[ SECRET POST #4866 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4866 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 57 secrets from Secret Submission Post #697.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

OA

The entire episode was scripted with Rodney charging into one ego disaster after another. He was sure he could beat the Ancients and fix the weapon, then his scientist Collins dies and he doesn't slow down, manipulating Sheppard to continue by using that lie about the Manhattan Project scientist (Daghlian was severely irradiated and slipped into a coma, he didn't keep working for god's sake). It's for science! Not my Nobel! Then, to still get to do the test, even when Zelenka raises more concerns, Rodney accuses Radek of professional jealousy and lies to Sheppard that he's really, really sure he's sure he's right, when it's blatantly obvious he's just covering his ass.

I won't even go into his apology, which, once again, was about Rodney's ego (I promise to never be wrong again, ha ha) and not even a little about what he did wrong.

I do not sympathize with Rodney in that episode. I'm not meant to. They went OTT with DHew chewing the scenery playing Rodney extra nasty, and it boggles my mind that fandom would sympathize with him in any way, let alone write TOMES of poor pitiful Rodney fic just bc no one ran up to Rodney and gave him a big squishy hug for being a complete and utter ass.

[(Anonymous)]

It's less me thinking that Rodney wasn't an egotistical asshole that episode (he very much was) and more me thinking that the show (and the rest of the cast) goes out of its way to keep asking him to do things that are pretty much exactly like what he did in that episode. Pull superscience out of a hat and throw all safety to the winds in the process. Trinity is coming hard on the tail end of Siege, where everyone was in constant crisis mode and not being able to pull superscience out of a hat resulted in Sheppard doing a suicide run. Later on in season 2 we get Inferno, where Sheppard is the one blithely promising that Rodney can pull superscience out of his ass to get them offworld, and the solution in that episode is to go to hyperspace in a 10000 year old wreck while inside the crust of a planet. (Which, to be fair, was already exploding, so if it had gone horribly wrong they wouldn't have blown up anything that wasn't already going, I suppose). We've got Caldwell playing his usual 'military hardass' in the corner talking about how the superweapon will be worth it, which for this episode Sheppard and Weir disagree with, but in later ones they turn around and agree with equally 'whoops apocalypse' sorts of solutions.

Anyway. It's not that I'm sympathetic necessarily with Rodney that episode. It's just hard to see what he did in Trinity as worse than what he's often asked to do in other episodes, or what other members of the cast are willing to do when it's their turn to be the focus of the moral of the week.

Basically, I don't think SGA was very good at morals.

[(Anonymous)]

Look, I get it. I think SGA was utterly crap at morals. Just look at Michael! Ugh. At so many bad decisions. And I don't disagree with you about Inferno or The Siege, except you're ignoring two critical facts. 1) they weren't under total Threat of Death in Trinity. Not at all. It was a test. It was a field experiment. They'd already done one, and Collins died. It was the second one, where Radek brought up some serious concerns that he'd already brought up once before, but he now claimed he had 2) Peer review concerns about Rodney's calculations. He had new facts Rodney utterly refused to listened to, even though it was just a test. Why did Rodney override him with insults? Because if he listened, the test wouldn't go forward. Couldn't, because Radek was right.

So, when it came down to it, Rodney couldn't handle not being right, and risked not only his own life, but John's, because he couldn't handle not being right.

That's why I feel the situation is completely different. It was meant to illustrate the dangers of sole pursuit (that's why they named it Trinity, for God's sake.) Two people died of criticality accidents during the Manhattan Project. After Daghlian was irradidated, they put measures into place requiring at least 2 scientists be involved in any such experiments. But another scientist irradiated himself just a year later (Slotkin) and they halted the core experiments until they could put remote controlled devices in place. Rodney's fairy story about learning something from Daghlian was so much BS.

The entire point of the episode went over the heads of fandom, though, who took offense at their fave not being forgiven instantly by Sheppard for needlessly almost getting them killed by not delaying the experiment.