She shouldn’t be in charge of Atlantis. She should be Chief Science Officer, but she hasn’t commanded anything. You could argue that she could head up a lab as a Colonel, and that would fly. But she hasn’t commanded anything, and she hasn’t really been anything more than an uber-nerd/scientist.
The Atlantis job requires skills more in line with O’Neill or Hammond or … Weir. Sam is a nerd/geek, not a wonk. Weir was a wonk, and the head slot needs either an experienced commander or a multifaceted wonk. Sam Carter is multifaceted, and she may well grow into the job, but she lacks the skillset for the job, and she would never have been appointed to the job. It’s one thing to be the high-end tech/geek who pulls out the Deus Ex Machina Hat Trick of the Week, but that isn’t the Hammond/Weir/O’Neill job.
They had the actor and wanted to keep using her, and they wanted to spice up Atlantis. So they stuck her in Weir’s slot.
The problem is that Rodney is an annoying analog to Sam Carter, and the only way that this can work is if they make Sam act like O’Neill, or like Weir, or like Hammond.
Sam Carter isn’t even qualified to command one of the capital ships, much less an entire base. This is just stupid.
As for the Luttrell character, I always thought that she was the Teal’C character analog - senior native leader, stoic… The other alien guy came along later.
While I see your point, Sam’s command experience is not of particular relevance for a few reasons. The Atlantis expedition may be under the jurisdiction of the SGC, but it is not a military operation. Weir didn’t have any command experience either. She was a diplomat, and while brokering treaties between nations was her thing, she was reluctant and nervous about the role she was undertaking. Considering the fact that she’s been under IOA scrutiny from day one, it comes as no surprise. The IOA didn’t trust her to make decisions in the interests of TPTB, and I think in the end, they’d rather have a chief officer from within the SGC overseeing the operation to give them the illusion that they they have more say in what goes on at Atlantis. It’s hard to even say whether Carter truly wants to be there … I think she displayed signs of reluctance at the idea and didn’t take the assignment entirely willfully, but TPTB may have “invoked” her decision for her.
Command positions are less about experience and credentials than they are about politics and bureaucracy.
That’s true…lord knows some of the idiots that are put in charge around here are clueless. And looking back, how much experience did O’Neil have befor being made a General and put in charge of SGC? I’m not sure about the Air Force, but I know for the Navy before you make Flag rank, you’ve been in a whole host of command positions already. Although I think they did a good job of showing his own uncertainness with the command in one episode. Hopefully they’ll do the same with Sam.
I think prior to being shanghaied back to active duty for SGC, he’d had a pretty varied career which I assume, included a few commands. Wasn’t he already a Colonel when he joined SG1?
As for Col Carter, I don’t think she wanted the command, but she’d kill for the chance to work and study in the Pegasus galaxy, or wherever Atlantis is.
Well, now we get into the difference between the movie and the series. In the original movie, O’Neill played a much larger command role during the research into what the stargate was. That gives the implication to me that he was used to being in command positions. However in the series with RDA, most of the history of Jack O’Neill was command of a combatant group. Company or so in size. There’s a long jump from there to General.
Now granted it’s also easy to assume that a flash back to his tour as an adjuctant or something wouldn’t be either interesting to us as viewers, or really pertinant to whatever he’s getting ready to blow up.
Also I tend to forget that even though Atlantis is the size of a small city (Manhatten I think they used as an example), it’s really probably only a couple of hundred people living there. At that scale her command makes a bit more sense.
Along with that, we don’t really know what SG1 did on their off time. Teal’c and Daniel get to do whatever, but the Generals Hammond & Landry might well have delegated a company or flight to Carter, so she does have some administrative experience. SG1 was the flagship team and we get to see the exciting stuff, but who’s to say Samantha didn’t do a lot of flight commander pencil pushing in-between missions? That wouldn’t normally qualify her for Atlantis commander but she does have years of experience working with O’Neill & Teal’c - First Prime of Apophis. It’s not like she hasn’t learned a thing or two about command.
Yep, I’m glad we’ve fan-wanked that to a satisfactory explination. grin
So, what did ya’ll think about the Friday (October 19th) episode?
The plot itself I thought was only “meh”, but I did like the fact that at just about anything they’d say Carter would be like “Oh yeah, I’ve run into that before” kind of like the StarGate equivalant to “This one time, at band camp…”. I liked that she didn’t just come up with a solution. Still very much a team effort.
And as I’ve been thinking about it, they might not have to have to resolve the “two super geniuses” issue. Carter is an expert at Asgard technology and interfacing that with human tech. While she’s certainly been exposed to some Ancient technology, it’s not the same as McCay who’s been around it 24/7 for the past 3 years. So I’d give him the edge with being famililar with what is in Atlantis.
Aren’t we supposed to start a new thread for that? Or was it so meh that it doesn’t deserve one? :dubious:
I thought it was amusing filler. If they do hope to pick up the pace with Carter (and I hope they do), this obviously wasn’t the episode for it. They need to do a Carter-centric episode soon that focuses on some kind of character shift. I’m already starting to miss Weir’s command presence. She was amiable but authoritative, unsure yet decisive. Sam just seems amiable and wants to please everyone. Weir wasn’t afraid to butt heads. Carter needs a new edge if she’s gonna fill Weir’s shoes. They’re trying to make her, as you said, part of the “team effort”. Weir never seemed part of the team, she was the head of a command structure and responsible for their lives. I love Sam but it just isn’t the same. It’s obviously still too early to judge, but I hope they ramp it up this season or the future does not bode well for the show …
And to come full circle back to the OP, my damn DVR cut off the last couple of minutes again. What happened after good Shepherd pitched bad Shepherd into the stargate?
I laughed at that too. Ronon was unusually quippy with Rodney in this one. Lots of snarking. The whale nightmares, calling him out on being a one-man science team, losing his bet with Zalenka. At least we know Ronon isn’t without a sense of humor.
I suspect that Weir will turn up at least for another couple of episodes. Now if she’ll remain as a “gues star” or they’ll just sort of left her drift into obscurity like Ford is unknown. But I was surprised that they brough his character back for that one story season ender/season premier. He’d been gone for so long I figured he was just written off.
And yeah anamnesis, since there aren’t a lot of Stargate dopers I figured I’d just keep using this thread for a bit. Maybe we can do a new thread every other episode? That way they don’t get too long, but we can still chat abit about them.
I don’t read spoiler sites and I don’t like sniffing details out of IMDB so I don’t know for sure what’s going to happen to Weir. I don’t WANT to know any spoilers.
So, I’d guess based on nothing much, that she’s getting the Ford treatment. She’s still out there, part replicator - is she still good, turned evil? They may get a couple more eps out of her, but she’s not going to come back and replace Amanda Tapping, so she’s pretty much a goner, I figure.
I don’t think I’ll be spoiling anything by mentioning that Weir will be a recurring guest star, but my opinion on her future is that she isn’t going to become an evil Replicator, at least not permanently. I personally think Weir will turn into the most valuable asset in the fight against the Replicators, and that her allegiance will be dubious when she comes back into the picture. We’ll think she’s a baddie, and maybe she will be, but in the end she’ll pull an Anakin by turning against her proverbial Palpatine, ridding the galaxy of the Replicators once and for all by the time the series is over and perhaps even sacrificing herself out of vengeance to do so.
Am I the only one that hated hated hated Weir? I came close to giving up on the series a number of times because I just couldn’t stand the smugness of the character, and the complete lack of any acting ability on the part of the actress.
Carter is so much better in every way; I disagree with everything cerberus said, she’s perfect in every way to take over command (and SO much nicer to look at than Weird!)
Does anyone know if the decision for Weird to leave was the producers’ or the actress’s? Not that I care, I’m just so freakin’ glad to not have to look at her any more, but I did notice that the actress showed up on NCIS the other day, so I’m assuming that she didn’t drop out of acting.
I didn’t hate her, but her big schtick was her awesome diplomacy skills. Those skills were usually about as effective as Captain Kirk’s. Let’s face it, nine times out of ten, you gotta blast 'em.
As Lev said upthread, Stargate threads die an early death so we’re unofficially consolidating episodes together in a single thread. My idea is that until a profoundly good episode comes along, I’m going to keep this zombie alive, er … undead.
Judging from the fact that no mention of last week’s episode came up, I thought I’d post on it and say I thought it was pretty lame. I’m usually pretty lenient even with the mundane episodes but this season is not turning out well. Mind-erasing virus native to Pegasus galaxy infects everyone on base, but Teyla and Ronon have an immunity to the strain and end up saving the day by going to the mainland for a naturally-occurring antidote. Okay, so what happened to the dozens of other Ethosians that Teyla brought to Atlantis? No immunity? Lame loophole, boring episode. I’m a little tired of these episodes not related to the story arc and next week doesn’t look any better: Teyla takes a trip back home and her village is missing. Maybe they got the mind-erasing virus too and got lost just like the meandering plot of Season Four.
