afraid, and she did it. And it worked out brilliantly--I mean, I'm honestly pretty sure there are about two people who could've convinced the Genii to give them a nuke in 1x20 "The Siege Part 2", and the other one was still a recurring character on SG-1 at the time.

(Really, the reason I dislike Simon isn't so much his actions as his timing. The decent thing to do would have been, as soon as Elizabeth got back and contacted him, to say "I'm not going to go with you, and also I've met someone else." Not to spend several days at least--possibly up to two weeks; he mentions "drop everything on two weeks' notice" at one point, but all that's unclear--stalling, at least vaguely implying that he was going to go (Elizabeth's nice dinner was a sort of well-this-is-our-last-chance-for-really-good-food, and I was honestly thinking when she explained that that he'd agreed, and was trying to figure out whether he changed his mind afterwards or died, because I knew he wasn't a major recurring character), and then--and then!--not mentioning that he was dating someone else until it seemed like she wasn't going to believe him any other way.

I mean, wow, Simon, way to be honest about it. You presumably knew that the reason she wanted you on the expedition so badly was because you were dating her (which I would rather nervously point out as nepotism if it weren't for the fact that as when she first asked Carson whether he'd reviewed Simon's file, Carson said yes and that Simon, like at least one other of the applicants he was looking at, was more qualified than he was, so at the very least if it was nepotism it was promoting the competent instead of the incompetent). You didn't think to mention the girlfriend before this? Or even as an expression of basic human decency?)

And the other thing is, we get a contrast to Simon--I'd say Simon is a foil for him except that would sort of... actually imply the writers are competent?--in Zelenka. I had to skip ahead a bit check the transcript for 2x14 "Grace Under Pressure" to be sure, but it is in fact canon as opposed to something that was made up for that one fic I read once where--anyway. Zelenka's afraid of flying and of deep water (or being underwater, I'm not sure which--maybe both? he did say in "Grace Under Pressure" he'd never even learned to swim), and we saw in 2x04 "Duet" that he was really uncomfortable with being off-world, but he went to another galaxy anyway. And then continued doing whatever it was he needed to do, whether or not it was precisely in the job description (see esp. "Grace Under Pressure", and I will be over in a corner flailing with my own deep-water phobia thank you very much).

Which I bring up because of the very end of "The Intruder", the scene where our people have successfully reached Atlantis. Teyla's waiting to talk to them, along with a few miscellaneous people who Clearly Don't Matter. After a couple of minutes of mutual catching up, they're joined by Zelenka, who showed up with a datapad thingy of notes on the city for Elizabeth. Or, here, have the script, why not.
Zelenka: Dr. Weir. Dr. Weir -- I'm glad you're back. We have several reports with new information on the city. Ever since we installed Z.P.M., we've made many interesting discoveries.
Teyla: Can this not wait? Dr. Weir has only just arrived.
Zelenka: I'm sorry, I ...
Elizabeth: No, it's fine, really. [takes the report] Let's get back to work.

It is sort of my personal canon--and why not?--that he rushed from whatever corner of Atlantis he'd been sciencing in as soon as he got the news they were back. His reaction to Teyla's "go away, she just got here" (...that's what she said, in normal-people-speak) sort of implies that it wasn't really that important. This looks like both a case of "here, have science, it's this galaxy's version of bringing flowers!" and of "you're back! You're back! I missed you so much but I don't really have an excuse to just go and say hi, we're not quite like that yet--aha, science, that'll work."

And... she has someone who'll do whatever she needs done, who isn't big on adventure and new scary places but wanted to explore the universe anyway, who gives her personal loyalty as well as professional loyalty, and it is just sort of the most heart-stoppingly perfect thing to see here, right where it's so badly needed.2.3.1.4: 2x06 "Trinity": feelings, for the extra soupçon of humiliation in the shame buffet.
The thing about "Trinity"--one of the things about "Trinity", since it's packed about as densely with nuance as the proverbial egg is with meat--is that everything hurts more, and means more, the more you assume everyone means to everyone else. Obviously that meaning doesn't have to be either sexual or romantic in nature, but none of the main characters of either Stargate show strike me as asexual, and also--while we're on the subject of the writers epically failing at nuance, subtlety, being a part of the 21st century, and so on--well, I really possibly think they'd be less likely to intentionally create any of the characters as asexual than they would be to create them as homo- or bisexual.

Uh, so, anyway, the more shipping you do in "Trinity", the more it all hurts everyone, and all good writers, and a lot of bad writers, know that the goal, certainly up to the climax of the story and possibly past that depending on genre and so forth, is to cause your characters pain and problems. Then you make them deal with them. It's part of the fun, and also very cathartic.

This isn't so much a "here is my evidence" section, this is a "well, if you take what I said before as fact, here's what it means for this". It's a little different from much of the rest of what I've done, but it struck me when I watched the episode, and I wanted to point it out.

Being humiliated and/or insulted in front of someone you very much want to think well of you can't possibly be an uncommon experience. The "oh, hell, s/he saw that/heard that/whatever" reaction probably crops up even in non-romantic contexts (I would actually certainly argue that it crops up in non-sexual contexts, incidentally). It's bad enough being insulted and demeaned in front of a friend, a co-worker, a superior--by a friend, co-worker, superior, of course, because it's not bad enough yet without that. Of course it is. But for--as I put it so utterly bizarrely eloquently in the title to this section--the extra soupçon of humiliation in the shame buffet, now imagine that in addition to all that there's an additional interest in the person hearing all this.

Zelenka: Rodney, I am trying to tell you as a friend, I have serious doubts.
Rodney: Well, you're wrong. I'm sorry, but there it is. And to bring this up now when I am just about to do this smacks of nothing but professional jealousy.
Zelenka: Fine! Kill yourself, just like the Ancients did!
[...]
Rodney: Yes, congratulations -- you've solved the mystery of how the Ancients screwed up ten thousand years ago. It doesn't mean that I will do the same. Look, I don't know how else to say this, but none of you are capable of understanding this on the same level that I do. And Zelenka, that includes you.
It sounds worse in Rodney's tone of voice, too--the whole conversation is bad, but that last line made me cringe back from the screen in sympathy.

Do I contend that this is in any way the most pressing part of anything? No. I merely point it out as a soupçon, not even worth bringing up amid all the other issues in anything but the most academic of contexts.

(And, again, as I said in section 2.3.1.1, these are actual grown-ups; regardless of Zelenka's personal feelings in the matter, he continues--presumably--acting in a calm and professional manner for the rest of the episode, because this is the sort of thing grown-ups do. SPARKLY HEARTS OMG.)

Before that--and I should have mentioned this first, perhaps, since it came chronologically first, but it's a point I've made twice before--we get more science-as-the-Pegasus-Galaxy-version-of-flowers. The meeting where Rodney, John, and Zelenka first report back to Elizabeth and Caldwell about Project Arcturus (i.e. the thing that ends up exploding), where they're all enthused--well, first, Zelenka seems to be talking right at Elizabeth (it's a bit hard to tell, since most of the scene is shot with talking heads, and it's very difficult for me to provide screenshots for support because it keeps jumping and the Gateworld autosequence was crap for once (this was the only one they managed to get), but since I am insane I went and rewatched the scene and plotted it out: here's a seating chart [the lines are people who moved after the briefing started--Caldwell was initially standing by the door, and Zelenka was initially facing the display screen to Elizabeth's left], and here's a small collection of the best talking-at-Elizabeth shots), and second, there's this exchange at nearly the end of the scene:
Elizabeth: And you believe you can finish their work?
Rodney: I do.
Zelenka: We do.
"Hi, remember me? I'm working with you on this? I can also do science?" (I said to Kami yesterday, in tones of "so that's it!", that you could really interpret significant pieces of "Trinity" as people showing off their science. It's the weirdest and most awesome courting ritual ever, and it's very sad that the solar system blew up.)

Conclusions from rewatching this scene a zillion times (mostly on silent, twice before the essay with volume, and once just now to get audio to go with the body language): HI BODY LANGUAGE, Zelenka and Caldwell do not look like they get along (gee I wonder why), and--much as I love "Trinity"--I am slightly sick of it right now.

2.3.1.5: concluding thoughts & other miscellany (incl. 2x13 "Critical Mass").
I was initially not going to give this its own header, but then I realized it broke into a separate entry [[ETA 5/16/10: in the LJ version of this essay]] and it'd possibly get lost altogether, so I figured it'd be best if I did indicate this exists, since it is something that's relatively important (and then segues into me foaming at the mouth about what's possibly my biggest SGA pet peeve discovered to date, and you all know I never miss an opportunity to do that).

I am not going into an in-depth analysis of 2x13 "Critical Mass" here, partly because that episode is incredibly ugly and it feels wrong to glee over it (and even more wrong to glee over it in the way I do), but mostly because we haven't gotten to it yet. Yes, I know I cited 4x13 "Quarantine", and that I've referenced episodes scattered well into fifth season, but the amount of detail I've been putting into the episode analyses in this section, like the ones I did in section 2.2, is something I don't feel confident doing without visual and auditory cues, as well as written ones, to support me.

I am just going to say the following things about "Critical Mass":
  • yes, the implications that the Atlantis mission would authorize torture of someone to extract information are... extremely disturbing. Yes, there is more than a bit of a suggestion that the reason that everyone accused Kavanagh and were so quick to believe his guilt were that they didn't like him. Yes. Absolutely. It's ugly, and I don't believe it's in-character for Elizabeth or Rodney (especially given that, not that I expect the writers remembered this but, Rodney got tortured for information in 1x10 "The Storm", with Elizabeth watching). Nor do I think it was necessary.

  • but, despite that--and, believe me, I am not in favor of torture (nor am I sure how I ended up with the sociopolitical stuff that seems to be permeating these past two sections)--I checked the script pretty carefully, and I never saw Kavanagh actually deny the charges, even when some fairly significant circumstantial evidence was brought against him. Furthermore, he was the first person to mention torture ("What? Are you gonna torture me?"). ...All that said, I am probably going to end up pretending 99% of the A-plot never happened, because it is deeply disturbing on multiple levels. TORTURE BAD, OKAY.

  • however, that remaining 1% is fascinating. And this is the bit I feel incredibly wrong gleeing over, because it does sort of imply that part of the Kavanagh-thing was dislike. But if I stick my fingers in my ears and ignore the context, it is just... what I said. Fascinating. Earlier in the episode, Elizabeth, John, and Caldwell were discussing the fact that they pretty much had to suspect everyone--not just everyone on the Daedalus, but everyone on Atlantis. Then the questioning starts, and continues, and meanwhile there's a B-plot with Teyla and a C-plot with Zelenka stuck on the Planet of Arts and Crafts from Hell.
    Kavanagh: Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Dr. Zelenka currently stuck offworld somewhere? Why isn't he a suspect?
    Elizabeth: Our list of suspects isn't open for discussion, but off the record, Zelenka went against his will and I couldn't picture him working for The Trust.
    'Oh, we can't trust anyone. Except Dr. Zelenka, of course.' It feels so absolutely wrong to get warm fuzzies from this, but I sort of can't help it. I have no idea of what her motivations are since, y'know, haven't seen the episode, but it is sort of lovely to see devotion being repaid at least with trust.
All right, anyway. In addition to that, and who knows what-all else in various other episodes... anyway, we have this--this build of something, which is done with grace and subtlety and precision, and then they go and fuck it all up by deciding their Sam-adoration quote isn't being met, which, FAIL. I MEAN IT'S NOT LIKE THEY HAD ANYONE ELSE WHO THEY HADN'T PUT IN A BELIEVABLE EMOTIONAL THINGY TO FLING AT HER HEAD, DAMMIT.

Also I think this may be the first time I have ever started a subordinate clause with anything like "grace and subtlety and precision", only to then wander off into obscenity and internetspeak. You're welcome.

The thing is--it's not that I don't think people can move on from relationships. It's that I'm pissed off they took an actually well-written relationship and threw it out the window for their weekly quota of Sam-adoration, because Rodney was already dating someone and they were probably Saving Her For Jack O'Neill meaning that if they threw John at her it'd, um, be a little... weird (not that that's ever stopped them before), and they didn't really have any other main characters (Carson's dead/a clone-thingy by then, right?), which left them with... what, Zelenka and Lorne?

And--correct me if they do something with this later--but I've never really gotten the impression that Lorne is interested in women. Or even necessarily men, really--of everyone we know well on Atlantis, he's probably the easiest person for me to see as asexual (and yes I know that I am clearly stark raving mad or something). Not to mention (because obviously viewer perceptions of character sexuality are not high on the writers' priority list) that they'd be bringing up the whole fraternization thing again (though, who knows, they might just have this awkward thing for the major-colonel dynamic, as long as one of them's Sam Carter).

So, Sam Carter and their need to adore her by proxy > multiple years of character development. And, okay, I am done with this now, really.
2.3.2: Steven Caldwell, who seems to have admiration for her without respect for her.
I'm sure you're thrilled to learn that this section is a lot shorter than the last one. Of course, that's because it wasn't until 2x06 "Trinity" that I actually saw anything to write about, and I've only seen up to 2x08 "Conversion", and Caldwell wasn't in the episode in-between.

But it's also because this isn't something that fills me with sparkly glee to explore in detail. I'm not quite sure why the writers didn't decide it was the best thing since sliced bread, but I'm glad they didn't.

I knew going into s2 that there are people who ship Elizabeth and Caldwell--rather a lot of people, actually, from what I can tell, compared to the number of people who ship her with Zelenka. (Obviously there are far more people than that who have John and Elizabeth, like, sekritly married or something, and the Elizabeth/Rodney people, but whatever, that is not the point, that's major-character shipping and it happens a lot more than minor-character shipping or major-character/minor-character shipping.)

Kami and I finished watching "Trinity" and basically went, "Well, I didn't see that. Did you?" "Nope. If anything, I saw the opposite", and we concluded that this was A Good Thing.

Caldwell's interactions with Elizabeth in "Trinity" and "Conversion" are... basically it's like he goes out of his way to be a complete ass. He uses power because he has it, not necessarily because it's the right thing to do, and he blatantly does it when it's going against what she wants. And, as he points out in "Trinity", it's not precisely as if she can stop him.

Caldwell: [...] I think you should know the Pentagon has taken a very keen interest in this vacuum energy.
Elizabeth: I'm sure they have, but the Pentagon doesn't make the decisions here.
Caldwell: Yeah, I may not have the power to overrule you on this, but when I get back to Earth I'm going to be making the recommendation that Dr. McKay be allowed to continue his work to the highest authorities. Ultimately, Dr. Weir, this won't be up to you.

That's, uh, that's very classy, Caldwell. Did you miss the bit where Elizabeth's military commander is standing right there listening to you explain to her that her opinion and five dollars can probably get you a drink at Starbucks? Because--and this might just be me not being military here--it sort of seems not very, um, sensible to sort of suggest that the leader of the expedition is so much straw cut out for a doormat for the military to wipe their feet on.

Oh, and then he admits that he is just arguing his side so hard because he wants the weapon. ("You want the weapon." "Yes! I do!" --It's not exactly ambiguous.)

That conversation, in normal-people speak:
Caldwell: My bosses want this.
Elizabeth: Last I checked, I was the one put in charge of this expedition.
Caldwell: Well, that's a problem, because we want this, so we're just going to ignore your authority if we have to.
It's not exactly... supportive. Elizabeth has enough problems as it is.

In "Conversion", he pulls the same thing again, but more so. John is going all bug-y and weird, and Elizabeth fortunately has the sense to appoint someone else as military commander of Atlantis before he goes completely batshit and smashes up her office then tries to strangle her against a random pillar in his room (though, um, not before he sexually assaulted Teyla in the gym). She is not comfortable appointing Caldwell (and honestly I'm not sure why she did--Lorne was right there, and was used to Atlantis). The decent thing to do would be, since she explicitly stated it was just a temporary thing, to continue doing things the way John had been doing them.

Less than a day after taking over, he's made huge changes to everything, planned to make a lot more, and is once again totally ignoring any and all authority she might have, though at least this time he isn't doing it in front of her subordinates. When she protests, he says, quote, "I don't need to check with you about how I run the military operations on this base, ma'am." The whole conversation's about halfway down the page here; I'm not going to transcribe the whole thing.

Now, ladies, gentlemen, nonbinaries, and time-traveling cyborgs, I'm sure you're totally clueless as to why I have this listed at all. I mean, I would be.

But--the thing is--when he isn't being an utter ass, or a professional, he flirts with her. There's a scene earlier in this episode--broken around the edges of the power and trust issues--which would actually be kind of cute if the notion of Elizabeth being with someone who respects her that little didn't absolutely make my skin crawl.

(Technically speaking I suppose one scene with flirting would not normally be much, but given that it's... some quite large percentage of their scenes together, well. Especially since it's in the most recent episode I've seen, thus indicating some sort of progression [they didn't interact much in 2x02 "The Intruder"; all their interactions in "Trinity" were strictly plot-relevant...], combined with--no, I can't use "combined with the fact that people ship them" as justification, people ship anyone. But still.)

In and around the "I don't trust you but my military commander is kind of insane now"/"I want Atlantis, I want to do everything my way" interplay that's the rest of Elizabeth and Caldwell's interactions during "Conversion", even in their first scene together (I would guess it's always a factor, except when they briefly forget before Caldwell decides to be an ass again), there's... well, the opportunity to smile.

I am very fond of the opportunity to smile, especially when it's given to people who don't get the chance often enough, like Elizabeth (see also section 2.3.1.2). And yet, here they are, in the middle of a crisis, and Elizabeth is playing Solitaire--I can sympathize; I do the same in times of extreme stress, and it's weirdly soothing--and Caldwell shows up and there is banter. Of a sort.
Caldwell: You're working late.
Elizabeth: [smiles ruefully; angles tablet to show her Solitaire game] No, not really.
Caldwell: Yeah. We keep trying to remove that from the terminals on the Daedalus, but somehow the crew keeps finding a way of putting it back.
Elizabeth: [grins and puts the tablet down] Never get between a genius ... and a computer game.
Caldwell: [grins back]
Look! Civil conversation! Charming civil conversation, even! And then Elizabeth wonders why he's still in Atlantis and Caldwell is all 'you know that position I DIDN'T GET, well I hear the guy who has it is having problems', and she gets understandably pissed off--Elizabeth has a hard time admitting defeat is even possible (cf. 1x04 "Thirty-Eight Minutes", etc., etc.--everything up to and including this episode)--and everything is sort of set to explode, all charm and happiness and peace gone.

(You know, I think if it'd been--say--Lorne, someone Elizabeth had worked with and did trust, this whole conversation would have gone radically differently. She wouldn't have been offended at the "if you need me to take over, I'm right here", or anything like that--I would say that she probably wouldn't have waited so long to put him in charge, but as soon as it became really obvious the retrovirus wasn't breaking down she did go to Caldwell. So.)

Then that sort of--Caldwell makes a deliberate effort to make things less set-to-explode, by changing the subject and switching the charm back on.
Caldwell: [indicates the tablet] You got chess on there?
Elizabeth: [leaning forward] As a matter of fact, I do.
Caldwell: [also leaning forward] Well, I have to warn you that I'm a career military strategist.
Elizabeth: Well, I'll have to take my chances. [picks up tablet]
And then Kami and I sort of gaped at our screens and flailed, which was only partly because we've decided "chess" is Stargate code for sex (...it's a long story, and it kind of made it utterly hilarious when I found out that in medieval and renaissance times chess was actually allegorical sex, and also used in the courting process). The other part of the gaping and flailing was because it actually did sound flirtatious and all. Definitely. Which was just... gah.
Kate: *chokes*
Kami: OH GOD NO NOT CHESS.
Kami: IT'S LIKE METAPHORICAL ANGRYSEX.
Kate: YEAH.
Kate: MATA HARI ELIZABETH IS GOOD AT FAKESMILING.

And then Caldwell tries to be supportive when Elizabeth tells him to take over, but it sort of comes out sounding awkwardly like he's asking if she and John are involved, which... ("You two are pretty close, aren't you?") Whether it's that or the fact that she just doesn't trust him, she's not really relaxed by the conversation.
Caldwell: [...I]f you need someone to talk to ...
Elizabeth: [dismissively] If you could assume those duties effective immediately?
Caldwell: I can do that.
Elizabeth: [turns to leave] Thank you.
I would feel a lot worse for Caldwell if he didn't sort of leap into completely ignoring her wishes as soon as he had command.

I've actually spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out Caldwell's motivations for treating Elizabeth the way he does. Most of the time, he actually seems like a decent guy--he has some strong opinions about Atlantis and how it should be run, but it's clear in 2x02 "The Intruder" that he actually expected to get the command himself, and Elizabeth basically threatened everyone in the higher echelons of the SGC with "the president and our foreign allies" if they promoted someone over John to be the military commander of the Atlantis expedition.

...so, I mean, his problems with Elizabeth, and his hell-bent determination when it comes to authority and all, those are clear. He knew how he wanted to run Atlantis; when he got the option, he tried. But he doesn't seem to blame John for it, from what I can tell, which is actually a sign of not really being five years old. He's not actually a bad guy, he just often acts like one when Elizabeth or Atlantis is involved.

("But, Kate," you ask, "doesn't that answer your question?"

No, ladies, gentlemen, nonbinaries, and time-traveling cyborgs, it does not.) The thing is, this is a very good case for Caldwell to have been angry at Elizabeth, maybe to hold a grudge against her, though I would argue the latter isn't exactly mature. His apparent attraction to her--and the fact that he's nice when he's being... all... attracted and stuff..--would be a good case for a "well, he should be, um, nicer all the time?"

The two theories I finally came up with are as follows:

One. He resents either her or himself, or both, for that attraction. She did politically manipulate him out of a position he felt he deserved (mind you, the Stargate-'verse working the way it does, if he'd been put in command they'd probably have all gotten killed because he wasn't a main character, or something), to allow someone she preferred to keep said position. But, despite that, she's--as I put it in the section title--Elizabeth freakin' Weir. She is (most of the time, i.e. when the writers aren't failing worse than usual at characterization), intelligent, competent, brave, and compassionate. She is also quite good-looking. It is probably not impossible, by a long shot, to find oneself attracted to such an individual even when you don't like them. In that situation, it's probably also possible to have the dislike not vanish in time to prevent everything from becoming a screwed-up mess of Issues.

Two. It's some sort of warped proving-I-still-can thing. That is, while she's not under his actual command as such, she is to some extent his responsibility--I'm really, really not clear on how the chain of command works with the civilians in the Stargate program, let alone how it works with the Atlantis expedition, but I believe Elizabeth reports to the government, while John reports to, um, Elizabeth and to the military?, Rodney reports to Elizabeth, the rest of the scientists report to their department heads who report to Rodney, and scientists in the field obey the orders of the military person(s) attached to their gate team. And I have no idea at all where in hell Caldwell fits into this. But he is in charge of the ship that's (currently what looks like) one of the only two links between Atlantis and Earth, and he does have a significant amount more combat-zone experience than Elizabeth does, I presume. So, it's possible that he's trying to prove to himself that he is capable of not agreeing with her, should it become necessary.

But really I have no idea. Caldwell is complicated, hasn't been onscreen enough, and tends to be used a lot as a cog to move the plot along. It's fascinating, though.

(It's also fascinating trying to puzzle out Elizabeth's feelings towards him. I don't see her getting romantically involved with someone in the military--she strikes me as too idealistic and too... I don't want to say "pacifistic" because that's not what a pacifist actually is, technically, but... something--but she seems to swing weirdly between "get the hell out of my city" and "sure, let's chat about computer games, it'll be fun!" She might be trying to charm him into being less of an asshat, or she might be kind of confused herself, or something entirely else.

2.4: Laura Cadman and Katie Brown: Cyrano d'Atlantis / unintentional parallels drawn at the speed of plot.
(And yes, I know that "Atlantis" in French is "Atlantide", but most people don't. Probably. Besides, "Cyrano d'Atlantis" makes my point equally well, thank you very much.)
This one's a little shakier than some of my others, and I think what may have tipped the balance was discovering a hilariously wrong literary reference.

The best way I can think of to make the basic argument is as follows: if Laura were a man, and got stuck sharing a body with Rodney, and complained the whole time until remembering that Rodney had a date with Random Botanist We'd Never Seen Before for that evening, and immediately decided it was going to be the best date in the history of EVER OMG, then took over, made a kind of adorable speech, and kissed Random Botanist... well, I'm pretty sure everyone would conclude that he was doing this because he was interested in Random Botanist himself.

But she isn't a man, she's a girl, so of course there's nothing in the least self-interesty about it! Obviously. Because we all know girls don't like girls that way.

...and, first, because I have to get it out of the way: CYRANO? SERIOUSLY, WRITERS? CYRANO?
Laura: Well, consider the opportunity, right? To have a woman there with you, helping you out, feeding you lines. I really think you could learn something.
Rodney: Thank you for the offer, Cyrano, but I think I'll pass.
CYRANO? BACK IN A LITTLE WHILE, OFF DYING OF LAUGHTER AT THE LITERARY REFERENCE FAIL.

Okay. Let me spell this out for you, writers (and also those of you ladies, gents, nonbinaries, and cyborgs who are not utter nerds): Cyrano de Bergerac is a French play about a guy named Cyrano who has a giant nose or something and falls in love with a woman named Roxane, who tells him--as soon as he's finally decided maybe even though he has a giant nose it is OKAY and she will LOVE HIM ANYWAY--that she's in love with his friend Christian, who's really hot but epically fails at talking to people. So Cyrano writes love-letters to Roxane and signs them with Christian's name, and Roxane thinks the writer of the letters is the best person ever, and then everyone dies or something. I MEAN HOLY SHIT, WAY TO JUST... EPICALLY... NO, SERIOUSLY.

Laura Cadman, aka Cyrano d'Atlantide. You're welcome and good night.

Okay, anyway, now that I'm done dying of laughter and have reincarnated, let's go through the episode.

In the first scene, it's entirely possible that Laura was reminded of the whole thing after picking flowers, and not before, but it is also possible to put a different interpretation on her picking a bunch of flowers and then telling Rodney, quote, "So--maybe you should pick some wildflowers from around here; I think she'd get a kick out of that. [...] She's a botanist, she never gets to go offworld, so..." I am not going to try to make an argument either way. Interpret this any way you like. Really, interpret any of this any way you like; this section in particular is more of an academic argument than something I have strong feelings one way or another about, though there are more than a few bits that don't make as much sense assuming platonic feelings as they do assuming romantic ones.

Here's our first introduction to Katie. Laura is still complaining, which she's been doing since she figured out what was going on, and Rodney is still looking like a crazy person as he talks to nothing, which neither of them seems to mind too much (apart from Rodney's distress that he was sent to see the psychologist due to possible emotional problems resulting).
Laura: Oh, stop sulking. You're acting like a two-year-old.
Rodney: This is your fault, you know.
Laura: How'd you figure that?
Rodney: All you had to do was keep your mouth shut while I was working.
Laura: You have no idea what it's like in here, OK?
Rodney: [stops walking] Yes, yes, I do. I know exactly what it's like in here because I live in here. I like it here!
Katie: [is randomly there, and stares] Rodney?
Now, remember, Laura herself is sort of invisible--that is, she's just a voice that only Rodney can hear. And she's not too charitably inclined towards him. The logical thing to do in this sort of situation would possibly be to snicker mentally, or even to deliberately continue causing problems as she did when he was meeting with Elizabeth (his boss), Zelenka (his... immediate subordinate, it looks like), John (his--counterpart?), and Carson (the doctor, and, incidentally, someone in whom Laura herself has displayed an interest). So, what does she, in fact, do?
Laura: Be cool!
Well, that was... unexpected.
Rodney: Katie! [turns to her] Hi.
Katie: Is, uh, everything OK?
Rodney: Yes! Yes! Everything is just fine. I was just, uh...
Laura: Talking on the radio! Talking on the radio!
Rodney: ...talking on the radio.
...well, I'm sure Rodney wishes you'd been this helpful when he was trying to convince his boss he wasn't totally crazy, Laura. Anyway, there's a bit of conversation in which Rodney and Katie are both sort of adorably awkward at each other, and confirm their date for tomorrow is still on.
Katie: Right! Well, I'll see you then.
Rodney: Mmm.
[Katie walks away, with a brief pause to look back at him]
Laura: You really know nothing about women, do you?!
Rodney: I know plenty.
Laura: Maybe this is a good thing.
Rodney: Excuse me?
Laura: I could teach you a thing or two about the opposite sex, McKay. Lord knows you need it!
Rodney: This is hell! This is my own personal hell!

Isn't it nice that someone is enjoying this whole thing? And that they switched from "this is horrible, I hate this" to "OH HEY THIS MIGHT NOT BE SO BAD" as soon as Katie showed up? Yes, yes it is nice. I mean, it'd suck if nobody enjoyed the experience.

Then Laura uses Rodney's body to get some time with Carson, which... is kind of weird, actually, since Carson is one of the few people on Atlantis I tend to see as completely straight, but whatever, she's using Rodney for it, which is the unintentional parallel drawn at the speed of plot to which I referred in the section header.

A bit later on, Laura is still trying to convince Rodney to let her participate in help with the date.
Rodney: No, it is completely out of the question.
Laura: Why? You'd rather go it alone?
Rodney: Oh yes, imagine that, I'd rather go it alone!
Laura: Well, consider the opportunity, right? To have a woman there with you, helping you out, feeding you lines. I really think you could learn something.
Rodney: Thank you for the offer, Cyrano, but I think I'll pass.
Laura: I was there when you bumped into her, OK? I felt how nervous and awkward you were.
Rodney: Well I'm sure that has nothing to do with my current situation.
Laura: C'mon, Rodney, let me do this for you! Maybe this is why this happened.
Rodney: “This is why this happened”?
Laura: Yeah.
Rodney: Are you insane?
Laura: Considering our situation here, I think I've been extremely reasonable. I can make this a living hell for you, Rodney. This is something I wanna do, and we're doing it.
I'LL BET IT IS. Uh. I mean. Okay, Cyrano hilarity aside, the fact that she's gone from "this whole thing sucks" to "Katie is why I'm here in your body just before your date with her" is fascinating, even without her threats to make Rodney's life a living hell if he doesn't let her.

(If I thought Rodney had any background in classical French literature and plays, I'd make a point about how apparently they can feel each others' emotions, and suggest that he made the Cyrano reference deliberately. As it is, though, Rodney's pretty much the last of the main characters to make that connection, and I'm not even sure I'm excluding Teyla and Ronon from that list.)

The date is, of course, an absolute and utter disaster. Laura does seem rather invested in it, for whatever reason ("Very good! That wasn't so bad. She's obviously into you, so at least we have that working for us. Now, I was thinking that we m--", emphasis mine), and spends the whole time spoonfeeding Rodney advice until she gives up in despair, makes a speech ("[...] Katie, I really like you. In fact, the past few months here have been made more liveable thanks to you. [...] But I don't want you to be insulted or to wonder whether or not I am interested in you. Because I am...I am very, very interested."), and then kisses the hell out of her in a 1950s-end-of-movie way [screencap]. And then flees, but really, what else is one to do in that situation.

At the end of the episode, she uses Rodney to kiss Carson when she's afraid they might die, thus proving that she is definitely okay with using Rodney's body for her own purposes. (...I really cannot figure out a way to say that sentence that doesn't sound kind of perverted, so, just... I didn't mean it that way, okay?)

I wouldn't argue that she's deeply invested in Katie (certainly, for whatever it's worth, she's more comfortable looking slightly insane/letting the body she's in look slightly insane in front of Carson, which probably argues more of a foundation there), but... well, Kami once referred to it as "belated teenage experimentation", I think? Something like that.

2.5: Teyla Emmagan and Ronon Dex: when character-&/or-actor chemistry screws up your script.
This one is one of the hardest "these people are involved!" arguments for me to make, because it's so much in--not just nonverbal, but active nonverbal. It isn't even the kind of body language I can link to a screencap of--it's how they move around each other, how they sound when they speak. Sure, there are stills I can take out of context (there's one from 2x06 "Trinity" that looks adorable, if you ignore the fact that really what's happening is they're trying to get out of the damn meeting I watched on silent a zillion times for section 2.3.1.4 walk through a doorway in a normal manner.

I mentioned a while ago that there are two and a half pairings I actually, wholeheartedly believe are really happening--and by "pairings" I mean mutual ones; Elizabeth's suitors (section 2.3, if you've been living under a rock/skipped straight here without passing go or collecting $200) both qualify for believable but not for pairing--Daniel and Sha'uri/Share, John and Rodney, and this. Teyla and Ronon. I don't know how to explain it. The only reason I even want to try is to talk about the horribly, horribly clunky writing in "Trinity", and the weirdness of the 2x04 "Duet"--"Trinity"--2x08 "Conversion" arc.

When I first got to 2x03 "Runner", the episode where we meet Ronon, I was excited because I knew of him from a vast, vast majority of the SGA fic I'd read (and I was also excited because speaking of new people--NEVER MIND, MOVING ON), but had no actual anything to frame this knowledge in. I knew that a lot of people wrote him with Teyla, but I figured that was a combination of convenience and "ooh, pretty"--the latter because they're both ridiculously attractive, and the former because it's, I don't know, tidy to have the gate team in romantic pairs instead of one pair and two loose ends?

And, yeah, in "Runner" they didn't really spark. (Mind, this is probably because Teyla was tied up at the time, and I've never gotten the impression that that's one of her favorite activities.) So I chalked it up to fannish convenience and went on and watched "Duet", and... wow. By their second scene together in that, Kami and I were both so incredibly convinced that they were... well, whether or not they were actually involved at that point or not, we weren't sure, but we were completely sure that they were going to get there eventually, and if they weren't yet it was just because they were prolonging the anticipation.

In "Trinity" they went off on a trading expedition together--is that what they're calling it these days?--and ran into an old friend of Ronon's, who--well, it has to be seen to be believed, really. Ronon has just walked into the room--they both thought the other was dead, or something (certainly Ronon thought Solen was dead)--and interrupted a slightly exaggerated story of Solen's.
Solen: Ronon?!
Ronon: There were two Wraith guarding that cruiser and he wasn't alone. [grins]
[Solen laughs and hugs Ronon, who hugs back, then remembers Teyla's there.]
Ronon: Uh, Teyla Emmagan, Solen Sincha. We served in the same regiment in Sateda.
Teyla: I am honoured.
Solen: You two make a nice match. Congratulations.
So... a complete stranger thinks they're a couple. It's that obvious. Or, as Kami put it, "OH GOD EVEN THE RANDOM OTHER SATEDAN CAN SEE IT."
Teyla: We are friends--nothing more.
[Everyone goes back to the plot.]

Kate: Writers> LA LA LA *STICK FINGERS IN EARS*
Kate: THAT WAS SO SUBTLEFAILWTF, SRSLY. [...] WRITERS. DRUGS. YOU ARE CLEARLY ON THEM. OR, JUST, LIKE, BLINDFOLDED.
Kami: OMG I KNOWWWW.

It was just. WHAT. (If you're following along and have a scary, scary memory, you'll recognize the "[Everyone goes back to the plot.]" from section 1.3, from the Randomly Dropped Into The Episode With All The Subtlety Of A Dozen Tangoing Elephants Bit in the first alternate universe (SG-1 1x19 "There But for the Grace of God") where Daniel discovers that General Jack and Dr. Sam are engaged. It is (a) glaringly obvious and (b) extremely random, especially since (c) it is totally irrelevant to the plot, and is brought up only once never to be mentioned or relevant again.)

Which, you know, great, I'm glad we can take time out from the fate of the world for some As The Stargate Turns, but... you've got enough problems with writing half the time anyway, do you really need to start in with the tangoing elephants?

People. Don't. Just. Ask. That. In my experience, anyway--it might be a common thing in the Pegasus Galaxy. But to me, as a viewer, sitting in front of my screen waiting to be entertained, it comes across as unnatural dialogue. "You two make a nice match. Congratulations" is not something I would ever say--nor would I say anything something like it--on being introduced to someone who happens to be physically standing next to a friend of mine.

Maybe it's a Satedan thing. Maybe the only girls you introduce to your friends are the ones you're ...matched with. I mean, that seems kind of rude to every other female you might at some point need to introduce to your friends, but what do I know, I'm just some random Earth chick who has friends of both sexes and genders.

Then in 2x08 "Conversion" John shoves Teyla against a wall and kisses her. My theory on "Duet" -- "Trinity" -- "Conversion" goes something like this:

not-Bob> So, Bob, we got the people's opinion on "Duet" last week.
Bob> And?
not-Bob> Well, apparently people think that, uh, [checks notes] Teyla and Dex are doing it, and that Sheppard was practically feeling up a male mannequin [screencap; you're welcome] and McKay's body kissed a guy and this is sort of, uh, gay?
Bob> McKay got a girlfriend in that episode!
not-Bob> Yeah, I know. Viewers, man, they're weird.
Bob> Okay, well, uh. We'll just have Teyla and Dex say they're not doing it. That'll clear things up.
not-Bob> And the other?
Bob> McKay has a girlfriend, and Sheppard's an Air Force hero who had glowy sex with whatshername back in s1. I mean, he's Kirk--except with weird hair and stuff?--, he's not sleeping with his lead scientist!
not-Bob> Oh, right, okay. Well, I'll just get everyone working on that "not doing it" thing, then.
Bob> Cool.

["Trinity" happens.]

Bob> So how'd it go?
not-Bob> Well, let's see, that Satedan guy immediately thought they were a couple, which some people thought was pretty weird, and then there was this whole thing where apparently people still think they're doing it even though they said they weren't?
Bob> Oh, for God's sake, Teyla's for Sheppard, everyone knows that.
not-Bob> ...yeah, well, uh, have you looked at the IMDB entry on the episode?
Bob> No.
not-Bob> ...Apparently, like, everyone thinks that that episode should come with a little rainbow sticker.
Bob> Are you serious.
not-Bob> Yeah. There were apparently some... weird... things. [summarizes section 2.2.2]
Bob> That was for the plot!
not-Bob> I know, I know. And, um. The episode right after, we don't know what people think yet, but it's got Dex really concerned about Teyla when she gets, like, attacked? So they're probably going to, uh. You know.
Bob> This is a disaster! All our plans getting messed up by idiot viewers who don't care about the character arcs! You know what? FOR 2x08 SHEPPARD AND TEYLA ARE KISSING IF YOU HAVE TO TURN HIM INTO A GODDAMNED WRAITH TO DO IT.
not-Bob> Oh, hey, that's an idea.

["Conversion" happens.]

not-Bob> ...if I say "rape metaphor" are you going to be annoye--
Bob> SCREW THIS, I QUIT.

The thing is, I don't really see Teyla and Ronon as in love, really. Sexually attracted, yes; good friends, yes. But I don't think it's weird that she apparently gets married offscreen when the actress got pregnant, and I don't think it's weird that Ronon and Jennifer had that embryonic relationship that got thrown out the window when the inexplicable Rodney/Jennifer thing happened.

And, really, that's why this is the hardest of the points for me to argue, because it isn't about a romantic relationship at all, so I can't point out dialogue and scenarios that indicate that. They're friends, they're allies, they're fellow outcasts in the extreme weird zone that is Atlantis and the Atlantean expedition, but... that's all text, not subtext, and the subtext of also-I-want-to-jump-your-bones eludes definition.
2.6: Sam Carter and Teal'c: when even the actors get fed up with the stupid.
So I haven't actually seen the episode where this happens, as such, but I find it a hell of a lot easier to believe than Jack/Sam. (Note to writers: this is a problem.) And, as I mentioned before, if anyone can find me where I read this, or tell me that I hallucinated it, I would be extremely grateful. [[ETA 11/25/10]] Aha. It's in the commentary track Amanda Tapping contributed to for 10x20 "Unending", the episode in question. [[End ETA 11/25/10]]

I made up a quick list of what we'd seen Sam's type to possibly be in section 2.1. For the sake of convenience I'll reproduce it here: quiet, cheerful, pleasant, intelligent without being arrogant, "they seemed like nice guys--maybe a tiny bit bland, but Sam might have been looking for stability by that time."

I'm not going to argue that this matches perfectly--for one thing, you don't get paid to be on a TV show as a main character for ten years if your character is bland. Usually. But 'stable', yes. And, really, all in all, I'd argue Teal'c works much better than Jack does.

Also, I believe he's the only person we actually saw Sam saying goodbye to before she left for Atlantis. Which is nice.

(I will probably have more Thoughts, of a Deep and Thinky Nature, on this once I've actually, uh, seen more SG-1? I wanted to get this out there, because it does tie in with the rest of the essay, but I know that neither this nor the next section are even close to, um, complete.)

2.7: Ronon Dex and Jennifer Keller: does this make Rodney McKay a homewrecker?
This is another topic that could really stand to be expanded on, in depth and detail, because from everything I've heard Ronon and Jennifer worked really well together. In text, their interactions during "Quarantine" were grin-inducing adorable. (They blew up the infirmary with an oxygen tank! Based on movies!) Probably the rest was too.

So, this is really more of a placeholder than anything else, here because I needed to acknowledge it, skeletal because it deserves better clothing to its bones than "and then I think I heard this one time maybe about an episode that, uh, stuff happened?"

3: Not-Romance: you're doing that wrong, too.
In SGA 3x17 "Sunday", Rodney refers to Carson as his best friend. This is my incredulous face, ladies, gentlemen, nonbinaries, and time-traveling cyborgs. We hardly ever saw them spending time together in a non-professional context, we saw pretty much nothing they had in common... writers, sweet ones, you do know that best friends, uh, hang out? And enjoy each other's company?

But, uh, they don't. That's the most blatant "WHAT." grouping, but there are others. Lots of others. Through all fifteen seasons of both the first shows combined (which is what makes me so wary of Stargate Universe--it's a show about people having relationships? oh God, no, send help).

People interact or not, in Stargate shows, as the plot requires. Sometimes this does strange and terrible things to characterization, and sometimes it accidentally opens up whole new vistas of sense.


 This concludes the essay (for now). It's thirty thousand words long, and there are whole stretches of things I didn't even address; it took me several weeks to finish (I wrote the first half or so over about three days, and then slowed down drastically). I hope you enjoyed it, or at least don't wish you hadn't read it.

Transcripts came from GateWorld, TwizTV, and, in desperate cases, from me going back to the episode and transcribing it by hand. Screencaps, where linked, were linked back to the source--i.e. GateWorld except that one time I had to cap 'em myself.

Comments are extremely welcome, particularly ones containing discussion of the essay. Please do not flame (where "flame" = "deliberately antagonistic behavior", "insults", "criticism offered without any pretense of being constructive", etc). If you have any corrections (whether of the technical-error variety or the factual-error variety), I definitely want to hear them. Since there are sections of this essay writing about things I haven't seen yet, I know there's a very good chance I got something wrong somewhere, and I would like to not have blatant errors.

(Exception: if this is about 3x17 "Sunday", that episode never happened. There are two things that happened in "Sunday"--Katie Brown is interested in pharmaceutical applications of xenobotany, and Lorne is an artist. None of the rest of that episode exists. There are no exploding tumors, and they did not invent some random scientist just to ask Elizabeth on a lunch date, and Teyla doesn't go around asking random people for dating advice, AND ALSO THERE ARE NO SUCH THING AS EXPLODING TUMORS, WHAT THE HELL.)

(Okay, fine, that episode happened, but I'm choosing to believe that the writers were so confused about writing a day off that they lost what was left of their minds and just... failed kind of epically. Also, they seem to have a grudge against fish.)

If I offended anyone by insulting a pairing they hold dear to their hearts, I'm sorry. These are my interpretations of these relationships as portrayed in canon, by the limited skills of the writing team. Obviously everyone who watches a show takes away their own impressions, based on their own experiences; even more so, everyone who writes fanfiction (or, to a lesser extent, meta) has to select which portions of the canon to incorporate. Outside of the show's canon, pretty much anything could be made to work, given sufficient time and effort, patience and skill.

and that's all she wrote.


EDITS:

Edit 16 May 2010: moved to Dreamwidth; imported all LJ entries; condensed this essay, which broke over five LJ entries, into one Dreamwidth entry; adjusted HTML to reflect this.

Edit 24 October 2010: added a small expansion to Section 1.1, "Our Manly, Heterosexual Air Force Hero and the Girl on His Gate Team. Who Is Not The Girl, Just a Girl.", found here.

Edit 25 November 2010: added a source reference to Section 2.6, "Sam Carter and Teal'c: when even the actors get fed up with the stupid.", found here. Unrelatedly, changed the address to the audience ("ladies, gentlemen, and cyborgs" (where the "cyborgs" is intended as a genre-based joke, also hopefully clarified in the edit)) to include nonbinaries.

Edit 8 September 2011: copied from personal LJ to fandom LJ.
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Date: 2011-09-13 10:10 pm (UTC)
jesse_the_k: Rodney gestures triumphantly (sga Rodney pwns again)
From: [personal profile] jesse_the_k
Comment: Sept 13: Deeply admired for combination of glee, seriousness, and snark. THANKS!

Date: 2011-09-14 01:04 am (UTC)
nonisland: Stargate's city Atlantis on the surface of the ocean ([SGA] Atlantis rising)
From: [personal profile] nonisland
Thank you! I'm very glad you enjoyed it. ♥

Date: 2011-09-16 03:25 am (UTC)
grammarwoman: (SGA OT4)
From: [personal profile] grammarwoman
This is...Amazing. Astounding. A staggering work of love and fandom!

I was nodding and "Totally!"ing through the whole thing, where I wasn't "Yes! That's exactly it!"

All the kudos I can muster are aimed right at you. I dream of trapping Joe Malozzi and crew in a room and having this drilled into their brains until they are sobbing out their apologies.

Bravo!

Date: 2011-09-16 03:38 am (UTC)
nonisland: Stargate's city Atlantis on the surface of the ocean ([SGA] Atlantis rising)
From: [personal profile] nonisland
Thank you so much! ♥

Ah, a world in which writers and producers actually listened would be a wonderful world indeed. *sigh*

Date: 2011-11-13 10:53 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
What?

I seriously cannot see where you are coming from. From my point of view, we must have been watching a very different show, because your arguments make no sense to me. At all.
I must say that to me you come off as very arrogant person who thinks they are better than everyone else, and that's a shame because it taints the whole feel of this essay.

Sorry. (not really, but i had to say it)

Date: 2011-11-13 09:33 pm (UTC)
nonisland: image of a fountain pen lying on a sheet of paper, with pale purple flowers off to the side, and text "nonisland" ([SG1] team!)
From: [personal profile] nonisland
Well, I hope you enjoyed the show you watched as much as I enjoyed the show I watched. Thank you for your feedback!

Date: 2012-02-17 02:24 pm (UTC)
jdjunkie: (dont'fuckwithD)
From: [personal profile] jdjunkie
As a massive SG-1 fan, I have to say I loved this essay. I also cheered the appearance of the sparkly ironic feeelings text because Jack/Sam has never, and will never, make ANY sense to me whatsoever for the exact reasons you so eloquently describe here.

Thank you for articulating my feeeelings on the J/S subject (I can't speak to SGA because I never watched and, having read this, I'm actually glad about that).

Cheers!

Date: 2012-03-21 06:28 am (UTC)
nonisland: image of a fountain pen lying on a sheet of paper, with pale purple flowers off to the side, and text "nonisland" ([SG1] team!)
From: [personal profile] nonisland
(Oh my gosh, I am so sorry to be this late replying.)

Thank you so much for your comment! I'm very glad you enjoyed the essay (and the sparkly ironic feeelings text)!

Date: 2012-02-19 12:11 am (UTC)
green_grrl: (SGA_asskicking)
From: [personal profile] green_grrl
I'm so glad Paian linked to this, because Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes ... all the way down. TPTB were HORRIBLE at writing relationships because it was all tell, no show. And the telling sacrificed characterization on the altar of convenience at every turn.

Totally with you on the unintentional relationships. The Sam relationship that I was completely sold on was Sam/Cam. And I completely buy Vala and Teal'c as friends with benefits. (And I did absolutely see and buy the Sam/Teal'c in Unending before I heard Amanda's commentary.)

And SGA's insistence on going out with everyone in Happy Couples Land except for John was forced and sickening. Rodney/Jennifer is just a world of no for me, and I'm firmly convinced Joe was deliberately playing Sheppard gay and jealous by the end.

Date: 2012-03-21 06:31 am (UTC)
nonisland: Stargate's city Atlantis on the surface of the ocean ([SGA] Atlantis rising)
From: [personal profile] nonisland
(I am so incredibly sorry to be this late replying.)

And the telling sacrificed characterization on the altar of convenience at every turn.
Yes, that's it exactly.

I'm very glad you liked the essay, and thank you for your comment and the additional thoughts.

I'm firmly convinced Joe was deliberately playing Sheppard gay and jealous by the end.
It wouldn't surprise me at all, really. *sighs* So much wasted potential.

Date: 2012-06-19 11:18 pm (UTC)
chalcopyrite: Shiny blue and purple hearts on a blue background (&hearts;)
From: [personal profile] chalcopyrite
It took me even longer to read this than it did you to write it, but I am glad I finally finished it! I have only seen a very small proportion of the first two Stargates (and constructed the rest of my chosen reality based on fic), but I love "listening" to people being thinky about things!

(A++ use of ironic sparkletext!)
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