SG-1: Jolinar's Memories/The Devil You Know

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

I know I'm not the only one to say this, but if they were treating their subject matter seriously, they would have limited themselves to fully exploring the Egyptian pantheon rather than (or at least before) slapping the same couple of one-note character traits (egomania, lust for power) onto a hodgepodge of different mythological/quasi-historical figures from vastly different cultures without regard for timeframe or how the Goa'uld actually all fit together.

So as it stands, the franchise is a generally light-hearted one that has nothing controversial or serious to say about these figures, which would make any attempt to take on a major world religion feel pretty odd (edginess for the sake of edginess). No matter how balanced their take might be, it would be bound to tick off some segment of the viewing audience.

[Beastro]

The thing that I thought was a missed opportunity was having Sokar really play into the devil mythology. not just "rar scary guy". From my (limited) understanding some interpretations of Lucifer have him be something of a Prometheus figure who helped humanity.

Such interpretations ignore what was so wonderfully encapsulated in Paradise Lost with regard to his arrogance and narcissism that ultimately results in his refusal to accept nothing short of being God, and since he can't be, would try to take ruin as many as he could before his time in Hell.

Satan isn't a Promethean figure, rather a "Columbine" one.

^ Yes, I know. The problem is that anyone who's even casually read the Old Testament knows how face-palmingly BS that statement was.

Within the world of Stargate, that depends on exactly when the Goa'uld left Earth. I don't know if it was ever established exactly when that was.

It's always been a sticking point I've thought about given that having them leave Earth too late makes history more messy. I've always thought of it being something around the dawn of civilization with the advent of the Bronze Age being the latest, rough 8000-3000BC at the most with everything else dealing with mythology being things which developed later by Mankind.

The fundamental issue here though is around the Goa'uld itself. Making a simple action film about an alien masquerading as an old Egyptian god is a good, simple idea, but the expanding upon that into a TV series runs into problems about the development of ancient society and beliefs that isn't so cut and paste as the series paints the Goa'uld, which are more like dynastic House of Europe that waxed and waned over time.

That then leads into deeper, but less fun action Sci-Fi ideas like Goa'uld representing different archetypal deities. It's an idea that actually is more flexible working with how the Goa'uld divided up and ruled Earth, but instead of meeting Zeus, Jupiter, Perun, Indra you instead meet the Goa'uld who ruled as the archetypal Sky Deity which ruled over all Indo-Europeans. When the Goa'uld left Earth his former domain fragmented and different cultures began taking on different names and cultural styles to reflect him.

I know I'm not the only one to say this, but if they were treating their subject matter seriously, they would have limited themselves to fully exploring the Egyptian pantheon rather than (or at least before) slapping the same couple of one-note character traits (egomania, lust for power) onto a hodgepodge of different mythological/quasi-historical figures from vastly different cultures without regard for timeframe or how the Goa'uld actually all fit together.

So as it stands, the franchise is a generally light-hearted one that has nothing controversial or serious to say about these figures, which would make any attempt to take on a major world religion feel pretty odd (edginess for the sake of edginess). No matter how balanced their take might be, it would be bound to tick off some segment of the viewing audience.

When they did they overstepped what should have been self imposed limitations to keep more there for the future to exploit. Instead they went wild and burned through the material at hand leaving them with literally no where to go once they introduce Ascendancy and the Ori.

The other self-imposed wound is making the Goa'uld so shallow and also too broad with the System Lords system being so established and set rather than a pack of Goa'uld with their patches of territory constantly squabbling in between the eras of a dominant one which is what we originally had for the most part early in the series. Instead the order of the Goa'uld was too set, so when too many got overthrown we suddenly had Earth, a single world sending out 4 man teams overthrowing an entire galaxy order.

Much done with too little, tied together with too much idealism at the end. Trying to somehow have the Jaffa united under one friendly government rather than them descending into anarchy and emulating the only system they've ever known for thousands of years before some little upstart nation on a planet introduced them to something else.

As for the edginess thing. I don't see how they could avoid it by being strictly "Overthrow all suppesed gods" since by not going that route you open up a can of worms of maybe some, if not most, of the galaxy actually might disagree with that as you make mulling over the ideas deeper, so to does it leave open the Goa'uld and other alien deities to become deeper too.

[Meushell]

I enjoyed this episode, but the writers seemed to forget two major characters within the plot, namely Rosha and Lantash.

We have an entire plot backstory added to Jolinar, but given the plot, it’s pretty messed up not to mention Rosha. It was her body after all. Did she go into some sort of full retreat mode because she didn’t want to think about what she and Jolinar were doing to escape? Was she an active participant because that gave her a better sense of control? Was there any conflict about the plan? Given the whole mind blend issue, are they sure they are seeing Jolinar’s memories and not Rosha’s?

What is Lantash doing all this time? Just keeping retreated and twiddling his tail? “La la la. Why should I care about this? I was only in love with Jolinar and Rosha too.” I could fanwank that he was in repeat because that makes it easier to keep Martouf as healthy as possible in that situation. He should get a mention though. He would have known Jolinar for what, like a thousand years? Then fell in love with her for the last hundred? Maybe he’s in retreat because the new knowledge completely messed him up.