OK, just finished the latest episode of Stargate SG-1.

     Just so everyone knows, LOVE Claudia Black.  Hey, Erin and Chriton rock Farscape, and I really liked her character here too…what was her name?  Varla?

     Varla’s just this incorrigible multi-layered-lying, cheating, mercenary, ass-kicking bitch, and I can respect that…

     …but I didn’t care for the combat between her and Daniel.  The parts where they were actually kicking each other’s asses was OK.  Especially the moment where Daniel comes to terms with the fact that even though she’s a girl, she’s kicking his ass, and he can’t let that happen…so he pops her in the nose…

     …maybe it’s just that I don’t like the idea of anyone but me being that flirty-touchy-hands-on with Daniel…but I just didn’t like the part where they were trying to make the fight *hot*.  It fell flat.  The choreography was lousy fight choreography, and seemed a little flat and awkward.  The sexual tension seemed a little forced and ridiculous, in that setting.

     Especially when you consider the slap-stick elements like the hair-pulling chick-fight scuffle that they got into and the ending to the fight where she subdues and kisses him, and he kisses her back, and then tenderly says “You’re a fruitcake”, and she head-butts him and knocks him out…since they did go that direction, it was a nice touch…but as a whole, it just didn’t fit.

     They should have had a brutal knock-down-drag-out and resumed the sexual tension afterwards.  They just loaded too much into it…or the timing was wrong, or the chemistry or something.  It didn’t work.  A more consistently serious fight scene would have established her more firmly as a dangerous, treacherous character.

     Those darn DeLouise boys…they’re adorable, and quite good with making T.V…but they DO tend to want to insert slap-stick comedy in the weirdest places.  Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.

     All the sexual tension leading up to the fight scene was cool…especially when she takes off the super-soldier helmet and he realizes that it’s not…you know…a half-dead, skinless, male, automaton of his sworn enemy that’s coming on to him in a creepily sadistic way.  You can practically see him thinking “You know, it wouldn’t be nearly so bad to be the sexual captive of…wait…yes it would…of course it would…I have a ship and crew to think of….the mission man…remember the mission…”

     It’s cool to see the tougher, more ruthless side of Daniel win out without a big drama fit from his humanitarian side.  She tells him this big whole sob story about a lost colony hiding from the Guold, and he just sort of does the “Uh huh. Right.  Here’s the brig, get comfy” thing.   In Jack’s absence, Daniel has gotten a little harder-edged and more practical to compensate.

     I liked Daniel in the bits of super-soldier suit.  That was nice-looking and hilariously incongruous all at once.  I guess just because it’s the kind of outfit that an academic would put together if he were trying to make a mercenary costume out of what was available… and Michael Shanks wore it at LEAST as well as Vin Deisel or a younger version of Van Damm would have.

     All-in-all, a passable neither-here-nor-there transition episode between story arcs, and a good character introduction for Varla, who I expect we will be seeing more of.