query: SGA ep "Irresponsible"

[tielan]

I know that a lot of people hated this ep. It's one of the eps I skipped and never bothered to catch up with (along with a handful of others at that time).

Actually, if you hated it, I'd like to hear from you: the whys and the wherefores of your dislike. I know the general premise and approximately what happens, and I'm not going to be psychotic on spoilers.

I'm interested in people's takes on the episode, but the main thing I want to know is...

I've seen people say that Kolya deserved a better death than he got. My understanding is mostly that somehow he found out Shep and co. were on the planet, tried a takeover, and Shep took Lucius Lavin's "in-vul-ner-a-ble" device and let Kolya have the first shot before he shot Kolya back.

The details might be wrong.

What would people have considered a "satisfactory ending" to the Kolya storyline (assuming that they had to end it)?

HALP?

Comments

[azure-horizon.livejournal.com]

I think after CG, John just wanted to get him to France.

I can't blame him for just shooting him.

[rhianona]

oh I agree. Shooting him was perfectly acceptable. The problem is that there aren't that many particular bad guys in the SGA universe. There is the Wraith and then later the Replicators. But pure out and out specific bad guys? Michael is really the only specific one left. Whereas in SG-1, we had a number of particular bad guys headed under the Go'auld, so if one of them died crappily, it wasn't a big deal. I think that is what bothered me. Had we a number of recurring villains and Kolya died like that, I probably wouldn't care how he died. But Kolya had been built up as sort of a boogie man so it just seemed a bit of a let down for him to die like that.

[tielan]

You have a good point about there not being too many specific bad guys in Atlantis.

I think they need bete noires for other characters, too. Things are little too focused on John and not enough on other people.

[rhianona]

I think they need bete noires for other characters, too. Things are little too focused on John and not enough on other people.
Well I blame the fact that until season 4, the show was really the John and Rodney show - oh and *hand wavey* there are these other characters here who might be of interest at some point, but really, focus on John and Rodney.

And I say that liking John. It would be nice if they hadn't wait until the 4th season to develop the other characters.

[tielan]

I believe part of the problem is that they had the same writers doing both SG1 and SGA. So they had forty eps to write in the same space of time as they're now doing twenty.

They went with what was familiar and "old-school" - a technological and explosive solution in every episode.

We might have seen better writing if they'd actually introduced more writers and separated the two shows instead of overlapping them.

[rhianona]

*nods* I agree. I think the only reason it works for Dr. Who, TW and SJA is that (1) they do use new writers but (2) they only have 13 episodes a season for each show, and they aren't filmed simultaneously, so gives the writers a bit of a break.