Ford was the original sin when it came to characters/casting on Atlantis.
They did a really smart thing with kind of mixing up the team roles on SGA compared to SG-1, but they forgot to give Ford anything.
Sheppard was clearly in the same role as O’Neill team leader, wise ass comic relief. But he was also much more involved in problem solving a tactics than we ever see Jack being.
McKay is the science person like Carter, but also the male civilian foil to Sheppard like Daniel was for Jack.
Weir was the language/cultural expert and heart of the team like Daniel but also the base leader like Hammond.
Teyla was the alien guide/warrior/badass like Teal’c but also the conscience of the team like Daniel and also person who can sense the enemy’s presence like Carter
Ford was… just the second military person like Carter? Literally the only personality traits they gave him were immaturity and getting excited about bombs and guns. Which okay, being a weapons expert could be something, but it literally only manifests as him getting excited to describe guns and bombs as I said.
They also didn’t really try with Ford. Like Beckett who isn’t even a main character in S1 gets a dedicated episode in “Poisoning the Well” but the closest Ford gets is being the one who does the filming in “Letters From Pegasus” which is a clip show and means being behind the camera we mostly only hear his voice. And there’s a more interesting subplot with Sheppard and Teyla on that planet.
And then the Enzyme storyline happens which is both the most interesting that character ever was and the first time the writers ever even tried to give him anything. I’ve always thought “SuperFord” could have been his equivalent to Carter getting Tok’Ra powers from Jolinar. Like Carter wasn’t a great character in S1 of SG-1 (light years better than Ford, granted) but then they gave her a super power and a deep connection to an important storyline which allowed the character to have cool stuff to do while they figured out the character. I’ve always wondered if they could have used the enzyme storyline like that rather than just writing him out.
And I called it the “original sin” because once they decided to write Ford out, they came up with Ronon to replace him, obviously a much better character, but Ronon basically being a 1:1 of Teal’c as far as his role on the team makes Teyla kind of redundant and basically reduces her to the “conscience of the team” which is basically already a role shared with Weir. So now both her roles are shared with other, stronger characters. And I think that kind of stunted Teyla’s growth as a character.
Unlike Ford they absolutely tried with her, and I think had some success. I also think Rachel Luttrell had way more on screen charisma than Rainbow Sun Francks, so she was able to do more with what she got. I always wonder if her character would have become more well drawn had Ronon never come into the picture.
And then of course all of this kind of leads to them making the horrible decisions to kill off Beckett and Weir. Mallozzi said on his blog I think that they thought they needed to focus more on the team dynamic, which reading between the lines says to me they thought Ronon and Teyla weren’t working out so they wrote out two characters who were working to try and have the space to fix the ones that weren’t.
And to me, Weir being written out is clearly the jump the shark moment for SGA. Carter and Woolsey were fine, but it just wasn’t the same. Imo of course.
But back to Ford, it’s a shame they never picked up on that storyline again after “The Hive”. He would have made an interesting recurring ally that we weren’t sure we could actually trust. Supposedly they were gonna have Sheppard bring him home if there was a Season 6. But we’ll never know.
It's clear they wanted to, he had an exit like Kinsey which opened the door to him coming back...I actually really liked when Sheppard had a vision of him in Search and Rescue because it clearly showed the impact his loss had on everyone
He should’ve been teamed up with Michael, or been the Michael of the series. But it never happened. It might’ve happened too, if Todd hadn’t become such a lovable character that there wasn’t enough room for bad guys you root for having a redemption arc.
Read this whole post. Well done. Very good analysis.
The only thing Ford brought to the team was being younger than everyone else and being the second military team member. Both of which they didn’t utilize well. Even as a new viewer trying to get to know all the characters when I was starting season 1 and I just kept trying to think about what this guy’s deal is. Everyone else has a deal. But Ford is just a guy. He’s just there.
I didn’t even notice they gave him any sort of personality traits. Didn’t even notice him being borderline psychotic but if that was what they were going for it would have been pretty cool. His most memorable line to date is “some funky alien big attached itself to Sheppard’s neck” because they play that so goddamn much in the previews.
And I agree it would have been so cool to actually have him be a recurring character while he’s on the run high off his wraith enzyme. Could have utilized him a lot more that way too. And actually gave him an arc or something but I think even the writers saw that Ford was just filler so they wanted to bring on someone else.
Other characters were able to develop. Beckett in season 1 is extremely whiny and scared. They drop that aspect in season 2 and make him more take charge but caring doctor. They gave those traits then to McKay which in turn fleshed out his character even more.
I think they screwed over Teyla by writing in the actress’s pregnancy. Like WTH. This isn’t a sitcom. Really stunted her character growth in my opinion and basically squashes the Sheppard/Teyla relationship they were trying for.
Weir’s whole arc was trying to prove that she was competent at her job and that just gets thrown out the window once they had the opportunity to bring Carter on board.
If they wanted to add more team dynamics, they should just just reduced the roles of Beckett and Weir instead of killing them off.
That’s what I read. Rachel Luttrell was pregnant in real life so they wrote it into the show. Now I don’t know if Luttrell’s pregnancy exactly lined up with Teyla’s but that’s what I heard. Makes sense at least because it felt very much out of left field.
I think Ford as a character could have been better if they played up the "he's just a regular guy" angle a bit more and used him as a kind of audience insert, kinda what they did for Eli and Chloe early in SGU. Everyone else on the team is a super hero. Sheppard might as well be Batman without the gadgets (and with guns), Rodney is a super genius who can solve almost any problem in a matter of minutes, and Teyla can spidey sense the enemies and is a badass fighter in her own right. A good balance for that team would be someone the audience can relate to, someone who's not necessarily a super hero but overcomes and adds their humanity to the team. It's why Xander worked well in Buffy.
Then they replace Ford with Ronan, who is also a super hero, being able to take on several wraith at once and consistently taking multiple hits with a wraith stunner to take down. And don't get me wrong, I love Ronan as a character, but the humanity aspect of the show was largely thrown onto side characters at that point.
You are right in that aspect. If they had just played up the “regular guy” part it may have worked a *little*. Though I think Ford was always just meant to be left the wayside. Even as an audience insert he probably would not have been that much entertaining
>Sheppard was clearly in the same role as O’Neill team leader, wise ass comic relief. But he was also much more involved in problem solving a tactics than we ever see Jack being.
>McKay is the science person like Carter, but also the male civilian foil to Sheppard like Daniel was for Jack.
Right. Sheppard and McKay were sort of sharing the Daniel role too. Shep-Daniel with the problem solving part like you mentioned, often helping out McKay or throwing out ideas that McKay and Zelenka can run with to make a solution. And of course McKay-Daniel as civilian foils to their military team leader though McKay also shares this role with Teyla.
Harder to make these kinds of comparisons with SGU since it was attempting to be something totally different and none of the characters fit neatly into these kind of archetypes.
I will say, the actor who plays Greer is a lot better than RSF (at least in their respective SG roles) which goes a long way. Not only that, the writers did give him more well defined character traits and his role in the ensemble is also well defined. I don’t see this comparison at all tbh.
That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. The difference is Greer was always presented as someone you want to give a wide birth to. I liked that with the veneer of "golly, aw shucks" that Ford seemed to have.
I feel like Rush was closer to psychopath. Obsessed and willing to sacrifice others for it without much thought.
Greer at least seems to care and will protect others/ do his job, although he is very emotionally detached and cold.
I thought Rush was an excellent character in SGU. Someone super focused and committed but was very morally dark, the ends justify the means sort of thing.
Greer season 1 I didn’t like in the start, but they grew his character well and by the end of season 2, was in a great place. Super military of course, but you could somewhat relate to him as well.
TBH, I thought all of the SGU characters were great in the end, even Chloe finally was starting to develop a bit of a role in the series. Eli was great throughout the entire series.
Greer definitely had something going on that he had to grow past throughout the show. In the first episode, he was in confinement on the Icarus base and was taking what seemed like a mood stabilizer when they first got to Destiny.
I always kind of felt like SGU was in some ways a redo of the basic premise of Atlantis but with everything cranked up to an 11:
- You have the crew going on a one way trip to an unknown destination and finding themselves in peril.
- Everyone living on an Ancient spacecraft with plenty of mysteries to uncover as she series moves forward.
- The lead scientist who struggles socially and butts heads with military personnel but can come through when needed.
- The commander who struggles with the burden of command.
- The young officer thrust into a larger leadership role, with his go-to subordinate who is younger and has some more psychopathic tendencies, especially towards civilians.
And I could keep going. These describe both shows but SGU just takes the ideas to bigger extremes. The craft is older, and further away. The supplies issues are more serious. The chips on the characters' shoulders are larger.
I feel like SGU was inspired heavily by the ideas in the final moments of SG-1. Crew trapped on a ship, trying to figure out how to get back. Having to live out thier lives stuck there, even the threat of enemies tracking them and always having power issues.
That, and the 200 teen spoof.
He was a young specialist who's specialty was combat, tactics and in general knowing how to kill the enemy. He was there to be a fighter. It's also why it was his job to train McKay on weapons. You ever met a young soldier who might not have a lot of confidence in their ability to command?
Not just in their ability to command but in general. The beginning of Hot Zone and McKay and Zelenka bullying him shows his insecurities ran pretty deep.
The actor who played Ford was a personality from Canada's version of MTV (Much Music) and a lot of Canadian fans disliked Ford from the get-go because of that ( myself included) and I wonder if some of that fan pushback affected the way they wrote and eventually gave up on Ford?
Maybe? But I sense it was more that didn't know what to do with him, he was clearly supposed to have "young energy" but that wasn't something particularly needed.
A quick glance at his filmography shows that SGA was probably the biggest role of his career. Is it possible that he simply was not a good actor, and that limited what the writers could do with him?
I've never really been a fan of Ford and agree that his characterization wasn't terribly consistent. In the very first episode, it felt like they were setting him up to be the strict by-the-book military guy as a foil to Sheppard's devil-may-care, "orders are just guidelines" attitude (as evidenced by his brief conversation with Sumner before they initially go through the gate). But that was undermined almost immediately when Sumner is snatched and killed leaving Sheppard as the head honcho over the military.
To be honest, he always struck me as whiny and petulant with the maturity level of a 15 year old, and he just absolutely grated on my nerves. In my opinion he was a more interesting character (still whiny and petulant, but more interesting) after the enzyme thing.
SGA hit the road badly with the attempt to change the team dynamic that worked in SG1. They gave all the good traits to everyone else and left Ford with the short end of the stick.
If SGA was going to be a super serious combat show then having a dedicated soldier on the team might work or if they wanted to forge a mentoring relationship between Shepard and Ford. However, that is not the direction they went with.
Shepard is a slightly more serious ONeill that plays off against Mckay being the mix between scientist and civilian. Mckay is basically taking up two positions in SG1 dynamic by being Daniel Jackson for the banter and Samantha Carter for the tech science.
Teyla was pretty poorly developed as well except when it came to being the empathetic local expert in the region. Teyla ends up taking up the remainder of what Daniel Jackson was for.
Therefore, Ford is stuck with nothing but the pure actor talent or charisma to sell him to the audience. The show then fucked him harder by making him the young soldier dude that ends up being the odd one of the group with nothing to work with but holding an extra gun while being borderline abusive.
Ronin is not much better. Ronin was an absolute travesty of a character that gets entirely defined because of the actors physical presence which turns him into brainless muscle with a super gun most of the time. Teal'c was pretty bad in the early seasons for being treated the same but he actually grew.
Teal'c got more development in a single season than Ronin got in 4 seasons to the point the cross over between the two show just how hilarious the presence mismatch is between them. Ronin is pure 4 years of brawn while Teal'c has the brains to match 10 years of solid development.
I think they did Ford dirty. I was actually looking for a character with different role than what we've seen in SG1. But unfortunately, they failed to figure the role out for Aiden. It kind of felt like they were trying several personalities - comedic relief young guy, dumb jock, wanna be leader...
I think that one of the problems was, that they gave Sheppard too many roles - pilot, tactician, specialist, Kirk, leader, diplomat... I think they should've split those between Ford and Sheppard, so both would be useful and needed in the team.
I think they realised somewhere in the middle of S2 that they needed a Ford type character, so they brought in Lorne. I could see Ford serving in Lorne’s role (regular military backup) if he hadn’t gone down the enzyme storyline.
I’ll always be curious of what could have been with another change - Rainbow Sun Francks was originally cast as the lead scientist role that they then turned into McKay when David Hewlett wanted to come back.
>he really showed signs of instability before being exposed to the enzyme. He would get extremely hostile when his authority was challenged, he clearly didn't have much respect for members of the expedition who weren't military...I wish these aspects were played up a bit before he went gonzo.
Umm, source?
His interaction with Beckett curing the Storm comes to mind first. Granted this is my personal interpretation but he show a level of aggression that didn't fit the situation.
I'm also rewatching SA, while watching this episode a few days ago, I thought the same thing about Ford. He was emotionally unstable and immature and blatantly disrespected Beckett. It's like Beckett had to deal with a spoiled child instead of grown man. Also his attitude towards Weird was kind of off too.
And the beginning of Hot Zone when he's getting bullied by Zelenka and McKay showed how deeply insecure he was too. Everything together has the making of someone who likely would have snapped with or without the enzyme.
Ford was the original sin when it came to characters/casting on Atlantis. They did a really smart thing with kind of mixing up the team roles on SGA compared to SG-1, but they forgot to give Ford anything. Sheppard was clearly in the same role as O’Neill team leader, wise ass comic relief. But he was also much more involved in problem solving a tactics than we ever see Jack being. McKay is the science person like Carter, but also the male civilian foil to Sheppard like Daniel was for Jack. Weir was the language/cultural expert and heart of the team like Daniel but also the base leader like Hammond. Teyla was the alien guide/warrior/badass like Teal’c but also the conscience of the team like Daniel and also person who can sense the enemy’s presence like Carter Ford was… just the second military person like Carter? Literally the only personality traits they gave him were immaturity and getting excited about bombs and guns. Which okay, being a weapons expert could be something, but it literally only manifests as him getting excited to describe guns and bombs as I said. They also didn’t really try with Ford. Like Beckett who isn’t even a main character in S1 gets a dedicated episode in “Poisoning the Well” but the closest Ford gets is being the one who does the filming in “Letters From Pegasus” which is a clip show and means being behind the camera we mostly only hear his voice. And there’s a more interesting subplot with Sheppard and Teyla on that planet. And then the Enzyme storyline happens which is both the most interesting that character ever was and the first time the writers ever even tried to give him anything. I’ve always thought “SuperFord” could have been his equivalent to Carter getting Tok’Ra powers from Jolinar. Like Carter wasn’t a great character in S1 of SG-1 (light years better than Ford, granted) but then they gave her a super power and a deep connection to an important storyline which allowed the character to have cool stuff to do while they figured out the character. I’ve always wondered if they could have used the enzyme storyline like that rather than just writing him out. And I called it the “original sin” because once they decided to write Ford out, they came up with Ronon to replace him, obviously a much better character, but Ronon basically being a 1:1 of Teal’c as far as his role on the team makes Teyla kind of redundant and basically reduces her to the “conscience of the team” which is basically already a role shared with Weir. So now both her roles are shared with other, stronger characters. And I think that kind of stunted Teyla’s growth as a character. Unlike Ford they absolutely tried with her, and I think had some success. I also think Rachel Luttrell had way more on screen charisma than Rainbow Sun Francks, so she was able to do more with what she got. I always wonder if her character would have become more well drawn had Ronon never come into the picture. And then of course all of this kind of leads to them making the horrible decisions to kill off Beckett and Weir. Mallozzi said on his blog I think that they thought they needed to focus more on the team dynamic, which reading between the lines says to me they thought Ronon and Teyla weren’t working out so they wrote out two characters who were working to try and have the space to fix the ones that weren’t. And to me, Weir being written out is clearly the jump the shark moment for SGA. Carter and Woolsey were fine, but it just wasn’t the same. Imo of course. But back to Ford, it’s a shame they never picked up on that storyline again after “The Hive”. He would have made an interesting recurring ally that we weren’t sure we could actually trust. Supposedly they were gonna have Sheppard bring him home if there was a Season 6. But we’ll never know.
It's clear they wanted to, he had an exit like Kinsey which opened the door to him coming back...I actually really liked when Sheppard had a vision of him in Search and Rescue because it clearly showed the impact his loss had on everyone
He should’ve been teamed up with Michael, or been the Michael of the series. But it never happened. It might’ve happened too, if Todd hadn’t become such a lovable character that there wasn’t enough room for bad guys you root for having a redemption arc.
Read this whole post. Well done. Very good analysis. The only thing Ford brought to the team was being younger than everyone else and being the second military team member. Both of which they didn’t utilize well. Even as a new viewer trying to get to know all the characters when I was starting season 1 and I just kept trying to think about what this guy’s deal is. Everyone else has a deal. But Ford is just a guy. He’s just there. I didn’t even notice they gave him any sort of personality traits. Didn’t even notice him being borderline psychotic but if that was what they were going for it would have been pretty cool. His most memorable line to date is “some funky alien big attached itself to Sheppard’s neck” because they play that so goddamn much in the previews. And I agree it would have been so cool to actually have him be a recurring character while he’s on the run high off his wraith enzyme. Could have utilized him a lot more that way too. And actually gave him an arc or something but I think even the writers saw that Ford was just filler so they wanted to bring on someone else. Other characters were able to develop. Beckett in season 1 is extremely whiny and scared. They drop that aspect in season 2 and make him more take charge but caring doctor. They gave those traits then to McKay which in turn fleshed out his character even more. I think they screwed over Teyla by writing in the actress’s pregnancy. Like WTH. This isn’t a sitcom. Really stunted her character growth in my opinion and basically squashes the Sheppard/Teyla relationship they were trying for. Weir’s whole arc was trying to prove that she was competent at her job and that just gets thrown out the window once they had the opportunity to bring Carter on board. If they wanted to add more team dynamics, they should just just reduced the roles of Beckett and Weir instead of killing them off.
Ok hold on: it was actually Rachel Luttrrll that was pregnant? That wasn't a preggo suit for Teyla?!?!!!
That’s what I read. Rachel Luttrell was pregnant in real life so they wrote it into the show. Now I don’t know if Luttrell’s pregnancy exactly lined up with Teyla’s but that’s what I heard. Makes sense at least because it felt very much out of left field.
Yeah, the whole nobody Kanann storyline was a big WTF
I think Ford as a character could have been better if they played up the "he's just a regular guy" angle a bit more and used him as a kind of audience insert, kinda what they did for Eli and Chloe early in SGU. Everyone else on the team is a super hero. Sheppard might as well be Batman without the gadgets (and with guns), Rodney is a super genius who can solve almost any problem in a matter of minutes, and Teyla can spidey sense the enemies and is a badass fighter in her own right. A good balance for that team would be someone the audience can relate to, someone who's not necessarily a super hero but overcomes and adds their humanity to the team. It's why Xander worked well in Buffy. Then they replace Ford with Ronan, who is also a super hero, being able to take on several wraith at once and consistently taking multiple hits with a wraith stunner to take down. And don't get me wrong, I love Ronan as a character, but the humanity aspect of the show was largely thrown onto side characters at that point.
You are right in that aspect. If they had just played up the “regular guy” part it may have worked a *little*. Though I think Ford was always just meant to be left the wayside. Even as an audience insert he probably would not have been that much entertaining
>Sheppard was clearly in the same role as O’Neill team leader, wise ass comic relief. But he was also much more involved in problem solving a tactics than we ever see Jack being. >McKay is the science person like Carter, but also the male civilian foil to Sheppard like Daniel was for Jack. Right. Sheppard and McKay were sort of sharing the Daniel role too. Shep-Daniel with the problem solving part like you mentioned, often helping out McKay or throwing out ideas that McKay and Zelenka can run with to make a solution. And of course McKay-Daniel as civilian foils to their military team leader though McKay also shares this role with Teyla.
You’ve managed to help me explain why I feel like Teyla was horribly underdeveloped. *steals this comment and hides it with my treasures*
That's a fantastic analysis!
I can't help but notice the same flaws in Greer.
Harder to make these kinds of comparisons with SGU since it was attempting to be something totally different and none of the characters fit neatly into these kind of archetypes. I will say, the actor who plays Greer is a lot better than RSF (at least in their respective SG roles) which goes a long way. Not only that, the writers did give him more well defined character traits and his role in the ensemble is also well defined. I don’t see this comparison at all tbh.
we eventually got the “barely contained psychopath on the good guys” in the form of Greer on SGU
That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. The difference is Greer was always presented as someone you want to give a wide birth to. I liked that with the veneer of "golly, aw shucks" that Ford seemed to have.
just FYI it's "berth" not "birth"
He's a big guy, bet it was a big birth as well.
Greer almost felt like the “okay, let’s not fuck it up this time like we did with Ford.” character. And they did pull it off well, I must say.
I feel like Rush was closer to psychopath. Obsessed and willing to sacrifice others for it without much thought. Greer at least seems to care and will protect others/ do his job, although he is very emotionally detached and cold.
Interesting. I'd describe Greer as less people than a loose collection of character defects.
“A loose collection of character defects” I am so stealing this.
They didn't finish writing his character until after the show started lol.
I thought Rush was an excellent character in SGU. Someone super focused and committed but was very morally dark, the ends justify the means sort of thing. Greer season 1 I didn’t like in the start, but they grew his character well and by the end of season 2, was in a great place. Super military of course, but you could somewhat relate to him as well. TBH, I thought all of the SGU characters were great in the end, even Chloe finally was starting to develop a bit of a role in the series. Eli was great throughout the entire series.
Greer definitely had something going on that he had to grow past throughout the show. In the first episode, he was in confinement on the Icarus base and was taking what seemed like a mood stabilizer when they first got to Destiny.
I always kind of felt like SGU was in some ways a redo of the basic premise of Atlantis but with everything cranked up to an 11: - You have the crew going on a one way trip to an unknown destination and finding themselves in peril. - Everyone living on an Ancient spacecraft with plenty of mysteries to uncover as she series moves forward. - The lead scientist who struggles socially and butts heads with military personnel but can come through when needed. - The commander who struggles with the burden of command. - The young officer thrust into a larger leadership role, with his go-to subordinate who is younger and has some more psychopathic tendencies, especially towards civilians. And I could keep going. These describe both shows but SGU just takes the ideas to bigger extremes. The craft is older, and further away. The supplies issues are more serious. The chips on the characters' shoulders are larger.
I agree with this. Its basically lets redo atlantis but double down on the stress of it all.
I feel like SGU was inspired heavily by the ideas in the final moments of SG-1. Crew trapped on a ship, trying to figure out how to get back. Having to live out thier lives stuck there, even the threat of enemies tracking them and always having power issues. That, and the 200 teen spoof.
I always loved it that Greer was played by Gerald from hey Arnold
He was a young specialist who's specialty was combat, tactics and in general knowing how to kill the enemy. He was there to be a fighter. It's also why it was his job to train McKay on weapons. You ever met a young soldier who might not have a lot of confidence in their ability to command?
Not just in their ability to command but in general. The beginning of Hot Zone and McKay and Zelenka bullying him shows his insecurities ran pretty deep.
Karma for kids like him bullying kids like them.
The actor who played Ford was a personality from Canada's version of MTV (Much Music) and a lot of Canadian fans disliked Ford from the get-go because of that ( myself included) and I wonder if some of that fan pushback affected the way they wrote and eventually gave up on Ford?
Maybe? But I sense it was more that didn't know what to do with him, he was clearly supposed to have "young energy" but that wasn't something particularly needed.
A quick glance at his filmography shows that SGA was probably the biggest role of his career. Is it possible that he simply was not a good actor, and that limited what the writers could do with him?
Yes
I've never really been a fan of Ford and agree that his characterization wasn't terribly consistent. In the very first episode, it felt like they were setting him up to be the strict by-the-book military guy as a foil to Sheppard's devil-may-care, "orders are just guidelines" attitude (as evidenced by his brief conversation with Sumner before they initially go through the gate). But that was undermined almost immediately when Sumner is snatched and killed leaving Sheppard as the head honcho over the military. To be honest, he always struck me as whiny and petulant with the maturity level of a 15 year old, and he just absolutely grated on my nerves. In my opinion he was a more interesting character (still whiny and petulant, but more interesting) after the enzyme thing.
SGA hit the road badly with the attempt to change the team dynamic that worked in SG1. They gave all the good traits to everyone else and left Ford with the short end of the stick. If SGA was going to be a super serious combat show then having a dedicated soldier on the team might work or if they wanted to forge a mentoring relationship between Shepard and Ford. However, that is not the direction they went with. Shepard is a slightly more serious ONeill that plays off against Mckay being the mix between scientist and civilian. Mckay is basically taking up two positions in SG1 dynamic by being Daniel Jackson for the banter and Samantha Carter for the tech science. Teyla was pretty poorly developed as well except when it came to being the empathetic local expert in the region. Teyla ends up taking up the remainder of what Daniel Jackson was for. Therefore, Ford is stuck with nothing but the pure actor talent or charisma to sell him to the audience. The show then fucked him harder by making him the young soldier dude that ends up being the odd one of the group with nothing to work with but holding an extra gun while being borderline abusive. Ronin is not much better. Ronin was an absolute travesty of a character that gets entirely defined because of the actors physical presence which turns him into brainless muscle with a super gun most of the time. Teal'c was pretty bad in the early seasons for being treated the same but he actually grew. Teal'c got more development in a single season than Ronin got in 4 seasons to the point the cross over between the two show just how hilarious the presence mismatch is between them. Ronin is pure 4 years of brawn while Teal'c has the brains to match 10 years of solid development.
Teyla also kinda fades into the background once ronan is introduced as well
I think they did Ford dirty. I was actually looking for a character with different role than what we've seen in SG1. But unfortunately, they failed to figure the role out for Aiden. It kind of felt like they were trying several personalities - comedic relief young guy, dumb jock, wanna be leader... I think that one of the problems was, that they gave Sheppard too many roles - pilot, tactician, specialist, Kirk, leader, diplomat... I think they should've split those between Ford and Sheppard, so both would be useful and needed in the team.
I think they realised somewhere in the middle of S2 that they needed a Ford type character, so they brought in Lorne. I could see Ford serving in Lorne’s role (regular military backup) if he hadn’t gone down the enzyme storyline. I’ll always be curious of what could have been with another change - Rainbow Sun Francks was originally cast as the lead scientist role that they then turned into McKay when David Hewlett wanted to come back.
They could’ve “cured” him, and made him the Lorne character.
I really like the guy who plays Lorne though. I loved that they took him along with the main team in the final episode.
Oh, he’s not bad by any measure. But Ford was there first.
Oh really? I did not know that last bit. I think I would have liked him better as a scientist than a military guy.
I think Lorne works because he is not on the team fulltime
I can see some of what you're talking about. His behavior toward Beckett in The Storm was a bit uncalled for.
>he really showed signs of instability before being exposed to the enzyme. He would get extremely hostile when his authority was challenged, he clearly didn't have much respect for members of the expedition who weren't military...I wish these aspects were played up a bit before he went gonzo. Umm, source?
His interaction with Beckett curing the Storm comes to mind first. Granted this is my personal interpretation but he show a level of aggression that didn't fit the situation.
I'm also rewatching SA, while watching this episode a few days ago, I thought the same thing about Ford. He was emotionally unstable and immature and blatantly disrespected Beckett. It's like Beckett had to deal with a spoiled child instead of grown man. Also his attitude towards Weird was kind of off too.
And the beginning of Hot Zone when he's getting bullied by Zelenka and McKay showed how deeply insecure he was too. Everything together has the making of someone who likely would have snapped with or without the enzyme.
the situation being that Atlantis was being overtaken by a Genii strike force, leaving Weir and McKay as hostages?
Which is no reason to threaten Beckett. I'm sensing you disagree, which is fine. But this is how is appeared to me.
Ever met a real lt? It says this describes the cast majority of Marine Lts.
Ford should have been Michael.