#ep. duet

[dr-futbol-blog]

No Man's Land, Pt. 2

The scene that follows then seems to contain all of the issues that plague the third season, all rolled into one. The scene contains a flashback that retroactively inserts a scene that is supposed to have happened during the previous season, meant to explain something relevant for this moment but at the same time to explain away something that had taken place before, to fill in one of those unaccounted for pockets in the narrative where subtext had lived. As I have mentioned previously, we get very few scenes where Sheppard and McKay are alone together, and usually they are accompanied by some circumstance that disallows them from acting the way they would routinely. The moments we see are the exceptions, not the rule. We do not know how they are when they are alone together because we do not get to see them, we are forced to reconstruct their dynamic from glimpses and to extrapolate from how they are around other people. And this particular scene seems to seek to give the mainstream viewer the opportunity to explain away one of the most intimate scenes we have seen between them so far.

Sheppard: OK. Can't sit here forever. Hit them while they're in hyperspace. They'll never know what happened. Is that even possible?

The first thing to note is what Sheppard is actually doing here. He is doing the same thing that McKay had just been doing within his cocoon inside the hive, which is to ask the question What Would McKay Do? and let it guide him through the trouble he is in. Both men seem to have constructed an internal model of the other, and we see that both of them have a tendency to talk to themselves when they are alone -- to talk to themselves through the proxy of talking to the other man, to be specific.

We have seen Sheppard in a very similar situation at the end of The Lost Boys (S02E10) when he had been forced to fly a wraith dart souped up by McKay with a human interface into a hive and the navi computer had asked him to rematerialize his cargo with a Yes/No option. And during this flight he seemed similarly to be talking to McKay through the interface he had set up for him, his only link to McKay at the time. Sheppard is talking to himself, yes, and the reason they show him doing this is because watching someone sitting in silence is not very riveting television and it allows us to see something of what is going on inside the heads of the characters. But in character, it evinces Sheppard's need to communicate and to maintain his connection to McKay in particular. This is something that both of them do. In fact in Inferno (S02E19), it seemed like McKay had been talking to Sheppard in his head to an extent that he thought he had actually already told Sheppard something he had not, in fact, told him yet.

And so we find Sheppard here, alone in a cockpit with a wing and prayer, unsure of what to do in this situation and likely more than a little frightened. He had the idea of doing something, as he so often does, but McKay is not around to tell him whether it is feasible or even possible to implement his plan. And because Sheppard seems to file away most things that McKay tells him into his permanent memory, he is able to immediately recall a time when McKay had been talking about this very thing. Even though the scene attempts to imply the opposite, what it actually shows is that Sheppard remembers everything that McKay has said, even if he had only been listening with half an ear, and that he is able to access these memories instantaneously.

What we then get is a flashback, which is a narrative technique that the show has not used very often (flashbacks are featured in 38 Minutes, Before I Sleep and The Intruder), and previously always to explain something that had happened before the beginning of the episode in which it had been used, between two episodes -- and not to rewrite something that had happened in previous episodes, in the previous season, and never from a character's point of view. This is the first flashback on the show that features someone's memory, meaning that it is not just showing us something that had happened previously but is showing us their interpretation of it, not giving us the unfiltered event as it happened but someone's spin on the event. This is what Sheppard remembers of what had happened, not what had happened -- and there is a difference. Memories are notoriously unreliable and coloured by circumstance.

To let the cat out of the bag, the scene features a beautiful woman and Sheppard seemingly paying more attention to the woman than he does to McKay. The comedic beat of the scene comes from the assumption that there was something important that Sheppard wanted to recall but was having trouble remembering what had been said because he had been paying more attention to the attractive female scientist than he had on the two men having a conversation right in front of him. This is the maintext reading -- Sheppard loves the ladies and ladies love Sheppard in return, if the bashful smile of the female scientist as he glances back at him is anything to go by. Mainstream Sheppard is Kirk of popular culture, who is always first and foremost looking to get his dick wet -- but only with the women. He is a space mack, going from port to port in search of transitory connections, loving them and leaving them, never settling down with one woman. This seems to be especially how male sci-fi nerds want to read his character, with more than a little wish-fulfillment sprinkled in.

There is nothing strange about noticing a breathtakingly beautiful woman, especially one that is making eye contact coyly and smiling shyly (although, let it be on record that McKay does not seem to notice her, nor does he generally pay any attention to the exceptionally attractive women working under him), and sometimes people are just so attractive that they seem to tilt a man's brain. Sheppard is clearly zoning out in the scene, and he is admitting it to himself. Bisexuality has been described as the "no man's land" between heterosexuality and homosexuality, and even though Sheppard seems to be looking for that "maximum thrust" in his sexual partners, he does have a pair of eyes on his head. The real question is, when did this happen? Because that necessarily affects our reading of the scene.

McKay: There is no reason to believe that their hyperspace field is any different than ours... and we can't launch 302s from the Daedalus while in hyperspace. Zelenka: I'm simply talking about manoeuvring within the field, not passing through it. What do you think? Colonel?

In the scene Sheppard appears to be having lunch (deduced through their triangle sandwiches), seated at the end of a table occupied by McKay and Zelenka, who seem to be engaged in conversation pertaining to wraith darts and the hyperspace field created by the wraith hives, something relevant to his current predicament. Sheppard is holding one of his arms across his chest suggesting that he is defensively holding his arms as a barrier between himself and (likely) McKay, using the other hand to eat -- and while he may not be trying to be seductive about it, the way he is eating his morsel of food is sensual. It seems as though his eye is caught by a beautiful brunette who is either occupying the end of their table or another table further out, it is unclear. The camera work makes it seem as though she is sitting at the same table as they are, only she is eating alone and may or may not have been listening in on their conversation. It looks as though she is meeting Sheppard's gaze, that they had made eye contact and she bashfully turns away while smiling, indicating her interest. What ever Sheppard thinks of her, she seems approachable to at least one of the men in the table. The implication is that she holds Sheppard's attention while the two men right in front of him do not.

This woman is wearing the blue shirt of the science corps which is also what McKay is wearing in the scene, and while it is unclear how far she is sitting from them, she is seated behind McKay from Sheppard -- and this is something that we see the show do a lot from hereon out. There is a beautiful woman that is made the focus of the shot so that the mainstream viewer is invited to interpret the scene in a heteronormative context when McKay is actually sitting in Sheppard's line of sight, meaning that he could actually be looking at either one or both of them. It is implied that he is looking at her, it is far from certain and requires an active reading of the scene. an interpretation. Sheppard being distracted by a beautiful woman is an interpretation.

Another interpretation of the scene is that she is indeed looking at him, trying to get his attention, but he is actually looking at what is right in front of him, which is McKay, the man who seems to have been the focus of his attention for the past two years. Third option is that he is looking at her, that he had noticed her, but that she was actually looking at McKay, who is likewise sitting smack in their middle and in her line of sight, where the main thing directing the viewer away from this interpretation is the belief that McKay is awful with women, that as a self-insert proxy for the sci-fi nerds McKay never gets the hot women that instead go for Sheppard, even though in truth many ridiculously attractive women seem to find McKay worth pursuing, especially when he is in his element, as he is here, talking about science. The woman is, furthermore, working under McKay. We had seen in Inferno (S02E19) that watching McKay in his element can be more appealing to women than Sheppard's rakish good looks.

The fourth, more unlikely, option is that we are shown McKay through Sheppard's eyes, that this breathtakingly beautiful woman is a representation of what Sheppard sees when he looks at McKay -- and we do later learn that he sees McKay through severely rose-coloured glasses, that as a man in love Sheppard sees McKay as much more attractive than people who are not hopelessly, helplessly in love with him do. I am not advocating for this interpretation even though she is precisely in McKay's colours and has a gap in her hair where his receding hairline would be, because the details on her tray do not match his (and Sheppard seems to view McKay more as a Chris Evans in his Human Torch era type).

But on some level she and McKay are being paralleled here, the implication being that for a bisexual fellow like Sheppard this woman and McKay are both equally appealing, that he is getting a double whammy here. He might even be thinking of a threesome -- not for the last time -- as he is clearly distracted by what he is seeing, he is having thoughts about what he is looking at. That much is obvious. The point is that what we are expecting to see will affect the way we interpret the scene and where, in an attempt at attracting more and specifically more mainstream general viewers during this time, they are holding the hand of the heteronormative viewer, they are still leaving that little bit of ambiguity for the subtext. They are not spelling it out. This is not a no homo even though it can certainly be received as such.

Sheppard: Hmm? What? Yes. McKay: He's not listening. Sheppard: I've got to pay more attention to those guys.

Sheppard explicitly mentions having to pay more attention to "those guys," and this is an important line. On the one hand, it seems to counter what Sheppard had told Weir in Inferno when she had asked his opinion on what the leader of the Taranans had been like: "He's a guy. Didn't pay much attention. Sorry!" Now he is saying that he has to start paying more attention to guys. However, this is actually reinforcing what he had told Weir then because the implication here is that he had not been paying attention to what the guys were talking about because he does not pay attention to guys because he only pays attention to girls.

Again this seems to retroactively remove some ambiguity of the Inferno scene which had been a masterclass in show vs. tell -- Sheppard saying one thing and then spending the entire rest of the episode showing the opposite. And while Sheppard may tell himself that he needs to pay more attention to those guys, even in this episode the fact of the matter is that there is no one in two whole galaxies that he pays more attention to than he does to McKay. Even in this very scene, we are shown that the opposite is true -- that he is able to recall a conversation that had happened months ago where McKay had mentioned something that he needed to remember now. However, by suggesting that he needs to pay more attention to these guys Sheppard is also inviting the viewer to pay more attention to these guys, so let us look at them in more detail.

I mentioned that when this scene is supposed to have happened affects our reading of it. It is easy to assume that it had been recent, especially as the viewer cannot be expected to remember what had happened during the previous season in any great detail, especially when this was coming out on network television once a week with months between the seasons. McKay and Zelenka are talking about the wraith so the immediate association the viewer makes is going to be to the previous episode, the season finale where they had received a lot of new information about the wraith and data pertaining to their technology and particularly to the hives. This is further reinforced by McKay just having mentioned downloading this data in the previous scene. However, when we look at the details, that seems an unlikely time for this to have occurred. In the context of their relationship, it seems as though they had very recently patched things up between them and it would hardly make sense for Sheppard to have been checking out other people. In fact, we saw Sheppard completely oblivious to an obvious pass by a beautiful scientist in the previous episode, and we had seen McKay not notice other people either -- but this is neither here nor there if one does not recognize the subtext. Contextually, it would not make sense for this to have been a recent event but much more importantly, the details do not support this interpretation either.

When we look at them, we see that McKay has the pad that he had been using in the commissary as he was eating alone during Michael (S02E18), who is of course also featured in this episode, and so this scene could be a callback to McKay's solitary lunch with an attempt at explaining it away -- McKay had not been eating alone after all, he had just stayed back after the others had gone. McKay had been studying wraith rematerializer schematics at the time, his wraith studies relevant to the scene, which would offer a connection between the scenes. Only, he has no red jello on his tray like he had at the end of his lunch then, so it does not fit. He had also been wearing a dark grey shirt, which is what he had worn for most of the second season. He had further used the pad prominently in Inferno but he seems to carry it with him frequently enough that it's presence in the scene gives us no anchor.

The only real contextual clue we have is in Zelenka calling Sheppard "Colonel," which does at least place this scene in the second season, during their second tour, with this female scientist probably a new arrival rather than one of the original crew we had simply never seen before. But Sheppard had invited us to pay more attention to these guys so we may note that McKay is wearing his blue t-shirt, Zelenka is wearing a jacket and Sheppard is wearing a long-sleeved black shirt. This means that this scene had happened around a time when Zelenka had been on an off-world mission, when McKay had been wearing the blue shirt he has largely abandoned now and Sheppard was wearing a long-sleeved shirt. And while we have seen them in these sets of attire in different episodes, there is only one episode that fulfills all of this criteria at once -- Trinity (S02E06).

The one problem with this is that Zelenka had been wearing the yellow science corps jacket at the time but the only other times that he had been wearing the grey jacket for a mission, in The Lost Boys (S02E10), Grace Under Pressure (S02E14) and Critical Mass (S02E15), do not match in details, would not have entailed an occasion for the three of them to lunch together. The jacket even looks a little big on Zelenka, so it may not even be his own but regardless, the combination of Sheppard in long sleeves and McKay in short blue sleeves is rare, and Trinity seems like the best match, seems like what they had been going for here. Because this is intended to offer an explanation for one of the weirdest scenes in the entire show, to recontextualize it.

Since all three of them seem to be in good spirits, this lunch must have taken place before they lost a man on the planet of the Ancient weapons platform and had to inform their next of kin on Earth. The topic of discussion is fitting because they had been talking about wraith and their technological capacity in the episode, and it is even possible that this would have taken place before the meeting where we heard McKay tell Sheppard "I said I wanted to do all the talking." It is obvious they had talked about what to say to the others before their meeting with Weir and Caldwell where Zelenka was also present, so it would have presented an opportunity for them to have had this conversation. Sheppard having been distracted during this discussion might also explain why McKay had thought that they had agreed on something that Sheppard did not.

However, this is not intended to explain their meeting with Weir and his cryptic remark, but instead what had happened later when Sheppard had turned McKay away from his door. Without the aid of subtext, Sheppard comes across as a dick for no reason, turning away a friend in need who is clearly suffering. So this scene retroactively offers the explanation that the reason Sheppard had turned McKay away from his door had been because he had been hooking up. This had been an explanation that many people had given the scene even at the time because it was strange enough to require an explanation. Mainstream viewers did not know what to make of this scene and it made many of them uncomfortable.

So what difference does it make? We have to look at the context of their relationship. As mentioned, Sheppard making doe eyes at a woman post Inferno makes no sense. What Sheppard is remembering here is not recent and he is not reminiscing about this woman but is trying to recall something McKay had said that might save his life now. But in the early part of the second season they were having a lot of problems. It seems like Sheppard had moved out of McKay's quarters following their return from Earth in The Intruder (S02E02) when McKay had needed "a little more time." The whole early part of the season we saw the two of them sniping at each other for seemingly no reason and their relationship was most definitely on a break, their relationship in the no man's land between being with each other and being broken up. McKay seemed to be feeling so miserable about it all that it appears like they had "an accident" following Duet (S02E04) when it had initially been Sheppard trying to get into McKay's quarters and had been turned away, and come Condemned (S02E05) Sheppard seemed to really want McKay, was looking forward to having another accident. He was starting to think that maybe they could patch things up.

The sandwich is a connecting factor here because it is quite possibly the remains of a sandwich Sheppard is eating here and McKay had offered to make Sheppard a sandwich, albeit sarcastically, in the episode while Sheppard had been looking at McKay like he wanted to eat him instead. We had further learned that Sheppard had a tendency to look at McKay like Doctor Vogel looks at pastries, and the way that we see Sheppard looking at either McKay or the female scientist here is not too dissimilar to how we actually see Sheppard looking at McKay in Instinct (S02E07). Which ever of them Sheppard is looking at in this flashback scene, he has looked at McKay the same way in the past.

In Trinity, Sheppard turns McKay away from his door because he was afraid that something was going to happen and something could not happen when Caldwell was around. Caldwell seemed to be looking for an excuse to have his command removed and he was not going to give it to him. Furthermore, McKay seemed damned sour the next day again for no apparent reason, telling the "Colonel" that he would not make the same mistake again -- of offering himself to Sheppard. So if we insert this scene there retroactively and assume that Sheppard had hooked up with the pretty scientist, someone working under McKay, when he was still in shock over having lost one of his scientists and clearly suffering, clearly looking for Sheppard to comfort him, it makes a difference.

Hooking up with a woman and hooking up with the colleague of your former lover when another one of his colleagues has just died and he is blaming himself for it are very different ballgames. It would mean that Sheppard had not done it just because his dick had an itch like the mainstream audience seems to view him but because he wanted to hurt himself. He was suffering too, he was not allowed to take comfort in McKay for a variety of reasons, so hooking up with a woman who had clearly wanted him, was available and convenient, and who probably reminded him of McKay more than a little given how they are paralleled, just to not hurt for one damn moment might have seen like a good idea at the time. It is pretty tragic, all things considered.

So did McKay know that something had happened? McKay seems to know when Sheppard has been with women, has a sixth sense for these things. In Trinity we had watched McKay basically reading Sheppard's thoughts so he might have caught up to something even though Sheppard had come to his door fully dressed. McKay is able to read Sheppard's mind even in this scene, able to tell Zelenka that Sheppard is not listening because he is the world's most renown Sheppard-whisperer just like Sheppard is the best McKay-whisperer. They know each other, they have that bond that is deeper than words.

Following that scene, of being turned away from his door, McKay seemed bitter and upset, and this scene seems to offer a convenient explanation for their inexplicable behaviour toward each other in the episode. But it makes a difference. Sheppard hooking up with a woman once (or twice, given the one time he seemed to have sex with Teer) when they were on a break is very different from making eyes at a woman when they are meant to be together, as they are here, as they were following Inferno, with a fragile peace between them.

But even in this scene they are playing with the difference between showing and telling. McKay says that Sheppard is not listening when clearly he had been listening, he was able to recall what had been said months after the fact. He had not been paying attention at the time but he had been listening because he is always listening to McKay. Sheppard seems to recall things that McKay has said better than he can remember them himself. He also tells himself that he has to pay more attention to these guys like he does not pay attention to McKay like a student cramming for his finals, this scene trying and failing to obscure the fact Sheppard is sitting there in the cockpit of a fighter-interceptor willing to sacrifice his life for McKay and that he spends the rest of the episode trying to find him like this scene, like McKay's mentioning of pornography, does anything to erase the romance of it all.

However, even though they seem to be offering this opportunity for recotextualizing the scene from the previous season for people who felt uncomfortable with the ambiguity, no viewer is required to do it. The scenes between them are inexplicable only if one does not recognize the underlying subtext but recognizing that the two of them have had a sexual relationship, nothing in the scene seems out of place. As mentioned, some people interpreted the scene like this had been the reason for Sheppard's behaviour even originally but all things considered, it would have been a terrible time for him to have a hook-up with some random woman. A man had just died, their hopes had been crushed and it was obvious that McKay was in a lot of pain. At the end of the day it becomes a question of how big of an asshole you think Sheppard is, and I personally do not read him like that. There is only one person that Sheppard looks at like Doctor Vogel looks at pastries, and a beautiful woman smiling at him does nothing to change that. Sheppard had told us that he never sees it coming with women and we have no reason not to take his word on that. And him saying that he needs to pay more attention to McKay talking with Zelenka does nothing to hide how much attention he pays to McKay all the time. It is obvious that Sheppard is zoning out in the scene but we get a scene later on in this episode that makes it pretty clear who he was zoning out over, and it was not one of McKay's minions.

Addendum based on a comment by @deansaddiction: We should also consider the possibility that Sheppard does exchange a glance with this woman but the look they share is motivated by both of them having been observing McKay from their vantage points, the woman working under McKay listening in on their conversation whereas Sheppard had just been looking at him while zoning out, listening to their to them talking but not really paying attention to what they were talking about and struggling now to remember the words that had been said. Sheppard is not zoning out watching the woman but is instead sitting back and enjoying the show before him and just happens to catch the woman glancing at him, amused by the fact that he had been so obviously looking at McKay with this dopey look on his face. The woman definitely seems amused by something, and given that she would have known how McKay and Zelenka are on the regular, the likely source of amusement is them and their never-ending debate. What is more, as she very likely works in McKay's lab, she would know that Sheppard is a regular visitor there, which we had been confirmed only in the previous episode, and there is not one person who gets to observe him and McKay for any length of time that does not soon catch up to what is going on between the two of them.

I will return to this with the upcoming episodes but the thing we need to understand here is that the whole early part of the season is trying to establish the fact that McKay is distracting Sheppard, McKay is a distraction to him, that McKay without even meaning to holds so much of his attention that it is making Sheppard reckless to the point of becoming irresponsible. This may even have been meant as the first indication of what becomes a bigger and bigger problem over time until it all comes crashing down in Sunday (S03E17). When he is with McKay Sheppard is barely able to pay attention to anything else, even noticing a ridiculously beautiful woman for only the briefest of moments.

Continued in Pt. 3

[filmjunky-99]

r e m e m b e r i n g

Harris Yulin

5 November 1937 – 10 June 2025

⚘️

[pic: yulin as aamin marritza, duet, ds9]

[opens-up-4-nobody]

I'm trying to think of like in a vacuume what is the most well written, compelling episode of star trek? Across all of star trek. Outside of nostalgia or shipping stuff or how iconic some of the episodes became. What is the best Star Trek episode?

[princessfroslass]

I think a lot about that scene where Angel's drink got spiked and like- he said he was very aware of the fact it was spiked, that that happened to him all the time but looking at the scene itself he seemed just- ready to take it? like he is not reaching for his gun or anything, he is just chilling there about to take the drink.

And like maybe he would take it and throw it at their faces and just shot them because theatrics but the fact that he was in a VERY bad mindscape and that after this comes the "If I end up broken, maybe I won't be his favorite toy anymore" line raises in me some....concerns about what would have happened if Husk wasn't there.

[bobafish]

Do you want to sing your most gut wrenching, toe curling,mind boggling performance of on my own? Especially if you don't like anyone and don't ship Marius and Eponine (who does tho?/gen) Just think ab brickR sober in an alleyway, his thoughts pouring uncontrollably like the rain on the muddy, cracked pavement.

[myuwus]

summoning circle

                     🕯️

            🕯️              🕯️

     🕯️                            🕯️

            CHAGGIE

 🕯️       FLASHBACK       🕯️

           DURING DUET

    🕯️                               🕯️

            🕯️              🕯️

                     🕯️

[deus-ex-mona]

ngl i want to see an entire dramatic chapter dedicated to chizuchan’s “oshi break up” with aizo, flashback sequence and all

[lureithleon]

picked up my anti depressants!

unlike stolas, I will not be rawdogging the full moon

[greatbigbeautifullife]

the way matthew and mary's last conversation is both "i hope i get to be your mary for all eternity" "you'll always be my mary because my mary is the true mary" and "i fall more in love with you everyday" and "i hope you'll remember [this joy] next time i scratch the car" ... oh those writers are SICK they are SICK AND TWISTED AND EVIL !!!!

[subsequentibis]

wh. huh. holy shit. just watched both of eps of bang brave bang bravern that are out bc of prev reblog. holy fucking shit.

[cryscendo]

kurt hummel in every performance

2x04 - Duets

Lucky - Sam Evans and Quinn Fabray

[dr-futbol-blog]

Epiphany, Pt. 18

We then move on to McKay and the others approaching the village, and while they are not running the way Sheppard had been running as he had made his way back from the cave the previous night, based on the fact that we can hear McKay being out of breath, they are keeping good pace. Given that we just watched Sheppard leave the village at a run back to them, the sequence of events here is interesting.

McKay: You know, I was just thinking: this entire field, I mean, not the field, I mean the field field, must generate its own day and night cycle, not to mention its own artificial climate. I mean, it's incredible! When you think... Dex: You wanna pick up the pace, McKay? McKay: Hey, he's waited for months. Another half hour isn't gonna kill him.

McKay mentions that keeping the walking pace that they have, it is going to take them half an hour to reach the village that it had taken 10 hours for Sheppard to have reached at a run. This suggest that they had indeed crossed the threshold the previous night and it is entirely possible that McKay patting the ground next to him for Weir to sit had happened just as Teer had told Sheppard to sit (and let us also note the similarity in the names, Weir and Teer -- pronounced Tier and rhyming with Weir -- that is probably not accidental; in fact, Teer = Teyla + Weir). If McKay's assessment of five minutes for the others to get in had been correct, they had started walking toward the village just as Teer kissed him, meaning that McKay was getting physically closer to Sheppard the further they were engaged in the sex. This also seems to indicate that McKay's "You know, I was just thinking" epiphany here about the artificial climate coincided with Sheppard's discussion on thunder storms over breakfast, which would mean that it had taken them c. 12-13 hours to make the same distance as had taken Sheppard 9,5-10 hours to run. This tracks.

What this means is that this is not the same place as where Avrid had first ran out of the woods to meet Sheppard, which had been "across the sanctuary" and hence closer to the cave, but that they have already crossed the sanctuary and are approaching the village. This is important for establishing that McKay's "You know, I was just thinking" was synchronous with Sheppard's "Haven't any of you seen thunderstorms?" of the previous scene. And that is curious, to say the least. The minimum of what is happening here is that Sheppard and McKay are, for umpteenth time, thinking the same thing at the same time like that keeps happening by sheer coincidence. McKay is saying "I mean, it's incredible!" just as Sheppard is saying "it's also very cool!" but because we see these things happen in sequence, we cannot appreciate the synchronicity.

It is also curious that as worried as McKay has been over Sheppard, earlier insisting Beckett come along because he does not know if Sheppard is seriously injured or even alive, he now seems entirely carefree to the point of being careless, like he is no longer concerned for Sheppard. Like he knows that Sheppard is alive and well and waiting for them where they are heading. And how could he possibly know that? That McKay does not care about him is not even an option. For some reason that is never explained, McKay seems to know. And he is feeling good, here. Like every step they take, he is feeling more at ease. And, just to re-iterate, they have bee walking for hours and he does not even seem to feel it.

Weir: We don't know how long it's gonna take to find him. Beckett: Aye, and besides that, I have a date planned with Lieutenant Cadman for tomorrow night. McKay: Oh, no, so we've only got twelve years in here! What? What is it? I'm not detecting anything. Dex: Doesn't mean it isn't there.

Ronon drops a lampshade on the viewers: just because you don't detect it does not mean it is not there. That something cannot be seen with the naked eye does not mean that it cannot have tangible effects. This being said, the t-shirt is both visible and tangible but it only has meaning in context.

But let us back-track a little. Beckett mentions that he has a date with Cadman, the first time that their budding romance from Duet (S02E04) is revisited. Later on, Beckett tells them that the affair had fizzled out and let us recall that it was only until Cadman was occupying McKay's body that she seemed to develop this interest in co-Ancient gene having Beckett. Regardless, it is clear that Beckett is here both on the field and has "got" a woman, both of which McKay had claimed that Beckett was jealous over for him during his enzyme-fueled possession in the previous episode. What is obvious here is that McKay is not jealous of Beckett for having gotten Cadman because Cadman is -- although blonde and beautiful -- among the last women that McKay would ever want, along with Heightmeyer, and that is curious given how he keeps claiming to be into hot blondes. He could care less about Cadman, and Beckett's luck with women is a peripheral concern for him when he is in control of his faculties and not trying to goad his best friend into scoring him some wraith dope. This also tracks. Also, we do not know if this is an on-going thing or this is their first date -- it might be McKay's words had even pushed Beckett into asking her out for all we know. What is interesting is that both of McKay's claims are revisited here, Beckett's dislike and not jealousy for being on the field and McKay's not getting (or wanting) all the women.

Second thing to note is that while McKay's "twelve years" here might well be hyperbole, his math just keeps not mathing. Sheppard has spent around six months inside the time dilation field which had been c. 17 hours of real time. Assuming that by "tomorrow night" Beckett was referring to a time that, given the 28-hour "day and night cycle" on Atlantis, would be 30-35 hours from when they went in (it was daylight on the planet they left from, which of course tells us next to nothing about what time it was currently on Atlantis, but it had also been daytime when McKay had been in his lab chiding Conan and Xena). With all of this, it would still only give them about a year inside the field until it was date time for Beckett meaning that McKay's assessment of how fast time is running is way off. And what it also tells us is that it feels like years to him since he has seen Sheppard. He can quip about another half hour not killing Sheppard all he wants but dissociating has made all of this feel a lot longer for him than it has been for the others, and he keeps approximating time to have been much longer. And also that he is just not not good at mental math, he kind of sucks at it, if we are perfectly honest.

This, now, as Teyla detects something in the woods also seems to be when Teer got the shining about the beast being upon them and when Sheppard started off at a run toward them, and that also tracks. McKay's dismissive comment toward Beckett's date coincides with Sheppard being dismissive toward Teer. In fact, it is possible Teyla detected it even before Teer. While McKay seems to respect Teyla's instinct, he also relies heavily on the scanner and hence he seems to have trouble reconciling the evidence from these two sources and this too may be symbolic. Ronon, on the other hand, trusts Teyla over a machine any day of the week.

Dex: Can you see anything? Teyla: No. But I sense something is close. Weir: Maybe we should try another way. Dex: Won't make any difference. It's stalking us. Beckett: Sounds like it's more than one. McKay: Yeah, more than one what? Teyla: I do not know.

And so the beast is "upon them," the Jabberwock has found them. And it is interesting that the beast comprising of the fears of the villagers has come for them because while each and every one of them feels fear, to be sure, they are also all of them much more in touch with their fears than the locals are. They can admit that they are afraid which allows them to conquer their fears, and it seems as though all of Sheppard's friends fight their fears almost on a daily basis, fight their fears like it's their job.

The three times that we have now "seen" the beast, it seems like Teer's fear of either not getting Sheppard or losing him to another has been at the heart of its manifestation, and let us be generous and make a claim that she fears losing Sheppard to all of them here, losing him to his friends that have come to get him home. It is not as though the beast is going for McKay specifically as we see him take hold of his weapon, the one that Sheppard has taught him how to use to protect himself, and prepare to protect not himself but also the weakest member of their rescue party, Weir. McKay is afraid but that has never stopped him from being brave because It's OK to be scared, it's part of life. That is something that Sheppard has learned from Rodney McKay.

They all fire on the invisible beast, and Ronon and Teyla attempt to take it head on while both McKay and Beckett close rank on Weir. The two of them are protecting the weakest link and also the leader of the expedition who may not be the most vital of them for the running of the mission (certainly all three of the are "vital, vital to this mission"), but is nonetheless really important. And this is precisely why McKay had wanted her to stay back. But she had insisted on coming for the reason we are able to see as Sheppard comes running out of the forest, throwing himself at the beast with not a hint of fear or hesitation.

And let us point out the fact that somehow Sheppard knew exactly where to find them, he ran directly to them having gotten no direction from Teer. He knew where they would be. The fact that he was drawn directly to them is rather interesting. Sheppard loves these people, all of them, every one of them in different ways and if his time in this prison has taught him anything, it is that he does not want to live without them. And so the beast vanishes and he finds himself face down on the ground just like most of his team, and Weir runs right to him again like she is the heroine of a romantic film rushing to her beloved that has been lost for so long -- when that is not at all what this is.

Note that McKay sees Sheppard first, looks at him first, and Weir and McKay start moving toward him at the same time. But McKay loses time putting down his scanner and so, as Weir gets to Sheppard first, McKay decides to put his gun away and then goes to help Teyla where Beckett had gone to help Ronon, because both of them might have been injured by getting hurled away by the beast. And Weir goes directly to Sheppard, puts her hand on him, on his shoulder, but then draws it back almost as quickly as she lays it on. It is, frankly, impossible to say if she even really makes contact. What is important is this: she is not the first person he looks at. He looks past her shoulder before seeing her.

Teyla told us "Something is close." Beckett said: "Sounds like it's more than one." Again we find the writers are speaking to the audience through the characters. Dex had asked "Can you see anything?" We are given the option of seeing the t-shirt or ignoring it. And what we cannot see here is him touching her. We see him throwing his shoulder back because he does not want to be touched by her. Weir had tried to touch him when he does not want to be touched and while we see women frequently override his boundaries, we have never seen McKay do that. McKay has never violated Sheppard's boundaries or done things to him he did not have his consent to do. That is the difference. We saw this already in Sanctuary (S01E14), and it is as true on this day as it had been then.

Continued in Pt. 19

[masatos-wig]

???????????? in front of a LIVE AUDIENCE??

[aarafox]

Any news on helluva boss lads?

[varietysky]

so we really got 2 more weeks with the purple bracket huh.....

[iridescentis]

i miss jetiana