SGA 4x12 Spoils of War

[zelempa]

I finished my nap!


Plot: John's Wraith buddy (finally christened "Todd" in this episode) had a tracking beacon which he had turned off, but it's been reactivated, giving the Atlantis crew his coordinates, and leading Rodney to surmise he is trying to communicate with them. John decides to go looking for him, but when they reach the ship where he's supposed to be, they find only dead Wraith--and the beacon lying on the floor, from where it's been cut out of Todd. With the help of a bumbling Nigel Bruce-meets-Frankenstein Ronon and Teyla (when John finally deigns to allow her to come on the mission) and her suspiciously megapowered Wraith DNA, Rodney gets the ship online, and learns from its database about a secret Wraith outpost which had helped them during the Ancient war.

Teyla flies the guys to the outpost where they find a massive honeycomb of Wraith fetus pod things. While there, the guys take time out of their busy freaking out schedule to rescue Todd, who informs them that the other Wraith took some ZPMs which he had stolen from the Replicator homeworld before it blew up, and are now using them to power this outpost. Rodney goes a little glassy-eyed. On the trail of the ZPMs, the boys are captured. The Wraith Queen tries to torture them but can't, because in the nick of time Teyla takes control of her mentally, and lets them go. The WQ begins to regain control, and Teyla manages to say through her, "John, help me," so John unleashes a round into her gut. Symbolism?

Just as another hive ship comes to cause trouble, Todd escapes via dart, and the good guys escape via jumper; before they leave, they destroy the cloning facility by pulling a 9/11 and crashing the stolen hive into it.

Of Note:

• JOHN (examining the map showing Todd's beacon): How far did you say he was from the nearest gate?
  RODNEY: About an hour by jumper. (cottoning to John's train of thought) Wait. I know we've worked with this guy before and he has helped us in the past, but he's still a Wraith! We don't seriously feel like we owe him anything, do we?
  JOHN (unnaturally high-voiced): No, no, of course not! But! (beat) Doesn't mean it's not worth checkin' out.
  RODNEY: ...Hm.
  I'm just saying. There is no explanation for this aside from John + Todd 4 Eva.
  
  
• John condescendingly lectures to Teyla that her anger "isn't about your people missing, it's about the father of your child missing." What? Where does he get off presuming to know better than she does how she feels? He barely knows how he feels at any given time.
  
  
• "We didn't come all this way just to turn back" seems to justify a lot of reckless missionry. Welcome to Atlantis, where our credo is "Let's Throw Good Money After Bad!"
  
  
• John names Todd "Todd" because doesn't want Rodney to call the Wraith "our friend", saying, "It's weird." John comes up with the name all super fast (obviously having given it some thought), and off Rodney's look, he explains defensively, "Guy I knew in college. Very pale." Sure, John.
  
  
• "We've got ourselves a new ship!" John and Rodney grin adorkable grins at each other. No, no, boys, it's the same old ship.
  
  
• JOHN: Didn't you say you got lost in a garden maze once?
  RODNEY: I was ten! Plus, I was running from a bee.
  Rodney says this with such shame-free conviction, as though he is sure this will vindicate him in the eyes of Sheppard. <3
  
  
• John's forced to his knees (again!) in front of the Wraith Queen (again!) When he manages to resist the Queen by making a struggly-pained face, she of course decides to punish him by feeding on Rodney, who is conveniently on hand as he was being forced to watch as the Queen tried to mentally penetrate John. You can see how this show got it fangirlbase.
  
  
• Teyla + Wraith Queen = super gay
  
  
• Urg. Teyla tells John he was right to question her involvement, and she's all freaked out because the WQ could have killed her baby. She hugs John, who looks uncomfortable. And on that we fade to black. Can I get a resounding "blah" on the baby subplot?

Comments

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

What gets me is that Sam might as well NOT EXIST as John makes all these decisions without ever once calling home. Big, significant, could affect the safety of the city decisions and he makes them solo.

Hammond would've torn a strip off O'Neill -- but O'Neill wouldn't have done it, not to this extent. In an emergency, yes, but Sheppard does it all the time.

[nightspring.livejournal.com]

At least with Weir, we got to see her lodging her token protests from time to time. Sam has just been such a non-entity in this season's SGA. I never thought I'd be wishing for more Sam, but... urgh!

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

I know AT has other committments but it makes no sense to have whole episodes with her not shown. If she's in charge, let her BE in charge.

I think their problem is that the leader of a city, like Hammond the leader of SGC, isn't, can't be, a main character in a show where the action takes place off the city/through the gate. Weir was never like Kirk or Picard; the central character, because the show is set up around the Stargate. A leader can't go off on misisons and not every episode can take place in the city or you lose the central premise of the show (though the Stargate's less important on SGA).

So they want the leader to be a main character but they can't give her enough to do to justify the credits position.

I'm liking Sam on SGA better than I thought I would but they're not incorporating her all that well. Moments here and there wher eit works, but often she's just an empty space John fills.

[nightspring.livejournal.com]

So they want the leader to be a main character but they can't give her enough to do to justify the credits position.

Exactly. And they already knew that from their experiences with Weir, so giving Carter/Tapping the second place in the credits is just... I don't have words to describe how idiotic that is! And they knew going in that AT had the SG-1 movies to do, so as Zelempa says below, they should totally have planned for that meta-constraint, and set up a more credible in-universe reason for her frequent absences. Or, you know, hired some other actor to play the expedition leader who would be there all the time. Or just made Sheppard and McKay co-commanders of the expedition. That would have been comedy gold all around.

Co-leaders??? What is the IOA thinking? What do we do when we don't agree?

Um... Rock, papaer, scissors?

:p

[zelempa.livejournal.com]

McKay as co-commander? Oh, trouble.

I understand the theoretical desire to rein in the guys, because their plans are stupid, but as long as they're not, in practice, ever actually reined in, hell sure*, they should be officially in charge. Actually, that would be deeply sexy in a Victors kind of way.

* ???

[nightspring.livejournal.com]

LOL, maybe too sexy? I totally loved Adrift, with John trying to be in charge, and Rodney just taking over because "ZMG! DOOOM! NO TIME TO EXPLAIN!!!!!" And John just pouts so prettily.

How about we have Woolsey / O'Neill / Landry / Ellis / Caldwell take turns showing up about every other week to try to rein in our guys, with varying degrees of success, which is to say, zero to none? That'd be about two guest turns each for the actors involved. ;)

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

They would so do that :-)

I'd love some of the military/civilian angst we had with Jack and Daniel, but that's not much of an issue with these two...

[nightspring.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I think what happened with SGA is that the "Shouldn't we talk to them first instead of shooting on sight?" line got shifted to Weir, and occasionary to Teyla. Rodney is usually silent/absent during those ethical debates, unless he's in the "mad scientist" role -- "Can I drop the bomb? can I? I want to see if it works!" Otherwise, he's completely neutral -- "Okay, the bomb is ready to drop. Are we dropping it or not? Make up your minds!"

But come to think of it, it's scary how often John and Rodney agree on almost everything. The only major disagreement between those two I can recall is the one in Adrift on whether to use the nanites to save Elizabeth. Trinity wasn't a disagreement on a principle, just that Rodney didn't want to give up and admit he couldn't control the experiment. I feel like I'm forgetting *something* -- surely in three and a half seasons, they've had more than one major disagreement?

Oh, right, the "first strike" against the replicators in First Strike, and the attack against the replicator fleet in All My Sins... In First Strike, Rodney was against the first strike idea, and John was for it, but they never did discuss it *with each other*. And there wasn't really an argument in All My Sins, since Rodney didn't have an alternate method to shut down the replicators ready. And if Rodney had been ready, John would have been happy to use the more permanent method.

Anybody think of any more arguments between those two? It definitely is a totally different dynamic than Jack/Daniel -- those two ate arguments for breakfast!

[zelempa.livejournal.com]

I kind of like that Rodney and John tend to agree--they have all this oh, cool communion--but it does make it scary when they're in charge, because there's no one representing the other side of any debate. People who might have opposed them:

* Weir - heard arguments on all sides, but generally just concluded with "Do it, gentlemen." Also, is dead.
* Carter - similar dynamic to above, only replace "dead" with "conspicuous in her absence."
* Anyone from higher up in SGC - present counterarguments weakened by their own agendas/blind adherence to protocol that doesn't make sense in this particular instance/dislike of major characters. Plans therefore are opposed by team or else go spectacularly badly.
* Teyla - sometimes brings up human rights type points and sometimes doesn't, but when generally defers to John as her commander.
* Beckett - exploded.

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

I miss the J/D sparring ::is nostalgic::

[zelempa.livejournal.com]

I should possibly watch SG1.

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

You really, really should. You would love the Jack/Daniel dynamic, especially in the early seasons.

[zelempa.livejournal.com]

It's because the actress is only signed for certain episodes, right? You'd think given that meta-constraint, they'd at least have officially made John co-commander, or something.

[kimberlyfdr.livejournal.com]

I posted my ep commentary (http://kimberlyfdr.livejournal.com/303847.html) last week and I was very pleased to see the Lorne/Teyla bonding. They have always been my secret SGA het pairing :)

[zelempa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I didn't mention that, because I'm not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, it's nice to see both of those characters get screentime, but on the other, it just seemed so banal. "I do not know what to expect." "Oh, you're going to make a great mom!"

I wasn't sure if they were trying to hint to us in this episode that Teyla's baby's abilities worry her--she's got a Wraithy baby or something--but I guess not, as it seems like Keller's on top of things & would have noticed if something was up. If Teyla had had such a concern, I think it would have been kind of cool--bittersweet--that Lorne assumed she was just worried about baby-having in general. But I guess she *was* just worried about baby-having in general? And I kind of feel like this show is not totally equipped to deal with the emotional ramifications of impending motherhood in a straight, non-sci-fi kind of way.

[kimberlyfdr.livejournal.com]

I seriously don't think they're gonna make Teyla's baby non-sci, especially knowing some of the minor spoilers for the future eps. Stargate writers can't write women well, generally, so I seriously think they'll throw in sci-fi things on top of this pregnancy.

[nightspring.livejournal.com]

pulling a 9/11

Osama Sheppard! Rodney Bin Laden! Awesome! :p