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selenayBut first a little food stuff, because today is a very foodie day *g* It's hormonal, probably. I found a wonderful new cheese at a local superstore - red Leicester with caramelised onions. It is *so* good. Fairly strong, very tasty, and surprisingly unlike plain red Leicester. Eaten with toast soldiers is wonderful. Not really a sandwiching cheese - it's too nice for that. It needs fresh toast to compliment and bring out the flavour.
And tonight we're going to my favourite Chinese restaurant where I'm not going to resist their crispy duck. I've been having crispy duck fantasies all day. And prawn crackers ::drool:: After all, it's been at least two weeks since I had Chinese food and this is *really good* Chinese food. Only two hours...
And now for the more interesting and pertinent Stargate and Atlantis commentary. Spoilers be here.
My first thought on this ep was "Look at the Gary/Marty Stu!" After the beautiful episode that was Affinity, this one felt like a let-down *sigh* I'm sure that it was an interesting idea when someone proposed it and the first ten minutes were great: the press conference, clone-Asgard, the idea of someone telling the world about the aliens. That all worked for me.
But then they took Gary Stu off-world and he got to fly the X-302. I'm sorry, but I just couldn't help going to a Gary Stu place during those sequences *sigh* The stuff back on Earth was better, with the SEC and the fraud and all. That could have been a great plot. They could have used The Trust in a more intesting way, too. But added into the other storylines, it just didn't feel right. Taking Gary Stu off-world at the end at least resolved it. To be honest, I don't think there was anywhere else they could go with it at that point.
I'm slightly miffed for feeling so negatively about this episode. Usually I can find things to squee and love about most episodes, but this one just hit a lot of wrong notes for me. It's the only episode this season that's disappointed me and I think that it's causing me particular problems because I enjoyed last week's episode so much.
So, onto Atlantis.
Now this is the reason I love these shows *g* This was a great episode and I refuse to pick holes in it. Hell, I haven't really found any holes to pick yet.
The most import thing to note is how much I am loving Dr Beckett. His awkward flirting with Perna was perfectly in tune with what I've seen of his character so far. Most interesting, though, was his work on the anti-Wraith drug and his reactions.
I've seen a lot of commentary on Beckett's reaction and role in the episode. The way I saw it may not match what other people saw, but interpretations are individual. When he was initially trying to develop the anti-Wraith drug, he saw the potential in it to protect everyone (not just the Hoffans - the Atlanteans and everyone they'd met) from the Wraith. He's a doctor: he said at least once that the first commandment of doctors is to first do no harm. Beckett didn't intend the drug to be a weapon against the Wraith. He couldn't have forseen how it would react with a live Wraith and I doubt that he would have allowed it to be tested on Steve if he'd had any idea that it would turn out to be a poison.
Maybe he was a little naive, but in this area I don't think he was. I think he mis-read the situation with their intentions towards distribution of the drug. On Earth, we'd expect to do extensive testing before allowing mass-distribution of a drug and that seems to be what Beckett expected the Hoffans to do. There was, again, no way he could have predicted what would happen and no way to stop the innocolations when the Hoffans decided on them. I ended up feeling rather sorry for Beckett. The work that he'd hoped would help so many people has instead killed thousands, possibly millions, of people and will probably bring the Wraith down on them. Their civilisation is now doomed. Beckett didn't intend any of that and his reactions at the end of the episode showed it.
I've also seem a lot of commentary on Weir's role in this episode and I've had to think a lot harder about that. We only had a couple of scenes for here in this episode and absolutely nothing after the discovery that the drug is a Wraith poison and kills so many of the people who are innoculated with it. My reading is that Elizabeth, reluctantly, allowed testing on Steve in the initial belief that it would do no harm to him. Even this is morally dubious and she knows it or she wouldn't have mentioned the Geneva Convention. I'm thinking this through a bit for the fic snippet that I'm planning, but she doesn't come out of the episode as badly as I'd thought she would. Yes, she shouldn't have allowed testing on Steve even if she didn't think it would harm him because that goes against the treaties and laws she probably spent years studying on Earth. She's a diplomatic negotiator: she had to know these laws. It doesn't reflect well on her character to allow this and I have to work out (for myself) what this means for her. But she couldn't have forseen how her choice would work out and how many deaths would result. The Hoffans have to take a large part of the blame; they are the ones who plunged on with the innoculations when they knew what effect it had on the Wraith and the percentage of their own people who will die.
This was completely a Beckett episode and I'm afraid that I didn't pay as much attention to other characters as I should have - guess that means that I'll need to rewatch it *g* I would have expected Sheppard to put up a fight against the tests on Steve, so it surprised me that he was the one trying to talk Elizabeth around. He's a little darker and more pragmatic than I'd expected. He had some wonderfully snarky banter with McKay - those two will be a continual highlight :-) McKay didn't have much of the episode, but he shone in every scene. Damn, I love that character :-)
Teyla, again, didn't have much focus. Her indifference to Steve's fate and the testing didn't surprise me. She's the only one who has lived with the Wraith threat all her life. Her reactions to the knowledge archives were fun and I wonder whether she's beginning to see how much the Wraith have destroyed that goes beyond simple human deaths. Hmmm.
A couple of other things to love: oh, the Star Trek love. Macoy was always my favourite character and to have Beckett behaving exactly as Macoy did regarding transporters, and McKay (?) notice was just wonderful :-) Also Beckett's reaction to Perna's death. Aww. Beckett may not have title credits, but he's turning out to be one of the best developed characters on the show.
And now I must change into pretty clothes for my trip to the restaurant :-)
And tonight we're going to my favourite Chinese restaurant where I'm not going to resist their crispy duck. I've been having crispy duck fantasies all day. And prawn crackers ::drool:: After all, it's been at least two weeks since I had Chinese food and this is *really good* Chinese food. Only two hours...
And now for the more interesting and pertinent Stargate and Atlantis commentary. Spoilers be here.
My first thought on this ep was "Look at the Gary/Marty Stu!" After the beautiful episode that was Affinity, this one felt like a let-down *sigh* I'm sure that it was an interesting idea when someone proposed it and the first ten minutes were great: the press conference, clone-Asgard, the idea of someone telling the world about the aliens. That all worked for me.
But then they took Gary Stu off-world and he got to fly the X-302. I'm sorry, but I just couldn't help going to a Gary Stu place during those sequences *sigh* The stuff back on Earth was better, with the SEC and the fraud and all. That could have been a great plot. They could have used The Trust in a more intesting way, too. But added into the other storylines, it just didn't feel right. Taking Gary Stu off-world at the end at least resolved it. To be honest, I don't think there was anywhere else they could go with it at that point.
I'm slightly miffed for feeling so negatively about this episode. Usually I can find things to squee and love about most episodes, but this one just hit a lot of wrong notes for me. It's the only episode this season that's disappointed me and I think that it's causing me particular problems because I enjoyed last week's episode so much.
So, onto Atlantis.
Now this is the reason I love these shows *g* This was a great episode and I refuse to pick holes in it. Hell, I haven't really found any holes to pick yet.
The most import thing to note is how much I am loving Dr Beckett. His awkward flirting with Perna was perfectly in tune with what I've seen of his character so far. Most interesting, though, was his work on the anti-Wraith drug and his reactions.
I've seen a lot of commentary on Beckett's reaction and role in the episode. The way I saw it may not match what other people saw, but interpretations are individual. When he was initially trying to develop the anti-Wraith drug, he saw the potential in it to protect everyone (not just the Hoffans - the Atlanteans and everyone they'd met) from the Wraith. He's a doctor: he said at least once that the first commandment of doctors is to first do no harm. Beckett didn't intend the drug to be a weapon against the Wraith. He couldn't have forseen how it would react with a live Wraith and I doubt that he would have allowed it to be tested on Steve if he'd had any idea that it would turn out to be a poison.
Maybe he was a little naive, but in this area I don't think he was. I think he mis-read the situation with their intentions towards distribution of the drug. On Earth, we'd expect to do extensive testing before allowing mass-distribution of a drug and that seems to be what Beckett expected the Hoffans to do. There was, again, no way he could have predicted what would happen and no way to stop the innocolations when the Hoffans decided on them. I ended up feeling rather sorry for Beckett. The work that he'd hoped would help so many people has instead killed thousands, possibly millions, of people and will probably bring the Wraith down on them. Their civilisation is now doomed. Beckett didn't intend any of that and his reactions at the end of the episode showed it.
I've also seem a lot of commentary on Weir's role in this episode and I've had to think a lot harder about that. We only had a couple of scenes for here in this episode and absolutely nothing after the discovery that the drug is a Wraith poison and kills so many of the people who are innoculated with it. My reading is that Elizabeth, reluctantly, allowed testing on Steve in the initial belief that it would do no harm to him. Even this is morally dubious and she knows it or she wouldn't have mentioned the Geneva Convention. I'm thinking this through a bit for the fic snippet that I'm planning, but she doesn't come out of the episode as badly as I'd thought she would. Yes, she shouldn't have allowed testing on Steve even if she didn't think it would harm him because that goes against the treaties and laws she probably spent years studying on Earth. She's a diplomatic negotiator: she had to know these laws. It doesn't reflect well on her character to allow this and I have to work out (for myself) what this means for her. But she couldn't have forseen how her choice would work out and how many deaths would result. The Hoffans have to take a large part of the blame; they are the ones who plunged on with the innoculations when they knew what effect it had on the Wraith and the percentage of their own people who will die.
This was completely a Beckett episode and I'm afraid that I didn't pay as much attention to other characters as I should have - guess that means that I'll need to rewatch it *g* I would have expected Sheppard to put up a fight against the tests on Steve, so it surprised me that he was the one trying to talk Elizabeth around. He's a little darker and more pragmatic than I'd expected. He had some wonderfully snarky banter with McKay - those two will be a continual highlight :-) McKay didn't have much of the episode, but he shone in every scene. Damn, I love that character :-)
Teyla, again, didn't have much focus. Her indifference to Steve's fate and the testing didn't surprise me. She's the only one who has lived with the Wraith threat all her life. Her reactions to the knowledge archives were fun and I wonder whether she's beginning to see how much the Wraith have destroyed that goes beyond simple human deaths. Hmmm.
A couple of other things to love: oh, the Star Trek love. Macoy was always my favourite character and to have Beckett behaving exactly as Macoy did regarding transporters, and McKay (?) notice was just wonderful :-) Also Beckett's reaction to Perna's death. Aww. Beckett may not have title credits, but he's turning out to be one of the best developed characters on the show.
And now I must change into pretty clothes for my trip to the restaurant :-)
