clearspira wrote: ↑Sun Jun 05, 2022 7:30 am
You're right about body swap episodes. Really the whole point of them is to showcase the actors abilities. I don't see how Vulcans can pull this off tbh given how they are generally boards of wood.
I hate body swapping on principle anyway. More often than not they just come off as gross violations that the script is trying to tell me is funny. At least Vulcans aren't likely to feel up the other persons boobs or have sex in that body (I guess, I haven't seen it). For some reason its no longer sexual assault if you use their own hands against their will. The only body swap story I have ever seen done that recognised this was in Buffy the Vampire Slayer when Faith had sex as Buffy.
Not to mention as Chuck pointed out in his review of Atlantis ''Duet'' that these episodes often suffer from genre blindness where the just forget that the Goa'uld has already established that having your body stolen is a fate worse than death. And now its hilarious! Look at Mackay, kissing a man!
I always found it kind of odd how Stargate already did a better episode involving body swapping and then years later they somehow manage to make a worse episode with the same topic. I think what made "Holiday" work is they involved multiple characters which covered at least 4 POVs (though I should only say 3, since Shanks also played Ma'chello), where Duet is mostly "Haha, I too get to control your body, here's how it's funny". Also, the comedy was more restrained in the SG1 episode, while in the SGA episode they just went overboard.
Back to the episode, before ep. 5, T'Pring only appeared for 4 minutes onscreen, all of which happened in the first episode, which is not enough to give her a proper characterization, especially when she does next to nothing in those 4 minutes. There's a reason why body-swapping stories are done with characters that were either developed enough before the respective episode, or are distinct enough that you can tell something happened. And since we barely know the character of T'Pring, her role in the negotiations while she's in Spock's body is practically waste of time, since ultimately Pike saves the day.
Which, come to think about it, is another thing SG1's "Holiday" does better: on one hand you literally have two different characters (played by the same actor) who you're not supposed to tell at first that they've been body swapped, and then later two very different characters (O'Neill and Teal'c) that swap bodies and you can tell it from the Moon. It plays a with the setting, creating something different.
