SG-1 6:03 "Descent"

[cdybedahl]

1) Space Ninjas!

2) One thing that keeps surprising me about this series is how funny Teal'c is. It's partly the script, of course, but Christopher Judge also seems to be a pretty talented comic actor.

3) If I admit that I like Jonas Quinn better than I liked Daniel Jackson, will I get torn to pieces by hordes of Daniel-crazed fangirls?

Comments

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I love Teal'c's deadpan humour.

I liked Jonas when they weren't trying to write him as Superman. By the time they'd allowed him to memorise all Daniel's notes and be able to memorise everything about Goa'uld ships and to be genetically special etc. he was no longer believable.

I liked the Jonas who was fascinated by the weather channel.

The best Jonas episode of the lot is the very last one, because he gets to interact fantastically with another character and to swop notes on O'Neill. When they wrote him as a normal human and weren't trying to ram him down my throat by making him save everyone else's lives all the time, I thought he had a lot of potential.

I still like Maybourne best, but he's an acquired taste.

[cdybedahl.livejournal.com]

Not that I have seen more than three episodes with Jonas as a regular yet, but so far I see it as no more than the perennial problem with bringing in a new player character into an experienced group. Somehow you have to make the new PC roughly comparable to the old ones in power level, but without the years of history it almost never feels really believable.

But we'll see. There's plenty of time for me to change my mind.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I disagree that a new character has to match the old ones in power level.

Consider Buffy. Xander never has any powers throughout the entire series.. This does not stop him from being a very popular and necessary charcter.

Xander is 'everyman'. We can see through his eyes and identify with him. They had a golden opportunity to do this with Jonas. Instead, he ends up knowing more about Goa'uld ships than Selmak, more about science than Sam and more about archeology and languages than Daniel.

Jonas's strengths as a character are the things he doesn't know and his delight in the new and unexpected. 'First time in a space ship'.

[jennixen.livejournal.com]

I agree with this completely. Jonas was funny but he wasn't Daniel and he shouldn've have been pushed into that role either.
Besides, I would rather have seen Jonas AND Daniel...eh, not like that though. ;)

[cdybedahl.livejournal.com]

SG-1 is one Fighter (Jack), one Elven Paladin (Teal'c), one Cleric (Sam) and one Bard (Daniel). When they lose the Bard, their balance is thrown out of whack, so they need to get a new one. If they'd chosen to have Jonas be another type of character, they would have had to change the type of the adventures they had, and that's not really possible that late in the show's run.

Alhtough it's kind of interesting to ponder what other type of character he might've been. Halfling Thief seems the most obvious, but then they would've had to find another way to cover the Languages and Lore skills that the Bard used to provide.

[jennixen.livejournal.com]

*grins*

I can see what you're saying, but surely it's possible to create characters with more depth than that? ;)
Jonas didn't have to be completely different than Daniel but I think they made him too perfect and too much like Daniel.
And despite the fact that it WAS his fault that Daniel died, they didn't seem to even have ONE whole episode where they mistrust him or have him suspicious of something.
In fact, if Jonas had turned out to be a villain in the end and betrayed them, he would've been a much better character. :)

[cdybedahl.livejournal.com]

Note that I said "player character". As in a tabletop roleplaying game. It takes very mature players to have one of them play a character with significantly less power than all the others.

When it comes to any kind of pre-written drama, you are of course correct. Although it's interesting that you choose Buffy as an example, because it's one of the best shows ever at avoiding treating their protagonists as RPG player characters. In contrast, SG-1 strikes me very much as a bunch of PCs. Which may be why it doesn't bother me that Jonas is ridiculously competent at many things; I judge SG-1 by a slightly different standard.

[trixieleitz]

I love Jonas. And Daniel. I slash Jonas and Daniel, although so far only in my head.

Teal'c is most definitely a hoot. I think he appeals to my own "joking with a straight face" style.

I haven't watched any SG-1 in far too long.