{"id":2277,"date":"2013-04-29T10:00:27","date_gmt":"2013-04-29T17:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/?p=2277"},"modified":"2013-04-29T08:01:01","modified_gmt":"2013-04-29T15:01:01","slug":"mark-watches-stargate-sg-1-the-fifth-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2013\/04\/mark-watches-stargate-sg-1-the-fifth-race\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Watches &#8216;Stargate SG-1&#8217;: The Fifth Race"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>JUST READ THIS BECAUSE THERE&#8217;S NO WAY TO SUMMARIZE THIS WITHOUT SPOILING THE ENDING<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Thanks to Christopher for commissioning this because\u00c2\u00a0<em>I didn&#8217;t know I needed this in my life<\/em>. To stream today&#8217;s commission video or to download it using Quicktime Pro, <a href=\"http:\/\/845eed0b8269c4ce4263-7aca4b0d3c616e184ccc79598f4053b4.r28.cf2.rackcdn.com\/stargate2x15.mov\" target=\"_blank\">go here<\/a>. You can otherwise download the file <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dropbox.com\/s\/lulnaf0ox6gcxe8\/stargate2x16.mov\" target=\"_blank\">on Dropbox<\/a> if needed.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 16px;\">I promise to freak out in a bit, but I wanted to talk about a realization I had about the main characters. None of them are particularly over-the-top and dramatic, which is both distracting and spot-on. Like, some totally fucked up shit happens in this episode, and most of the time, Carter, Teal&#8217;c, Hammond, and Daniel barely react to it. It&#8217;s distracting because HOW ARE YOU NOT PEELING YOUR FACE OFF IN TERROR, but then I think about how these are\u00c2\u00a0<em>all<\/em> military people. (Well, Teal&#8217;c is an alien, but that&#8217;s not the point.) My father was trained not to react dramatically, and I imagine these people are the same way.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li>That being said, security procedures and protocol are completely thrown to the wind in &#8220;The Fifth Race.&#8221; So many times during this episode I was screaming about the fact that this group of people let O&#8217;Neill do\u00c2\u00a0<em>whatever the fuck he wanted<\/em>. Why on Earth are you sticking your face into an alien-built\u00c2\u00a0receptacle\u00c2\u00a0that totally looks like H.R. Giger&#8217;s creation? Why are you letting O&#8217;Neill wander the base? After he hacks your computer system\u00c2\u00a0<em>right in front of you, WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU LETTING HIM TOUCH ANYTHING AT ALL?<\/em> Granted, that&#8217;s what ultimately saved him, but seriously, it was kind of bizarre that these people didn&#8217;t do much of\u00c2\u00a0<em>anything<\/em> to stop O&#8217;Neill from possibly sabotaging everything.<\/li>\n<li>O&#8217;Neill really was the best character to inflict with the knowledge of the ancients. He&#8217;s the kind of guy who is always vaguely irritated with everything, detached from what&#8217;s going on. I really believe that Richard Dean Anderson has nailed down this portrayal of a tough-skinned Colonel in the Army, so it&#8217;s both comical and deeply frustrating that\u00c2\u00a0<em>he<\/em> is the one spewing this alien language and dealing with scientific theories he previously had no interest in understanding.<\/li>\n<li>Lord, this episode really cranks up the tension to a point where I was unsure the writers could resolve all the chaos they&#8217;d written into the story. I was wrong. I WAS SO WRONG.<\/li>\n<li>The reveal that the Asgard race are actually LITTLE GREY PEOPLE is so completely fucking incredible that I almost never want to watch another episode of\u00c2\u00a0<em>Stargate<\/em> because this is the pinnacle of sci-fi perfection. Look, I grew up on\u00c2\u00a0<em>The X-Files<\/em> and was deeply obsessed with UFO culture as a kid, so that first glimpse of the Asgard sent me back to a\u00c2\u00a0<em>very<\/em> specific place in my childhood. The thing is,\u00c2\u00a0<em>Stargate<\/em> posits that there are countless alien races in our solar system, and they&#8217;re generally humans in elaborate costumes or freakish parasites. (Granted, I&#8217;ve not seen every SG-1 episode before this, so this is a terribly general statement.) Never in a million years did I expect that the show would put the archetypical version of aliens in front of us.\u00c2\u00a0<em>Ever<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Not only that, but the title hints towards a future plot\/story line that is just stupendous. Oh my god, the references to the Asgard observing the human race? Everything O&#8217;Neill says about the human spirit and our resilience? The creature design? This is, without a doubt, the best episode of this show I&#8217;ve seen.<\/li>\n<li>Bravo,\u00c2\u00a0<em>Stargate<\/em>. BRAVO.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Make sure to check the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/calendar\/embed?src=815s3sbr8clhdi9tn8k7r3tim4@group.calendar.google.com&amp;ctz=America\/Los_Angeles\" target=\"_blank\">Master Schedule<\/a> for all upcoming commissions!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JUST READ THIS BECAUSE THERE&#8217;S NO WAY TO SUMMARIZE THIS WITHOUT SPOILING THE ENDING<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[200],"tags":[433,474],"class_list":["post-2277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mark-does-stuff-2","tag-commissions","tag-stargate-sg-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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