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dr-futbol-blog · 12 days ago

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The Hive, Pt. 11

Alone in the cell with a beautiful young woman who is vulnerable and frightened, in need of protection and desperately looking for a saviour with the voice of a cherub and the eyes of a doe, we find that Sheppard is still standing with his back turned to her, facing the hallway outside of the cell. He appears to be looking for structural weaknesses in the door, feeling up the wall that the webbing is attached to, his attention on the same thing it has been on ever since they were first locked up in the cells and he had been remembering what McKay had done that one time they had been on a hive together, which is getting the heck out of there.

Neera: I'm sorry. It's my fault you got caught. I should never have asked you to stop.

Because it does not seem like Sheppard is going to engage her himself, the woman decides to take the initiative and approaches him with an apology, designed to show her remorse and make him feel for her at the same time. This woman had been planted into the cocoon by the wraith queen with the express purpose of getting information out of Sheppard, of getting him to spill the beans, and it is unclear when exactly Sheppard figured out what the ruse was. He was cautious of her from the very beginning but it does not seem as though he has had any particular reason to be suspicious of her yet. She is a very good actress, and as Sheppard himself admits to the queen later, she is very attractive. She is very good at what she does even if what she does is not very nice.

But here, as Sheppard is feeling up the jamb of the cell doorway, he seems to be ignoring her on purpose. He knows she is there, he knows that they are alone, and he has chosen not to engage with her. Men usually enjoy the company of beautiful young women, they seek out contact with them, they want to be viewed as helpful, gentlemanly, protective, what have you. To make a good impression, to make the beautiful young woman smile or laugh, to give them attention. We see this the world over. And John Sheppard is bisexual, he does by his own admission find her attractive. Which is why the only thing that explains his behaviour here is that he is not single. He is taken. This is the way a man who is in a relationship behaves when they are locked up together in a closed space with a beautiful young woman. He is being a gentleman, a good man. But not for her.

Sheppard: It's OK. You were trapped in one of those cocoons; no-one can blame you for wanting out. Neera: Now your friend has taken my place.

Sheppard seems to be uncomfortable having been left alone with her, and let us recall that McKay was acting rather similarly when he was left alone with Jace in the previous episode. Sheppard turns around as she talks to him but note that he does not turn all the way around. He keeps his body turned away from her, turning his head the rest of the way to face her. This is important in the way that facing someone signals giving them one's full attention but staying half turned away as he does communicates that he does not wish to engage with them, that he is almost half-turned back to looking away even as he responds to her.

Sheppard blinks here, processing what she says, which we have seen as him hiding some deep hurt previously. It is entirely possible that what she says, "I'm sorry," reminded him of McKay, as that is what McKay had told him recently, when the two of them had been alone together in the meadows. Otherwise Sheppard's response and his tone are perfectly neutral, exhibiting the kind of politeness that is characteristic of his social class. Pleasant but noncommittal. Charming but vacant. Like when having manners is more about displaying your own station in life than it is about actually treating the help or the less fortunate with respect, where it is about being some kind of a person while the targets of the behaviour might just as well be furniture.

He tells her that it's OK but if he actually believed that she was who she claims to be, a likely traumatized young and defenseless victim of the wraith, his behaviour here is remarkably callous. He does not care about her. He is not there to make her feel better. He has other concerns besides holding her hand through this. Either Sheppard already has suspicions or he just really, really does not know how to relate to women.

Sheppard: Not for long, not if I can help it. Neera: How will you get us out of here?

Sheppard seems to pause for a moment after she refers to Ford as his friend, not sure what to think about that, how to feel. They were never friends, not exactly. And he is not Ford's commander anymore, either. He does not know what they are, all he knows is that he does not want Ford to die here, not at the hands of the wraith. Volunteering to take someone's place is also something that might give him pause. That is not what Ford had done, he had not given up his freedom to free this woman. They had taken Ford and stuffed him into a space that had once been occupied by her, metaphorically, but it is not something that Ford would ever have volunteered to do. And yet he knows that he would take McKay's place in an instant, he would not even have to think about it. For anything. And that is why he needed to get out of here. He needed to get Ford, needed to get them off the hive and back to his planet, and to exchange Ford for McKay. His concern with Ford's well-being was also motivated by the fact that he does not know what Ford's men would do if they returned to his base without him. He needs Ford alive also as a bargaining chip to get McKay back.

Also, let us note what Sheppard actually says here. He does not say that he is going to spring Ford free and then all of them can get out of here. She tells him that Ford has taken her place, and his response is "Not for long." If he already suspects her, this may also mean that he intends to send her back the way she had come and switch her right back with Ford. He is not making her any promises to get her out of here with them. But as mentioned, it is unclear when exactly Sheppard catches on to her.

Sheppard: OK, I haven't figured that part out yet. But when I do, it's gonna be real impressive. Neera: The wraith will not allow us to escape.

Here, Sheppard is being charming. Boyish, impish. It is possible that he is attempting to weaponize charm against her himself, see where that gets him. But more likely is that he is doing this for himself, he is amusing himself to keep his sanity. It is a way of tricking himself into feeling more confident, less afraid. He is basically doing the same thing that the comic book superhero Spider-Man is known for. While he is saying it to her, he is really saying it just to hear it, saying it to himself.

But again we can see that McKay is never far from his thoughts. Sheppard spends most of his time on the hive locked up in a cell just as he had on the Ancient warship Aurora. Almost back to back, Sheppard gets to experience what it is like to be held up and detained by both sides of the Pegasus chess board, the Ancients and the wraith. He is in a position to compare these experiences.

And here, he is most definitely remembering his recent experiences in another holding cell. He had been locked up for much longer than he cared to be and McKay had come in with the express purpose of busting him out. And as soon as he had said that they needed to break out of the cell, McKay had told him to "hold that thought" and had arranged their whole jailbreak from the outside making it very much look like magic. Sheppard had been well and truly impressed. It had, in a word, been real impressive. And while McKay was not here now to free him, he was doing his best to conjure him up in his mind. He was doing his damnedest to figure out what McKay would do here to bust them free. Because he believes that McKay would be able to do it. He knows McKay would be able to do it.

Sheppard: Yeah, well, I try not to let them tell me what I can and can't do. Neera: You do not fear them? Sheppard: The wraith? Naah. Now clowns, that's another story. Scare the crap out of me.

This is an interesting exchange. For one, we see that Sheppard wants to be done with this conversation and turn back away from her. He already almost turns away twice but then turns back just to get in the wise-ass line about the clowns. And this just confirms the fact that he is speaking to amuse himself, his performance here is not for her benefit. We see her confusion as she obviously has no idea what clowns are. Sheppard is fully aware that she has no idea what clowns are. Sheppard and McKay both have a tendency to make references that the Pegasusians have no hope of catching, have no way of understanding, and this too tells us that he misses McKay. McKay would get his reference, he would find it amusing even if he did not think it was hilarious. McKay would appreciate his banter just like he appreciates his references to MacGuyver & al. They have a shared frame of reference that unites them in a way that no one from this galaxy could ever get in the way of.

But what is Sheppard actually saying here? Coulrophobia, the fear of clowns, is a common condition likely caused by the "uncanny valley," of something resembling humans but being just a little different. Such creatures introduce an element of liminality to those mental processes geared toward perceiving people, the human species being an example of the social animal for whom the in-group and the out-group form important points of reference, that might mark the difference between safety and falling victim to a predator. And so Sheppard may well be afraid of clowns, and we will later learn that they are indeed nightmare fuel to him, but his intention here is not to share his actual fears with this stranger. He is making a flippant, smartass remark, not bonding with her through sharing personal information.

Sheppard actually is afraid of the wraith, but has no intention of showing it. And he is not actually afraid of clowns (as far as he is willing to admit to himself), and hence implying that he is more afraid of clowns, which are not really scary, than of the wraith, is a way of ridiculing the wraith, of making them seem less imposing. So, he is not saying that clowns are scary here. He is saying that the wraith are not frightening but an object of ridicule. And this is bravado on his part. He is afraid of the wraith, they are horrifying. He just has no intention of letting them see his fear.

But later on, in Doppelganger (S04E04), we learn that Sheppard is actually afraid of clowns. It is the appearance of the clown while Sheppard is within McKay's nightmare that signals the transition from McKay's nightmare into Sheppard's nightmare, of the entity moving from McKay into Sheppard. McKay dying for any reason, be it swallowed by a giant fish or dying on a gurney, is Sheppard's nightmare. McKay dying is his worst fear.

McKay's nightmare was not being swallowed up by a fish, his nightmare was to be far away from home, all alone, a looming threat just at the edge of his consciousness with no way of finding his way back. McKay's nightmare is Sheppard telling him that he does not care about him, he never did, Sheppard despising him. And while they began their journey inside McKay's subconsciousness, the appearance of the clown marks the shift from McKay's mind into that of Sheppard. Because in spite of his bravado, they do frighten him. It is not something that he would ever admit but he does find them creepy. There might be something in his childhood that had caused him to feel such deep-seated insecurity that symbols innocent frivolity like carnival clowns may actually horrify him.

But even further, we transition from Sheppard saying that clowns scare the crap out of him here to McKay entering Weir's office, describing himself as "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed," Weir drawing our attention to him by the words "Look at you!" We are invited to look at McKay while thinking about clowns. And indeed McKay is the clown, the comic side-character--or so we are meant to think of him.

I wrote about McKay as a type of Pierrot, the sad clown archetype of Commedia Dell'Arte in connection with Duet (S02E04), seen comedic by the other characters where he internally suffers from a broken heart, pining after his lost love. McKay's character development from the buffoon of SG-1 to the "avatar of the disenfranchised" that we have seen him grow into also closely follows the development of Pierrot.

And in this regard, it is not clowns that scare the crap out of Sheppard. What scares the crap out of him is never finding his way back to his clown. We know what Sheppard's deepest fear is, and it is not the wraith and it is not a Volkswagen full of clowns.

Continued in Pt. 12

#sga #stargate atlantis #john sheppard #sga meta #sheppard is bi #rodney is gay #rodney mckay #mcshep #ep. the hive #ep. duet #ep. doppelganger

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dr-futbol-blog · 17 days ago

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The Hive, Pt. 6

On the hive we see Sheppard help Ronon lay down what seems to be a young boy in a white t-shirt while Ford had been begrudgingly helping an adult man. As soon as they have the boy free, Sheppard lifts up a woman we will later discover to be a plant, a human who has willingly chosen to aid the wraith in exchange for their survival and whom the queen was using to get information out of Sheppard because for some reason she was unable to penetrate his mind. As the wraith drones once more catch up to them, we see that Ford has abandoned the man he was helping in order to engage the guards, and we see Sheppard and Teyla attempt to drag the female victims to safety.

Their attempt was doomed from the beginning, however, and we see Sheppard knocked out by the wraith stunner for the second time in short order, once more hit squarely in the back. They are dragged away and as the woman seems to be exhibiting fear, we have no occasion to suspect her motives yet. She is just another innocent victim to the wraith that is now locked up in a cell with them. And as the wraith have separated the strike team, Sheppard now shares a cell with her and Ford.

Ford: Feeling better?

This time we find Sheppard lying down on the hard, cold floor where previously he had his head on Teyla's lap as he was the last to come to from the wraith stunner's effects, the only one that was not taking the enzyme. This time they have another person in the cell who, presumably, is not on the enzyme and the fact that she had apparently not been stunned should probably tell us something.

For the second time in this episode the camera lingers on Sheppard's package before moving up his body, and it is curious that both Sheppard and McKay have been eroticized by the cinematography. Let us also appreciate the fact that Sheppard and McKay were both unconscious at the same time here because fate keeps putting up obstacles on their desire to be reunited. We hear Sheppard groan in obvious pain as he regains consciousness and lifts himself up, but he is trying to keep the noise suppressed, to not let anyone in on the fact that he is in pain. He also does not answer Ford's question, both because he does not think that it is genuine and because he considers Ford a hostile and he would never let a hostile know his weaknesses.

Ford: Her name's Neera. Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard. Sheppard: Hi...

As soon as Sheppard's eyes happen upon the woman cowering in the corner, he looks at her with caution. This woman is a stranger but it should not be all that difficult to come to the conclusion that it has to be one of the people they were saving when they were taken out. We see Sheppard freeze up minutely as he notices her, a stranger, because even though there may be certain things he has to hide from Ford, he is still able to be more or less himself in his presence, and now that Ford no longer has any official position within the military, it would not even matter if Ford did learn the truth about him. But when it comes to strangers, Sheppard is very obviously cautious. Sheppard is very careful in portioning out aspects of himself to new people.

Ford tells him her name, meaning that they have exchanged at the very least a few words while he has been out cold, and it is notable that Ford introduces Sheppard with the title that he had learned from McKay because Sheppard's promotion had been the most significant thing that had happened to McKay since Ford had been gone. We see many things play out on Sheppard's face as he politely but extremely tersely acknowledges the stranger. Initially we see suspicion, as he tries to figure out what this means for them. Sheppard frowns ever so slightly, but then lifts his chin up and seems to force his features to become more open, to become friendlier. This is not a natural reaction, this is something that Sheppard does in a calculated fashion. He then lifts his brows in what could be a flirty gesture as he says hello to her but the fact that he is feeling so far from flirty, his expression comes out looking like he had just bitten into something sour. He then narrows his eyes, seeming to feel such bitterness that he can barely contain it and it has very little if anything to do with her.

Sheppard: Where are the others? Ford: They split us up into separate cells. I guess the wraith figured that keeping us in smaller groups would make it tougher to escape. We shouldn't have stopped! Sheppard: What's done is done, Lieutenant.

Sheppard looks at the woman but does not engage her further, instead wanting to know where everyone else is. As Sheppard and the woman both look at Ford, we see that there is a resemblance in them. The woman has dark hair and she is quite attractive, and given that people are often drawn to partners that bear resemblance to then, she should be especially attractive to Sheppard. Particularly as she is making herself seem vulnerable, damaged, someone looking for a hero to save her, a guardian to protect her (and this is not something she or the wraith queen would know but this is not what Sheppard is looking for in a lover because he feels like he has all the world that needs saving as it is), which would make her more than attractive to most men.

We see Sheppard worry his lip as Ford explains that they had been separated from the others that are probably in another cell, which is to be expected. But he then blinks in a way that has previously signaled some acute pain, him being at the end of his rope, and there is nothing that seems to warrant this reaction in what Ford is telling him. The blink follows Ford's words "I guess the wraith figured that keeping us," so it does not seem to be caused by what Ford was saying, at least not directly. It could be a delayed reaction to Ford mentioning being split up since Sheppard has been split up from McKay much longer than he cares to even think about by now. Sheppard snaps at Ford as he points out that it was Sheppard's fault that they had been caught, that without stopping to save those people they might have made it out. It is likely Sheppard realizes this himself but the blame game is not going to do them any good here.

Ford: No! First you set off the alarms, and then you stop to rescue people when you know damned well the wraith are on our tail? It's like you're purposefully sabotaging this mission. You hate to see me succeed at anything. Sheppard: You've got a lot of issues to work out, Ford. Ford: Teyla and Ronon went down too quick when they were shot.

Neera seems to be listening to their conversation with keen ears and as we cut back from Ford we notice that Sheppard has turned back to look at her. From how Neera looks at him, it would seem like he held her gaze for a lengthy time, probably trying to figure out what kind of a person she is. Now, this could be a sign of attraction as often people like looking at pleasant things, their gaze searches for attractive features to look at. But here, it is likely that Sheppard is more concerned about the fact that Ford is airing all of their laundry in front of a stranger, dirty and otherwise. Ford also describes how he sees Sheppard and while his description is coloured by his paranoia and bitterness toward Sheppard, it is not entirely off the mark. And Ford does know Sheppard pretty well, and as mentioned, Sheppard does not want strangers to know him. He wants to control what of himself he lets people see. And so instead of acknowledging any of what Ford said he turns it around on him, telling him that it is all in his head. At the end of the day, Ford was never as significant for Sheppard as Sheppard was for him, and that was the problem. He looked up to Sheppard, he wanted to prove himself to his commander, he wanted to mean to him what McKay seemed to mean to him, and he never could figure out why that was.

Ford: The enzyme's wearing off. Sheppard: You feeling anything yet? Ford: Not yet. But I will.

Ford tells him that the enzyme must be wearing off for both Ronon and Teyla, and Sheppard looks up in concern. His concern is not so much for Ford but given that he had purposefully allowed Ford to continue his experiment with Ronon and Teyla to get McKay off the stuff, he is feeling responsible for what is and what must inevitably happen to them. Furthermore, he knows that just as soon as Ford will start showing signs of the enzyme wearing off for him, their chances of getting off the hive will go down. Their best bet is to use what ever juice all of them have left. It is also interesting that at this very same time on Atlantis, McKay is starting to come down from the enzyme and his withdrawal is very difficult, nearly costing him his life. Here, Sheppard is glad that he at least got McKay off the stuff before he had time to develop such an addiction, not knowing that McKay had taken a nearly fatal dose of it for him.

Ford: It's happened before when I've run out of the enzyme. It gets pretty bad. So we gotta figure a way out of here. And no more unnecessary stops.

Sheppard gets up just as soon as Ford has pointed out that they are running out of time. He knows that they have no time to waste, and not just because Ford or Ronon and Teyla either. He agrees with Ford that they need to find a way out. Ford looks at the woman as he says that they should not make any unnecessary stops anymore, implying that he blames her for the fact that they had been caught and that he would not stop to save her again given the choice. He is cold and dismissive when the woman seems to be frightened, feeling as threatened by Ford as he does by the wraith. And she keeps looking at Sheppard with this quiet pleading, wishing that Sheppard as a good man would protect him from not only the evil, evil wraith but also from this cold and callous man in their cell. As Sheppard later points out, she is very good at what she does here. Most men would have had their heartstrings pulled. Sheppard does look at the woman as Ford calls her an "unnecessary stop" but it is difficult to tell what he is thinking. It is not at all clear when Sheppard figures out what she is.

Continued in Pt. 7

#sga #stargate atlantis #john sheppard #sga meta #sheppard is bi #rodney mckay #rodney is gay #mcshep #ep. the hive

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