merelyn | SGA 2x18

Overall, I have to say that I liked it:

Okay, I went into this one spoiled, so I had already braced myself for/resigned myself to the fake!science before I watched it. That didn't really bother me too much.

*Michael was absolutely adorable. Props to whoever played him.

*Teyla/Michael. I thought they had great chemistry, personally. Really liked the way the developed and played out their relationship. Though frankly, I'm a little surprised that Teyla went along with the deception in the first place. Not in the least because it's so very, very lame. Did anyone honestly think they'd be able to pull it off for any extended length of time? If so, maybe they forgot to memo Carson about not leaving his neatly labeled files on his desk in plain sight.

*John. JF was excellent, John's reactions perfectly IC. Reminds me of a fic I just re-read,

rivier's Exigencies, which tackles dark!John and "any means necessary" in a time of war (and does it far better than the show ever will, I suspect).

*No Rodney. We all know that SGA runs better when they avoid cramming everyone in unnecessarily (cf. "Critical Mass" vs. "Grace Under Pressure"). And despite what we'd like to believe (and what the show would like us to believe), Rodney can't know everything about everything. This wasn't his area of fake!science. He didn't need to be there. What was there, though, I enjoyed a lot. The scene in the mess was great, the bit at the end was great, and I loved that you could tell, even in the small scenes he was in, that he thought it was a bad idea.

*I loved the moral/topical parallel stuff going on.

SGA gets points from telling the ep from Michael's POV, and attempting some complex storytelling. Still not sure if they succeeded fully, but "A" for effort, guys. Really, by the end of it, I was pretty much with Michael, as I think was intended. The Atlanteans dropped the moral ball on this one like woah. And this was far more effective at showing us that the Wraith are more than just one-dimensional baddies than anything SGA has done before. ("Condemned," anyone?)

On a more topical front, the biological weapon possiblity? *shudder* Maybe it's just the pacifist in me, but that freaked me the hell out. Because really, can you imagine a weapon like that in the hands of these people? If this episode confirms one thing, it's that the Atlanteans, bless them, are a bunch of morally dubious fuck-ups. And I love them, and I love the show for making them that way, but seriously. They're why that saying about good intentions and roads to hell was made. (Look at "Coup d'Etat." I spent most of that ep with my hands pressed to my mouth going, "OMG, you sketchy bastards! You're *so* going to bungle this situation!!" And damned if they wouldn't have if it hadn't been for the Deus ex Machina triple cross thing at the end.)

Still, SGA wouldn't be SGA without that vaguely horrified feeling. It's one of my favorite parts about the show. It will very interesting to see how this plays out. John's right; they are in a war now that the jig is up, which means that we're going to see more of that old "any means necessary" tension flare up again, as it hasn't really since Season 1. (I've missed it.) When the Wraith come, and the war escalates, I'm a little worried about what they're going to have to do to stop them.