Granted, I haven't seen any but the earlier seasons (because I am a bad fangirl, not because I think they are bad...) but here's some of my take, and some conjecture based on your comments above:
I think Sam might have some gut feelings about the army from her childhood, but she's got the whole compartmentalization routine down, so she can DO something she has gut level reactions to. And she's got a certain amount of her identity sewn up in her scientific detachment. It doesn't mean she has to supress emotions, but she would be more upset by those emotions getting in the way of her accomplishing something she needed to than by any of the emotions themselves.
She took a certain amount of pleasure (although not obnoxious amounts of it) in being "Samantha" as opposed to "Samuel" in the first ep, as I recall. Some of what drives her would be the need to prove that those who told her she can't be a woman and be successful at science, or the military, are wrong. Even if they never know it, she'll have proven it. Some of what drives her is simple fascination with the things she works with. They are toys, in a sense, but she doesn't take them lightly; she knows how dangerous they can be, and first and foremost, she is a GOOD person.
Her faith is the faith that there will always be something new to discover, but she also tends to put faith in people.
The reason she has such trouble with command is that as a scientist she is trained to remain objective; it's the opposite of trusting your gut. When it's just a fight, she has only to use her abilities to observe her opponent(s), make a theory and test it out. She can make the fight objective, because the opponents are not some of the people she has faith in - they can become test subjects. When she has to command people, it isn't so cut and dried. People's personalities are variables and as such, they mess her up. The possibilities get in her way, and she can't be entirely objective about the people she's commanding, nor can she just trust gut instinct that easily. She is bothered at the idea of letting THEM down.
OK, I should've been in bed ages ago, so I'm gonna stop trying to make that last paragraph make sense and say what I want it to; maybe it'll jog something for you as is. *HUGS*
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Date: 2006-07-21 04:34 am (UTC)From:I think Sam might have some gut feelings about the army from her childhood, but she's got the whole compartmentalization routine down, so she can DO something she has gut level reactions to. And she's got a certain amount of her identity sewn up in her scientific detachment. It doesn't mean she has to supress emotions, but she would be more upset by those emotions getting in the way of her accomplishing something she needed to than by any of the emotions themselves.
She took a certain amount of pleasure (although not obnoxious amounts of it) in being "Samantha" as opposed to "Samuel" in the first ep, as I recall. Some of what drives her would be the need to prove that those who told her she can't be a woman and be successful at science, or the military, are wrong. Even if they never know it, she'll have proven it. Some of what drives her is simple fascination with the things she works with. They are toys, in a sense, but she doesn't take them lightly; she knows how dangerous they can be, and first and foremost, she is a GOOD person.
Her faith is the faith that there will always be something new to discover, but she also tends to put faith in people.
The reason she has such trouble with command is that as a scientist she is trained to remain objective; it's the opposite of trusting your gut. When it's just a fight, she has only to use her abilities to observe her opponent(s), make a theory and test it out. She can make the fight objective, because the opponents are not some of the people she has faith in - they can become test subjects. When she has to command people, it isn't so cut and dried. People's personalities are variables and as such, they mess her up. The possibilities get in her way, and she can't be entirely objective about the people she's commanding, nor can she just trust gut instinct that easily. She is bothered at the idea of letting THEM down.
OK, I should've been in bed ages ago, so I'm gonna stop trying to make that last paragraph make sense and say what I want it to; maybe it'll jog something for you as is. *HUGS*