Please don't misunderstand me, I am not saying that any show, including Stargate, doesn't have occasional good episodes in amongst the 'turkeys' and AFTER they have jumped the shark. But these episodes only serve to torment us, by showing us what it could be like and could have remained that way if the writers weren't so desperate for ideas to titillate the viewers that they go and do tacky things.
For example. Friends - Phoebe has triplets and Rachel and Ross constantly break up and get back together. Then Rachel has a baby! Babies, sexual fulfilment (usually in the form of a romantic wedding) are the drooling fans idea of the triumphant pinnacle of a show. In reality, the show takes a nose dive as soon as a baby is introduced. Or the two protagonists get hitched. When the wedding car drives them away to an exotic, erotic, romantic honeymoon and a blissful life, they might as well hang a coffin from the rear bumper, not a lucky horseshoe. To indicate the demise of a another good idea.
And another, being the change of established regular character for new 'babe'. Star Trek Voyager rid themselves of boring old Kes and took on sultry Seven of Nine. Who was an ugly old Borg that went to bewitching beauty in one episode. From then on it ceased to be Star Trek Voyager and a quest to get home and became this angsty voyage of human discovery for Brannon Braga's dish of the day. Watch out for a whole bunch of sharks homing in.
In Stargate, for me I spotted a lonely shark fin when Anise came into being, although I agree that the character herself had potential, but the way they exposed the character through the clothing and the deadpan acting was a transparent sexual ploy and nobody fell for it. Unless of course they were a bunch of highly sexually frustrated males! I got another glimpse of the shark during the Zatarc episode and I got the strong impression that RDA himself felt uncomfortable with that whole scenario. It was something to do with his body language during the episode. I saw it and thought, this guy doesn't agree with this story line.
The final definitive shark jump was really the ascension of Daniel in all of it's tacky and badly presented glory. Oh all of that angst, the glowy scene, Oma Desala in her anally retentive corporate suit and those little cutsie pie earrings, standing there spouting rhetoric to a man who was dying in horrific agony. And the fact that only Jack could talk to him. The glowing exit through the stargate. Not to mention all the tortured angst, the setting up of websites.....Save Daniel Jackson.....the heart and soul of the show. Urgghh......barf bucket anyone?
Not that I am saying that Daniel wasn't the morality of the show, because he was undoubtedly the moral glue that held together the military arrogance of Jack, the scientific arrogance of Sam and the downright bloodthirsty vengeful Teal'c. Without him, the show fell into a morass of the 'humans are the ONLY species who are morally justified or capable of teaching the universe where they went wrong' scenario. And we're gonna do it with big honkin' spaceguns.....or big honkin' heavy machine guns.
Poor little Jonas kind of squidged into the whole thing and no wonder he spent the first few episodes wandering around with books under his arm and a huge mug of tea, looking totally lost. He was probably thinking 'Who are these people and what the f****k am I doing here? When he stood gazing longingly into the Stargate during the first episodes of Season 6, he wasn't thinking about solutions to saving earth, he was actually wondering whether, if they did activate the stargate, he could jump through to sanity before earth blew up. Taking his chances in the arms of ET (Anubis) was probably a whole better scenario than hanging with a bunch of people who actively hated his guts because his people indirectly caused Daniel to become a glowy thing which wafted through the air vents! Alternatively he was checking the Weather Channel to see which part of earth would be nice at this time of year, so that he and his fish could go there and never be in the SGC again! Provided earth didn't blow up of course.
This is why I feel that the Season should have ended with 6 and not come back for the final death throws of 7, along with a descended Daniel. Someone recently pointed out to me in a private mail that when descended and undescended are mentioned, she always thinks of testicles. Let's hope that Season 7 isn't just a bunch of descended testicles. Someone else wanted to know why I still watch and am interested.......let's just call it morbid fascination. I sit and watch while the show swings my suspension of disbelief higher and higher and I goggle and wonder, where next? I've long since given up that they will entrance, terrify and enchant me as they did in the movie and the beginning of the series, with tales of menace and an enemy that doesn't bite the dust because Jack and co snarl at them.
