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A few things
First, an earthshattering announcement. Please note yesterday's date on your calendars: ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
iuliamentis and I, for no compelling reason, didn't watch any Stargate. We will, of course, attempt to remedy the situation tonight.
Anyway. Finally managed to settle on a pleasing Stargate-themed wallpaper for my work computer: this from jackslashdaniel.com, which manages to betray my thing for incredibly depressing country music and my Daniel Thing, all in one go. Yay me. Incidentally, does anybody know of a Stargate vid (or Sarah-McLachlan-like profusion of vids) to "The Dance"? Because, yes.
There is only one thing about this show that makes me consistently scream and wave my arms at the screen (just one! see how little I know about anthro? And how much I'm letting most of it go? yeah!) and that is the failure of SGC personnel to deploy what my medieval history professor referred to as the weapons of the weak in appropriate situations.
(The weapons of the weak were the only ones medieval peasants had available to them in dealing with their landlords, who held more or less total control over them. If your landlord charged unfairly high rents, you paid them with the worst of the grain and the produce, the sickliest livestock. If your landlord required an inordinate number of days of labor, suddenly no one in the field could bend over a hoe for more than five minutes consecutively without pausing for a sip of ale and a chat with his neighbors, or else you all had suddenly remembered that this was a saint's day on which you couldn't work. For the latter, you needed the cooperation of the parish priest, but that was doable, and for the rest, simple solidarity among the people being mistreated was sufficient to, if not effect change, at least express displeasure to The Man without anyone committing a crime.
This is off the top of my head from an intro Medieval History class taken close to a year ago, so forgive overgeneralizations and general inaccuracies.)
In instances such as "Our trusted base commander has been replaced with a jingoistic yahoo who wants me to build a doomsday weapon and use it to blow up a world which supports life and possibly human life," and "The president is ordering us to resume operations which will inevitably result in the death of a valued crew member," these are precisely the weapons the SGC should be deploying - specifically Sam in the former case and everyone from Hammond on down in the latter. Bauer can order Sam to build a naqadah bomb, but he can't prevent her breaking a finger in the process and being stuck in the infirmary for hours, nor can he prevent unforeseen difficulties where an 'accidentally' crossed wire blows out the electrical system of the bomb, nor, well, lots of other things Sam ought to be able to think of. (To say nothing of the concept of 'criminal orders' which don't have to be obeyed - I mean, Sam, if some galactic tribunal grabs you and says, "Hey, you built a bomb, sent it through your gate, and blew up an entire planet, killing thousands of people, extinguishing uncounted lifeforms and incidentally causing a hell of a mess all over that system's local space," are you planning to say, "Sorry folks, I was ordered?")
Ditto the situation in "48 Hours," where the SGC is ordered to resume operations with Teal'c stuck in the gate. It ought to take no more than an eyebrow to have Janet announcing that the team can't be cleared for offworld travel without diagnostic tests 1A-47X, or Sgt. Cardigan pronouncing that they're getting an error and he can't get a lock safely and they're going to have to investigate the problem in the computer systems, or anything. With sufficient multilevel solidarity, they'd be able to use those tactics effectively for long enough to solve the actual problem.
Now, I think I know why they don't: they're military, malingering or whatever the technical term for shooting yourself in the foot is is a crime, etc. OTOH, so is blowing up an entire planet, and if it isn't it damn well should be. But, pardon me for saying so, committing crimes of this sort is only a problem if there's a chance your're going to get caught, and in most instances, that doesn't look like a problem (and if it were, Jack and probably the rest of SG-1 would already be cooling their heels in Leavenworth several times over). Also, they're military and therefore accustomed to being the empowered ones, so passive resistance and the weapons of people with no weapons just don't occur to them (though I'm willing to speculate that Daniel understands the concept - he never seems to be around when they need it, though.)
So I just scream, "Weapons of the weak!" at the TV occasionally, and now you know why. Aren't you glad?
And it occurs to me that this whole ramble could well be superceded by any one of the ~40 episodes I haven't seen yet, in which case, ah, well. I'm a n00b.
iuliamentis and I, for no compelling reason, didn't watch any Stargate. We will, of course, attempt to remedy the situation tonight.Anyway. Finally managed to settle on a pleasing Stargate-themed wallpaper for my work computer: this from jackslashdaniel.com, which manages to betray my thing for incredibly depressing country music and my Daniel Thing, all in one go. Yay me. Incidentally, does anybody know of a Stargate vid (or Sarah-McLachlan-like profusion of vids) to "The Dance"? Because, yes.
There is only one thing about this show that makes me consistently scream and wave my arms at the screen (just one! see how little I know about anthro? And how much I'm letting most of it go? yeah!) and that is the failure of SGC personnel to deploy what my medieval history professor referred to as the weapons of the weak in appropriate situations.
(The weapons of the weak were the only ones medieval peasants had available to them in dealing with their landlords, who held more or less total control over them. If your landlord charged unfairly high rents, you paid them with the worst of the grain and the produce, the sickliest livestock. If your landlord required an inordinate number of days of labor, suddenly no one in the field could bend over a hoe for more than five minutes consecutively without pausing for a sip of ale and a chat with his neighbors, or else you all had suddenly remembered that this was a saint's day on which you couldn't work. For the latter, you needed the cooperation of the parish priest, but that was doable, and for the rest, simple solidarity among the people being mistreated was sufficient to, if not effect change, at least express displeasure to The Man without anyone committing a crime.
This is off the top of my head from an intro Medieval History class taken close to a year ago, so forgive overgeneralizations and general inaccuracies.)
In instances such as "Our trusted base commander has been replaced with a jingoistic yahoo who wants me to build a doomsday weapon and use it to blow up a world which supports life and possibly human life," and "The president is ordering us to resume operations which will inevitably result in the death of a valued crew member," these are precisely the weapons the SGC should be deploying - specifically Sam in the former case and everyone from Hammond on down in the latter. Bauer can order Sam to build a naqadah bomb, but he can't prevent her breaking a finger in the process and being stuck in the infirmary for hours, nor can he prevent unforeseen difficulties where an 'accidentally' crossed wire blows out the electrical system of the bomb, nor, well, lots of other things Sam ought to be able to think of. (To say nothing of the concept of 'criminal orders' which don't have to be obeyed - I mean, Sam, if some galactic tribunal grabs you and says, "Hey, you built a bomb, sent it through your gate, and blew up an entire planet, killing thousands of people, extinguishing uncounted lifeforms and incidentally causing a hell of a mess all over that system's local space," are you planning to say, "Sorry folks, I was ordered?")
Ditto the situation in "48 Hours," where the SGC is ordered to resume operations with Teal'c stuck in the gate. It ought to take no more than an eyebrow to have Janet announcing that the team can't be cleared for offworld travel without diagnostic tests 1A-47X, or Sgt. Cardigan pronouncing that they're getting an error and he can't get a lock safely and they're going to have to investigate the problem in the computer systems, or anything. With sufficient multilevel solidarity, they'd be able to use those tactics effectively for long enough to solve the actual problem.
Now, I think I know why they don't: they're military, malingering or whatever the technical term for shooting yourself in the foot is is a crime, etc. OTOH, so is blowing up an entire planet, and if it isn't it damn well should be. But, pardon me for saying so, committing crimes of this sort is only a problem if there's a chance your're going to get caught, and in most instances, that doesn't look like a problem (and if it were, Jack and probably the rest of SG-1 would already be cooling their heels in Leavenworth several times over). Also, they're military and therefore accustomed to being the empowered ones, so passive resistance and the weapons of people with no weapons just don't occur to them (though I'm willing to speculate that Daniel understands the concept - he never seems to be around when they need it, though.)
So I just scream, "Weapons of the weak!" at the TV occasionally, and now you know why. Aren't you glad?
And it occurs to me that this whole ramble could well be superceded by any one of the ~40 episodes I haven't seen yet, in which case, ah, well. I'm a n00b.