Memento Mori

DVD, Stargate SG-1 S10 (Memento Mori)

You have to accept 'Stargate' on its own terms, taking into account it's just made on a TV budget and it's often derivative science fiction drama that has to be mass produced with twenty-plus episodes a year. And they'd been doing it for almost ten years. So you don't go in expecting too much if you know what's good for you, it rarely has the depth of ideas, commentary and character of, yes, 'Star Trek.' Added to this, it's easy to begin an episode with a high concept and very much harder to pull off a reason for it later, beyond it being a tremendous hook to the channel surfer thinking to check out this series. And it was a brilliant start, Vala's a waitress and foils a hold-up by taking out both criminals like Jason Bourne. Can you justify it, though? There's also the fact that hardened sci-fi viewers have seen such ideas many times before so you're already running through the possible scenarios in your head: it's some kind of sting operation, Vala's at this restaurant because she's playing a role and now she's just upset that and lost her cover. Or it's all a dream/ hallucination/ simulation by aliens/ result of accident/ drugs or some other trick or technology. Or she's genuinely lost her memory, leaving you wondering why she's ended up here.

The latter option is the case here, and once the episode starts we jump back three weeks to Daniel taking Vala out for a fancy meal at a posh restaurant where she gets kidnapped by shady types who we later learn are members of the infamous Trust, this time either working with, or for, a Goa'uld who wants memories Vala has from her time playing host to another Goa'uld. Okay, it gets a little convoluted, but you can dismiss the plot and just enjoy the filmic running about as SG-1 try to track down their missing friend and colleague, while Trust members are also on her trail once she escapes them, and the local law enforcement since she's a witness to the attempted robbery - for all they know she could have been in with them since she's new on the scene. And it is filmic, with explosions as safe-houses are stormed and gunfire spraying around, Mitchell commandeering some guy's bike so he can go off speeding after Vala's kidnappers a second time when imposters from the Air Force come to take her into custody from the police, and even cars rolling over spectacularly. They didn't need to have Mitchell on a bike whizzing through traffic, they just add an inconvenient plot point of a police car blocking in the team's vehicle. The only point I would gripe about and that almost lessened the episode for me was that the team weren't integrated into the story well enough.

We do get Carter, Teal'c and Daniel joining the pursuit, but they're not as integral as they should be, especially amid a large gaggle of guest characters from Trust members, to the Goa'uld, the police and general citizens to take up so much of the screen time. And what I watch the series for is the team, which sadly has been less together than they used to be. It makes sense from a story perspective as they are all experts and important people in their own right that Mitchell specifically got back together last season, since they could easily be heading their own teams or their own projects rather than still be on this one single team, but that's a problem of the format coming into contact with how things work in real life: you don't usually get highly qualified, successful people just doing the same job for ten years, they'd be constantly moving up or on. It's the same problem with starship crews being together for years and years in Trek, because they would be promoted or reassigned, but for the sake of TV, characters can't change too much or it breaks the format. That's a good phrase because this is one of those episodes that does break format. It's not one of the off-planet episodes, it's one of the Earth stories. Maybe it doesn't exactly break format then, but revert to a sub-genre within the series' mythology, which it's done many times over the seasons.

Dealing with the Trust, rogue NID, or dodgy politicians has always been part of the purview, and I'm sure they'd even done similar stories before where a character loses their memory and ends up in a different situation. Or maybe it was one of the spinoffs. The question is really whether it could live up to the premise, and by the end I was pretty much won over. Not because of the gunplay and action, but thanks to the character shining through. Now and again through the episode you get a bit of heart to proceedings: Daniel explaining his reason for inviting Vala to dinner was to thank her for trying so hard to give up her former tendencies and fit in to Stargate Command; the diner owner's kindly words when instead of taking out his own problems on her when she can't pay for her meal and is about to walk out, he instead offers her a job and a place to stay with apparently no ulterior motive (Don Stark was another actor who'd had a couple of Trek roles, notably Nicky The Nose in 'First Contact'). Ultimately it's Daniel putting down the gun and trusting her not to shoot him, saying exactly the right things she needed to hear so she'd stop running and trust him, that's what sells the episode. Because you can have all the car chases, fights and bullets flying left, right and centre, but if you haven't got a meaningful character moment like that then it's all for nothing (as many films show).

It's not perfect, it's not quite a rip-roaring success, but especially after the previous story in which everything went wrong, to see an episode in which things come right by the end is a relief. It allows Claudia Black to play up for the camera all day long (though even being alien how does she not know what a date is, or what 'To Dad' really means?!), which is what she's good at, and when it's just her and Ben Browder's Mitchell together it could almost be lost 'Farscape,' so there's lots to enjoy. The subplot of this mysterious tablet the Goa'uld lady was searching for may or may not become important in subsequent episodes, but could just as easily sink into oblivion as simply motivation for the cause of Vala's problems here. The Trust I can take or leave, they've never been very well defined, much like other 'secret' organisations on the series over the years, with only Mayborn of interest, and he'd had his day, being a recurring character connected with O'Neill and so not necessary any more. Every episode doesn't need to add to the ongoing story and I like it when they do one-off sci-fi episodes, though this was clearly the writers' desire to play with a full-on action film in the real world and everything was geared towards that, including the odd cop-out like Teal'c left in a room to make the Trust captive talk and all he does is whisper something in his ear which we're not privy to - it's a cheat, basically, a writer's device to dodge a way out. A bit like Vala getting handed her uniform patches as a fully-fledged member of the team for… being captured? Hmm. And I'm sure they said it was Three Weeks Ago from the hold-up, and then it goes forward Two Weeks Later where we see it happen again… So it just slips through since it was polished, with occasional amusement, I just wish the characters were used a bit better in general.

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