Classics: SG1 2:13 - Spirits

Overall Rating: 1.0

Worst.
Native American Story.
Ever.

Plot Synopsis:

When SG teams find raw Trinium - a metal with significantly higher tensile strength than steel - on a planet they believe to be unoccupied, a survey expedition is sent to establish mining operations. However, the indigenous people subsequently show themselves (they derive from Native North American cultures and have evidently developed advanced trinium forging techniques to make arrows, one of which nails O'Neill in the side when he is sent to retrieve SG-11 after they fail to report for a check-in) and now we're in an awful mess. The rest of SG-1 is sent to smooth things over, obtain the release of SG-11 and negotiate a peaceful mining treaty with the native population.

SG-1 gets more than they bargain for when the native peoples ask their spirit guides whether mining is OK and get a negative answer. Believing the natives are just using the spirit guide myth as an excuse to turn us away, we attempt to mine in secret and the base is promptly overrun by a pair of native spirit called "Xe'ls" and "T'akaya" who angrily defend his people's land and "the key" (the Trinium) as he did when the Goa'uld took them from Earth generations ago. They claim our methods our violent and wasteful. Daniel and Jack are forced to negotiate with what turns out to be a couple of very advanced aliens impersonating the mythic figures lest the SGC be destroyed. They agree to allow the natives to see them in their true form and to bury their Stargate to prevent us from mining their Trinium. How generous of them, ay?

Writing: 0.0

I hate straw men arguments on screen, revisionist history, unnecessary "white guilt" and needlessly large 2X4's being swung at my head. While Jack O'Neill of all people (!) angrily defends the "aboriginal rights" of the natives over our own right to defend ourselves, we never get to hear the logical reasons for why our mining the mountain would be hazardous to the natives below. Our ways are simply DECLARED as wasteful and violent...we are the moral inferiors from the first moment of screen time...because lord knows, native American populations were perfect...not barbaric and violent at all...their methods are the only correct way. I AM PROSTRATE WITH SORROW FOR MY SINFUL WAYS OH MIGHTY WRITERS!!!!! *headSLAMdesk*

If you REALLY believe that native North American populations weren't just as greedy, violent, destructive and selfish as we were...you're selling those people short. You're turning them into impotent victims and robbing them of their humanity. It's just as racist as actively hating American Indians for the color of their skin. The reason the natives lost their land and were mistreated was precisely BECAUSE they were human and suffered from the same bad motivations as Europeans...they fought constantly amongst themselves in silly tribal wars and weakened their own populations as a result. In fact they were less technologically advanced because they fought so much that they didn't have time to focus on scientific discovery. They lost because tribalism is a bad societal model. We had a better model and we defeated them. It happens all the time...they did it to each other just the same (on a smaller scale). This script WREAKS of the same kind of misleading history that is being taught all the time in our schools and I have no patience for it.

If that weren't enough...the show was genuinely boring too. No interesting dialog...no good character interactions...nada. Big freakin' plonko as Tim the Tool Man Taylor would say.

Acting: 3.0

Tonane (Rodney Grant) is perhaps the most ridiculous Native American I've ever seen on a TV show. Why...why did they direct him to play his character so goofily? Are they TRYING to paint all natives as care free simpletons?? This reveals much about how the media honestly views natives (completely innocent and completely victimized...with a dash of charming ignorance on the side). The spirits are far too easily swayed by a two-minute speech and their acting is quite poor...especially Alex Zehara (Xe'ls). The regulars aren't horribly putrid, but Amanda Tapping's annoying portrayal of skepticism in her first meeting with Xe'ls and T'akaya is well out of character for her as is Don S. Davis's casual indifference to what the script writers want us to believe is an immoral act perpetrated by the stand-in buffoons at the NID. GAH...I'm getting more annoyed with every passing word.

Message: 0.0

2X4's hurt. This one isn't even a morally accurate 2X4. That is all. Sorry...it's all been said above.

No Highlights from this gigantic stink bomb.