Rewatch: Trinity

[twinsarein.livejournal.com]

The away team visits Doranda, inhabited according to the Ancient database. McKay doesn't detect any life signs however. In orbit they find a large destroyed Wraith fleet, on the surface everything is turned into dust. Only one building is left standing and McKay recognizes it as Ancient. It looks like an improved ground based version of the weapons satellite. McKay and Zelenka find out the ancients were experimenting with high-energy physics to find the ultimate power source, harnessing vacuum energy from our own space-time. McKay is one hundred percent convinced he can finish their project. Meanwhile Teyla travels to the planet Belkan to obtain a disease-resistant strain of flaxseed. Ronon joins her and one of the Belkan negotiators tells he's not the only surviving Satedan.  [Poll #1798215]

Comments

Final thoughts:

[helenkacan.livejournal.com]

Last week I said I was going to bring up dialogue from Condemned and that it was pertinent to this week's epi. I don't know how much time has passed between these two episodes. But, in that one, John was bolstering Rodney's ego and ability to be a miracle worker. Plus, the whole concept that Rodney is crap at lying to others about what he can or cannot do came back to bite John in the ass in this episode. You wanted Rodney to be over-confident and, boy, did you ever get it.

It's hard for me to reconcile this week's Rodney with last week's. The same thing will happen in S5 with Tracker. I think that the writer (and possibly director) took a short-cut to try to cut Rodney down. To do it all in one episode was possibly not a good tactic. I also can't believe how callously Rodney treated John, as menial, as stupid. Of course, if TPTB hand out writing assignments to several writers (who don't check to see whether their writing makes any sense overall) and then put them back together – we get serious character continuity errors and OOC behaviour.

What OOC behaviour? Well, Rodney's series of horrible non-jokes. When does Rodney make jokes like that? And to whom? It doesn't even qualify as snark IMO. There's all this professional jealousy over Radek, but also a different kind over Ronon's presence. So, now Rodney needs to make himself feel more experienced and essential to the team than someone who was a Runner for seven years? It seems petty. Ditto for treating John like his personal slave minion. My final criticism is that, if this is how the smartest man in two galaxies behaves, then we're all screwed. A scientist who refuses to listen to logic is a dangerous person. Or worse. This Rodney is the kind of man we'd let die so that Laura Cadman could live. And, when I – as a die-hard Rodney fan - say that (I'm surprised to be admitting it), you know it's OOC.

I still don't know how to interpret some of John's reactions or facial expressions. Did Joe really get those directions? I know he likes to ad-lib, but this was hardly the episode to allow for expressions outside of what the scenes required. I've mentioned the places where I thought his reactions were downright wrong. I guess that may be a topic of discussion for another time.

It was certainly fascinating to see how eager Steven Caldwell was to get his paws (on behalf of the Pentagon, of course ::groans at the U.S.-centric nature of the interest::) but was acting in a subdued manner.

Even if everyone agrees that Rodney was wrong, especially not to listen to Radek, to believe that it was merely petty jealousy on Radek's part, what do we say about the Ancients? They were arrogant and thought they'd come up with the ultimate force against the Wraith. And dangerously new technology too hazardous for any galaxy.

Anyway, my butt's tired ... again. So I think I'm done for another week.