SG1 Absolute Power

[Mabus]

https://sfdebris.com/videos/stargate/sg1s4e17.php

Daniel not being himself is always something interesting, since it's always nice to see Shanks doing different things. I hope Chuck gets to eventually review "Lifeboat", which is basically "Split" before "Split" was a thing (yeah, I know similar stories existed before, but for some reason I feel that episode was written by Shyamalan).

On topic, I really like the idea of the Goa'uld knowledge being mixed with their evilness, in a way it's a good safety system: anyone who would dare to access said knowledge to use it against the Goa'uld would eventually end up the very thing they swore to destroy. Not very likely to create any meaningful alliances against the Goa'uld when you're too busy trying to subjugate everyone around you.

[Frustration]

I thought of it as a more implicit thing than a safety mechanism - their memories contain everything they are, not merely the explicit information, to the point that the two things cannot be separated.

Fun fact: what happens to Teal'c is never explained in the episode, but they shot a scene where the team finds his comatose body being used to produce blood-bonded naquadah so that Daniel could operate the Go'au'ld technology. It was worse than if he'd simply been killed.

[CrypticMirror]

I don't that Daniel acting like an asshat is that out of character, Daniel has always, going all the way back to the original movie, had a bit of an asshole streak in him. He's always been willing to ditch the rules if they get in the way. It is just that a taste of real power exacerbates this in him, he can play the conscience to others but sometimes he needs someone to play it to him too.

[McAvoy]

I honestly felt it was a straight forward episode. Daniel gets the knowledge of the Go'auld and everything that comes with it. So he gets what makes Go'auld be a Go'auld and not some nice alien parasite.

Basically Daniel becomes one himself but without the symbiote taking over.

If I recall, the episode ends with Daniel pretty much able to take over the world.

[Mabus]

I thought of it as a more implicit thing than a safety mechanism - their memories contain everything they are, not merely the explicit information, to the point that the two things cannot be separated.

Well, the Goa'uld have been shown to store their data on external storage units, but those are always exceptions. Their own natural "genetic memory" is the way they secure their knowledge from being used against them by mixing knowledge with their own evilness. Kind of like the Maquis of Sade writing a science book in his own style. Only this book can only be read by experiencing it. Which means you can't experience the knowledge without also experiencing evil. Which will corrupt you into becoming evil.

Which is the genius of it: You don't need to encrypt knowledge if others can't safely use it. So that in itself is still a very effective safety precaution to prevent your knowledge from being used against you. You'd need to be a soulless robot that cannot experience any emotions to safely interpret the Goa'uld knowledge.

When Daniel put the hand device on, the very first mental impulse he felt was to use it to slam O'Neill into the wall, which would either cripple or kill him. Not to safely test the device in controlled conditions on say, a punch sensor, not to find a way to block the hand device's energy burst, but to hurt some else.

Fun fact: what happens to Teal'c is never explained in the episode, but they shot a scene where the team finds his comatose body being used to produce blood-bonded naquadah so that Daniel could operate the Go'au'ld technology. It was worse than if he'd simply been killed.

I haven't managed to find that scene anywhere (apparently it's on the season's DVD?), but I can see why it was removed from the final episode: it basically creates a massive plot hole by suggesting that the Jaffa can also use Goa'uld technology that was designed to only be operated by a "God"... so the overly-paranoid Goa'uld kind of forgot to prevent their slaves from being an inch away from finding out that they're not Gods? Not to mention junior symbiotes live in a special pouch and thus would be mostly isolated from the body, yet somehow they still release naquadah in the blood of the Jaffa? Why waste their naquadah on slaves?

I think the writers originally intended to have that scene be one way the Jaffa take down the System Lords, in that as more and more Jaffa rebel, they realize they too can operate Goa'uld technology with a little bit of outside help and thus every Jaffa out there immediately turn against their masters. But the writers must have realized this was too absurd, the Goa'uld genetically engineered the Jaffa to act as incubators for the junior symbiotes, yet somehow forgot to remove this glaring flaw. Does not compute.

[clearspira]

I have often wondered what happened to this kid. Bear in mind that only a few years after this episode, Earth would get access to the combined knowledge of the Asgard and the Ancients.

Knowing all of the Goa'uld's knowledge is pretty funny now that we know just how primitive they actually are. I like to picture him coming back to give Daniel another lesson only for everyone to look at him blankly.

[Fianna]

I wish they hadn't introduced the genetic memory concept, 'cause it left little room for distinctive or memorable villains. Eventually we got Yu and Ba'al, who were distinguished by putting practical concerns ahead of evil showboating, but for the most part, the Go'auld were pretty interchangeable as baddies, because they were all essentially the same crappy individual Xeroxed into a bunch of different bodies.

[Cheerilee]

I haven't managed to find that scene anywhere (apparently it's on the season's DVD?), but I can see why it was removed from the final episode: it basically creates a massive plot hole by suggesting that the Jaffa can also use Goa'uld technology that was designed to only be operated by a "God"... so the overly-paranoid Goa'uld kind of forgot to prevent their slaves from being an inch away from finding out that they're not Gods? Not to mention junior symbiotes live in a special pouch and thus would be mostly isolated from the body, yet somehow they still release naquadah in the blood of the Jaffa? Why waste their naquadah on slaves?

It's not a lot of naquadah, just trace amounts so the brain signals can connect to the device. And an adult Goa'uld can cure cancer in their host, while an infant Goa'uld supercharges a Jaffa's body, to the point where they become dependent on it and can't live without the symbiote, so all Goa'uld are capable of messing with the bodies of all hosts.

I think the key factor is knowledge. When the Tok'ra left Carter, she had naquadah installed on her blood, and retained *some* knowledge of how to make Goa'uld tech work, which was Carter's limiting factor, her mind, and how much she could remember from the Tok'ra about how to make things work.

An infant Goa'uld doesn't share their mind with a Jaffa, so regardless of naquadah in their blood, a Jaffa would understand less than Carter about how to make the tech work, and Carter can barely do it sometimes.

Daniel on the other hand, in this episode, looks at the hand device and bemoans the fact that (unlike Carter) he has a perfect understanding of how to make the device work, but can't use it at all, because no symbiote has ever taken over his immune system and installed the naquadah into his blood. So he uses Teal'c to farm the blood. Even if an infant Goa'uld doesn't normally give naquadah to a Jaffa, Evil Daniel might know how to *force* the infant Goa'uld to do it, and then he can take regular shots of Teal'c's blood to temporarily use the tech for a while before his body purges the naquadah. It's a perfectly evil scheme.


Also, I was always under the impression in this episode that Evil Daniel had killed Teal'c because Teal'c was the one who killed Sha're (to save Daniel). Daniel was pissed about that and blamed Teal'c, but then quickly forgave him. I always figured that Evil Daniel, with all the power in the world, had retracted that forgiveness and decided that he really did want to see Teal'c dead.

[Mabus]

It's not a lot of naquadah, just trace amounts so the brain signals can connect to the device. And an adult Goa'uld can cure cancer in their host, while an infant Goa'uld supercharges a Jaffa's body, to the point where they become dependent on it and can't live without the symbiote, so all Goa'uld are capable of messing with the bodies of all hosts.

I think the key factor is knowledge. When the Tok'ra left Carter, she had naquadah installed on her blood, and retained *some* knowledge of how to make Goa'uld tech work, which was Carter's limiting factor, her mind, and how much she could remember from the Tok'ra about how to make things work.

An infant Goa'uld doesn't share their mind with a Jaffa, so regardless of naquadah in their blood, a Jaffa would understand less than Carter about how to make the tech work, and Carter can barely do it sometimes.

If one needs to be a former host to use the hand device, then I don't think all Daniel needed was Teal'c blood, which makes the whole deleted scene pointless. It also makes Daniel's comment to O'Neill about needing naquadah in one's blood also pointless, as he would have known that he needed more, and that's not what that scene was about.

If anything, as shown with Carter and Vala later on, it doesn't seem to matter how long one was a host, but rather how much they operated said technology (Vala couldn't have been a host for more than a decade at best, since her father was still alive and was in his 50s at least), and the first time we meet Vala she easily uses that healing ring thing, which no doubt she used it hundreds of times, which she either "inherited" from Qetesh or found it somewhere else. By comparison, Carter only used the hand device and the palm healing device a couple of times, so she didn't "train" with it that often. Hell, Jacob was a host for three years and was still able to use the healing device as easy as Vala did, and I have a feeling Vala was a host much longer than Jacob was.

[McAvoy]

I have often wondered what happened to this kid. Bear in mind that only a few years after this episode, Earth would get access to the combined knowledge of the Asgard and the Ancients.

Knowing all of the Goa'uld's knowledge is pretty funny now that we know just how primitive they actually are. I like to picture him coming back to give Daniel another lesson only for everyone to look at him blankly.

I figured that kid ascended and that was that.

I think even at the very end of the Stargate franchise the Tauri truly had a grasp on how everything worked. I am sure if Evil Daniel appeared he probably would be able to make things up that no one really knows about. Or override some systems easier than more with the exception of Asgard tech.

But yeah, Evil Daniel would be easier to deal with by that point.