Regarding the masquerade, here's a quote from one of my favourite films of all time ''Men In Black''.
Agent K: Humans, for the most part, don't have a clue. They don't want one or need one, either. They're happy. They think they have a good bead on things.
James: Why the big secret? People are smart. They can handle it.
Agent K: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.
Human beings are reactionary to the extreme. Remember the film ''Contact''? Now add that on top of the knowledge that the aliens are not only hostile, but they are actively trying to enslave us again. Oh, and everything you thought you knew about the history of the Earth and humanity is wrong. Oh, and that God or gods you worship? We now have 100% proof that he or she was in fact an alien snake. Oh, and the Roswell aliens are real. Oh, and the world is now pretty much run by the Illuminati given how we have this shadowy group of unelected government officials with unimaginable technology operating behind the scenes.
Come on, guys. The Earth of the Stargate universe could never realistically reveal any of this shit.
Atlantis: 38 minutes.
Re: Atlantis: 38 minutes.
I thought the implication of parts of the Baal arc were that Earth industries and science were incorporating ever more alien science and tech. Of course none of the massive social, economic and so on changes that would entail are not really depicted, but I mean they need to keep the show relateable right?
I remember seeing this episode, the review seems to get it. I would not have put the Weir Kavanaugh fight her in a larger context of the way Weir's leadership or female characters or whatever are displayed, I think I felt like it was just conflict for the sake of conflict to try to add more drama. It is interesting to hear Chuck attempt to draw out these larger themes to portrayal, I find they are often speculative (as in his attempt to read foreshadowing of Bashir's genetically augmented status into earlier portrayals that probably had no such features), in this case it seems like more than just speculation (although it is more about what is going on in the writer's room then what is going on in the narrative of the show).
I remember seeing this episode, the review seems to get it. I would not have put the Weir Kavanaugh fight her in a larger context of the way Weir's leadership or female characters or whatever are displayed, I think I felt like it was just conflict for the sake of conflict to try to add more drama. It is interesting to hear Chuck attempt to draw out these larger themes to portrayal, I find they are often speculative (as in his attempt to read foreshadowing of Bashir's genetically augmented status into earlier portrayals that probably had no such features), in this case it seems like more than just speculation (although it is more about what is going on in the writer's room then what is going on in the narrative of the show).
Yours Truly,
Allan Olley
"It is with philosophy as with religion : men marvel at the absurdity of other people's tenets, while exactly parallel absurdities remain in their own." John Stuart Mill
Allan Olley
"It is with philosophy as with religion : men marvel at the absurdity of other people's tenets, while exactly parallel absurdities remain in their own." John Stuart Mill
Re: Atlantis: 38 minutes.
The problem with revealing the Stargate program to the public is that the realistic effects of some of the technologies they have are extremely horrifying.
Resurrection technology? A goldmine for medicine, and a lifechanger (literally) every time there are heavy human casualties from natural disasters, plagues, and even for stuff like mass shootings... but what happens when you have people that commit suicide, criminals shot dead by police or that kill themselves after a mass shooting? What about people convicted for life without parole that die in prison of old age, will they keep getting resurrected to serve their sentence until their bodies essentially become caricatures? (if we go by the episode "Need", without a symbiote, a human body can be repaired for about 700 years by the sarcophagus before failing completely). And speaking of said episode, half of the reason the Goa'uld are the way they are (the other being genetically-transmitted memories) is due to constant exposure to the sarcophagus. Oh and did I mention that the SGC doesn't have the cheap less sophisticated sarcophagus technology, but rather the original Ancient resurrection tech, that can not only resurrect dead people, but turn inanimate organic material into a living organism? Not to mention that a corpse sitting right near the active device will turn into an undead instant-repair semi-intelligent bloodthirsty zombie that can only be killed by blowing it to tiny bits? You don't even need religious reasons to be afraid of this technology.
Naquadah? A superheavy element with insane energy generation that can be turned into bombs with a simple hack? You can't turn a modern nuclear reactor into a nuke (best you could get is a Chernobyl) but in Stargate, they have been shown to turn those small portable naquadah reactors into nukes by simply swapping the upper core and letting it overload... even OTC stuff like nitromethane aka nitro fuel which can explode, is a lot harder to detonate than naquadah. Not great PR for nuclear energy. But wait, there's more! In S7 ep. Resurrection, there's an armed Goa'uld nuclear bomb disguised as an artifact that had around 10 pound of Naquadah and if detonated, it would destroy all of Orange County LA, which going by Nukemap, would require a ~50 MT TNT explosion, about the yield of the Tsar bomba. Since it takes so little Naquadah to cause such a huge explosion, nuclear proliferation would take a turn for the worse, since unlike in the case of uranium or plutonium, making bombs from Naquadah is a lot easier (in an earlier episode they trigger it with some potassium I think, though there was probably a bit more technobabble than the visuals showed), so no doubt that any amount of naquadah brought on Earth will be tagged, monitored and tracked much more strict than with current nuclear material. Oh, did I mention the Goa'uld bomb was an artefact? Well, you know how even today in Europe and other parts of the world they keep finding unexploded ordnances (UXOs) from wars and have to evacuate said area until they take care of the problem? Well, now every location ever visited by the Goa'uld may carry the potential of still having live nuclear bombs, and some might even be booby trapped, not only archaeologists have to worry about heavy metal poisoning, toxins, parasites when handling old artifacts, now all of the sudden they have to watch out for nuclear bombs, and not the small ones either... speaking of booby traps... you know who had a reputation of putting explosive booby traps everywhere? Baal. Who was a deity. In Levant. Aka Israel and nearby countries... Won't it be a lot of "fun" for someone to find an ancient nuke in say, Palestine and accidentally trigger it? I'm pretty sure that after SGC acquired Asgard scanning technology they began to conduct a stricter scan of most of world's archaeological sites to find ancient weapons of mass destruction, however, as seen in S8, when Baal built an entire skyscraper filled with naquadah, it's fairly easy to cloak/mask both naquadah and similar weapons, so you're not gonna be able to find them all. And speaking of nukes, SGC (and presumably Russia and China) now have multi-gigaton nukes, that alone will not go well with the public and the other countries, to put it mildly.
Teleportation? Well, that's a very useful technology. But unless you have beaming jamming technology at hand, what would it stop the gov or some rogue group, like say NID/The Trust from just beaming people away from houses without warning for, like they did with Eli in SGU? What about beaming a bomb or poison gas, both which happened in the series? Should everybody just install jamming fields everywhere to prevent that from happening? Are such jamming devices even safe? Won't they interfere with civilian wifi, TV and other wireless communication? Do they cause health problems? How much power do they consume?
Now I could give more and more examples, but it's clear that the SGC has access to technology that would be waay too powerful for anyone to handle without causing severe power disparities, and simply dumping all this information and technology in the world would cause innumerable problems and there's no easy answer for each.
Which is quite sad, since there have been very few episodes where they touched upon these issues (and where they did, it was almost always indirect) and none come in mind where someone trying to implement most of SGC's technology has lead to such ethical dilemmas.
Resurrection technology? A goldmine for medicine, and a lifechanger (literally) every time there are heavy human casualties from natural disasters, plagues, and even for stuff like mass shootings... but what happens when you have people that commit suicide, criminals shot dead by police or that kill themselves after a mass shooting? What about people convicted for life without parole that die in prison of old age, will they keep getting resurrected to serve their sentence until their bodies essentially become caricatures? (if we go by the episode "Need", without a symbiote, a human body can be repaired for about 700 years by the sarcophagus before failing completely). And speaking of said episode, half of the reason the Goa'uld are the way they are (the other being genetically-transmitted memories) is due to constant exposure to the sarcophagus. Oh and did I mention that the SGC doesn't have the cheap less sophisticated sarcophagus technology, but rather the original Ancient resurrection tech, that can not only resurrect dead people, but turn inanimate organic material into a living organism? Not to mention that a corpse sitting right near the active device will turn into an undead instant-repair semi-intelligent bloodthirsty zombie that can only be killed by blowing it to tiny bits? You don't even need religious reasons to be afraid of this technology.
Naquadah? A superheavy element with insane energy generation that can be turned into bombs with a simple hack? You can't turn a modern nuclear reactor into a nuke (best you could get is a Chernobyl) but in Stargate, they have been shown to turn those small portable naquadah reactors into nukes by simply swapping the upper core and letting it overload... even OTC stuff like nitromethane aka nitro fuel which can explode, is a lot harder to detonate than naquadah. Not great PR for nuclear energy. But wait, there's more! In S7 ep. Resurrection, there's an armed Goa'uld nuclear bomb disguised as an artifact that had around 10 pound of Naquadah and if detonated, it would destroy all of Orange County LA, which going by Nukemap, would require a ~50 MT TNT explosion, about the yield of the Tsar bomba. Since it takes so little Naquadah to cause such a huge explosion, nuclear proliferation would take a turn for the worse, since unlike in the case of uranium or plutonium, making bombs from Naquadah is a lot easier (in an earlier episode they trigger it with some potassium I think, though there was probably a bit more technobabble than the visuals showed), so no doubt that any amount of naquadah brought on Earth will be tagged, monitored and tracked much more strict than with current nuclear material. Oh, did I mention the Goa'uld bomb was an artefact? Well, you know how even today in Europe and other parts of the world they keep finding unexploded ordnances (UXOs) from wars and have to evacuate said area until they take care of the problem? Well, now every location ever visited by the Goa'uld may carry the potential of still having live nuclear bombs, and some might even be booby trapped, not only archaeologists have to worry about heavy metal poisoning, toxins, parasites when handling old artifacts, now all of the sudden they have to watch out for nuclear bombs, and not the small ones either... speaking of booby traps... you know who had a reputation of putting explosive booby traps everywhere? Baal. Who was a deity. In Levant. Aka Israel and nearby countries... Won't it be a lot of "fun" for someone to find an ancient nuke in say, Palestine and accidentally trigger it? I'm pretty sure that after SGC acquired Asgard scanning technology they began to conduct a stricter scan of most of world's archaeological sites to find ancient weapons of mass destruction, however, as seen in S8, when Baal built an entire skyscraper filled with naquadah, it's fairly easy to cloak/mask both naquadah and similar weapons, so you're not gonna be able to find them all. And speaking of nukes, SGC (and presumably Russia and China) now have multi-gigaton nukes, that alone will not go well with the public and the other countries, to put it mildly.
Teleportation? Well, that's a very useful technology. But unless you have beaming jamming technology at hand, what would it stop the gov or some rogue group, like say NID/The Trust from just beaming people away from houses without warning for, like they did with Eli in SGU? What about beaming a bomb or poison gas, both which happened in the series? Should everybody just install jamming fields everywhere to prevent that from happening? Are such jamming devices even safe? Won't they interfere with civilian wifi, TV and other wireless communication? Do they cause health problems? How much power do they consume?
Now I could give more and more examples, but it's clear that the SGC has access to technology that would be waay too powerful for anyone to handle without causing severe power disparities, and simply dumping all this information and technology in the world would cause innumerable problems and there's no easy answer for each.
Which is quite sad, since there have been very few episodes where they touched upon these issues (and where they did, it was almost always indirect) and none come in mind where someone trying to implement most of SGC's technology has lead to such ethical dilemmas.
Re: Atlantis: 38 minutes.
I'm still on the fence about that, when it comes to what the episode is trying to say about her. She's horrible, and it's so glaringly obvious that it has to be intentional, right? But the episode lets her have the last word... but the episode ends in what is clearly a trial over the failure of her first command... but she was the Science Officer on the Enterprise and recommended by Pike... but she had zero people skills and reveled in it... but people like her anyway... but she lost her ship, the life of a crewman, and cost countless Klingon lives... but the episode is a comedy and not a tragedy...Mabus wrote: ↑Fri Jan 17, 2020 3:10 pm Since the topic of "not-so great female leaders" is still warm, now I really want to hear Chuck's thoughts on Captain Alita when he reviews the Short Trek "The Trouble with Edward", since it seems that this trope of "hero-centered morality" is still alive and kicking.
The only thing I can say for certain is that no one really knows how to write a consistent tone on this one. Either it wants to just be a goofy episode involving a brand new, inexperienced captain and a terrible "scientist" clashing that ends in tragedy, or it wanted to be a tragic story about how bad command decisions and mad science create catastrophes around silly little fluffballs... and neither option really works.
I suspect the entire episode started with the idea of "hey, fans say that the Tribbles couldn't possibly exist as a naturally-evolved species, so let's give them an origin story", and the rest is just an accident of writers throwing scenes at the script and filming them.
-
Darth Wedgius
- Captain
- Posts: 2948
- Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2017 7:43 pm
Re: Atlantis: 38 minutes.
The Stargate program's secrecy went way past how long they could have realistically covered all that up, but I can see why the governments would want to keep it secret; when the nuclear genie came out of the bottle, the world became a far more dangerous place (if paradoxically peaceful, perhaps). The kind of power a single Prometheus class starship implies in the hands of any nation, even my own, even Switzerland, gives me the willies.
Putting off the possible nightmare scenarios for another day must be an indescribably appealing idea.
Putting off the possible nightmare scenarios for another day must be an indescribably appealing idea.
Re: Atlantis: 38 minutes.
Dunno how much of it is the performance and how much is the writing, but she always came off as someone trying to act like Hammond and lacking both the gravitas and down-to-earthness he had.bluebydefault wrote: ↑Thu Jan 16, 2020 5:22 amIf I'm honest Weir never really was a strong character. She wasn't horrible but I feel like they tried to do things like that to make her more interesting and it never worked.
The best that came be said about the character is that she acted like someone would be expect of someone new to leadership thrust upon her as she tried to come off strong, come off like she was commanding, came off like she was in control of situations, but always kept failing and giving off a vibe that she was out of her league.
Now, if only the show had that stuff in mind rather than tried to make her into things she wasn't.
Re: Atlantis: 38 minutes.
I've noticed that in many films and series, whenever they have an antagonist written as a buffoon, for some reason the heroic side also has to either act the same of get involved in a situation where they too come across as idiots, even though the script tries to show them in the right.Deledrius wrote: ↑Sun Jan 19, 2020 6:50 pmI'm still on the fence about that, when it comes to what the episode is trying to say about her. She's horrible, and it's so glaringly obvious that it has to be intentional, right? But the episode lets her have the last word... but the episode ends in what is clearly a trial over the failure of her first command... but she was the Science Officer on the Enterprise and recommended by Pike... but she had zero people skills and reveled in it... but people like her anyway... but she lost her ship, the life of a crewman, and cost countless Klingon lives... but the episode is a comedy and not a tragedy...Mabus wrote: ↑Fri Jan 17, 2020 3:10 pm Since the topic of "not-so great female leaders" is still warm, now I really want to hear Chuck's thoughts on Captain Alita when he reviews the Short Trek "The Trouble with Edward", since it seems that this trope of "hero-centered morality" is still alive and kicking.
The only thing I can say for certain is that no one really knows how to write a consistent tone on this one. Either it wants to just be a goofy episode involving a brand new, inexperienced captain and a terrible "scientist" clashing that ends in tragedy, or it wanted to be a tragic story about how bad command decisions and mad science create catastrophes around silly little fluffballs... and neither option really works.
I suspect the entire episode started with the idea of "hey, fans say that the Tribbles couldn't possibly exist as a naturally-evolved species, so let's give them an origin story", and the rest is just an accident of writers throwing scenes at the script and filming them.
TLJ is a very good example of this: Hux and the First Order are written and portrayed as incompetent strawmen that fail at everything (yet somehow took control of the Galaxy in like a day somehow), but then the Rebellion, aka the "heroes", aren't shown much better, and their competence leaves a lot to be desired. We shouldn't like the villains because they are all about not questioning authority and following orders from an important person in a weird dress, but we must like the heroes because they have an important person in a weird dress that gives orders and doesn't like to have their authority questioned... It's very difficult for me (and many people as well given the film's mixed reception) to find any sort of enjoyment in this sort of narrative situation, where I can't take the villains seriously and the only way I should even consider the heroes heroic is because we're told so. Now, you might think there is some significant difference, but nope, the film doesn't even spend one second trying to give any significant weight or even character development to anyone involved, their actions are never questioned in a way any sane person would. And to make matters worse, Holdo has worse leadership qualities than Weir, because at least Weir, over the course of the series grows a bit in some episodes and her people skill aren't 100% bad, while Holdo... well, how to put it... "So a stormtrooper, and a who now are doing what?" Holdo barely knows the people she's supposed to save under her command and she's referring to Finn, a former stormtrooper that deserted the enemy and (eventually) helped them destroy the Starkiller base, which happened like yesterday (yes, chronologically, TFA happened at least one day before this film) in a demeaning way (yay, he'll forever be a stormtrooper to her I guess), even though less important people like Rose recognized him immediately, despite never seeing him before. Great people skills there, lady. And to make matters worse, during her first "talk" with Poe, she dismisses him as a hothead, because, get this, she "dealt with plenty of trigger happy flyboys" like him. So not only she's way over her head in her current situation, her judgement is compromised by the fact that she had bad experiences in the past with other "Poe-s". No bias there, nooo sir. Oh and she's angry that because of him they lost their useless slow-ass bombers, while forgetting that the only reason they're not space dust is because Poe blew up the Starkiller base A DAY earlier! And because stupidity seems to be infectious, even characters known for being competent are suffering: Leia told Poe a couple of minutes earlier that "There are things you can not solve... By jumping into an X-wing and blowing something up", a day after Poe did just that... then after Snoke's ship arrives, she allows him to... sigh... jump into an X-wing and blow something else... Seems that the only way you can show someone being great, is to push everybody else down, aka narcissistic logic.
The Trouble With Edward short isn't very far off: I'm supposed to hate Edward because he's an egotistical prick, that he's a bumbling incompetent (who also can perform genetic engineering and not kill himself) that somehow managed to get far in the most important organization in Earth's history (hey, the episode lampshaded that, all is good amirite) and that he wants to make brain dead furry meatballs, so clearly he hates cute animals, therefor he's bad... yet, the Captain does nothing impressive or remarkable except making funny faces at Larkin's presentation, her people skills seem to resume to chitchatting with the female officers, apparently we're supposed to like her because one person said so, just hours (?) after she was assigned as captain with no other scenes or dialogue of any kind to show or support that (all we hear is that Larkin doesn't like her which means we should like her), her confrontation with Larkin after his anonymous complains to Starfleet come across as a highschool teenage girl doing a bad imitation of Dr. Evil from Austin Powers, after the tribbles begin to multiply she and the rest of the crew fail at containing something that could have been stopped in like 10 different ways, instead they go around and shoot the neverending spawning tribbles (on stun, because they're not evil or something) and that somewhat is supposed to make sense somehow I guess, and after losing the ship, we're still supposed to be rooting for her because, um... Larkin "was an idiot". Throughout the entire episode, we're literally being forced to (somehow) root for the new captain, and this is done by making the antagonist a buffoon, while also making everybody else around, even the captain, a bunch of idiots... and that's supposed to be funny, or at least it's supposed to make us smile because the Captain is the victim or something.
Both these two examples are not that different from what happens in the SGA episode: The writers prop up a buffoon character to be an antagonist, the main character starts doing dumb things presented as being good to one-up him, while the people around are being forced by the script to appear dumb, even though, as we've seen in the scene with McKay, exactly the opposite happens. It's like a flu, the moment someone or something dumb appears, everybody else catches it.
