The Pirates! In an Adventure with Laundry! and Crossdressing! (In Boston in the Fall.)

[melannen]

I am at stellar_dust's for the holiday week, and she has loaned me one of her archeology books, which has led, through an interesting series of links, to me reading a research paper from the Seventh Korean-Japanese Symposium on Medieval History of Europe. I love living in the future!

Of course if I was actually living in the future I'd be reading the actual paper I wanted to look up, instead of a paper translated from Japanese to Korean to English that happens to cite it, but, well, we can't expect our intellectuals to keep up with the times. /not bitter at all

Anyway, on to actually relevant stuff: stellar_dust's flatmate erinptah, having watched through her SG1 DVDs and then attempted to watch SGA only to realize it was the one where the fic was better than the series, wanted a "good parts" list of Stargate Atlantis seasons 1-3, so I said I'd post one here. (Limited to s1-s3 because stellar_dust stopped buying the DVDs after that.) Kibitzing in comments welcome. She says she likes Rodney McKay, time travel, and mystery/exploration type stories.

Season 1 vol.1:
Rising pt 1 & 2
Hide and Seek
Thirty-Eight Minutes
Suspicion
Underground

S1 vol 2:
The Storm/The Eye
Hot Zone
Sanctuary
Before I Sleep

S1 vol 3:
Letters from Pegasus
(Possibly The Siege)

Season 2 vol 1:
Runner
Duet
Trinity

Season 2 vol 2:
Epiphany
Grace Under Pressure

Season 2 vol 3:
(possibly Inferno)

Season 3 vol 1:
Sateda
Common Ground
McKay and Mrs. Miller

Season 3 vol 2:
Tao of Rodney
The Game

Season 3 vol 3:
I don't remember any of these at all. Had I stopped watching by then, or were they just that unmemorable? Hmm.

Comments

[melannen]

See, I remember Conversion as basically a John Has Angst episode (also there was that completely weird attempt at creating John/Teyla which failed miserably as most attempts to give John chemistry with females did) and I suspect she wouldn't have much paitience with John Angst episodes.

And I started watching live/reading fic with the pilot, so I think the first half of S1 is all really good, but apparently people who got into the show at different times disagree. :P

Sora just stopped appearing after The Storm/The Eye (although IMDB tells me that her actress has since married a guy named Carson McKay O.o) but I have just remembered that the S3 episode "Coup d'Etat" has a different Genii woman in it who gets to do some pretty cool stuff, even if she has less chemistry with Teyla.

...IIRC, most of the Kate development seemed to happen after S3. And there was some relatively good Bechdel passing/leadership stuff after Sam Carter and Kaylee what's-her-name showed up in later seasons; if she actually likes the good parts version of S 1-3 it might be worth suggesting some of those.

[kiezh]

Heh. I suspect we see a lot of the show differently, which, y'know, mileage varies. :)

I saw a lot of John/Teyla in the show, though not in Conversion; that ep is all about the body horror and loss of control, which I don't see either of them finding sexy. (In fact, the thing I really love about the John-Teyla dynamic is how full of respect and deliberate choices it is. They are kindred spirit control freaks who don't like to show their negative emotions to anyone! It is awesome.)

SGA had this weird habit of having characters kiss in ways that weren't kisses at all - mind control, bodyswapping, dubcon or noncon, etc. There were no consensual, sexy kisses! They were all creepy as hell.

I love the beginning episodes too; one of my favorite characters in the show is the city itself, and probably the most vivid image in my head from any episode in any season is the spires of Atlantis breaking the surface in Rising. There's that spirit of gleeful, terrified discovery in the early eps, the "holy shit! we're in an ancient alien city we don't understand!" feeling. I loved that.

I'm very fond of the genre of fic where contact with Earth was reestablished later, or not at all, creating more of an adapt-or-die situation for the expedition. That was a consistent problem with the writing on SGA, actually: awesome ideas with no follow-through. Which may be part of why it was so rich for fanfic.