sgareview - michael, s2e18

Oh my God I loved this episode.



It's like Stargate: The Cows Fight Back.

I'm coming at this from a highly unethical perspective. My greatest regret is that it might/could/maybe have worked and it didn't.

I didn't remember what this was about until the bit in the bed with the dreaming and wow, that was *very cool*. I felt bad for Michael. Not bad enough not to shoot him up myself if necessary, but hey, he'd get my chocolate ration. And then things happened and he found out, of course, and he escaped, which I so didn't see coming, and now come the great ethical debates.

I'm just--okay, I'm from a tradition of nonsensical sci-fi. I honestly do not give a shit the scientific blah blah blah. If they say it works, then whee! More fun than a barrel of monkeys. So instead of killing Michael, or you know, leaving him to take however many lives he feels necessary to keep survival going, they changed him to human. Bravo. I am behind this. I am *mixing the drugs* in the backroom of the lab, the mad scientist lab, where I will give Carson footrubs if necessary.

Think. There is the cow. The humans are coming to make him into hamburgers. I'm thinking prime rib. I can honestly state that if the cow spoke to me, I'd back the fuck off, not least because that cow would be making me *so much money*, but also because a predisposition of sentience and self-awareness makes me uneasy as to my food.

The Wraith do not back off the cows when they talk, build civilizations, or try to flee them. There really isn't much of a comparison. It's grey and messy and not really something I'm terribly comfortable with thinking about. But I'm very comfortable with doing whatever it takes to bring them down. It's kind of dove grey, even, in the spectrum. It's not like the Wraith aren't, you know, capable of space travel and stuffed with fantastic technology--they could sure as *hell* develop something that substituted for the use of sentient life for the daily three courses. I'm just saying, if Star Trek could make replicators (the other replicators, not the bug things), then the Wraith could have figured something else out.

What makes us better? We go to war, we go to peace, we kill and maim and slaughter, build civilizations and create art. We do not eat our sentient life. We're just weird about our food being able to think. The Wraith are--God, I don't even have words. I hated the Goa'uld, but the Wraith are the anti-thesis of everything that makes life, even moreso than the Goa'uld. They're like anti-life. You can't take a moral high ground when there isn't common ground. Humans are *dinner*. And I'm just saying, as a member of the species that makes part of the ten course Wraith feast, there's a difference.

But even beyond that--maybe it's my instincts speaking, from a deep dislike of the idea of showing up on a plate, but--seriously. Almost any means necessary here. I'm just in that place where I am just fine with it. There won't be peace, there's no *hope* of peace, there's no way to stop the Wraith from *eating them*, so--yeah.

Random Thoughts

1.) John freaked me the hell out with that infirmary moment of wrestling down Mike the Future Lieutenant Wraith. That was just--it's one thing to see it from the team pov, quite another to have Michael watching it and seeing it from his. John officially scares me about as much as the Wraith. God that is hot. Mike. Jesus.

What I'm not entirely sure of is his opinion on the subject and I'm thinking that it's deliberate. He, Rodney, and to a lesser extent, Teyla, seemed to fall into the category of wary acquiescence with what was going on. Weir and Carson were All About Turning Wraith to Cow, and Ronon was death first. Which is pretty much characteristic of all of them, so no huge surprises. Which really makes me want to see the staff meeting where this was decided, because whoo-doggies, I bet that one took a couple of *days*.

2.) I liked Teyla's bond with Michael a lot, and I don't buy that entire Wraith instinct bullshit. He freaked out over being lied to about what he was, freaked out about being penned up, just--he acted to me like a scared human. He wanted to get away from the people who were scaring him, injecting him with drugs, etc. I totally get that. He didn't use deadly force until he felt himself completely out of other options. I just--it failed, but it failed for reasons that actually, to me, had little to do with the actual transformation and more to do with the control of the experiment failing.

3.) Ronon annoyed me. A lot. It was just stupid. I get he's bitter against the Wraith, I get his trauma, yes, seven years. Then in the name of God stay out of the way of the experiment. You don't ask the scary evangelists to help with stem cell research, you *keep them away*. And you don't go sabotaging it, either, and frankly, that is what he was doing. Not cool.

4.) I was terribly impressed with the level of paranoia going on. Security cameas, twenty-four seven watching, guards, John looking worried and pretty and worried. It was nice. I like.

5.) I agree with everyone else. Rodney's great brilliance and personality should never, ever, ever do anything even *resembling* undercover. For his own safety.

I have all these weird thoughts of vague comparisons to the Borg, which actually don't apply except I think in some ways they do, but I need a lot more concentration to pull that off. And I'm basically still stuck in the infirmary, watching John and Ronon holding down that Wraith, and freaking myself out.

Okay, I'm done. Yeah. That just--it worked for me in all ways. I am all about the giant bioweapon of humanity dropped on them. They can learn to love steak.

Comments

[gaylarain.livejournal.com]

I just want to point out that in The Defiant One the surviving wraith was eating the little bugs that showed up on the scanner as large life signs.

[not-sally.livejournal.com]

Was he eating them? I thought that was just the wraith being a toddler and swapping them. But still, let's say he was eating them, we still can't tell if they fill his dietary necessities, can we? Because we've also seen wraith eating human food, and it meant nothing so...