Spoils of War: episode reaction
Jan. 12th, 2008 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fiercelydreamedThis was an episode where I occasionally found myself calling things out at the screen in a sing-song voice.
During John and Teyla's confrontation in the locker room: "Sex-ist jack-ass!"
During the Wraith queen's extended fondling of John's chin: "Camp-y bull-shit!" (Also, when the Queen gave her hilariously B-grade line about how she's never encountered "such resistance" from a human before, I desperately wanted John to say, "It's because I have a problem with women.")
However, the final scene pretty much reduced me to flipping my computer the bird with both hands.
... I'm sorry. Did we really just have an episode where two childless middle-aged white dudes educated a pregnant woman of color about her role as a mother, and she thanked them for it? Did we really just have the writers unblinkingly give us one fertile female leader willingly reduced to unconscious immobility so she can spawn the next generation of her people, and then give us another fertile female leader reducing herself to metaphorical immobility because she's decided that protecting the one kid she's carrying will better protect the legacy of her people than going out and finding the several hundred of them who may not be dead? (Because of course in a galaxy of small social groups and tribes trading regularly with each other, there's a really high premium put on a kid having to be genetically the child of only one tribe -- come on guys, the implication that a child of Teyla's without an Athosian father wouldn't be Athosian isn't even anthropologically plausible.) Did John really just have his patriarchal bullshit autocratic decisions about where Teyla's priorities should lie vindicated? Did we really just get an episode where Teyla's "power" (not to mention her otherness in terms of Wraith genetics) was enhanced by her ability to carry a (male) child?
Seriously -- did we really just have an asexual form of reproduction that still looked like tentacle gang-rape?
Don't get me wrong, it wasn't an awful episode, and yes, there's plenty of squee to be had (what with Rodney yet again being set up as the damsel whose imperilment will most damage John Sheppard's cool -- god, even the Wraith Queen can tell they're BFF), but I'm pretty sure you can find that squee elsewhere, and I need a minute to be pissed off.
Essentialist, sexist, colonialist, heteronormative bullshit.
During John and Teyla's confrontation in the locker room: "Sex-ist jack-ass!"
During the Wraith queen's extended fondling of John's chin: "Camp-y bull-shit!" (Also, when the Queen gave her hilariously B-grade line about how she's never encountered "such resistance" from a human before, I desperately wanted John to say, "It's because I have a problem with women.")
However, the final scene pretty much reduced me to flipping my computer the bird with both hands.
... I'm sorry. Did we really just have an episode where two childless middle-aged white dudes educated a pregnant woman of color about her role as a mother, and she thanked them for it? Did we really just have the writers unblinkingly give us one fertile female leader willingly reduced to unconscious immobility so she can spawn the next generation of her people, and then give us another fertile female leader reducing herself to metaphorical immobility because she's decided that protecting the one kid she's carrying will better protect the legacy of her people than going out and finding the several hundred of them who may not be dead? (Because of course in a galaxy of small social groups and tribes trading regularly with each other, there's a really high premium put on a kid having to be genetically the child of only one tribe -- come on guys, the implication that a child of Teyla's without an Athosian father wouldn't be Athosian isn't even anthropologically plausible.) Did John really just have his patriarchal bullshit autocratic decisions about where Teyla's priorities should lie vindicated? Did we really just get an episode where Teyla's "power" (not to mention her otherness in terms of Wraith genetics) was enhanced by her ability to carry a (male) child?
Seriously -- did we really just have an asexual form of reproduction that still looked like tentacle gang-rape?
Don't get me wrong, it wasn't an awful episode, and yes, there's plenty of squee to be had (what with Rodney yet again being set up as the damsel whose imperilment will most damage John Sheppard's cool -- god, even the Wraith Queen can tell they're BFF), but I'm pretty sure you can find that squee elsewhere, and I need a minute to be pissed off.
Essentialist, sexist, colonialist, heteronormative bullshit.