Thought of the Day for TPTB
"Stargate: Jonas Quinn" by Kelly
I watched "Redemption" last night on the Sci-Fi channel. I didn't do it out of misguided loyalty, or to give TPTB a chance (I've never
understood that concept--why should I give them a chance? They blew it last season, when they wrote out Daniel Jackson in the first place. As a consumer, I'm not obligated to try any product that I don't think I'll enjoy. My father quit smoking a couple years ago... should I have asked him to give a different brand of cigarette a chance before he did so? But I digress...)
Anyway, I watched it because I wanted to see if the show could get "bigger and better"-- more explosions, more action, more...just... more -- as the producers and writers have been proclaiming far and wide since this whole debacle began.
My verdict?
Nope.
It started off promisingly enough, with SG-1 and a substitute member running from danger. The team split up as soon as they returned through the gate though, without a word to each other and without showing any concern for their (temporary) fourth team member. I started worrying.
The opening made me nauseous. (Motion sickness from watching the Stargate ring circling continuously, not the credits.) Then we got to the actual show -- and my stomach really started churning. You see, they've got Jonas ensconced in Daniel's office, popping grapes, reading one of Daniel's hand-written journals, listening to classical music and watching the weather channel. Sam is quite nice to him -- she even flirts a bit when asking him to go off base with her for a field trip. He jumps at the chance.
We discover that Jonas has memorized everything in Daniel's library. (I'm not even going to go into how wrong it is for him to be given access to that library, which includes Daniel's highly-classified *personal* journals, or this would turn into a rant.) Jonas has no frame of reference for USING that knowledge, but he has a superhuman ability to absorb everything he reads. Hmm...sounds to me like he should be watching the history channel or the travel channel or maybe even old movies like "Ben Hur" in order to get some sense of life and culture on Earth, but I guess that would be too practical. It's funnier that he only watches the weather channel and thinks it's predicting the future.
Yeah. Right.
Anyway, I stuck it through the end, but never recovered from that scene. And it didn't get any better. There was something missing -- and I don't just mean Daniel. It was never more obvious than in this episode that Daniel IS the heart and soul of the team. Without him, the team wasn't a cohesive unit -- they were three disparate individuals who didn't seem to be too interested in each other. The comedy bits seemed forced, as did the emotional interactions -- not that there were many of those. It's interesting that, even though Daniel is my favorite character, I didn't realize how MUCH Daniel Jackson contributed to the team until he was gone. He was the glue that held the others together.
No offence to the actor who plays Jonas, but he isn't good enough to fill in the hole that's left in the team. I don't think there's ANYONE who could do that. They should have gone with Jack's suggestion and have a three member SG-1.
Okay, back to the episode.
There were, oh, so many things wrong with it, so I'll pick just one. The timeline. The timeline was ridiculous. Three months and they've used Jonas's stolen naquadria to develop an imitation death-glider, complete with warning systems and fail-safes? They've developed three new engines and discovered a way to make their glider hyperspace capable? Excuse me? In three months, they've managed to pull together something the Goa'uld, the Tollan, and the Tok'ra haven't done in thousands of years?
Yeah, and I have a bridge to sell you.
Back to the episode. (This is kind of how I felt when I watched. Distracted. Uninterested. Bored.) The storyline about Teal'c was well-acted. Too bad I wasn't really interested. And then we came to the cliff-hanger: Mr. Big Bad himself -- Anubis. *yawn* I laughed. Whoever created Anubis has been watching too many sci-fi cliches. He wasn't menacing, or creepy, or even that well done. It was just...pfft. A masked guy in a robe. Nothing. It's been done before, and far, far better.
I may tune in next week to see how they resolve their little problem. Then again, I think I may have to go grocery shopping or something...
What I used to love about Stargate was that it was believable. Yeah, there was that gate that traveled to other planets, which required a willing suspension of disbelief, but the people going through it were real. Three-dimensional. They cared about saving the world and each other. The military background gave them a backdrop with rules and guidelines to follow in their explorations. Each team member was unique and added something special to the mix. Four members, one team.
Now, I guess Jonas has already taken Daniel's place by reading all his journals. Sam is next, I think, since it seems this former politician is also a scientific/electronics whiz. (All he did was look at blueprints, and he saw a flaw that an entire development team missed. Maybe they were rushed in those three months, but still.) Since Teal'c spoke to O'Neill about his willingness to give Jonas a chance, Jonas obviously won the bet about knocking Teal'c down in their boxing match. So it seems he's developing super strength as well. I'm not sure how he's going to learn the leadership tactics that make Jack unique, but he's already started on the snappy one-liners.
Pretty soon, I think we're going to see one member, one team. Stargate: Jonas Quinn.
Or someone else is going to see it. Me, I'll be grocery shopping. Or washing my hair. Or something.
By Kelly
9th June 2002
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