People I Miss... (Part 1)
Aug. 29th, 2010 07:44 amI miss Peter Grodin. He was only in a handful of episodes in the first season, but he made a huge impression on me. He had a wonderful screen presence and good chemistry with the other characters. The industry learned that you couldn't just kill off random red shirts and expect it to have an emotional impact with the audience but I really wish they hadn't killed off Grodin. It would have been interesting to see how his character would have developed.

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Date: 2010-08-29 01:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-29 03:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-29 04:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-29 02:14 pm (UTC)I think that's one of the reasons I like Amireal's 'Quarks' story so much. She 'rescued' Peter (well, by making him a Runner, which some days I can see better than others) but also made his recovery crucial to the AU story she was telling. Stuff like that makes me smile. :-)
He would have been a logical replacement after Elizabeth's death, y/n ?
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Date: 2010-08-29 03:34 pm (UTC)I want to say yes so much to this...except for the part where I really like the idea of Teyla being Elizabeth's replacement and Peter being her *coff* errand boy.
That's a lot of pretty in one room.
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Date: 2010-08-29 06:08 pm (UTC)As much as I agree with you, I doubt seriously that the SGC/IOA would have allowed Teyla to be in charge as long as there were any ties to Earth (which is why I long for McShep S6--so we could see that happen and really play around with the cultural divide between Earth and Pegasus--I think installing Teyla as leader would have gone a long way towards improving he reputation of the expedition!).
I also wonder if Grodin was one of those people who makes a better second than first, which was why I asked the question. Most days I have a hard time picturing him in charge, but I wonder if that impression would have changed as we saw his character develop. Much as I like Chuck-the-technician, he didn't really fill Grodin's shoes as a replacement command center face.
Cool icon!
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Date: 2010-08-29 06:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-29 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-29 03:38 pm (UTC)I still miss him.
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Date: 2010-08-29 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-29 03:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-29 04:06 pm (UTC)Smart, funny, loved to needle McKay, he should have been given the chance to develop. Sometimes, I don't think the producers/writers had their heads out of their butts. They made some foolish mistakes with the show...Carson's death???
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Date: 2010-08-29 04:34 pm (UTC)SGA gave us some fantastic secondary characters.
Absolutely! The secondary characters rose to the occasion and made us believe. Damn I love a show that does that :)
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Date: 2010-08-29 04:29 pm (UTC)Not only did I love Grodin's character (and miss him terribly), I think he could have developed into a rival in the tall, dark, and handsome department, as well as the snarky scientist department. And that's too bad, because the little digs between Grodin and Rodney were great and would only have gotten better. I was surprised and very sad at TPTB's decision, but at least the death was a good one. Grodin doing what he knew he needed to do and Rodney knowing it too - and Rodney's reaction was, unfortunately, the first of many reactions to the deaths of his scientists. As "killings off" go, Grodin's was at least done right.
Also, not to get into shipping but in Season 1 canon, especially during that two-week wait for battle, I can so see Elizabeth and Grodin together - if I were to contemplate het ships, you know. Liz wasn't blind after all - to looks or brains - and I think Grodin would have erased a few Simon memories.
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Date: 2010-08-29 05:36 pm (UTC)Elizabeth: "Simon? Simon who? Oh yes, do that again please, Peter....yes!"
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Date: 2010-08-29 06:14 pm (UTC)I also could definitely see Peter and Elizabeth together--more so than I can E and any other pairing. In fact the only het SGA fic I ever wrote was about those two. *coughs*
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Date: 2010-08-29 06:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-29 07:29 pm (UTC)That's what this whole post has done for me--I can't wait to see who's next!
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Date: 2010-08-29 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-29 09:43 pm (UTC)When I did sit down to think about characters such as Elizabeth and Carson, I was surprised to find I missed Elizabeth more. I like Carson as a character--probably because he *is* a character--in a short period of time, he became a real person to me, love him or hate him. Aside from the genetic experimentation with the Hoffan virus and Micheal (both done with the pressure of defeating the Wraith as a driving force), I think he was a good doctor--at least in terms of his devotion to his patients. However, I had been primed for his loss and by the time I finally watched Sunday, I was already emotionally shielded from it.
S4 was the first season I watched as it happened and I think Elizabeth's death had a greater impact on me as a result. Her death felt like a turning point for the show and I think that is part of the reason I miss her as well.
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Date: 2010-08-29 07:31 pm (UTC)I agree with the "oh, let's forget and move on" attitude we get towards all of the death and drama in the series. The storm is a crazy, creepy episode (it's great) with John in full out warfare-mode, and he kills a lot of people, scares Elizabeth (sniper training? Black ops?) and probably impresses the marines no end - and in the next episode Elizabeth is all sunshine. And all the killing forgotten. Twiddledum, twiddledee.
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Date: 2010-08-29 09:50 pm (UTC)Which would have been easier to understand if they had a huge stable of writers that contributed to the show but it was like the same handful of guys all the time! You'd think there could be a *little* continuity of character development.
This apparently was one of the things they decided to do differently with SGU. Why they couldn't have introduced it in small amounts in SGA is beyond me. Well, maybe not. I get the impression with SGU they wanted to really play around with the moral failings of people as a whole, which would have resulted in them fundamentally changing the SGA characters as presented in order to take that track, I guess.
I've just found that sometimes the deleted SGA scenes had some real moments of character insight and that these scenes were often cut for no other reason than time. Personally I could have done with a little less of some long dramatic shots of a ship approaching a landing area and seen some of these deleted scenes... :-)
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Date: 2010-08-30 12:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-30 12:32 am (UTC)Just the time crunch of getting scripts out and filmed on such a schedule is mind-boggling; you are right to point that out. A bible would have been extremely useful too. :-)
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Date: 2010-08-29 07:52 pm (UTC)I really hated that they killed him off. Not only did I love him as a character, but Bates and Ford were also written off around that time. It really hurt the diversity of the cast.
I love Atlantis AUs that have Peter surviving, and total AUs where he shows up as a character. :-)
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Date: 2010-08-30 08:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-30 05:42 pm (UTC)It makes me go back and re-watch the respective episodes with a new angle, a new view, a different slant, in this case, focusing more on Peter Grodin. :-)
Thanks for coming up with that.
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Date: 2010-08-30 08:18 pm (UTC)