aelfgyfu_mead (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aelfgyfu_mead) wrote2008-02-16 09:58 am
aelfgyfu_mead) wrote2008-02-16 09:58 am
Entry tags:
SGA: "Midway"
It's that time again:
I expected "Midway" to be bad, and this time lowering my expectations didn't work because 1) it wasn't bad in the ways I expected and 2) it had good scenes at the start, lulling me into giving up those low expectations.
I haven't read anyone else's review yet, so I may be covering old ground. At any rate:
Bloopholes!
- Midway should never have been designed without security. I can believe that Rodney might think his work unhackable. I cannot believe that Sam--the other half of the McKay-Carter Intergalactic Bridge--would. And the IOA is freaking paranoid. No iris? No manual entry of IDC, just an automatic signal to the SGC that it's Midway? Bull.
- How big is Midway? We've got three scientists on the station, and Teal'c and Ronon have to share a room? How the heck would they handle six people in quarantine at the same time? A dozen? It's so small Teal'c and Ronon have to share a room that can barely fit a bunk bed, but yet dozens of Wraith come through the Gate and disappear in the dozens of twisty corridors, all alike? Teal'c and Ronon, and later four squads of Marines, can play hide & seek with the Wraith in this place? That's nuts.
- These Wraith have a weapon that can stun people through how large a radius? I looked at Arduinna's Stargate Handbook to refresh my memory of the layout. The Gateroom is Level 28. Even if they only knocked out people up to the elevator changeover at Level 11, we're talking about seventeen levels. They knocked everyone out? If the Wraith have a weapon like that, well, game over, man. They can just chuck one through the Gate at any planet they want and face no resistance.
Of course Ronon had never seen one of those before. We probably never will again. It's a plot device because otherwise, the Wraith get mowed down at the SGC, and there's no episode.
- What were the Wraith doing? Maybe I got too ticked off to figure this out, but their plan seemed to be to leave everyone alive (and mostly armed), feed on a few random nameless people, and head to the surface. Why the heck didn't they secure the SGC so that they could bring through whomever they wanted at leisure?
- Waking up: I'm to believe the first person to wake up is Coolidge, and he's calling the military before anyone else even stirs? Everyone else wakes up, and not one of the trained soldiers--Marines, SFs, Air Force--goes for their weapons and tries to help, leaving only Teal'c and Ronon to fight the Wraith.
- Bomb the SGC? We've got a limited number of Wraith, and Coolidge decides--and the military agrees!? that it's better to destroy a base in a populated area than risk one of the Wraith getting out? These aren't Replicators; they don't reproduce without a queen! Yes, there's a risk in letting one or a few get out--but surely we'd lose a heck of a lot more people bombing the SGC, and if we can evacuate the SGC, then the Wraith can get out anyway, so why bomb?
- They can't stop the self-destruct? Has that ever happened before?
- The Wraith hacked the codes on Midway itself awfully darned fast. I didn't want anything to happen to Bill, but honestly, I would have found it far more believable if they'd gotten information the same way the Wraith have gotten it before: through the telepathic connection that draining a person gives. That's how they get information from people, guys! We've seen Wraith queens use it (Sumner in particular), and surely that's what Michael was doing to Carson in "No Man's Land"!
Wimping out: eventually, Teal'c would have wiped the floor with Ronon. Ronon has youth, strength, and simple bulk on his side, but Teal'c has cunning and patience ("old age and treachery"?). They had Sam stop it so that fans can continue to fight about who would win, and we don't rag on the writers if our favorite loses. Hmph. So they think.
Todd never appears so that we know he didn't get killed, or because the actor wasn't available, or both.
Character missteps: my tolerance for bloopholes goes up considerably when I like what they do with the characters (see my review of "Trio" for just one example). When I don't like what they do with the characters, I get picky. I felt very picky by the end last night.
- "Who peed in his Wheaties?" Brilliant Husband asked concerning Ronon early on. It's the truth. Have we ever seen him in that bad a mood? I can see him being defensive, resentful, even hostile, but pulling the gun on Teal'c was totally over the top, and especially stupid after Ronon had just said he knew how to play the game. Ronon is impulsive. He is not stupid.
- Even Teal'c was a bit much. I can see him getting impatient--but I can also see him quietly amused by the fiery young warrior. We didn't get to see any amusement.
- Kavanagh. Can we please give the man at least one redeeming quality? He's not a person; he's a caricature. I'm still holding out hope we'll get a real character here someday.
- Sheppard: I felt his was the worst characterization of the night. I can see him choosing to overlook Ronon and Teal'c's fight. I have real trouble seeing him in the room, placing bets--and especially still being there when Col. Carter comes in. Sheppard's not stupid either. That's tremendously unprofessional and risky for the team--Ronon has an interview in three days! The IOA would surely ask what had happened if he showed up with the stuffing beaten out of him. What's he gonna say? "I went three hours against Teal'c?" Oh, yeah, that will ensure his place on Shep's team! I know Sheppard doesn't care a lot about authority, but he does respect Sam; he should at the very least look embarrassed to be caught participating in this insanity, if he has to be involved at all.
What I really found inconceivable was Sheppard's lack of tactics on Midway. Did I miss something? He left no one to secure the Gate room on the station? He knows the Wraith have secured the planet; he knows a Wraith shot out the MALP. He doesn't think the Wraith will get a clue that the Lanteans may come to Midway and send reinforcements? Two people, maybe four, should be able to mow down a fair number of Wraith coming through.
And I thought it preposterous that Sheppard would lock himself in the front of the Jumper for days and not let anyone in to relieve him, so that when a huge ship shows up, he fails to notice, and no one else can tell. Sheppard just wouldn't risk everyone's lives that way. He can't be the only one with instrumentation, when they figured it could be two weeks before the Daedalus came.
I also can't believe Sheppard only lasted one day with the scientists. Yes, Kavanagh is even worse than Rodney--but seriously, one day?
And they must have toilets on Jumpers, but I don't think they have any in the forward section. Yuck. (Yes, ever since I found out the original Enterprise plans showed no toilets, I've been obsessed with toilets on spacecraft and in stations.)
I should have felt terrible for Rodney when he thought Sheppard was dead (again). I felt nothing, I think simply because I was so ticked off at that point.
There were good bits; there just weren't enough of them for me!
Sam and Teal'c's scenes made me happy. There we see the Teal'c we've come to know and love (even if the hair strikes me as wrong), and I love the friendship these two have.
They didn't kill Bill Lee! I was terribly afraid we'd lose Bill! They also didn't make him an idiot (they had Kavanagh for that. Finally got Kavanagh's first name--Peter). Bill was good: out of his element, even afraid, but not a coward.
Sam was right to stop the fight. (I hope she called Sheppard into her office and told him off big time.)
Rodney again calls Sheppard "John" only when things get really bad.
I can't find a transcript yet, so I may have made mistakes here, and I may misquote this line. Much as I object to characters who exist only to be irritants and comic relief, the line of the night for me was Rodney's: "We've made a terrible mistake!... We revived Kavanagh!"
Wraith tech is cool.
On the whole, I thought the episode really sloppily written. I can fix most of the bloopholes: have the Wraith suck the information out of the unknown scientist, thus learning the IDC which must be input manually for the SGC. Have the Wraith securing the Gate room on Earth and Teal'c and Ronon unable to break through from there; the Wraith can off unknown people (make sure Walter's off-duty!), and we don't have the silliness with Coolidge and bombing the mountain to kingdom come. Have John and Sam come in together to break up the fight, because John's pretty easy-going, but I can't see him tolerating that kind of behavior. And so on. It would have been easy to make the episode much more believable.
And now...spoilers for next week as I continue to work on lowering my expectations:
I don't have to work very hard to lower my expectations.
Teyla's psychic powers now give her visions of the baby's daddy? Spare me. I'm not into this mystical pregnancy shtik. Normal pregnancy is like having an alien inside you; who needs the extra mumbo-jumbo? Besides, something about how the vision looked made me want to say, "Help me, Obi-Wan; you're my only hope!"
The last five minutes? I've been waiting months to see Carson, and now they say he only shows up in the last five minutes? Well, crud. That will no doubt mean that we don't even find out how he is supposed to have survived until the following week!
On the bright side, that gives me one more week before the story I haven't quite finished and posted yet becomes AU because they reveal that season 3 didn't happen quite as we thought it did! (No, I don't know that for sure, but I'm guessing they're going to tell us the Carson who died wasn't the real Carson.)
I expected "Midway" to be bad, and this time lowering my expectations didn't work because 1) it wasn't bad in the ways I expected and 2) it had good scenes at the start, lulling me into giving up those low expectations.
I haven't read anyone else's review yet, so I may be covering old ground. At any rate:
Bloopholes!
- Midway should never have been designed without security. I can believe that Rodney might think his work unhackable. I cannot believe that Sam--the other half of the McKay-Carter Intergalactic Bridge--would. And the IOA is freaking paranoid. No iris? No manual entry of IDC, just an automatic signal to the SGC that it's Midway? Bull.
- How big is Midway? We've got three scientists on the station, and Teal'c and Ronon have to share a room? How the heck would they handle six people in quarantine at the same time? A dozen? It's so small Teal'c and Ronon have to share a room that can barely fit a bunk bed, but yet dozens of Wraith come through the Gate and disappear in the dozens of twisty corridors, all alike? Teal'c and Ronon, and later four squads of Marines, can play hide & seek with the Wraith in this place? That's nuts.
- These Wraith have a weapon that can stun people through how large a radius? I looked at Arduinna's Stargate Handbook to refresh my memory of the layout. The Gateroom is Level 28. Even if they only knocked out people up to the elevator changeover at Level 11, we're talking about seventeen levels. They knocked everyone out? If the Wraith have a weapon like that, well, game over, man. They can just chuck one through the Gate at any planet they want and face no resistance.
Of course Ronon had never seen one of those before. We probably never will again. It's a plot device because otherwise, the Wraith get mowed down at the SGC, and there's no episode.
- What were the Wraith doing? Maybe I got too ticked off to figure this out, but their plan seemed to be to leave everyone alive (and mostly armed), feed on a few random nameless people, and head to the surface. Why the heck didn't they secure the SGC so that they could bring through whomever they wanted at leisure?
- Waking up: I'm to believe the first person to wake up is Coolidge, and he's calling the military before anyone else even stirs? Everyone else wakes up, and not one of the trained soldiers--Marines, SFs, Air Force--goes for their weapons and tries to help, leaving only Teal'c and Ronon to fight the Wraith.
- Bomb the SGC? We've got a limited number of Wraith, and Coolidge decides--and the military agrees!? that it's better to destroy a base in a populated area than risk one of the Wraith getting out? These aren't Replicators; they don't reproduce without a queen! Yes, there's a risk in letting one or a few get out--but surely we'd lose a heck of a lot more people bombing the SGC, and if we can evacuate the SGC, then the Wraith can get out anyway, so why bomb?
- They can't stop the self-destruct? Has that ever happened before?
- The Wraith hacked the codes on Midway itself awfully darned fast. I didn't want anything to happen to Bill, but honestly, I would have found it far more believable if they'd gotten information the same way the Wraith have gotten it before: through the telepathic connection that draining a person gives. That's how they get information from people, guys! We've seen Wraith queens use it (Sumner in particular), and surely that's what Michael was doing to Carson in "No Man's Land"!
Wimping out: eventually, Teal'c would have wiped the floor with Ronon. Ronon has youth, strength, and simple bulk on his side, but Teal'c has cunning and patience ("old age and treachery"?). They had Sam stop it so that fans can continue to fight about who would win, and we don't rag on the writers if our favorite loses. Hmph. So they think.
Todd never appears so that we know he didn't get killed, or because the actor wasn't available, or both.
Character missteps: my tolerance for bloopholes goes up considerably when I like what they do with the characters (see my review of "Trio" for just one example). When I don't like what they do with the characters, I get picky. I felt very picky by the end last night.
- "Who peed in his Wheaties?" Brilliant Husband asked concerning Ronon early on. It's the truth. Have we ever seen him in that bad a mood? I can see him being defensive, resentful, even hostile, but pulling the gun on Teal'c was totally over the top, and especially stupid after Ronon had just said he knew how to play the game. Ronon is impulsive. He is not stupid.
- Even Teal'c was a bit much. I can see him getting impatient--but I can also see him quietly amused by the fiery young warrior. We didn't get to see any amusement.
- Kavanagh. Can we please give the man at least one redeeming quality? He's not a person; he's a caricature. I'm still holding out hope we'll get a real character here someday.
- Sheppard: I felt his was the worst characterization of the night. I can see him choosing to overlook Ronon and Teal'c's fight. I have real trouble seeing him in the room, placing bets--and especially still being there when Col. Carter comes in. Sheppard's not stupid either. That's tremendously unprofessional and risky for the team--Ronon has an interview in three days! The IOA would surely ask what had happened if he showed up with the stuffing beaten out of him. What's he gonna say? "I went three hours against Teal'c?" Oh, yeah, that will ensure his place on Shep's team! I know Sheppard doesn't care a lot about authority, but he does respect Sam; he should at the very least look embarrassed to be caught participating in this insanity, if he has to be involved at all.
What I really found inconceivable was Sheppard's lack of tactics on Midway. Did I miss something? He left no one to secure the Gate room on the station? He knows the Wraith have secured the planet; he knows a Wraith shot out the MALP. He doesn't think the Wraith will get a clue that the Lanteans may come to Midway and send reinforcements? Two people, maybe four, should be able to mow down a fair number of Wraith coming through.
And I thought it preposterous that Sheppard would lock himself in the front of the Jumper for days and not let anyone in to relieve him, so that when a huge ship shows up, he fails to notice, and no one else can tell. Sheppard just wouldn't risk everyone's lives that way. He can't be the only one with instrumentation, when they figured it could be two weeks before the Daedalus came.
I also can't believe Sheppard only lasted one day with the scientists. Yes, Kavanagh is even worse than Rodney--but seriously, one day?
And they must have toilets on Jumpers, but I don't think they have any in the forward section. Yuck. (Yes, ever since I found out the original Enterprise plans showed no toilets, I've been obsessed with toilets on spacecraft and in stations.)
I should have felt terrible for Rodney when he thought Sheppard was dead (again). I felt nothing, I think simply because I was so ticked off at that point.
There were good bits; there just weren't enough of them for me!
Sam and Teal'c's scenes made me happy. There we see the Teal'c we've come to know and love (even if the hair strikes me as wrong), and I love the friendship these two have.
They didn't kill Bill Lee! I was terribly afraid we'd lose Bill! They also didn't make him an idiot (they had Kavanagh for that. Finally got Kavanagh's first name--Peter). Bill was good: out of his element, even afraid, but not a coward.
Sam was right to stop the fight. (I hope she called Sheppard into her office and told him off big time.)
Rodney again calls Sheppard "John" only when things get really bad.
I can't find a transcript yet, so I may have made mistakes here, and I may misquote this line. Much as I object to characters who exist only to be irritants and comic relief, the line of the night for me was Rodney's: "We've made a terrible mistake!... We revived Kavanagh!"
Wraith tech is cool.
On the whole, I thought the episode really sloppily written. I can fix most of the bloopholes: have the Wraith suck the information out of the unknown scientist, thus learning the IDC which must be input manually for the SGC. Have the Wraith securing the Gate room on Earth and Teal'c and Ronon unable to break through from there; the Wraith can off unknown people (make sure Walter's off-duty!), and we don't have the silliness with Coolidge and bombing the mountain to kingdom come. Have John and Sam come in together to break up the fight, because John's pretty easy-going, but I can't see him tolerating that kind of behavior. And so on. It would have been easy to make the episode much more believable.
And now...spoilers for next week as I continue to work on lowering my expectations:
I don't have to work very hard to lower my expectations.
Teyla's psychic powers now give her visions of the baby's daddy? Spare me. I'm not into this mystical pregnancy shtik. Normal pregnancy is like having an alien inside you; who needs the extra mumbo-jumbo? Besides, something about how the vision looked made me want to say, "Help me, Obi-Wan; you're my only hope!"
The last five minutes? I've been waiting months to see Carson, and now they say he only shows up in the last five minutes? Well, crud. That will no doubt mean that we don't even find out how he is supposed to have survived until the following week!
On the bright side, that gives me one more week before the story I haven't quite finished and posted yet becomes AU because they reveal that season 3 didn't happen quite as we thought it did! (No, I don't know that for sure, but I'm guessing they're going to tell us the Carson who died wasn't the real Carson.)