(no subject)

[merelyn]

I put this up at sga_noticeboard, but there were spoilery comments for "Trinity" on it, and the post got accidentally deleted instead of the comments (and actually, I don't think you're supposed to have discussions on there anyway, oops, just links). Anyway, I was asked to repost it, and decided to put it up here and link to it.

I have a random question about "Condemned":



Okay, so after I watch the episode on Friday, I was talking to my sister about it, and both of us were kind of confused as to what was going on with Rodney fixing the Puddle Jumper. I re-watched it, and I'm still confused. The different reviews I've read seem to say to different things about it as well.

Was he bluffing about not being able to fix it? If so, what for? The jumper was pretty much a sunk cost, and powering up the gate for the convicts wouldn't have been that bad; it certainly wasn't presented as such in the episode.

Did he know how to fix it but didn't realize it consciously, and somehow Eldon and John picked up on it better than Rodney himself?

Or is it a case of everyone assuming that Rodney could fix it, and him honestly not being able to (which you know, is technically true, because he *couldn't* get the thing the fly). Was Torrell's comment about Rodney waiting to fix it at the last minute in order to make himself out to be a bigger hero completely off the mark or not? (Considering that Torrell nailed him pretty well otherwise?)

What do you think?

Comments

[foggynite.livejournal.com]

I interpreted it as Rodney 1) knowing the jumper was broken and that it wouldn't be able to operate the way the convicts expected it to, and 2) reluctant to try anything else for fear of the convicts either reaching Atlantis or thinking he was screwing around and killing everyone in retaliation. John knows that Rodney is a master at improv under stress not that Rodney's had a lot of practice or anything and probably expected Rodney to have two or forty back-up plans, knowing that Rodney would psyche himself out of most of them. So he says he's a bad liar for all the reasons mentioned in the comments above, and provides the blind faith in Rodney that the man himself is lacking. I would go into Rodney's defensive pessimism, but that's a meta discussion for another time...