5.05: Red Sky

[Norita]

Well, I frankly was disappointed, I thought it was a very weak episode. And Daniel hardly spoke two words. His role as SG1's diplomat was totally ignored. Hey, he should have been the ones convincing those people of SG1's good intentions. Yet it was Jack and Jack who did all the talking. I know the part with the Asgards is Jack's domain but surely they should have used Daniel more in terms of diplomacy, hey, that's his sturf! I think this is a reaction to those episodes where Daniel is the one who does that stuff (Enkarans, etc.) and the writers/RDA wanted to show that Jack too does the speaking thing.

I don't know, the episode seem like a rehash of different episodes to me of previous episodes (Demons= the religion as fanaticism thing), (the Enkaran situation = a race/planet doomed), (the one where an SG team steal the weather controllling gizmo = Tauri responsibility for setting things right after they screwed things up). And the Asgard believe like in the Cimmerican episodes (Thor's Chariot, etc.) It's like they took all these episodes and combined them.

Nothing original or new was advanced. And the people look like Amish/Mennonites to me.

[Anni]

I think they were meant to be Amish like....... And I do agree. It seemed like a rehash of other episodes, but for once I was pleased that nobody was particuarly impressed with SG1 and their attempt to impose their sort of moral stance and belief system on a people who weren't having any of it. that to me was pretty much realistic. People who have had a belief system for a few centuries and had no reason to doubt it wouldn't just believe Jack. After all, the sun went strange just after SG1 stepped through their gate. What else were they supposed to think?

I thought it was quite illuminating that the other Asgard (less Thor) didn't seem as impressed with SG1 or Jack as Thor had been. Of course SG1 have probably caused a major shift in the balance of power in the galaxy by killing off various System Lords who probably held the balance just by being there. So they might not be impressed with SG1's accomplishments because it impacts severely on everyone else. As indeed Jacob Carter hinted at himself in conversations with Jack. After all, as General Hammond said very sensibly before, the humans know nothing about the politics and balance of power out there in the galaxy and there they are tramping around and obviously acting as a catalyst for other disastrous events. Which is, of course, what would happen in reality.

Not every culture will welcome SG1 and their particular brand of morality or belief system.

I have a feeling that people will be a little irritated with this episode because it had a negative feel to it and left SG1 with a bit of egg on their face.

As far as Jack pinning that guy to the ground, well, yes two of his men had just been killed, but Jack was brassed off because no one would see it from his point of view. As a CO he would feel extreme anger at the senseless deaths of his people, but as a good disciplined CO he would also control himself and not fling himself on the person he feels is the perpetrator, especially since the presence of him and his team was only actually being tolerated on this planet. Whether they were trying to help or not. SG1 were still responsible for the problem in the first place.

Did I or did I not hear Sam say that they had had to override certain dialling procedures in order to get a lock. Perhaps it needs to occur to the SGC that perhaps sometimes they are not meant to visit a planet.

Of course, the Asgard could have given them a list of addresses for places that they would prefer SG1 not to go, but I have no reason to believe that the humans wouldn't be arrogant enough to ignore that.

[skydiver]

all in all i'd put this one in fth place of season 5.

it starts out with the guys getting tossed through the wormhole, nice camera effect there. then they're greeted by...ok call me silly but they looked like munchins. i mean really. the clothes, the silly hats the women wore and how they're shot at the very beginning looks like they're short.

anyway, they're greeted and given gifts since they're a friend of thor. of course there is one dissenter who doesn't like them(just has to be one of course)
while they're visiting the village ( i heard it was recreated on a soundstage so they could do the sky thing, and it shows) the sky shifts red.
eventually sam speculates that their wornhole passed through the sun, and it had picked up something, she speculated plutonium, along the way and it made the sun shift. (whatever, the science goes over my head)
anyway the short story is the planet will eventaully die.
sam and tealc' go back to the gate to contact the sgc and check the malp's sensors(does d-man have even ONE line?)
while jack and danny go to church with the munchkins.
they get zapped and see freir's message to the people(ok so it's a recording like in the tunnels on cimmeria)
basically sg-1 gets blamed. some of the locals aren't crazy about it, others say its freir's will...and don't get hot under the collar
for a few minutes i actually had hope that sam wouldn't be able to fix it...but of course she comes up with a theory..it involves a rocket and shoot a heavy element into the sun to reverse the damage(no comment on science stuff)
hit the fast forward and it's 3 weeks later, the rocket is pretty much assembled and ready to be laoded with the mcclarium(anyone get the joke here please clue me in cause i didn't)
of course the dissenter started a nice fire by the rocket and it blew up, killing two g'tau and two members of sg-6.
this sets jack off(rightly so, just went a little too far in my book, he pulled a gun on the guy FCOL)
he's ready to say screw it and leave. the rest of sg-1 refuse.
they come up with another solution (of course they do)
in the end the sun ends up fixed but we don't know who fixes it. did sam's plan work or did the asgard step in? we'll never know

btw, sg-1 does talk to the asgard high council and they refuse to help the g'tau, it would violate the protected planets treaty.

this had so manyholes in it even ignoring hte science stuff.

1) sam did over ride safety protocols to establish the gate...why? there are hundreds, thousands of addys available...why work hard for one?

2) ok, so i can buy the asgard not coming on their ships to relocat the people...why the heck didn't they pop in and tell the g'tau to go with sg-1 to a new world? or would that have been just too low tech for them

3) the asgard are just like the goauld...they impersonate gods and limit the development of races...

all in all it isn't the worst thing i've ever seen and it did have some moments but...it could have just been so much better if they had relocated the g'tau, some woldnt leave of course, then they go back weeks later and see the whole planet is dead.
why does it have to always be a happy ending? yeah i know this is tv and it's fictions but....it just could have been better.

[Jaxie]

thanx

i've watched the first 11 minutes of the the show. and i like it so far, yes there are sum holes but hey, this is television there is always gonna be holes.

and for what it's worth i liked daniels lines in the cave thingee with the other three.

"end of the world"

"that..that is a recording"

it's not like he didn't say anything.
so thats my bit, try not to take apart the entire eppie - THERE WERE GOOD BITS.

can't wait till next week
ciao
jaxie

[Norita]

A few good bits don't make a good episode.

[Anni]

I'm probably going to get my head in my hands here, but I've found that a lot of people find something to love in the episodes just because SG1 are in them. I'm not generalising or pointing fingers, but when people really adore a show as many of the Stargate fans do, they will forgive almost anything and if something IS missing, they will replace it themselves by writing a fanfic around the 'missing scene' or 'scene that they believe would have worked better' or even some perceived piece of interaction between their much loved characters.

....and before anybody gets the gun out to shoot me down in flames. I am not referring to anyone or any one group in particular. All I am saying is that 'if the cap fits, wear it'

This episode was a rehash of others, it revisited the constant issue which is a bugbear with all of the characters except perhaps Daniel, and that is the issue of supposed gods and faith and the humans apparent hostility and quite often, violent opposition towards anyone who appears to pose as a god.

It constantly surprises me that Jack in particular, who doesn't appear to have any strong religious views should be so adamant all of the time on this. Especially since SG1 often unwittingly portray themselves as almost 'semi-godlike' when they promise things to people like the Katalans.... "We can fix it, we can work miracles..." was what Jack more or less said, without even knowing whether they could. He made a promise that he was possibly not going to be able to keep on the premise that they had saved the universe before. "We can do it, can't we Carter?" And she just looks stunned and very worried because it was her meddling that upset the sun. And General Hammond himself looked more than a little annoyed that SG1 had caused a problem which meant that another expensive project had to be moved and used to get them out of trouble. And it still didn't because it got blown up. And here is Jack, getting really mad, mad enough to kill over a situation that his team caused and justifying it by saying, 'but we would have saved you if you hadn't blown the rocket up."

If they hadn't overruled the dialling protocols in the beginning they wouldn't have needed to find a solution to a problem they had caused. Catch 22.

What could be more intrusive than clever little Sam Carter cunningly overriding the dialling protocols just to gate to the planet and causing the problem in the first place? That action reeks of arrogance all on its own. She is enough of a scientist to realise that if the lock wasn't happening that there might be some device on the gate to prevent indiscriminate gating. But she went and did it anyway.

The whole episode was a self-fulfilling prophecy. And brings the issue of whether SG1 have the right to gate indiscriminately to world after world. Other people's and species' worlds in fact. After all, would we just allow indiscriminate gating from other worlds onto earth? Damn sure we wouldn't! The Earth gate has got an iris fixed to the gate and it's in a guarded facility.

It's like wandering into to someone else's property and then demanding that they think and act like you do. Or is it that there is one rule for us and another for them?



I don't like the kind of morality portrayed here and I don't agree or condone it. It's like they're saying to everyone 'screw you, we're going to come to your planet whether you like it or not..."

[skydiver]

once, just once i want to see them face the consequences of their actions. way back in one false step when they thought they had caused 'the plague' janet said 'i'm surprised it hasn't happened before' referring to an innocent virus the humans were carrying decimating a whole population.

to me they just took the 'let's warp science and pull a happy ending out of the fire' easy way out.

in my opinion how it should have ended:

after jack's 'you'r god is an alien' speech, danny comes up with getting frair to tell the gtau to follow the tau'ri to another world. frair agrees since this will save lives and not infringe on the treaty. but thanks to jack's speech, not all of them go...their faith in their god is shaken enough that they don't trust frair's word.

days, weeks later the gate from gtau is opened and the sgc go to investigate. they find the people who stayed behind dead and dying...see if jack hand't have shaken their faith in the first place, they would have left and lived...sam killed the people by taking short cuts, jack killed the people by destroying their faith, the asgard killed the people by not doing anything...sg-1 faces the consequences for traipsing willy nilly about the universe.

it would have been a nice allusion to all the 'primitive' people that have been destroyed by well meaning 'advanced' people through out the centuries, be it by disease or simple contamination of their life style.

instead it was a nice, gee let's all break into a round of cumbaya at the end story.

[ShelbyS]

Wow, there is a distict lack of positivity in this room. Jack would be very disappointed.

But seriouly, you guys have some really great points. Particularly about SG-1 trapesing through the galaxy making a mess. I too would have liked to see them not win this one. And I'm getting a little tired of the way Jack always depends so much on Sam, it makes her feel really bad if she can't work it out and please him. You're all talking about Daniel not getting any lines, WHAT ABOUT TEAL'C. I think the poor guy got maybe 2, and he wasn't even in the shot half the time.

But I did honestly really enjoy this episode (and no, Anni, it's not just because SG-1 were in it and because they are much loved characters). It was entertaining, and I'm not going to sit here and analyse EVERY little thing that bothered me about it. I liked the interaction between Jack and the Asgard, and also Jack's outburst (which was well deserved I think, I was only disappointed that he didn't hit the guy a few more times - oh, btw, anyone wonder what happened to that guy, he sort of just dissappeared). I also loved it when Sam told Jack he was right about the wormhole thing. His reaction was adorable.

Also, if you think that Jack was interfering in thier belief system etc. and that he shouldn't have been trying to convince them to let the SGC help, just remember that he only had their best interest at heart and that he was genuine about it. He just wanted to fix what had happened. I also liked the way they made us view the Asgard, and how they really are no better then the goa'uld.

BTW: Sky, "McClarium'" is the heavy element A22 they used in the sun. Sam coined the phase when the scientist who made it (Dr. McClare? something like that), gave them the element. She named it after him. It eased the pain for him, becuase he had to give up the element that had taken him 5 years to make.

[tatter]

boy talk about unhappy campers!:evil:

i like the show for the most part...then again im not that picky
not a fav but watchable.

[ShelbyS]

Hey, I'm not an unhappy camper. I thouroughly enjoyed it!

[Norita]

Very interesting ideas posed by Anni and Skydiver. I think the show is (for want for a better word), losing "realism". Yeah, I know it is sci-fi but one of the things I really liked about SG the series was that it could be possible. But know with the never ending comeback kid Apophis and the SG1 becoming invincible......

The Jaffas are becoming like the stormtropers in Star Wars, never hitting. And leaving the solution till the last possible moment, our heroes find the solution at the last possible moment, with seconds counting over and over, well suspense is lost.

I know there are always loopholes in the episodes (giving the 45 mininute timeframe) yet in this one they were too many and too big loopholes.
1. Yes, Anni, Jack was behaving totally irresponsible and out of character when he said that SG1 could fix it, we can work miracles. That's like impersonating a god, becoming like the Goaul'd and the Asgard somewhat. I know Jack's intentions were good but anyway misrepresenting SG1 like that was wrong. I wonder why the writers did not make Daniel protest, his voice was not heard on this matter. And Daniel's character would have made him oppose this misrepresentation. It is wrong.
2. The Asgard couldn't save the this planet because they would break the treaty with the Goaul'd. Excuse me, why would the Goaul'd had to find out, necessarily? And didn't they break the treaty when they attacked the Goaul'd in Thor's Hammer? Here they wouldn't be attacking the Goaul'd at all, just fixing this little problem with the sun.
3. I have very serious concerns with the writers portraying Carter bypassing (with SGC's consent, of course) the protocols that protected this planet. Why is that necessary when there are so many planets out there. It amounts to a big piece of hubris on Carter's part, hey I can do it, I can bypass these protocols, I am brilliant, so why not do it? Can they realize that these protocols may be there for a reason? SG1 destroyed the Cimmerians' protection in Thor's Hammer and the planet was attacked. So apparently SGC doesn't learn a thing. As you said, they march accross the galaxy, without thinking if they have the right to visit every planet. Hey, Earth is protected by the iris, we don't accept visitors from anywhere, yet the Taur'i keep on visiting without a thought to any danger they may do.
4. Yeah, poor Teal'c didn't have much to say or do, for that matter. This was Jack's episode, made to show his concerns, his caring, his passion, his debating skills, etc. But Daniel was strangely silent on this matter, and that goes against his character, as consistently portrayed in lots of episodes.
5. If the writers keep on this vein, SG1 and SGC trampling without thinking how they may affect other cultures (and Daniel not doing his job, unnateruly silent on this matter, hey people in how many episodes Daniel protested precisely on this matters) and using technology for technology's sake, knowledge for knowledge's sake, well if the writers really want to be realistic and not having SG1 save the day in the nick of time so consistently and so unrealistically, they are robbing the show of one of it's greatest qualities, realism.

[trancer]

Hi, newbie here, go easy!

What surprised me most about this ep were Jack's actions. The fact that after the rocket was destroyed he was ready, willing and able to just leave the Klataans(sp) to their death, essentially dooming/writing off an entire planet because of the actions of a minority group who really were nothing more than terrorists. As a CO, and representative of Earth, that was just low. Especially considering the fact that these people were doomed because of the actions of SGC.

I think this ep skirted around the issue a little too much. I mean, how guilty did the members of SG-1 feel about their actions? If they couldn't have found a way to save them, would they have stayed and died with them because it was their fault? Oh, and why is it bad for the Goa'uld and Asgard to pretend to be Gods, but okay for SG1 to continue to let the Klataans assume they were elves sent by the god Frere? Does this mean that SGC will limit their visits to planets they deem less technologically and socially advanced than they are? Wow, that's alot of questions.

I don't necessarily think it was "arrogance" on Carter's part to bypass the safety protocols. Sometimes the only way to know what's right, is by finding out after you've done something wrong. from what I understand, they didn't exactly get a big 'ol sign that said "Please don't open this gate". As Jack pointed out, the Asgard knew that SG was exploring the gates yet neglected to mention that some of these gates had locks on them, or why. Sure, just because she "can" doesn't necessarily mean she "should", but that does leave out the question of "why".

Well, those are my ramblings, thanks for, um, listening.

[ShelbyS]

If you guys complain so much then why do you bother watching the show? I liked it for what it was.

How are we ever supposed to get a season 6, if all people do is criticise. You do know that the writers lurk here sometimes and on the mailing lists.

I'm not saying that your opinion sucks or anything like that, you all have some very valid points but for god's sake, it's supposed to be something we all love (and most people here are very passionate about Stargate), so why does it have to be knocked all the time?

I'm off to find some positivity.
Hooroo.

[Norita]

Originally posted by ShelbyS
If you guys complain so much then why do you bother watching the show? I liked it for what it was.

How are we ever supposed to get a season 6, if all people do is criticise. You do know that the writers lurk here sometimes and on the mailing lists.

I'm not saying that your opinion sucks or anything like that, you all have some very valid points but for god's sake, it's supposed to be something we all love (and most people here are very passionate about Stargate), so why does it have to be knocked all the time?

I'm off to find some positivity.
Hooroo.

Well, isn't analyzing and commenting about the episodes one of the reasons this and other forums are about? And if the producers/writers of the show do read these forums, it is my modest opinion that if they do take in to considerations fans' ideas and opinions, they surely must take more seriously fans' thoughts that are not merely about "drooling" and how handsome and sexy that actor is, etc. And I have no intention of denigrating the droolers, hey, I am one myself, I think MS is one of the handsomest actors around and RDA and CJ are not far behind.

For the most part I think most of the episodes go from great to good, but if once in a while there comes a clinker (in my modest opinion), we certainly can voice our thoughts without offending anyone. I don't think we are insulting the producers/actors/writers for doing this. Hey, it's a free country!

[shiloh]

Well, all viewpoints are valid.

But there are some folk who *never* seem to have anything good to say about the show. Who seem to hate everything and everybody. Who condemn every episode.


Those are the ones I ask, why do you watch the show?