SG-1: Serpent's Song

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Well, from my perspective, I was so caught up in the drama of his death and the threat of Sokar and the ethics of whether to turn him over, I honestly forgot that the sarcophagus was a thing.

[J!!]

I have a vague recollection of something about the System Lords getting so damn old that the sarcophagus tech wasn't working for them anymore. I think it said they were starting to go senile too. Was that this episode, or another one, or am I completely out to lunch on this?

[Ghilz]

I have a vague recollection of something about the System Lords getting so damn old that the sarcophagus tech wasn't working for them anymore. I think it said they were starting to go senile too. Was that this episode, or another one, or am I completely out to lunch on this?

It comes up after Yu is introduced, that he's one of the oldest and yes, going senile. Not this episode.

[Morgaine]

If we're counting Atlantis, which suffered far more from having terrible villains, I'll give props to Kolya. He's barely in the show, but the guy's episodes were great.

Yeah you know I wish they had dedicated more episodes to Kolya instead of concentrating on the Wraith, who were always utterly terrible and useless villains who I never understood why they were so afraid of letting them into the Milky Way. Why? The moment they set foot there they'd be ripped apart by literally any of the factions there.

[Beastro]

I may be cynical, but for some reason, I kinda like it when the heroes show a certain ruthless pragmatism from time to time. I'm reminded of the Voyager episode "Prey" where 7 of 9 decides that she really doesn't want herself or the rest of the crew to die to save a single member of Species 8472 from the Hirogen.

For me the appeal is that it shows the protagonists as not simply "human" but also that they don't have an answer for everything, they can't hold back because they don't know if they're strong enough to defeat their enemy even if they give it their all. Something which reflects so much of the nastiness in history around war and inter-cultural conflicts that is puzzling to us when we're cursed with the hindsight that robs us of the fear and uncertainty they lived in.

According to Benjamin Sisko, not always. Sometimes the line you'd never cross is up against another line you'd never cross, and you find out which compromises you're actually willing to make. And the fandom is still divided over that.

The division is, IMO, between those that recognize the eternal problems Mankind has, and always will, face in the circumstances Sisko faced, and those that are consumed by the triumphalist mentality of the Federation, that the Fed can pull their punches because they will always win, it will always work out, they can never lose.

I do like how the episode spares a few moments to show us the host who wakes up from a living nightmare of millennia performing atrocities with no control on his body.

That's the highlight for me, the moment that made the episode and showed the horror that the Goa'uld regularly commit. It shown nearly as much as it should have and gave them the unwarranted reputation as cartoonish villains that led to their scrapping and replacement with the horrid Ori when they didn't have to be.

Apophis was the main baddy when the show was still fresh, and he's the one primary villain with a real connection to the characters.

He was the most "organic" of the lot and showed a path of character design that could have added more nuance to the Goa'uld than what was done with them. I think what made that was how flustered and insecure he was played. He seemed more grounded and more like someone desperately trying to keep up the appearance of a deity when he knew he wasn't that this episode displayed the most of.

On the other hand, Sokar was so uninteresting as the big bad and brought absolutely nothing new to the table that I was glad to see him gone and replaced with someone with a much more personal connection to SG-1.

IMO, that applies to pretty much every Goa'uld main antagonist in the series and franchise. They got sucked into constantly upping the ante that is lost perspective like comic books do. Worse, they hyped Sokar as this terrible power and then he was gone in such an underwhelming way. By the time it got to Anubis things had gotten so out of hand there was no tension and scale to the danger.

IMO, I think the problem was the very basis of making all Goa'uld be terrible, evil rulers and not show any nuance where some are, others actually have taken on the full mantle of acting like deities and have more reasons to rule as them than simply the desire to have people oppressed and under their boot.

Instead you could ave had some Goa'uld welcome Earth as a power and cooperate with them, if only to get them to attack their enemies for them, but show more detail to the conflict between Goa'uld and the Tauri and between the Goa'uld themselves that could have maintained drama and keep the stakes high while not exploding the scale to the point where Earth is dealing with extra-dimensional beings, that the conflict is still being done in one small corner of the universe.

They tried that at times, most of all with Yu.

Heh, I've never really been a fan of Replicarter. Your mileage may very I guess.

The Replicators were find as a remote enemy and reason why the Asgard were tied down, I really liked the grounded, practical problem solving of dealing with them in the episodes where they were introduced, but like the Goa'uld to Ori transition, they got powered up so much they killed all threat.

Thinking about it, as much as the Ori drove me from watching the show, the changing of the Replicators from odd, aliens machines into human actors acting like their machines was what killed the show for me.

I think the final scene would've worked much better if someone on the SG-1 team brought up the sarcophagus as a "You know this doesn't change anything" statement and everyone reacted to it as a grim acceptance of facts.

I think that moment should have put things into perspective and what the Goa'uld were doing, that handing even the poor guy Aphopis was in was worth it in the long run to end the very thing the Goa'uld were doing to everybody else enslaved like he was.

It reminds me of when the Allies realized what the crematoriums were in concentration camps and began bombing them. Bombs being bombs, many missed and would land in the camps themselves killing their inhabitants, and yet even with that happening the bombings brought hope and joy to those stuck in them - it showed that there were people out there trying to actively stop what was being done and that at the very least, they were alone with what they faced even if some of them died as a result of that help.

If we're counting Atlantis, which suffered far more from having terrible villains, I'll give props to Kolya. He's barely in the show, but the guy's episodes were great.

Yeah you know I wish they had dedicated more episodes to Kolya instead of concentrating on the Wraith, who were always utterly terrible and useless villains who I never understood why they were so afraid of letting them into the Milky Way. Why? The moment they set foot there they'd be ripped apart by literally any of the factions there.

It's more ceaseless upping the ante. They effectively tried to remake the Goa'uld instead of making a truly alien race that couldn't fathom coexistence with Mankind, because they were so predatory in their evolution it literal isn't in their psyche.

Instead we had freaks mugging the camera that tried to act that way with an wink and nudge that they were in on the act, that they were some how human and knew what they were doing and reveled in it in the way a serial killer who taunts and gloats knows how transgressive his acts are.

IMO, they should have been more like the Kzinti and Kilrathi, only instead of being what you'd expect of a feline with human intelligence, have them be what you'd expect from a spider.