SGA 4.10, "This Mortal Coil"
Dec. 7th, 2007 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironicOh. Oh, oh, oh. It's like this show got good this season or something.
Loved the John/Ronon sparring scene. Great blocking, great framing (seeing Sheppard through the crook of Ronon's arm), great fight-to-conversation match-up. Loved Ronon's smirk and the fact that he landed John in the infirmary again. And that he only sort-of-accidentally hit him. (Was that the move that caught Joe in the eye that he was talking about in the SciFi.com interview?)
(Seriously, though: How long did the Replicators think they could keep the team under this delusion when they knew they'd get injured at some point and discover their super healing powers?)
Obvious that Lorne and then Keller were in on some sort of conspiracy, but wasn't clear what the conspiracy was, especially when it seemed that John was the one with the "little nanite things" – and then the life sign scan really muddled things up. Go, writers! Twist after twist after twist, all within the first half of the episode.
I like the atmosphere of paranoia that characterized the beginning. Even if it turned out to be (a) justified and (b) not taking place on the real Atlantis involving "real" Atlanteans, the fear that people around you might be Replicators and you don't know it seems like something that would be gnawing at a lot of people. It reminds me of—well, a lot of things, but mostly the season of DS9 where people were freaking out because of the Changeling invasion, and the hysteria was sustained for so long because every once in a while, someone would turn out to be a Changeling infiltrator. And the test for that also involved bleeding; Changeling blood, once it leaves the body, reverts to its natural gelatinous state. Here, they cut themselves and watched it heal. A Replicator litmus test.
And oh, how scary on Rodney's behalf was the lab scene where they sliced his hand? A big knife, of all things—just what Kolya's henchman used against him during the storm. John would know that. And Ronon grabbed him by the arms and held him still while he panicked, which was (a) hot and (b) reminiscent of Rodney's remark in "Irresistible" that Ronon held him against the wall while Lucius sweet-talked him and (c) hot and (d) scary. Wish they'd drawn that out a little more—Rodney being assaulted by the people he trusts the most—one of them holding him still against his will while the other calmly cuts him and the third watches and does nothing. The fear and confusion and pain, both physical and emotional—and yet—and yet Rodney stayed put when John was finished, didn't run from the lab screaming for help or to hide, but stood still and took the towel from them as balm and waited to hear what they had to say. That's trust: Even when they hurt him, even when he doesn't know why they're hurting him, even when he's not sure he knows who they are, they're still his friends, his team.
Tonight's ep may have confirmed that Ronon/Rodney is my favorite SGA 'ship. Not that I don't love the McKay/Sheppard, and the Rodney/Teyla, and the OT4, and the John/Radek if I were to find any. But Ronon/Rodney has a special place in my heart. All the smirks Ronon aims at him—the bear hug last season—the quiet moment in "Tao of Rodney" with the scar—the scene at the end of "Travelers" where Rodney grimaced at Ronon's table manners and Ronon just eyed him hotly—the times when Ronon makes fun of him—the times Rodney sneers and then seeks protection—and many others—and now this, with the casual companionable back-slapping and the kinda bondage and the way Ronon just stared at him after the knife test without a trace of the usual smirk and the—yes. Ronon/Rodney.
Yay "Progeny" follow-up! Maybe they are not so brave and/or stupid to say that this particular scenario has been running since "Progeny" (surprise! equivalent to finding out that House has really been hallucinating since "No Reason"), sort of like those fics where they keep waking up and waking up from the mind-probe and it's never real, but it's a cool idea that the Replicators stored the team's patterns during that original incarceration and the splinter group has been waiting to use them or has been actively experimenting with them since then.
And I love the concept of doubles and simulacra; have ever since discovering Philip K. Dick. It can't be an accident that the similar theme was brought up; "Replicators" is practically "Replicants" to begin with. Were the nanite-built Elizabeth et al really inferior to the originals? It's hard to say, given how little we know about their construction. My suspicion was that there had to be some flaws in their design, physically, that would eventually prove them inferior to the "real" Elizabeth et al—that you can't really build a person from scratch and expect them to live for a while without something malfunctioning in the hardware or the programming. As for their thoughts, memories and behaviors, I thought those would be identical. But that's just how I was imagining things would go. I wish they'd allowed it to go on longer, letting the brewing tensions break into arguments or violence, especially between Ronons, or to take a greater risk, where one of the originals was killed in the Replicator attack and one of the copies made it through, like maybe Rodney, and then they'd work with nanite!Rodney and it would be weird and people wouldn't know how to treat him even though he's just as much Rodney as Rodney was, and then they'd deactivate the nanites and he'd really be indistinguishable from the old Rodney, until eventually so many episodes had gone by that everyone—the other characters and us—came to see him as the same Rodney as before.
Oh well. Yay for simulacra nonetheless.
What else. John/John! Got along fairly well, certainly much better than John/evil!alien!doppelganger!John, as we were prepped to remember and contrast. Rodney/Rodney OTP. (The fic, we will be seeing the fic soon, yes?) Ronon/Ronon at first hilarious with the twitches, and then intriguing with the mistrust/discomfort. Noted that Ronon was again ready to cut and run from Atlantis in favor of hunting Wraith; still not entirely at home there even after the end of "Reunion." Or, no, he feels at home there as much as or more than anywhere else, but when he feels he's not wanted, or when a better deal comes along, he's ready to go. Teyla/Teyla—oh, wait, totally unexplored. Extrapolation from her talks with Ronons [sic] that she's fairly okay with being a copy and considers herself just as fully-realized a person as her original self, but expects the "real" Atlanteans to consider them inferior.
That was Melena the Replicator turned into, wasn't it? I wonder why they never brought that up again? I thought it was nice proof that the nanite!team was emotionally equal to "our" team, for Ronon's heart to stutter like that at her sudden appearance.
John/Rodney. I loved that Rodney went to John with his qualms about things being Not Quite Right, and that they spoke softly together again, and that John trusted him back and didn't make fun of him as he would have done in the first season or even last season. I loved that John said "my McKay" in the New Athos tent and nobody blinked. (I would have loved it if someone *had* blinked, or snickered, or made an "I wonder..." face, too.) I liked that John sought him out at the end to sort-of-but-not-really talk about Elizabeth, seeking some comfort in a non-huggy way. And Rodney apparently knows when John's bedtime is.
Elizabeth's death was something of an off-screen anticlimax, eh? I guess she redeemed that by sacrificing herself on-screen in her second incarnation. Possibly she'll still be brought back sometime in the wonderful world of "it's sci fi, she'll never *really* be dead."
And, oh, Rodney, and Zelenka. Rodney, Rodney, throwing himself into his work so Elizabeth's death—the first one only, strangely, not the second, because I guess he did think it wasn't really her—wouldn't break him open. The reference to Carson. Oh, my heart. Not that I liked Carson all that much, or entirely bought that Rodney considered him his best friend, but I remember how devastated he was when he was packing up Carson's things, and to think that he's desperately pushing that same pain down inside now, it's—oh, Rodney. And oh, John! So stunned when Elizabeth appeared on the video screen (and not to break the mood, but there needs to be audio manips of John's line out of context, "I don't know what to say. This is all so..."), and sad and resigned at the end when he's finally admitting she's gone. And Radek. Radek, whether or not he has/had the crush on Elizabeth that fandom says he has/had, is clearly hurting too, and his nudge for Rodney to stop working, let himself grieve, talk about it with him, was so wonderful, as was Rodney's honest response—no desultory dismissal, just the admission that yes, he's working so he doesn't have to think about it, and no, he doesn't want to talk. Yet! How great was that? He said he might want to talk about it at some point! Maybe because there's no Heightmeyer anymore, but it feels like Real GrowthTM that Rodney would open up to Radek (when not about to die of Ancient-induced auto-Ascension). And then he thanked him. And it was lovely, lovely, lovely.
And I think that was it. Except maybe for the cute-even-if-expected blip-blip-blip-"Oh, crap" after the fade-out. Hee.
Huh. Hey, where was Sam?
Er, not sure when I'll have 'net access next, but will reply to any comments as soon as I can.
ETA: Krisdia on the more troubling side of tonight's events [ETA: f-locked, sorry]. Recap by Kass, including a link to the mcshep_match story that anticipated this scenario.
Loved the John/Ronon sparring scene. Great blocking, great framing (seeing Sheppard through the crook of Ronon's arm), great fight-to-conversation match-up. Loved Ronon's smirk and the fact that he landed John in the infirmary again. And that he only sort-of-accidentally hit him. (Was that the move that caught Joe in the eye that he was talking about in the SciFi.com interview?)
(Seriously, though: How long did the Replicators think they could keep the team under this delusion when they knew they'd get injured at some point and discover their super healing powers?)
Obvious that Lorne and then Keller were in on some sort of conspiracy, but wasn't clear what the conspiracy was, especially when it seemed that John was the one with the "little nanite things" – and then the life sign scan really muddled things up. Go, writers! Twist after twist after twist, all within the first half of the episode.
I like the atmosphere of paranoia that characterized the beginning. Even if it turned out to be (a) justified and (b) not taking place on the real Atlantis involving "real" Atlanteans, the fear that people around you might be Replicators and you don't know it seems like something that would be gnawing at a lot of people. It reminds me of—well, a lot of things, but mostly the season of DS9 where people were freaking out because of the Changeling invasion, and the hysteria was sustained for so long because every once in a while, someone would turn out to be a Changeling infiltrator. And the test for that also involved bleeding; Changeling blood, once it leaves the body, reverts to its natural gelatinous state. Here, they cut themselves and watched it heal. A Replicator litmus test.
And oh, how scary on Rodney's behalf was the lab scene where they sliced his hand? A big knife, of all things—just what Kolya's henchman used against him during the storm. John would know that. And Ronon grabbed him by the arms and held him still while he panicked, which was (a) hot and (b) reminiscent of Rodney's remark in "Irresistible" that Ronon held him against the wall while Lucius sweet-talked him and (c) hot and (d) scary. Wish they'd drawn that out a little more—Rodney being assaulted by the people he trusts the most—one of them holding him still against his will while the other calmly cuts him and the third watches and does nothing. The fear and confusion and pain, both physical and emotional—and yet—and yet Rodney stayed put when John was finished, didn't run from the lab screaming for help or to hide, but stood still and took the towel from them as balm and waited to hear what they had to say. That's trust: Even when they hurt him, even when he doesn't know why they're hurting him, even when he's not sure he knows who they are, they're still his friends, his team.
Tonight's ep may have confirmed that Ronon/Rodney is my favorite SGA 'ship. Not that I don't love the McKay/Sheppard, and the Rodney/Teyla, and the OT4, and the John/Radek if I were to find any. But Ronon/Rodney has a special place in my heart. All the smirks Ronon aims at him—the bear hug last season—the quiet moment in "Tao of Rodney" with the scar—the scene at the end of "Travelers" where Rodney grimaced at Ronon's table manners and Ronon just eyed him hotly—the times when Ronon makes fun of him—the times Rodney sneers and then seeks protection—and many others—and now this, with the casual companionable back-slapping and the kinda bondage and the way Ronon just stared at him after the knife test without a trace of the usual smirk and the—yes. Ronon/Rodney.
Yay "Progeny" follow-up! Maybe they are not so brave and/or stupid to say that this particular scenario has been running since "Progeny" (surprise! equivalent to finding out that House has really been hallucinating since "No Reason"), sort of like those fics where they keep waking up and waking up from the mind-probe and it's never real, but it's a cool idea that the Replicators stored the team's patterns during that original incarceration and the splinter group has been waiting to use them or has been actively experimenting with them since then.
And I love the concept of doubles and simulacra; have ever since discovering Philip K. Dick. It can't be an accident that the similar theme was brought up; "Replicators" is practically "Replicants" to begin with. Were the nanite-built Elizabeth et al really inferior to the originals? It's hard to say, given how little we know about their construction. My suspicion was that there had to be some flaws in their design, physically, that would eventually prove them inferior to the "real" Elizabeth et al—that you can't really build a person from scratch and expect them to live for a while without something malfunctioning in the hardware or the programming. As for their thoughts, memories and behaviors, I thought those would be identical. But that's just how I was imagining things would go. I wish they'd allowed it to go on longer, letting the brewing tensions break into arguments or violence, especially between Ronons, or to take a greater risk, where one of the originals was killed in the Replicator attack and one of the copies made it through, like maybe Rodney, and then they'd work with nanite!Rodney and it would be weird and people wouldn't know how to treat him even though he's just as much Rodney as Rodney was, and then they'd deactivate the nanites and he'd really be indistinguishable from the old Rodney, until eventually so many episodes had gone by that everyone—the other characters and us—came to see him as the same Rodney as before.
Oh well. Yay for simulacra nonetheless.
What else. John/John! Got along fairly well, certainly much better than John/evil!alien!doppelganger!John, as we were prepped to remember and contrast. Rodney/Rodney OTP. (The fic, we will be seeing the fic soon, yes?) Ronon/Ronon at first hilarious with the twitches, and then intriguing with the mistrust/discomfort. Noted that Ronon was again ready to cut and run from Atlantis in favor of hunting Wraith; still not entirely at home there even after the end of "Reunion." Or, no, he feels at home there as much as or more than anywhere else, but when he feels he's not wanted, or when a better deal comes along, he's ready to go. Teyla/Teyla—oh, wait, totally unexplored. Extrapolation from her talks with Ronons [sic] that she's fairly okay with being a copy and considers herself just as fully-realized a person as her original self, but expects the "real" Atlanteans to consider them inferior.
That was Melena the Replicator turned into, wasn't it? I wonder why they never brought that up again? I thought it was nice proof that the nanite!team was emotionally equal to "our" team, for Ronon's heart to stutter like that at her sudden appearance.
John/Rodney. I loved that Rodney went to John with his qualms about things being Not Quite Right, and that they spoke softly together again, and that John trusted him back and didn't make fun of him as he would have done in the first season or even last season. I loved that John said "my McKay" in the New Athos tent and nobody blinked. (I would have loved it if someone *had* blinked, or snickered, or made an "I wonder..." face, too.) I liked that John sought him out at the end to sort-of-but-not-really talk about Elizabeth, seeking some comfort in a non-huggy way. And Rodney apparently knows when John's bedtime is.
Elizabeth's death was something of an off-screen anticlimax, eh? I guess she redeemed that by sacrificing herself on-screen in her second incarnation. Possibly she'll still be brought back sometime in the wonderful world of "it's sci fi, she'll never *really* be dead."
And, oh, Rodney, and Zelenka. Rodney, Rodney, throwing himself into his work so Elizabeth's death—the first one only, strangely, not the second, because I guess he did think it wasn't really her—wouldn't break him open. The reference to Carson. Oh, my heart. Not that I liked Carson all that much, or entirely bought that Rodney considered him his best friend, but I remember how devastated he was when he was packing up Carson's things, and to think that he's desperately pushing that same pain down inside now, it's—oh, Rodney. And oh, John! So stunned when Elizabeth appeared on the video screen (and not to break the mood, but there needs to be audio manips of John's line out of context, "I don't know what to say. This is all so..."), and sad and resigned at the end when he's finally admitting she's gone. And Radek. Radek, whether or not he has/had the crush on Elizabeth that fandom says he has/had, is clearly hurting too, and his nudge for Rodney to stop working, let himself grieve, talk about it with him, was so wonderful, as was Rodney's honest response—no desultory dismissal, just the admission that yes, he's working so he doesn't have to think about it, and no, he doesn't want to talk. Yet! How great was that? He said he might want to talk about it at some point! Maybe because there's no Heightmeyer anymore, but it feels like Real GrowthTM that Rodney would open up to Radek (when not about to die of Ancient-induced auto-Ascension). And then he thanked him. And it was lovely, lovely, lovely.
And I think that was it. Except maybe for the cute-even-if-expected blip-blip-blip-"Oh, crap" after the fade-out. Hee.
Huh. Hey, where was Sam?
Er, not sure when I'll have 'net access next, but will reply to any comments as soon as I can.
ETA: Krisdia on the more troubling side of tonight's events [ETA: f-locked, sorry]. Recap by Kass, including a link to the mcshep_match story that anticipated this scenario.
no subject
Date: Dec. 8th, 2007 05:04 am (UTC)Huh. Hey, where was Sam?
She doesn't exist on RepliAtlantis. Elizabeth wouldn't have known who her replacement was and the last information update (when Elizabeth got captured) was before Sam was put in charge, so RepliAtlantis doesn't know she exists to make her.
no subject
Date: Dec. 8th, 2007 05:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Dec. 8th, 2007 05:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Dec. 8th, 2007 05:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Dec. 8th, 2007 05:09 am (UTC)I don't know if I want a show that's nothing but Rodney and Jeanie, or Rodney and Rodney.
"I don't know what to say. This is all so..."
You know... I still have the audio clip of Wilson saying (almost?) the exact same thing?
no subject
Date: Dec. 8th, 2007 05:16 am (UTC)I still have the audio clip of Wilson saying (almost?) the exact same thing?
*g*
Rodney: (line I can't remember, possibly about wanting to stop)
John: No... Keep going.
no subject
Date: Dec. 8th, 2007 05:29 am (UTC)That was Melena the Replicator turned into, wasn't it?
I thought it was been Melena, too, but wasn't sure.
I wish they'd allowed it to go on longer, letting the brewing tensions break into arguments or violence, especially between Ronons, or to take a greater risk, where one of the originals was killed in the Replicator attack and one of the copies made it through
You know, this would have been fascinating. My biggest issue with the ep would probably be that it was sort of a cop-out to create a whole other team and then not do much with it, with the possibilities and philosophical questions of it all. I'm not sure I *really * wish that it went quite this far, but I do wish they had explored it more. Then again, the scenario you described is something I *totally* would love to see in fic!
no subject
Date: Dec. 8th, 2007 05:33 am (UTC)Until you mentioned it, I didn't even realize that Sam was missing, from either Fake!Atlantis or The Real Thing. Interesting. I also didn't pick up on the fact that John cut Rodney with The Big Knife -- I was too busy flinching at the image of Knife + Palm. *g*
I'm afraid Krisdia's post is f-locked.