Write or Wrong? Writing Stargate SG-1

"Stargate is a tough show to write for," continues Glassner. "One of the reasons for this is that we want to give something to all of our leads to do in every episode and occasionally that's a challenge if the plot centres on just one of them."

Jonathan Glassner, Executive  Producer, Stargate SG-1 Seasons One - Three.

Threshold

That was... different. Not what I expected, but then that's probably a good thing :^) I would expecting possibly a very tout, tense, episode with either the CIA's or USAMIRID's top psychological warfare specialist fighting it out with the conditioning in Teal'c's mind assisted by the reluctant SG1, a la B5 season 4. That said, we have got a lot of interesting things from Teal'c life to ponder about.

As myself and Eva were pondering about in another thread, the control that the Gou'ald have is based on the traditions and teachings handed down from the parents or their society in general. This teaching must be exceptionally powerful because, even though Teal'c had (most likely) got away with his betrayal, he still didn't feel safe until he'd killed his friend Vorash (?).

It's a wonder that the Gou'ald actually have any sort of military leadership at all considering that they are killed or are be killed for even the slightest provocation, maybe even at a whim.

I liked the scene where Daniel spent most of it saying, "Did he just call me a woman?" I suspect in the same circumstance I would do something similar :^) In fact seeing *everyone* fretting around the bed as a good sign.

So, without getting side-tracked into a long topical debate about religion, does anyone thing that Sam has been religious at least once in her life. I suspect that she might have been a good little Christian girl, going to church on Sundays with her parents, praying before going to bed, but as she grew up her faith lapsed, especially when she started getting into Astrophysics[1]. This lapse of faith and questioning herself might have caused the delay in her reply to Teal'c's statement.

[1] And no, don't get me started on (IIRC) Scientists of Christ[2] either :^) [2] Who are completely different to Christian Scientists BTW.

From what little I could tell, the cinematography looked impressive, with the director going mad with candles and dramatic lighting (or lack of it :^) ). I liked that fact that just because the Jaffa are based on the Egyptians, it doesn't mean that they have to spend their entire lives in the desert or scrublands.

Well that's all I can think of now, something might materialise in a moment though :^

Chimera

Oh, wow, I loved this episode.

Threshold highlighted the difference between S4 and S5 so far for me: during S4 it was hard for me to get the feeling of 'team' even in episodes where all the members were together. Here in Threshold we have a very Teal'c-centric episode, but the difference during S5 so far seems to be that the team are 'connected' in a way I didn't see them in S4.

This was a tightly-written episode (kudos to Brad Wright for an excellent script) which did a beautiful job of showing us the influences on Teal'c and how he came to have his doubts about his 'god.' I particularly appreciated the way they wove in scenes from COTG. Like Enemies, I loved everything about this episode: the excellent script, fine direction, outstanding acting by all the cast, and the overall feeling of *team*. You could tell they were all stressed and worried about Teal'c (wonderful to see them all pulling together like this) and CJ did an incredible job (and looked pretty darned incredible too).

Favorite moments: Jack and Daniel at Teal'c's bedside. Daniel, the Man of Words, unable to come up with anything to say at first, "I think he said velour", "Did he just call me a woman?" These two men just play off each other so well, and you get a real sense of comfortable friendship between them. Sam's little talk with Bra'tac (it was good to see him interacting with her for a change) and angsting at Teal'c's bedside in a lovely moment.  Janet's fierce determination to save her patient. Everyone gathered around Teal'c's bedside. Teal'c's flashbacks, and that dizzying set of flashbacks at the end. I can tell you, at the end of the episode, *I* was wearing a big, fat smile on my face.

I feel like I'm rediscovering Stargate.

Brenda

I absolutely adored this episode. I thought it was very intelligent and literate, managed to give us a single-character episode that is chock full of 'team' feeling and really does tell us (almost) everything we ever wanted to know about Teal'c. CJ is totally breathtaking throughout, absolutely magnificent from start to finish, and gave a virtuoso performance of a man running the gamut of almost every life experience before our eyes. I loved the way we got to see Teal'c change and grow from his first meeting with Apophis, where he is tongue-tied in the presence of his god, through doubt, revelation, self-hatred, up to his now totally explicable decision to answer Jack's request for help in COTG.

We have had some really good insights in the past into Teal'c. Bloodlines gave us a big chunk of information about what Teal'c had left behind (a wife and son he loved), the sacrifice he had made in joining the SGC, the level of his commitment to his cause, and introduced us to the wonderful character of Bra'tac. What it didn't tell us was how Teal'c had come to the point where he was prepared to make such a sacrifice. Cor-Ai told us about the depths of Teal'c's self-hatred, the death wish he had to overcome; how he needed to forgive himself for his past crimes and come to believe that he could do more good alive than dead, and it told us about the kind of decisions Teal'c had been forced to make every day while first prime of Apophis. Unfortunately, after that episode, however, we didn't get to hear any more about that side of his life afterwards. (Or indeed about Jack's burden of guilt/responsibility for past actions either, although we did a see past Special Ops mission in which Jack was involved that had gone wrong in Gamekeeper and it was touched on again briefly in Chain Reaction in Jack's case.)

In Family we found out about Apophis' ability to conquer the hearts and minds of those who even have good reason to hate him, and learnt that Apophis was canny enough to know that Teal'c's pride in his son was his Achilles heel. And in The Serpent's Venom we got an insight into how important faith is to the Goa'uld and to the Jaffa: how necessary it is to the System Lords that their divinity should not be questioned, and that those who question it should be seen to recant, and how important it is to the Jaffa who do believe that others should as well. Ter'ok in Serpent's Venom genuinely believed that Teal'c would die 'damned' if he did not recant his 'blasphemy' and acknowledge the Goa'uld as gods. (We've had lots of other insights into Teal'c as well, but these seem to me to be the main ones to do with his past history as someone who once believed Apophis was a god and then ceased to believe that to be the case yet had to remain in his service.)

But there were still a lot of gaps: How did Teal'c come to believe the Goa'uld were not gods? When did this happen? Maybe most importantly of all, what made him decide to take that momentous decision to give up the people he loved and turn on men he had trained to help Jack and the others in COTG?

In Threshold we finally got answers to these and other fascinating questions and in an episode that I thought was exciting from start to finish, had real depth, and which faced up to the moral dilemmas Teal'c has faced in the past (and present) unflinchingly.

This also felt to me like an episode that really needed to happen here, at this point in the series mythology. (And not only because the viewers were at the stage where having so many unanswered questions about Teal'c was starting to really bug them.) One can't help feeling that the reactions of Jack, Daniel and Sam to Teal'c's condition would probably have been very different in the past. Would they have been forged enough as a unit in S1 or S2 to go through this experience together? Would they have been strong enough to sit back and let Teal'c basically die in front of them for his own good back then? They have been through this before in different forms, with Skaara and Sha're in COTG (Goa'uld possession); with Kawalsky (Goa'uld possession) in The Enemy Within; Sam in In the Line of Duty (apparent Goa'uld possession); Daniel in Need (Goa'uld technology distorting his personality); Jack in Into the Fire (apparent Goa'uld possession); Daniel in Legacy (apparent schizophrenia); Sam in Entity (possession by alien entity). These are people who have found out the hard way that without the mind to go with it, having the loved one's body there means nothing at all.

I loved Janet's reaction to someone she cares about being left to die while she is forbidden to help him, and we really needed Janet's reaction to counterpoint everyone else's. Everyone in this episode cares passionately about Teal'c. It's certainly a Teal'c episode, I think far and away the best Teal'c episode we’ve ever had, but it's also very much a team episode. Janet wants to save her patient (and friend). Janet believes in the power of medicine. She has to believe that there is something within her particular area of expertise – which is after all the life-saving business – which can save him. What Bra'tac proposes is really anti-medicine: no painkillers, no drugs, no therapies. It is a great credit to Janet that she is prepared to go along with it, even though she clearly loathes this treatment, and I was so glad that she was given something medical to do at the end which could give her a sense of achievement in Teal'c's cure. (And who knows if the other Jaffa Bra'tac treated might not also have been saved if there had been a Janet on hand to shock their hearts back to life, once they had found themselves and chosen the path of freedom again?)

The same with Hammond. He might not necessarily agree that Teal'c is better off dead than in his own mind, but given the fact that the practical consequences of Teal'c not being in his own mind are him being shut up in solitary confinement until his symbiote matures, and has to be killed, whereupon he'll die anyway, it makes sense that he would also go along with this treatment, but no one seeing the look on Hammond's face when Teal'c is suffering could doubt how much Teal'c means to Hammond. (I really wish they'd given this kind of team support to Sam in Entity but perhaps they made amends in Ascension?)

Having been through the experience of having the people they love in there in body but not in mind, Jack, Daniel and Sam know that if Teal'c isn't Teal'c then he is as lost to them as if he was dead, which still doesn't make sitting there watching him suffer easy for them, and I thought it was handled very well. I loved the direction throughout the whole episode, the chilly blues of Teal'c's flashbacks were incredibly atmospheric, but loved the way the scenes of Teal'c in the infirmary were lit in particular, with whoever is watching over him in the shadows, and Teal'c in the candlelight. Teal'c being strapped to the bed had the same effect as in Serpent's Song too, where the immobility of the patient, because of his stillness in contrast to the movement of the others, makes him totally dominate the scene.

When Jack and Daniel are doing their stint of Teal'c watching, even though they were bantering (and very wonderful it was to see them bantering again, they were totally adorable in this episode, as in Enemies), it was clearly displacement activity for what was a very traumatic experience for them, something really highlighted by Sam's scene with Teal'c, which, yes, I admit, I absolutely loved. I loved the fact Teal'c tried to trick Jack and Daniel, but appealed to Sam's compassion. It could be that by appealing to Sam's kindness he was just using his knowledge of her, but I don't think so, I felt that he was genuinely trying to speak to her as someone who could sympathize with his faith. His bewilderment at how they could punish him for loving his god was genuinely upsetting and AT was totally wonderful in this scene. She managed to look like someone who hadn't slept in a long time and had clearly been stressed out for days, while still looking beautiful in a very natural way. (Neat trick if you can do it and I certainly wish I could.) We really got to see Sam's strength and her compassion in this scene and the brow mopping was simply stellar. We may not have a very large number of Sam and Teal'c scenes but at least every one of them is outstandingly good and this one was the best yet. (I absolutely loved the little scene between Bra'tac and Janet where he asks her to trust him, and the scene between Sam and Bra'tac too.)

But as well as being a wonderful story about characters and the character of Teal'c in particular, Threshold examined in more detail than ever before, the other great power/terror of the Goa'uld. Their ability to make people believe in something that is manifestly untrue and act against their own inherent humanity (for want of a better word given our track record as a species) because they believe it is the right thing to do only because they believe the one they follow is their god. It's seems pretty ironic, and fitting, that in the episode following the one in which Apophis seems to finally get his chips, that we are given what I feel is the clearest insight yet into just how evil an entity he is/was.

What Threshold did (for me anyway) is show us how extraordinary a person Teal'c is by showing us how 'ordinary' he is, showing us the steps that led him from an awestruck Jaffa to a world weary fifth columnist facing a future of trying to immure himself to horror to do some good, to the man desperate enough to take that leap of faith in COTG. It is made clearer than ever before in Threshold that Teal'c, like Bra'tac before him, was effectively in the position of being a non-believer in an Inquisition that has existed for thousands of years, extends across every country he has ever encountered, has no known opposition capable of defeating it (as those who oppose Apophis are only the followers of other Goa'uld whose belief system is exactly the same except for the name of the god they believe in), and which has a grip upon the minds of its followers that is almost impossible to shake loose. He is someone born into a system that appears to have no possibility of change and which hardly anyone questions.

That he has doubt at all, given his upbringing and the unquestioning belief which surrounds him, is a great credit to his independence. But having come to realize that the tyrant you serve is not a god, but an ordinary monster, what do you do? Bra'tac has done as much as he feels he can. He pretends to be loyal to the Goa'uld he despises and has made himself the best warrior that he can so that his power will be as great as he can make it. By this means he can temper some of the evil the Goa'uld do. And he can hope that in time more Jaffa will come to realize the Goa'uld are not gods so that they will turn on Apophis and others like him.

Bra'tac is revealed to us as a complex, flawed, fascinating man in this episode; someone whose inherent compassion is constantly having to duel with his pragmatism. No one seeing him in this episode could doubt that he loves Teal'c like a son, or would have any difficulty understanding why he would rather see him dead than see him a slave to the lies of a false god.

The dilemma that Teal'c (and Bra'tac) faced every day once he had ceased to believe Apophis was a god was touched upon in Cor-Ai in the past, but it is really examined here. How can you do good within a system that is evil? If you serve it, you surely strengthen it; if you leave it because it sickens you, someone worse than you will take your place, at least if you are there you might be able to do some good. To safeguard others it is surely better that you lead the army of an evil tyrant rather than someone who has no morality.

This is the decision Bra'tac has made before Teal'c joins the service of Apophis and this seems to be the best that Teal'c can hope for; that by rising to the highest position in Apophis' service he can temper the evil of the Goa'uld and hope in time to defeat them. But with Bra'tac one feels that in the past he did not believe the Goa'uld could ever be defeated in his lifetime. He could safeguard some Jaffa whom a lesser commander would callously sacrifice. He could blur the edges of Apophis' orders a little so that more innocent people live and less good Jaffa die. But he cannot escape the system which has enslaved him. Nor does he even have the comfort of faith. Simon de Montfort could die commending his soul to God, and believing he had nothing with which to reproach himself. Presumably so can whoever was the first prime of Apophis who led the attack on the Jaffa of Chulak mentioned by Bra'tac in Maternal Instinct, and who clearly had no more problems implementing the 'God will know his own' policy for Apophis than Simon de M did for Pope Innocent III in the Albigensian crusade, because that Jaffa presumably *did* believe that Apophis was a god. It seems likely too that the Chulakian massacre was something which might well have been less all encompassing and savage if either Bra'tac or Teal'c had still been first prime, showing the other side of what happens when you openly defy the evil tyrant you are serving and go and fight for the opposition.

I loved the way we got to see Teal'c's development so lucidly here. Although a lot younger and wider-eyed than the Teal'c we know and love, the Teal'c who will not speak against the father whose memory he still honours, is very much our Teal'c. As is the one who won't betray Bra'tac even though he has committed blasphemy, and can't bring himself to kill a friend, despite the fact he doesn't know that Apophis won't know and kill him for it. I liked the way that even after Teal'c has doubts, and then the proof that Apophis is not omniscient, he is still proud to be chosen as first prime to Apophis; he is still someone living within that system even though he knows it is a system based on a lie.

CJ did an amazing job in showing us all the different stages of Teal'c and PDL really did live up to his Living God status with this sublime direction. It was probably cruel and unnecessary to make CJ take his shirt off in what seemed to be sub-zero temperatures but not only did it make for a *very* pleasant visual, that scene with apprentice Teal'c blindfold and half naked in the snow thinking he is good enough to take Bra'tac without having to do his homework was a great character insight into both of them.

I loved the scene where Jack and Hammond are in the observation room too and we can see Sam and Teal'c (and the candles) reflected in the window too. Don't know how long that one took to set up but it was definitely worth it.

The scenes between Teal'c and Drey'ac (Drey'auc? Dray'ac?) were wonderful too. Those of us who had the Teal'c & Women conversation seemed to be up a gum tree on that 'arranged marriage' presumption because they definitely appeared to be a young married couple who were very much in love. Drey'ac seemed to be a wonderful wife to Teal'c and in the first scene I found myself thinking 'How they hell are they going to convince us that he would leave her when she is such a sweet woman who clearly adores him?' But when we got the second scene between Teal'c and Drey'ac we found out exactly why Teal'c was prepared to leave even this woman whom he obviously loved. Teal'c's description of what he'd had to do to stay alive was a real gut-wrencher and CJ was amazing in this scene. I thought it was very clever to use the same technique as the writers of Greek Tragedies used to and have the most grisly events described rather than portrayed. In the TV age it was a brave decision to make but quite apart from the fact that having flashbacks within flashbacks seems unnecessarily complicated and would have meant having to adopt yet another visual 'style' which might have made the contrast between the present and past scenes become less distinctive, I really didn't feel the need to *see* Teal'c having to watch women and children slaughtered. And in this case the images supplied by Teal'c's description, thanks to CJ's amazing acting, were just as harrowing, even without being burnt onto our retinas.

Because wonderful as the scriptwriting and direction were (and I thought they were both absolutely superb), and brilliant as were the scenes with Bra'tac, Apophis, and our team in angst mode, this was really CJ's show, and without him being able to show us exactly what was going on in Teal'c's head at all times, this episode just wouldn't have worked. I thought he gave the most incredible performance in Threshold and every time I watch it again I am even more in awe of how good this one was and how good CJ was in it.

Lori

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