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brainofckStupid Stargate. :p
I am about to write some extreme Jack behavior, and I wanted to go back and find out if there is any justification for said behavior so this morning, I got up when the cat yowled and popped in the movie, which I have not seen.
However, I'm not sure the movie is appropriate for Small Boy, so I had to stop when he woke up. Well, actually, I let him watch with me til they were getting ready to go through the Gate the first time, but I don't trust Abydos and Ra, so I need to preview that before Small Boy sees. It's only PG-13, so maybe it will be OK.
So anyway, this Part One applies to the first 20-30 minutes of the film.
SPOILERS for the movie, the show, and various fan fic.
Part One of CK's Guide to Stargate for People Who Have Forgotten It or Never Saw It
Poor baby Daniel! I didn't realize exactly how down and out he was when Catherine offered him the Stargate job. Evicted from his apartment! No wonder the jokes about how he was desparate enough to become her boy toy...
Daniel's first act as a translator arriving at the Mountain is to ruthlessly correct someone's bad translation of the inscription on the Gate's coverstone. He mutters about how someone must have been using Budge and why do they keep republishing him? :)
Daniel works around the clock for two weeks trying to figure out the glyphs on the Gate. He is clearly GUZZLING coffee during these scenes. They go so far as to send him out to the water fountain in the hall outside the room where he is working to get more water in the coffee pot, which has just the dregs of the previous coffee in it. Chain coffee making. He might as well have been lighting his ciggarette off the butt of the previous one...
Daniel pulls a fast one to get on the team that goes through the Gate. They send the MALP through and they are looking at the pictures it sent back of the Gate on the other side. They being Gen. West, Daniel, Jack, and some other people. They are all realizing that the glyphs on the other gate are different from the glyphs on Earth's gate. (A cool thing I didn't realize and that they don't really emphasize in the show. Every planet's Stargate should have a different set of glyphs!!! So dialing between planets without going back to Earth first is probably more or less impossible on the fly. A continuity problem for the writers on the show, as SG-1 dials between planets, skipping Earth, whenever it is convenient for the plot.) Anyway, everyone else is realizing that the glyphs are different and therefore it's going to be pretty tricky to dial home. West, apparently an easily discouraged man, immediately talkes about scrapping the entire Gate program because getting home will be impossible. Daniel volunteers, "I could do it!" Because of course, Daniel can see that the cheverons on the other gate are locked at what he is assuming are Earth's coordinates from that Gate. (There may be a plot twist on this, as I am not sure Daniel could see all 7 cheverons from the footage they were watching, but Daniel assures West that he is absolutely sure he can do it.) West says, "You're on the team."
They are rushing to get the mission moving, so nobody else even seems to look at this footage. Using Daniel's breakthrough, they opened the Gate, immediately sent the MALP through, a team is assembled and ready to go, and as soon as Daniel has his look at the MALP telemetry, it appears that they go through the Gate on their first mission the same day, if not almost immediately.
The funny part to me is, when Daniel says he can dial the Gate home, Jack mutters, "He's full of shit," and walks off in disgust. I think Jack saw exactly what Daniel saw on the MALP telemetry, but I imagine if he DID, he will confront Daniel with it later on in the movie. But this might also have been Jack testing Daniel (see my continued rambling below). Maybe Jack didn't call him on it, because he figured if Daniel was smart enough to figure it out, not to mention figure out the entire glyph problem in two weeks, maybe he would be a useful resource in the field.
For those of us who are not Egyptologists, the Gate was buried under a coverstone. Coverstones typically cover tombs. At one point Daniel does ask about what else was under the coverstone and whether it was covering a tomb, but in the excitement of his landslide of discoveries and everyone's cooing over them and him, he doesn't follow up on the question. Nor does he consider at this early stage the warning that was written on the coverstones. FYI, this is some other need-to-know information that Jack has and Daniel doesn't. The remains of a goa'uld were found under the coverstone with the Gate.
Interesting to note that before Daniel has his breakthrough regarding the glyphs and what they mean, right before he goes out to the hallway to get water for coffee, he notes to himself on his dictaphone that "I'm never gonna get paid." *snickers* Those of you who have watched the show for enough seasons will recognize that at a key moment, Daniel asks, "I do get paid for this?" Apparently the scars caused by seeking and losing grant funding run very, very deep... *snickers more*
Oh. Another small tidbit of which I was not aware. Catherine was given autonomy over the program, but eventually the Air Force decides that she might actually get the Gate working, so they go out and specifically reactivate Jack for his as yet unspecified talents. And Jack, at this point, is in charge of the Program! COOL! I had no idea! :)
Another small, slashy tidbit, the first scenes of the movie show Jack and Daniel's recruitment in parallel. And they arrive at the mountain at almost exactly the same time, Jack all spit and polish, and Daniel looking quite disreputable (and sneezing). Daniel has just finished his devastating re-translation of the coverstone, including identifying that it is not at "Door to Heaven" but rather at "Stargate." Catherine is about to tell him more extiting stuff when Jack comes in and tells her that the whole project has been classified and she isn't to tell anything to any civilians anymore without his direct authorization.
So in that one tiny first scene between them the canon sets up the conflict between Jack and Daniel. Daniel is seeking, and Jack is protecting. Or, less generously, Jack is standing in the way of scientific discovery of the truth. But interesting to see that the writer set up their first scene as a confrontation. Also interesting, Jack wins the battle here, denying Daniel his immediate access, but Daniel wins the war, becuase he clearly gets access. Though the access must have been controlled by Jack. OK. This analysis is going nowhere, moving on.
They are clearly testing Daniel through the whole first part. Daniel works for two weeks and finally figures out what the glyphs are and what they mean. He figures out they represent a method for locating a point in space. Gen. West expresses that Daniel has done in two weeks what it took the other scientists in the room 2 years to figure out. We think that the other scientists have been working for two years prior to Daniel and Daniel has just swooped in at the end and given them the whole story. However, Daniel shows them the solution, then they roll back the blast shield on the embarcation room (the meeting is taking place in the briefing room), and we realize that Daniel has yet to tell them anything they don't already know. The control room as we all know it from the show is already there. The gate is set up and spinning. The control computers are there, with their dialing programs all set.
Daniel, of course, figures out how to determine which glyph is Earth's point of origin. He only brings them the last piece of a puzzle they have already worked out.
This raises another interesting Jack/Daniel question, really a sort of "sub-question" of the one above. Jack stops Catherine from telling Daniel very much before he steps in as the mediator of what Daniel can know. Was Catherine planning to keep all this information from Daniel and test him by making him work through the whole puzzle of the glyphs again? They didn't need him for that. But he did figure it out himself in a fraction of the time it took them. Would Catherine have told him about their work on the glyphs, and let him get to work immediately on the project they had hired him for - to try to determine which glyph was Earth's point of origin? Was it Catherine or Jack who tested Daniel and made him jump through the hoops? A teeny weeny point in the plot development, but an interesting one for the slasher's feelings about the development of the relationship between these two men.
And that's my guide to the first 20 minutes of the movie! Stay tuned to tomorrow's guide to hopefully the rest of the first full hour! *snortle* Ah, the life of the working mother!
I am about to write some extreme Jack behavior, and I wanted to go back and find out if there is any justification for said behavior so this morning, I got up when the cat yowled and popped in the movie, which I have not seen.
However, I'm not sure the movie is appropriate for Small Boy, so I had to stop when he woke up. Well, actually, I let him watch with me til they were getting ready to go through the Gate the first time, but I don't trust Abydos and Ra, so I need to preview that before Small Boy sees. It's only PG-13, so maybe it will be OK.
So anyway, this Part One applies to the first 20-30 minutes of the film.
SPOILERS for the movie, the show, and various fan fic.
Part One of CK's Guide to Stargate for People Who Have Forgotten It or Never Saw It
Poor baby Daniel! I didn't realize exactly how down and out he was when Catherine offered him the Stargate job. Evicted from his apartment! No wonder the jokes about how he was desparate enough to become her boy toy...
Daniel's first act as a translator arriving at the Mountain is to ruthlessly correct someone's bad translation of the inscription on the Gate's coverstone. He mutters about how someone must have been using Budge and why do they keep republishing him? :)
Daniel works around the clock for two weeks trying to figure out the glyphs on the Gate. He is clearly GUZZLING coffee during these scenes. They go so far as to send him out to the water fountain in the hall outside the room where he is working to get more water in the coffee pot, which has just the dregs of the previous coffee in it. Chain coffee making. He might as well have been lighting his ciggarette off the butt of the previous one...
Daniel pulls a fast one to get on the team that goes through the Gate. They send the MALP through and they are looking at the pictures it sent back of the Gate on the other side. They being Gen. West, Daniel, Jack, and some other people. They are all realizing that the glyphs on the other gate are different from the glyphs on Earth's gate. (A cool thing I didn't realize and that they don't really emphasize in the show. Every planet's Stargate should have a different set of glyphs!!! So dialing between planets without going back to Earth first is probably more or less impossible on the fly. A continuity problem for the writers on the show, as SG-1 dials between planets, skipping Earth, whenever it is convenient for the plot.) Anyway, everyone else is realizing that the glyphs are different and therefore it's going to be pretty tricky to dial home. West, apparently an easily discouraged man, immediately talkes about scrapping the entire Gate program because getting home will be impossible. Daniel volunteers, "I could do it!" Because of course, Daniel can see that the cheverons on the other gate are locked at what he is assuming are Earth's coordinates from that Gate. (There may be a plot twist on this, as I am not sure Daniel could see all 7 cheverons from the footage they were watching, but Daniel assures West that he is absolutely sure he can do it.) West says, "You're on the team."
They are rushing to get the mission moving, so nobody else even seems to look at this footage. Using Daniel's breakthrough, they opened the Gate, immediately sent the MALP through, a team is assembled and ready to go, and as soon as Daniel has his look at the MALP telemetry, it appears that they go through the Gate on their first mission the same day, if not almost immediately.
The funny part to me is, when Daniel says he can dial the Gate home, Jack mutters, "He's full of shit," and walks off in disgust. I think Jack saw exactly what Daniel saw on the MALP telemetry, but I imagine if he DID, he will confront Daniel with it later on in the movie. But this might also have been Jack testing Daniel (see my continued rambling below). Maybe Jack didn't call him on it, because he figured if Daniel was smart enough to figure it out, not to mention figure out the entire glyph problem in two weeks, maybe he would be a useful resource in the field.
For those of us who are not Egyptologists, the Gate was buried under a coverstone. Coverstones typically cover tombs. At one point Daniel does ask about what else was under the coverstone and whether it was covering a tomb, but in the excitement of his landslide of discoveries and everyone's cooing over them and him, he doesn't follow up on the question. Nor does he consider at this early stage the warning that was written on the coverstones. FYI, this is some other need-to-know information that Jack has and Daniel doesn't. The remains of a goa'uld were found under the coverstone with the Gate.
Interesting to note that before Daniel has his breakthrough regarding the glyphs and what they mean, right before he goes out to the hallway to get water for coffee, he notes to himself on his dictaphone that "I'm never gonna get paid." *snickers* Those of you who have watched the show for enough seasons will recognize that at a key moment, Daniel asks, "I do get paid for this?" Apparently the scars caused by seeking and losing grant funding run very, very deep... *snickers more*
Oh. Another small tidbit of which I was not aware. Catherine was given autonomy over the program, but eventually the Air Force decides that she might actually get the Gate working, so they go out and specifically reactivate Jack for his as yet unspecified talents. And Jack, at this point, is in charge of the Program! COOL! I had no idea! :)
Another small, slashy tidbit, the first scenes of the movie show Jack and Daniel's recruitment in parallel. And they arrive at the mountain at almost exactly the same time, Jack all spit and polish, and Daniel looking quite disreputable (and sneezing). Daniel has just finished his devastating re-translation of the coverstone, including identifying that it is not at "Door to Heaven" but rather at "Stargate." Catherine is about to tell him more extiting stuff when Jack comes in and tells her that the whole project has been classified and she isn't to tell anything to any civilians anymore without his direct authorization.
So in that one tiny first scene between them the canon sets up the conflict between Jack and Daniel. Daniel is seeking, and Jack is protecting. Or, less generously, Jack is standing in the way of scientific discovery of the truth. But interesting to see that the writer set up their first scene as a confrontation. Also interesting, Jack wins the battle here, denying Daniel his immediate access, but Daniel wins the war, becuase he clearly gets access. Though the access must have been controlled by Jack. OK. This analysis is going nowhere, moving on.
They are clearly testing Daniel through the whole first part. Daniel works for two weeks and finally figures out what the glyphs are and what they mean. He figures out they represent a method for locating a point in space. Gen. West expresses that Daniel has done in two weeks what it took the other scientists in the room 2 years to figure out. We think that the other scientists have been working for two years prior to Daniel and Daniel has just swooped in at the end and given them the whole story. However, Daniel shows them the solution, then they roll back the blast shield on the embarcation room (the meeting is taking place in the briefing room), and we realize that Daniel has yet to tell them anything they don't already know. The control room as we all know it from the show is already there. The gate is set up and spinning. The control computers are there, with their dialing programs all set.
Daniel, of course, figures out how to determine which glyph is Earth's point of origin. He only brings them the last piece of a puzzle they have already worked out.
This raises another interesting Jack/Daniel question, really a sort of "sub-question" of the one above. Jack stops Catherine from telling Daniel very much before he steps in as the mediator of what Daniel can know. Was Catherine planning to keep all this information from Daniel and test him by making him work through the whole puzzle of the glyphs again? They didn't need him for that. But he did figure it out himself in a fraction of the time it took them. Would Catherine have told him about their work on the glyphs, and let him get to work immediately on the project they had hired him for - to try to determine which glyph was Earth's point of origin? Was it Catherine or Jack who tested Daniel and made him jump through the hoops? A teeny weeny point in the plot development, but an interesting one for the slasher's feelings about the development of the relationship between these two men.
And that's my guide to the first 20 minutes of the movie! Stay tuned to tomorrow's guide to hopefully the rest of the first full hour! *snortle* Ah, the life of the working mother!
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-03 01:13 pm (UTC)It's uncanny as to how much the movie daniel jackson and the tv show daniel jackson look alike.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-03 02:38 pm (UTC)But yeah, it's amazing how alike they are; when I was watching the show with my mom, I thought it was the same Daniel. It was only later on when I wandered over to SG-1 fanficdom that I found out it was a different guy. And looking at the two of them next to each other, I think movie!Daniel is cuter than TV!Daniel; that's who I imagine whenever I read the fanfic. :)
Angie
The two Daniels
Date: 2005-09-03 02:58 pm (UTC)spoilery comments
Date: 2005-09-03 05:07 pm (UTC)They being Gen. West, Daniel, Jack, and some other people.
Including Kawalsky and Ferretti! I like TV Kawalsky better -- such a hottie. (I can totally ship TV Jack/Kawalsky.) But movie Ferretti was French Stewart! Aaaaw.
A few things from the movie have been changed for the show. The one that jumped out at me was that movie Abydos was in a distant galaxy on the other side of the universe, which I found astronomically far-fetched. On TV, I think, they are within the Milky Way, and only, in The Fifth Race, eg, when using the 8th chevron for "distance," do they go outside. That makes much more sense. < / reality squick >
I think they also changed how much the glyphs are different. I think the stargates have all the same glyphs for the first 6 chevrons, using the constellations the way we use A, B, C and 1, 2, 3 on the side of a map. So Earth would always be A, 2, for example. Then they have different glyphs to choose from for points of origin -- because there are so many different stargates, you'd never fit all of the POOs on one ring and you don't need them; you only need the one. Daniel already knew he needed a different address and POO for coming back from Abydos, and it's clear later in the movie that the problem isn't that the glyphs on the ring are different, it's that the address and POO glyph aren't on a convenient, nearby cartouche, as on Earth. (Yeah, okay, there's a reason that acronym-crazy SGC never acronymed that one...)
Jack/Daniel's first meeting: I like to think in my slashy heart that Jack walked into the room and saw this little cutie being passionately enthused and blindingly brilliant, but buried the immediate attraction under military hard-assery because he's so emotionally not ready. (Angst!)
!!! I had so not gotten that they had already figured out the constellation part. D'oh! I thought they were messing about with the rings and power already because they had figured out that it was a machine meant to be powered and have moving rings. *is a dork*
Was Catherine planning to keep all this information from Daniel and test him by making him work through the whole puzzle of the glyphs again?
Why not? They may have known what the first 6 glyphs/chevrons were for, but were they 100% sure about what the 7th glyph was supposed to be? They had figured some stuff out and were taking that part as gospel. Catherine's a scientist. She was probably pretty well aware that they had thought themselves into a box and Daniel is brilliant at thinking outside the box. By starting from the beginning, he could possibly come at it without assumptions and bring a whole different/bigger perspective.
(Pssst. If you want help looking for a particular type of canon Jack behavior, e-mail me, and I can think back for examples, too.)
Re: spoilery comments
Date: 2005-09-03 05:17 pm (UTC)Re: spoilery comments
Date: 2005-09-03 10:10 pm (UTC)I see there was a twist on Daniel knowing how to get back! :) Just finished the thing.
It's a shame they had to off Jaye Davidson. So lovely. *sigh*
I see they got Good Father and Skarra back for the TV show. He's an attractive lad, isn't he. :p
Do they really look alike? :p
Date: 2005-09-03 10:12 pm (UTC):)
But I think everyone is fooled by the floppy blond hair and the glasses. Though MS does have the lovely full lips, his face doesn't have the same round, soft curviness of JS'.
Sorry. Obssess much? Me?
It was a little odd seeing JS as Daniel, since I have seen sex, lies, and videotape about 20 times...
Re: Do they really look alike? :p
Date: 2005-09-03 10:18 pm (UTC)Re: spoilery comments
Date: 2005-09-03 10:25 pm (UTC)Jaye Davidson sho pritty! Art direction and production so much better in movie. TV goa'uld so Vegas tacky.
Alexis Cruz is a cutie. His dreadlocks got a little out of control in Children of the Gods, but after he was snaked, his hair grooming got better.
Re: spoilery comments
Date: 2005-09-03 10:34 pm (UTC)I have to say, though, that the portrayal of Ra is just about the only thing truly better in the movie, in my opinion. I mean, it was nice to see the bigger scale of a few things, like the embarcation room, for example. JS is is lovely as Daniel, but I adore Mr. Shanks. And I much prefer RDA, and movie!Jack doesn't get much character development. And the TV show plots tend to be overall much better. So on the TV show every planet looks like British Columbia. I can live with that. :)
Re: Do they really look alike? :p
Date: 2005-09-03 10:35 pm (UTC)Re: spoilery comments
Date: 2005-09-03 10:47 pm (UTC)There are charms to both movie and TV Daniels. (Am reviewing today how smokin' hot MS's ass looked in those striped pants in "1969" -- yeeeessss, charms, precious.... :-P)
And even though I'm a Kurt Russell fan, I LOVE RDA and his Jack! In the O'Neill DVD special feature they go into the fact that when RDA signed on, he was given latitude to develop the character, because he would have been bored out of his mind playing "stoic" season after season. In the storyline it makes sense -- he's had a year to come to terms with his grief.
The TV plots pay a lot more attention to the science, internal consistency and arc continuity. Much better! British Columbia, pretty. Endless gold spray-painted goa'uld ship corridors, ack!
Re: Do they really look alike? :p
Date: 2005-09-03 10:55 pm (UTC)