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I love Stargate. I love it even without Jack O'Neill. I love Cameron Mitchell. I love that Sam is coming back next week. I love Daniel -- well, I love Daniel now that he's died, twice. And Teal'c... well, I've always loved Teal'c, how can you not love the T-Man?
But if I have to sit through one more stupid Daniel Jackson speech about how faith is evil and stupid, I'm gonna throw something at the television. Don't get me wrong the Ori are evil and telling people the truth about them is a good thing. The writers aren't doing that, though. No. They have Daniel babbling on about proof and science and how knowledge is for everyone and how the people shouldn't believe until they have proof.... JUST STOP! This poor planet is not the place for a debate on the benefits and drawbacks of religious faith and belief. It may have been a good study on what people should believe in: Is the basis of the belief good or evil -- and basically, you know, it's bad to believe in evil. Because, you know, evil is bad. It's not like the Ori are good at disguising their basic evilness, either. They come in with the hard line: believe or die. Agree or suffer. Worship or burn... or rather, worship and burn. Obvious evil, people.
It soon degenerates beyond that, too. This planet gets reduced down to extortion: say you worship the Ori or die. Sure, it's portrayed as "believe" or die, but that a bunch a bull because you can't force belief. You can use fear to extort a confession of belief. But that isn't belief, it's merely a survival mechanism. Big difference. Belief is an internal decision and while it can be faked with lip service, it cannot be imposed. The Ori aren't about faith. They are about control and fear.
The one good thing they had Daniel saying was the "why do they want people to worship them?" -- that at least focusing on the real problem here.
They better focus on finding a way to cure the disease that the Ori can drop on everyone. They better come up with a better argument against the Ori than "belief is evil" because that's a losing argument. They damn well better have someone of faith stand up against them rather than paint anyone with faith as a fanatic who is willing to sell their soul for a bit of proof or power.
Sorry for the rant that the show may not have completely deserved. Only the show's writers -- for all their wonderful plots and characters -- tend to be way to heavy handed with issues once in a while. I'm hoping that they don't make this whole season a "point".
Stargate -- or any show, for that matter -- is best when it merely touches on the "issues". Fiction is best when the struggles of our heroes illustrate the pros and cons of any "big picture problem" and allows us to debate the merit of each side ourselves. The more heavy handed they are in their efforts to make sure that the viewer couldn't possibly come to a different conclusion then the one they want, the more likely I'm going to throw things at the TV.
I'm holding out hope that SG-1 doesn't degenerate into that. I mean, the show has always been about having fun, right?
But if I have to sit through one more stupid Daniel Jackson speech about how faith is evil and stupid, I'm gonna throw something at the television. Don't get me wrong the Ori are evil and telling people the truth about them is a good thing. The writers aren't doing that, though. No. They have Daniel babbling on about proof and science and how knowledge is for everyone and how the people shouldn't believe until they have proof.... JUST STOP! This poor planet is not the place for a debate on the benefits and drawbacks of religious faith and belief. It may have been a good study on what people should believe in: Is the basis of the belief good or evil -- and basically, you know, it's bad to believe in evil. Because, you know, evil is bad. It's not like the Ori are good at disguising their basic evilness, either. They come in with the hard line: believe or die. Agree or suffer. Worship or burn... or rather, worship and burn. Obvious evil, people.
It soon degenerates beyond that, too. This planet gets reduced down to extortion: say you worship the Ori or die. Sure, it's portrayed as "believe" or die, but that a bunch a bull because you can't force belief. You can use fear to extort a confession of belief. But that isn't belief, it's merely a survival mechanism. Big difference. Belief is an internal decision and while it can be faked with lip service, it cannot be imposed. The Ori aren't about faith. They are about control and fear.
The one good thing they had Daniel saying was the "why do they want people to worship them?" -- that at least focusing on the real problem here.
They better focus on finding a way to cure the disease that the Ori can drop on everyone. They better come up with a better argument against the Ori than "belief is evil" because that's a losing argument. They damn well better have someone of faith stand up against them rather than paint anyone with faith as a fanatic who is willing to sell their soul for a bit of proof or power.
Sorry for the rant that the show may not have completely deserved. Only the show's writers -- for all their wonderful plots and characters -- tend to be way to heavy handed with issues once in a while. I'm hoping that they don't make this whole season a "point".
Stargate -- or any show, for that matter -- is best when it merely touches on the "issues". Fiction is best when the struggles of our heroes illustrate the pros and cons of any "big picture problem" and allows us to debate the merit of each side ourselves. The more heavy handed they are in their efforts to make sure that the viewer couldn't possibly come to a different conclusion then the one they want, the more likely I'm going to throw things at the TV.
I'm holding out hope that SG-1 doesn't degenerate into that. I mean, the show has always been about having fun, right?
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you have fun ranting, don't you?
Date: 2005-08-14 08:16 am (UTC)From:have you been getting my emails?
ray
Re: you have fun ranting, don't you?
Date: 2005-08-16 02:19 am (UTC)From:I'm hoping the show cuts me some slack. I think that they are being heavy handed because they want to make sure that the bad guys are more likely to be compared to radical Christians than other religions. I wish they would just write the it intelligently and let radicalism be identified as radicalism.
Oh... ranting again. *grin*
And the last email I got from you was Aug 4, which I'm sure I responded to.
*checks email*
Of course, I don't have a response listed anywhere. I'm sure I wrote one.
Hmm.. I will fix that.