#ep. echoes

[dr-futbol-blog]

Echoes, Pt. 18

We do not know where Sheppard and McKay had been transported on the Daedalus -- likely the bridge -- but when we rejoin them, the two of them have split up and are in different places. McKay is in what passes as an engine room hooking up the ZPM into the ship's systems where Sheppard is on the bridge with Colonel Caldwell, and for some reason he seems to have been standing by the Captain's chair. We see him stepping down from the dais holding the chairs, his hand brushing up against the back of the chair as he contacts McKay to ask him how he is getting along. We have heard Sheppard say some variation of "How's it going, Rodney?" or "Talk to me, Rodney" when ever the two of them are in contact but not together physically, wanting to be kept apprised of what McKay is doing at any given time. And this is not just about wanting to be in the know or in an attempt at hurrying the other man along, Sheppard genuinely wants to live vicariously with McKay, he wants the two of them to be doing everything together.

Sheppard: How's it going, Rodney? McKay: You know, this might look easy, but it's actually a little more complicated than just flipping a switch. Caldwell: Hurry up, please. We're there.

McKay responds to Sheppard somewhat distractedly because most of his focus is going into hooking up the ZPM, but we have noted before how McKay seems to have developed an ability to do work even as Sheppard is talking his ear off, even as Sheppard is supposedly distracting him, and this may be due to his childhood when he needed to develop strategies to focus on his school work while his parents were busy hating each other and blaming him. It is possible that McKay even requires some amount of distraction for his mind to be able to focus on solving problems instead of scanning his environment for sources of potential danger.

And because the two of them have worked together for so long and so well, Sheppard may intuitively understand that McKay needs these interruptions from him. Of course McKay is grumbling just to take some of the pressure off, and this could be interpreted as him displaying his "impossible heroics game" like Sheppard had accused him of doing in Phantoms (S03E09) -- and if the order of the episodes were reversed, as I have suggested, then Sheppard might easily be able to refer to times just such as this then -- even if it is not McKay's intention of making himself seem like the bigger hero, someone who is able to take on this gargantuan task and resolve it, by making what he does sound more complicated than it is.

Likely he is absolutely truthful about this being rather complicated and not something that just everyone would be able to do -- even if we had seen Sheppard handling the ZPM back down on the planet in a manner that suggested that he knows how to handle himself around it, like he might have been able to do this on his own because it had not been McKay's technical expertise that had made Sheppard insist on bringing McKay up on the spaceship with him. Sheppard had needed to take McKay away from the planet where the fish were increasing the volume of their warning that had been causing people to start developing aneurysms to the point of dying, and Sheppard could not allow McKay and that big old brain of his to spend another moment down on the planet if he was in danger of dying from having his brain exploded by the whales. He had needed to remove McKay from the planet's surface as quickly as possible, and he had taken the ZPM with him so that he might literally be able to shield McKay from danger to the best of his ability up in the ship. Of course neither McKay nor anyone else knows that this had been Sheppard's motivation, and as far as they are concerned, he and McKay are here saving everyone else even if everyone else had been perfectly safe under the umbrella of the shield, at least for the time being.

We have also noted before that McKay and Sheppard seem to run at fundamentally different speeds, Sheppard preferring fast and intense and McKay being meticulous and taking his time doing things. While Caldwell is also telling McKay to hurry up here, what McKay is saying about how it may look easy but it is actually more complicated than just flipping a switch is actually something that could also have been spoken by him during their more intimate moments, insisting on proper preparation especially because Sheppard seems to need that "maximum thrust" to get off -- as hinted in No Man's Land (S03E01). McKay is only thinking of Sheppard's best interest as he takes his time to do this properly, wanting nothing better than to give Sheppard exactly what he wants and needs. There is also symbolism in having both Sheppard and McKay fondle this girthy phallic object one after the other.

McKay: What, we are already? Caldwell: We didn't have far to go. Position, Doctor. The shields are up. We need the extra power from that ZPM now. McKay: Yes, yes. I just need to...

While Sheppard wants to be kept apprised of what McKay is doing we have noted previously that he tends to defer to Caldwell's authority when ever they are on the Daedalus, and so it is Caldwell who takes over communicating with the engine room or where ever the shield is emitted on the ship, telling McKay that they had arrived in the position that likely either McKay or Zelenka had calculated would be the optimal place for them to open Sheppard's umbrella. We see that the whole bridge appears to be looking out to the sun but since it is possible that they do not actually have windows on the ship but cameras are projecting an outside view of the ship on a screen, they have to be filtering some of the radiation so that it only looks like they are staring directly into the sun from much closer on than they would on the planet's surface because that would surely blind each and every one of them. Also note that Sheppard is leaning against the captain's chair, wanting to keep some distance to the female helmsman, seeming more comfortable in the space of another man.

We can also note that McKay uses a different tone with Caldwell than he had with Sheppard, having tried to explain to Sheppard why he was taking his time whereas he almost snaps at Caldwell, sounding irritable. We had noted him do a similar shift in tone earlier when he had asked Zelenka why he was bothering him while he had been in the middle of an intense conversation with Sheppard, and we have noted that McKay has a tendency to take out on other people feelings that have been generated by Sheppard making demands on him, feeling the growing pressure but not wanting to unload his irritation on Sheppard because he does not want Sheppard to be cross with him. It seems like McKay actually is on his best behaviour with Sheppard much of the time because he needs Sheppard to like him, somewhere deep down he fears that if he upsets Sheppard then the man will no longer bother with him, he will not want to waste his time on him. McKay seems to fear showing his authentic self to Sheppard, not realizing that Sheppard loves him warts and all, that Sheppard has chosen McKay several times over in lieu of perfect beings because he loves his faults. It is McKay's deepest desire to be chosen by someone, to be their first choice, and he does not even realize that Sheppard has done that over and over again.

McKay: Oh no. Sheppard: What? McKay: The prominence is fully collapsing into the photosphere. Brace yourselves!

McKay turns to check out the status of the prominence and notices that they are out of time, speaking only the words "Oh no." It is a feature of Sheppard hearing these ominous words and not being able to read McKay's face to see what he is thinking, which is something that Sheppard thinks is vitally important for him to be able to do in a crisis, that we then hear Sheppard tightly ask McKay what it is, his tone suggesting that he expects McKay to know to tell him what it is without him having to ask, he expects McKay to know to explain it to him and not just leave him hanging with a dramatic, suspenseful and very unhelpful "Oh no!" And McKay does fill Sheppard in even as he scrambles to do what had been asked of him, which was to boost the shield with the ZPM. This was it. Also, pay attention to how the stream of plasma ejaculates from the sun like a metaphor for sexual completion, Sheppard seemingly wanting to take it right in the face.

Sheppard: Rodney! McKay: ZPM is online.

Sheppard and Caldwell are watching the stream coming right at them since they had purposefully parked the ship right in its path, and as it seems to be getting real close we hear Sheppard call out for McKay, his tone part pleading, part insisting that McKay do something about this.

While we have gotten some indication of the fact that McKay would prefer to die with Sheppard when the time comes, it had never been Sheppard's plan to actually die here. Sheppard does not want to die with McKay because he does not want McKay to die at all. The thought is unacceptable to him. He had brought McKay up here on the ship to keep him safe from the whales and to give him the best cover under the boosted shield to the ZPM but because they had arrived at the scene so quickly and the prominence had collapsed so unexpectedly, Sheppard likely had a moment to doubt whether he had made the right choice here, had time enough to think whether he should demand that Caldwell open a hyperspace window and get them the hell away from the stream. Now that the planet is not shielded at all it would definitely fry everyone down in the city but Sheppard had not come here to die and he certainly had not come up here to sacrifice McKay for everyone else. This is what we hear in Sheppard's tone as he pleads for McKay to give him something. Having made the choice to bring them up here, there is nothing further that Sheppard can do except to trust that McKay is able to pull another eleventh hour miracle out of his shapely posterior. Watching the stream coming directly at them, Sheppard likely has time enough to pray. He hopes he did the right thing.

Caldwell: How long will this last, Doctor? McKay: Anywhere from a few seconds to several hours. Sheppard: Hours? You never said anything about hours! Caldwell: We're building up serious heat behind the shield. McKay: I told you this wasn't a good plan!

Caldwell asks a pertinent question that Sheppard clearly should have thought to ask before, which is how long they can expect this coronal mass ejection to last. McKay tells them something that he has likely known since graduate school, which is that these kind of phenomena are very unpredictable and can last up to several hours. And because Sheppard is so taken aback by this brand new information here, it is obvious for anyone to see that he had not brought the two of them up here to die.

Sheppard had not known this and if he had known this, he likely would have thought of something else. His intention had been to take McKay away form the place where his brain, his most important and priced possession, was in danger of killing him, and to bring him somewhere where he might be able to shield him best, and now McKay was telling him that this might have been the worst place to bring him. They might be able to shield the city but at the cost of their own lives and that had never been Sheppard's intention. We can hear the accusation in Sheppard's tone, like he was blaming McKay for him having brought them up here, and we have to account for the fact that Sheppard seems to have a very obvious tendency to project. He is afraid and he can only deal with this sudden and overwhelming fear by blaming McKay for having made him bring the two of them up here.

And since we know that McKay thinks his parents had hated each other and blamed him when he had been a child, Sheppard's tendency to blame McKay may actually be something that he finds comforting and familiar, people having a known tendency to try to resolve their childhood traumas in their relationships as adults. It is for sure not the healthiest way to conduct courtship, and Sheppard and McKay's relationship has all the signs of trauma-bonding, which likely required them to dissolve their relationship so that they might be able to build it up again in a healthier way down the line. We can hear the anguish in McKay's tone when he whines to Sheppard that he had told him this was not a good plan from the get-go -- he is not wrong about that -- having obviously gone along with this plan only because he felt the need to please Sheppard, to do what Sheppard needed him to do for him.

While this is going on, we get an interesting exchange between Zelenka and Ronon down on the planet that might just as well be about Sheppard and McKay's relationship:

Dex: How're they doing? Zelenka: Well, according to my calculations, the blast wave should have hit us by now but I'm reading no discernable increase in radiation. Dex: So they're doing good? Zelenka: Yes. So far, anyway.

McKay: Temperature inside the shield's rising too fast. I'm already detecting several failed sensors on the bow. Caldwell: If this thing keeps going, the heat build-up could damage the hull. McKay: Not "could." It's already damaging it. We have a breach in the 302 Bay. Caldwell: Seal it off. McKay: Another breach. Deck four -- we're venting atmosphere.

But while things between the two of them may be so far, so good, it seems like everything is currently crumbling all around them, the ship coming apart at the seams. We can note that while McKay and Caldwell are both trying to stay on top of things, are trying to deal with the problems as they arise, Sheppard has once again fallen quiet.

We have noted that Sheppard has a tendency to go quiet when he is overwhelmed by emotion, not wanting people to hear his voice tremble or stutter, needing the maintain an image as the stoic action hero type to his men, to the people he is asked to lead into battle. While he is not in charge here and there is nothing he can do but pray, Sheppard is faced with the fact that he had brought the man that he loves up here, and although he may have had the best of intentions, it seems like he had personally doomed them, like he had brought McKay up here just to die. Sheppard thinks that his love is a death sentence, that he is a death bringer, that he marks the people he loves for death, and it seems like he had managed to do that again. He had damned McKay, and because he had never loved anyone as much as he loved McKay he had always known that it would end up spectacularly badly. It is possible that Sheppard is not even hearing or able to take in what Caldwell and McKay are saying, even if it is a comfort for him to be able to hear McKay's voice in his ear. McKay mentions the word "bow" here, and while they may have started their adventure the other day standing by what had reminded him of the bow of a ship watching the sun set beneath the horizon as he had been reminded of Celine Dion bellowing out a song about her heart going on, Sheppard felt anything but the king of the world right now. He has never been more afraid as he is here.

Continued in Pt. 19

[dr-futbol-blog]

Submersion, Pt. 1

In Submersion (S03E18) the subtext that had given us hints of a relationship between Sheppard and McKay is all but vanished, their relationship now that of bitter ex-lovers that can barely stand to be around each other. Forced to work together, it seems to take them effort to just be friendly toward one another. This episode is also preparation for the finale, setting the stage for the dramatic events therein, the intention here more than anything to put all the players in their proper places for that to take place. We do not know how long it has been since the end of the previous episode, and it had been unclear even there how long it had been since Beckett's untimely and unfortunate death by the final scene where McKay had been alone and lonely looking out to the sea, meaning that we do not know how long the mourning period has been -- not to everyone but not to Sheppard and McKay in particular, given that the two of them seemed to be mourning the untimely and unfortunate death of their intimate relationship at the same time as mourning the passing of their friend.

Teyla: Um... shotgun, is it? McKay: Oh, come on. I don't know why I have to do this.

The episode begins with a view of the city from afar from which the camera is then submerged underwater -- deep in the dark underwater where it seems that Sheppard's team are joined in the submersible jumper with several others for what ever mission they are on. We first get a shot of Weir and Ronon sitting in the jumper hinting at the fact that Weir has taken McKay's usual seat, the seat of the spouse that is also called the shotgun seat, next to Sheppard -- also sometimes seen as the "seat of honour" even though in cars dignitaries are often seated in the back, on the rear right behind the driver. But seating Weir here now and McKay not being seated there currently is not arbitrary, and in fact they call attention to this in the dialogue.

Teyla walks up to McKay who seems to be seated behind Sheppard, in the seat that he had occupied traditionally and before the two of them had started an intimate relationship, the seat that seems to have been reserved for an Ancient science person, with access to scientific instruments in the jumper. McKay seems not to be looking out of the window into the darkness since there does not appear to be much out there for them to look at but is watching Sheppard, looking at the back of his head, perhaps oblivious to the fact that Sheppard may also see him from the reflection in the window. Teyla seems to be inviting herself to sit in his place, which is a curious request to make -- made especially curious by the fact that she does it by calling "shotgun," clearly not understanding what "shotgun" means in the context. Shotgun is meant for the place currently occupied by Weir, being a particularly desired seat, and since we have seen Teyla seated behind Sheppard on many of their missions recently, this suggests both that Teyla has heard McKay call "shotgun" previously while claiming his seat next to Sheppard, and that Teyla feels like McKay had taken up her seat on this mission, and it really is not her problem that someone else had claimed McKay's seat. She should not be relegated to the back of the jumper just because Weir had decided to tag along.

It seems like at some point, after Sheppard and McKay had started their relationship, she and McKay had switched seats, and Teyla had mereley come to claim her own seat now -- from wherever she was coming from. We do not know how long they have been on the way down by this time, albeit they certainly make it seem like it has been a while, and so Teyla may have gotten up to use the restroom or what ever facilities they may or may not have onboard the jumper or even just to stretch her limbs, and McKay may have taken the opportunity to claim her seat when she got up -- using the ancient principle of "you snooze, you lose," or figuring that this was a case of them playing Musical chairs and that the seat was open for anyone to claim once it was vacated. She did not feel like this, however, and all of this just calls attention to the fact that McKay is not seated on what had by this time become his usual seat by Sheppard's side -- Sheppard was no longer extending those boyfriend privileges on him. It seems like Sheppard is petty when it comes to things like that.

McKay reluctantly gets up and gives Teyla (back?) her seat, feeling the need to throw a comment as he leaves, which he seems to direct at Sheppard especially even though he does not seem to expect him to respond -- which he does not. McKay's attitude suggests that this may not even be the first seat he has had to vacate on this journey, and Sheppard may have asked him to give up his seat for Weir earlier. Sheppard loves McKay, that has not changed. He just cannot stand to be around him right now, especially knowing how much he has hurt the other man and unable to deal with his emotions, needing to project about them, needing to lay the blame on McKay for what he had done to him. And so it seems that McKay has no alternative but to move to the back with the unwashed masses, the grunts and redshirts, needing to make it known to everyone that he is doing this under duress.

McKay: What? Zelenka: Nobody said anything. McKay: You don't have to, do you? Look, it's not my fault things are hard to find on the bottom of the ocean. Zelenka: Rodney, you said you knew where it was.

Relegated to the back compartment, McKay takes up a seat that may or may not have been left vacant by Teyla. McKay seems to feel everyone having a negative disposition toward him, responding to what he thinks people are thinking by asking them to spit it out. Zelenka even points out to him that no one had said anything -- and this is another rather clear example of McKay reading people's thoughts.

We had seen McKay develop his seemingly latent ability into full-blown telepathy in Tao of Rodney (S03E14) but we see hints of him catching people's thoughts at least to some extent again and again without anyone thinking there is anything strange going on. Zelenka's comment here seems to lampshade this -- they were doing this on purpose even if it was too subtle for most viewers to pick up on. There is always the chance that McKay is just good at picking up patterns or is able to read people's expressions, possibly due to the hypervigilance he has developed on account of his abusive childhood environment, but it is curious that it keeps happening to him and no one else. And being that he seems able to sense the thoughts of the people around him (but Sheppard's the loudest since he possesses an exceptionally strong Ancient gene), it must feel uncomfortable to the point of being unbearable for him to experience everyone's frustration with him, feeling like everyone is blaming him for the trip taking too long.

McKay: I said I knew its last known location. It is a mobile drilling station, remember? Obviously that's gonna take a few hours. Dex: If we don't find it soon, this is gonna be your last known location. McKay: Oh, zing!

We get some exposition as McKay mentions that they are looking for a moveable drilling platform at the bottom of the ocean, and hence the presence of both Weir and Zelenka on this mission may recall the events of Before I Sleep (S01E15), in which both Zelenka and Sheppard had jumped with Weir from another timeline into this one and had subsequently died at the bottom of the ocean. Their remains, if there is anything left of them, have been beneath the waters for 10 000 years, since the last great battle between the Ancients and the wraith, which is not irrelevant for the events of the episode

Listening in on the conversation, Ronon turns back to make a somewhat unfriendly comment to McKay and McKay makes what seems like an equally hostile response, and we have to address what is going on here. McKay had suffered a tragic loss at the end of the previous episode to which Ronon had seemed sympathetic, and so his treatment of McKay could be seen as callous here -- and it might be by design. We do not know how long it has been since the memorial when Ronon had come to check up on him, but it could be that Ronon is trying to help McKay in his own way, trying to create a sense of normalcy when his break up with Sheppard has thrown all of their lives out of whack. He is not treating McKay like he is fragile, like he is a shrinking violet or a Victorian maiden who needs to be treated delicately.

Ronon could be doing this as a mercy, as callous and annoyed with McKay as he seems. On the other hand, McKay may have been acting particularly prickly recently, and Ronon may be genuinely sick of his antics, telling him that enough is enough and he needs to start acting like a human being again. The third, and I think the most interesting possibility, is that this is the first time Ronon is under water and he is freaking out, he is barely keeping it together because the environment is out of his control in a way it is not when they are in space -- and in this too we may see how similar he and McKay are on a deep level.

We can recall that McKay has a very traumatic memory of being under water and they seem on their way to the bottom now, and this can only remind of his previous experience even though McKay is trying not to show that he is feeling uncomfortable -- and he would not want Sheppard to see him vulnerable right now anyway. McKay had confessed to Sheppard in Echoes (S03E12) that he feels uncomfortable under water, and Sheppard may even be aware of this, even though under the circumstances he cannot react to this in any way, as concerned for McKay as he had seemed then. Ronon's comment of this being or becoming McKay's last known whereabouts also highlights the fact that this is the last known whereabouts of Sheppard and Zelenka from the other timeline. The two of them had perished here, and we are supposed to remember them.

Feeling like everyone has turned on him or that it is pile-up-on-McKay day, feeling the hostility coming at him from all quarters, McKay comments with a sarcastic rejoinder to Ronon, his tone betraying the fact that he too is frustrated by the situation -- quite possibly more frustrated than the others because while they may be bored by what seems to be a wild goose chase, McKay feels all of the blaming him for their current situation, of not having led them directly to their target even though it seems like McKay actually had given them a pretty close ballpark to where they might be able to find this platform that they had obviously found worth checking out, hoping to find information and technology of the Ancients there that might help them with their many and sundry problems.

Feeling like he is being blamed might be familiar and even feel comforting in a way to McKay but he is still acting out under the extreme pressure, unable to keep his thoughts or comments to himself at the best of times. And it must be especially upsetting to him not to have Sheppard's back anymore, not able to count on Sheppard being there for him. McKay may be surrounded by people in this jumper that seems to be filled to the maximum capacity now but he is more alone now even than he had been standing outside alone on the edge of the city in the previous episode. If the others were thinking this would be a long trip, they had no idea how long it was starting to feel like to him.

Continued in Pt. 2

[dr-futbol-blog]

Sunday, Pt. 8

Even though Ronon had left Sheppard's quarters in advance of him, when we find the two of them arriving on what seems to be the site of a major accident it is Sheppard who holds the lead. Because we know that Ronon is generally faster than Sheppard, this indicates that he had been more desperate to arrive at the scene, and even though he does not say anything, we can be fairly sure that his first concern is the same as it always is -- whether is McKay alright. Sheppard may have ended their relationship with the hope that he might be able to focus more on his duties, on keeping the entire city safe, but it is not that easy for a leopard to change its spots -- especially since breaking McKay's heart had not made Sheppard love him any less. He can tell himself that this had been for the better, that his decision would give him the opportunity to focus on his job as the commander of Atlantis, on keeping everybody in two galaxies safe, but we see how Sheppard takes in the wounded as he arrives, checking to see who they are, seeming to be searching for something and not just trying to get on top of the situation.

Dex: What happened here? Beckett: Some sort of explosion. At least three dead; maybe a dozen or so severely injured. Teyla! Sheppard: She gonna be OK, Doc?

It is notable that it is Ronon who has to ask the question of what had happened, and it could be that Sheppard has lost his ability to speak for the moment, as he often seems to do in emotionally overwhelming situations, his voluntary mutism possibly resulting from his childhood and how ever his father had disciplined him when he had been a normal child who may have wanted to cry upon occasion, and partially from him developing a slight stutter when he is overwhelmed and not wanting his men to hear it -- believing that he sets a better example to them as a stone faced commander than a stuttering human mess. Sheppard had taken Ronon in so that Ronon might be able to perform duties when he is unable, and him speaking for Sheppard now could easily be an example of him doing this job.

The scene they arrive at had been the site of an explosion -- the partner of Sheppard's golf buddy Jim had exploded due to some Ancient radiation essentially transforming both of them into living bombs, and she had gone off in the afternoon just following lunch time. Teyla had actually been with her because they had been practicing stick fighting since Weir had cancelled her lunch date with Teyla, and Teyla seems to have survived only because she had suddenly turned back, having forgotten her sticks in the gym. If not for suddenly having remembered what she had forgotten, she would have been the closest person to the exploding woman. But she had still suffered grievous injury, and it seems to be Beckett who detects her among the injured. Sheppard is immediately by her side, sounding distraught now that he forced himself to speak, able only to demand answers from Beckett -- assurances that Teyla would be alright. It is easy to read this scene in the context of what Sheppard and Ronon had just been talking about up in his room on the topic of his love life and whether he is romantically interested in Teyla, since the explosion had gone off just at the right (or wrong, depending one one's point of view) moment, sparing Sheppard from having to respond to Ronon's question of why he and Teyla could never be a thing -- or what ever it is that he was about to say on the topic.

Beckett: She's lost a great deal of blood. We're gonna need to get her to the Infirmary stat. Sheppard: Is she gonna be alright? Beckett: Let's go. Let's move!

Sheppard's worry could be described as almost excessive here, a real desperation in his voice as he pleads for Beckett to tell him that Teyla is going to be alright. Sheppard does care about Teyla a great deal, and so it would be easy to interpret him as revealing his true feelings toward her here, the emergency and her dire condition bringing out the love that he feels for her even though he pretends never to show it ordinarily. Only, this is not the first time that we have seen Teyla in mortal peril or even knocking on death's door, and we may recall that when Sheppard had stopped by Teyla's seeming deathbed in Echoes (S03E12), it looked to be the first time he had given her a single thought during the entire episode and he had only a moment to spare by her side at the time. Sheppard does care about Teyla, but his behaviour here is not romantic and it is not ultimately motivated by her.

Let us appreciate the fact that Sheppard has no idea what has happened here, not sporting his earpiece on his day off and having received no news beyond Beckett just having told him that there had been an explosion that had claimed three lives and injured dozens severely -- two of them that he has seen with his own eyes. In other words, Sheppard does not know that McKay is not one of them and as it is, he does not feel like he can ask -- he cannot bring himself to even speak his name. He does not feel like he is in a position to ask after having ended their relationship, even though it must be the foremost thought on his mind -- his worst fear -- like it always has been. Ending their relationship had not changed that. And seeing Teyla had just ramped up his fear because if Teyla had been one of the injured, it is entirely possible that McKay had been there too. For all he knew, Teyla had been so shifty before because she was going to have lunch with Weir and McKay. Sheppard knows McKay well enough to know when he usually eats lunch (hence not having wanted to be at the commissary at the same time as him), not knowing that McKay had not been there because he had been eating lunch elsewhere at the time. What is more, having seen Beckett on the scene meant that McKay was not on the mainland fishing with the guy, which is what Sheppard had still thought might have been the case on their way over here. Seeing Beckett tending to the wounded had immediately made his internal alarm go up a whole notch.

But what is most harrowing of all here for Sheppard is that as he sees Teyla, her injury reminds him of what he had done to McKay in Phantoms (S03E09). It was intentional that we never got to see Sheppard's initial reaction to seeing McKay's injury and his realization that he had been the cause of it because it must have been absolutely devastating to him. We had not seen Sheppard until he had a moment to process it, when he had been desperate to find Beckett in the forest so that the man might come fix McKay, come tell him how bad it was -- whether he was going to be alright. It is not incidental that Teyla appears to have her injury on the same side, almost in the same place as McKay because this is bringing up memories for him -- this is bringing up feelings that he finds difficult to fight down. And do not miss the way Beckett does not actually respond to Sheppard's question here, which is odd. He glances up at Sheppard's face and looks concerned, and it is possible that he does not say anything because he knows that he does not know. Beckett is not able to make any promises here, and he expects Sheppard to know that he would naturally do his best -- he would always try to save everyone he could but especially someone he knew personally.

Sheppard had only recently found Beckett cradling one of his men in the forest trying desperately to keep him alive, and so Beckett expects him to understand that the answer to his question is "I'll do my best." But that is simply not what Sheppard wants to hear here -- he wants reassurance. He actually needs someone to tell him that it is going to be alright, and not just about Teyla -- even though Teyla does contain a lot of symbolic value to him too. If he had failed to keep Teyla alive and safe a week after ending his relationship with McKay with the excuse that focusing all of his attention on McKay made it more difficult for him to keep everyone safe, it would only highlight what a huge mistake he had made. Of course there is also the possibility that Beckett is able to read Sheppard's emotions here since he seems to be emoting very strongly, and it is even possible that he is confused by what he is receiving from Sheppard since he had not known that Sheppard had felt like this about Teyla -- because most of what he is feeling here is not generated by her, he is only projecting it on her in the moment.

Sheppard: What the hell happened here, Radek? Zelenka: There was an explosion. Sheppard: I get that, but why? Zelenka: Well, I'm not sure yet. I wasn't allowed on the scene until the emergency crews cleared the floor. What took you so long? Sheppard: The transporters are down and there's a lot of stairs.

Beckett and his team leave them, intent on taking good care of Teyla and the rest of the injured, and Sheppard has a moment to look absolutely distraught. But seeming to still be scanning his environment for something, he then lands on Zelenka and approaches him, demanding answers from him -- his expletive revealing just how intensely he needs to know the answer to the most important question, even if he cannot voice it. He needs Zelenka to understand what he is asking without needing to come out and say it -- even if seeing Zelenka so calmly studying the debris already suggests to him that McKay had not been one of the wounded or the dead. Sheppard has seen how much Zelenka cares about McKay (more even that he feels strictly speaking comfortable with), and so he eases marginally just seeing that Zelenka, who has been at the site longer, is not broken up about it.

Zelenka tells Sheppard that there had been an explosion, which Sheppard can see for himself, showing once again how Zelenka is not as good at communicating pertinent information to Sheppard as McKay is. Zelenka is an intelligent man but there is no one who knows Sheppard as well as McKay does, and Sheppard finds himself constantly disappointed when other people fail to act or to respond to him the same way as McKay does -- which is just the way he wants him to. And because it seems like Zelenka does not have the answers that Sheppard is looking for here, he seems to join the party in figuring it out for himself, grabbing one of the flashlights from the floor to get a better look at what had happened -- and to be sure, as a soldier he does have some expertise when it comes to explosives.

But I will call your attention especially to what Zelenka says here about it having taken an unexpectedly long time for Sheppard and Ronon to get to the site. Obviously Zelenka had expected Sheppard to get there quicker, and Sheppard explains that it was because the transporters were down and that they had to take a lot of stairs to get there -- which is fair enough. But for Zelenka to comment on this means that they are more than fashionably late to the scene, which again seems to confirm the location of Sheppard's quarters by the edge of the city on one the promontories and that it takes at least one but possibly two trips on a transporter to get from there to the central spire. The explosion must have happened somewhere near the mess hall and the mess hall has to be at a central location -- which Sheppard's quarters are not. But Zelenka's comment here does not just betray the fact that Sheppard's quarters are a long way from the central spire but also hints at the fact that Sheppard had, until very recently, lived somewhere much closer. It seems like Zelenka expected Sheppard to have gotten here quicker on his day off -- having expected him to be somewhere closer. It is not impossible that Zelenka straight up knows that Sheppard had been living together with McKay.

Zelenka: McKay is in his lab. He thinks he might have a lead. Sheppard: What kind of lead? Zelenka: He didn't say. The good news is, though, the structure is intact, so there's no danger of the tower falling down. There is, however, something very odd. Dex: What?

It could be because Zelenka does know McKay so well and has been able to observe Sheppard when it comes to him -- having even been dragged to the bottom of the ocean to save the man's life in Grace Under Pressure (S02E14) when Zelenka had been fairly sure that Sheppard would expend both of their lives trying to save McKay, having seen how desperate he was to save him -- that Zelenka then does answer the question that Sheppard had been unable to voice so far: he tells him that McKay is safely in his lab and is working on this. McKay being in his lab and having sent Zelenka here when normally he might have been at the scene himself is not arbitrary because it seems like they are both almost as though avoiding each other at this time, they are avoiding having to say the other's name and are even trying to avoid having the other's name come up in conversations, which is quite typical post-break up behaviour. On any normal day McKay would gladly have been right on the site trying to figure this one out but now he had preferred to stay in his lab instead -- and it is not even impossible that he had been by the site already and had time to leave given that he had been closer to the scene, having left Zelenka to hold up the fort and do the job he might have normally done himself.

Note that as Sheppard asks what kind of lead McKay had, he quite pointedly avoids mentioning McKay, not asking about him but about the thing, and he carefully avoids looking at Zelenka when he speaks the question as though pretending that his attention is on the wall. He is affecting a casual air as he asks the question, which only tells us that he is feeling anything but casual -- Sheppard only needs to perform not being interested in something or not caring about something when he does care very much, and there is nothing he cares about more than McKay even though he is trying to pretend like there is anything normal about the two of them trying to solve this thing on their own when this is the kind of thing that on any normal day, the two of them would have tried to solve together. Zelenka does not actually know what McKay's lead had been and is unable to report his theory to Sheppard so that the two of them could start workshopping this via proxy. Note also that what Zelenka says about the structure being sound and withstanding this quite massive explosion is also true of the show -- and of their relationship. The foundation is sturdy enough that it can withstand the kind of really rather drastic roadblock that they had introduced on the course of true love right now.

Zelenka: Well, the few eye witness reports that we have say that Doctor Hewston just... blew up. Sheppard: What the hell does that mean? Dex: How is that even possible? Zelenka: Yeah, normally I would agree with you but from what we can tell, she was standing right in the middle of the hall here and just exploded.

Zelenka explains to them that the explosion seems to have been caused by a woman just blowing up -- and we may note here that the woman who had been practicing stick-fighting with Teyla seems to be a narrative mirror for Sheppard and the man who had been playing golf next to Sheppard where we had seen McKay's lookalike previously seems to be a narrative mirror for McKay.

Both of them had an explosive tumour on account of what they had done together alone in the night -- and McKay later calls Doctor Hewston Jimbo's "partner" and does not seem to be referring to lab partners -- making it really quite concerning that one of them had just combusted. What is more, she had exploded with no forewarning and no one had been able to anticipate anything being wrong. Let us note that for all McKay is devastated both by the events of this day but also seemingly the past week, of what had happened between himself and Sheppard of which we only get hints, McKay is much better at expressing genuine emotions than Sheppard is. For all he may cope through dissociation, McKay works through his emotions and does not bury them inside the way Sheppard does. McKay may often take them out on others but he does take them out and does not bury them inside to fester. There is a metaphor here for the two of them, and it is very concerning what it says about Sheppard in particular that his mirror should just explode with no forewarning.

Sheppard: So, what, a suicide bomb? Zelenka: Well, see, no. That's what I thought too originally, but I've scanned the area with my equipment and there isn't even the slightest trace of explosive residue. We have no idea what we're dealing with here.

Trying to get to the bottom of this and needing to understand why this had happened, Sheppard arrives at the possibility of a suicide bomb -- which is not altogether different from the crisis they had to deal with in Critical Mass (S02E12). For all he knows, there might have been another Goa'uld to have attempted to infiltrate the city even if the devastation seems --thankfully -- relatively small this time. But Zelenka disabuses him of the notion that this had been any explosive device -- and for sure both of them know that there are many ways to blow up the entire city that does not involve explosives -- seeming to at least rule out any ordinary human terrorist or insurgent.

What is interesting here is that they use the catch word "suicide," which had been so prominently featured in the previous episode where "Sammy Suicide" had fired up his rockets and blown himself up -- Herick too having been a narrative mirror for Sheppard in his grief. It seems like the point of Herick was to reflect what Sheppard might be like if he ever lost McKay, the darkest mirror for when he hits rock bottom, and so having his narrative mirror blow up again seems like a reflection of this, tying the episodes together. Sheppard had gone on what both of them would refer to as "suicide missions" in The Prodigal (S05E15), McKay seeming to make light of Sheppard having the tendency to take on these kinds of missions -- and if we were to ask his ex-wife, it is possible that he had been undertaking missions of this nature long before he had ever arrived in Atlantis. McKay had certainly thought that that is what Sheppard had been willing to do to save Teyla -- to take on an insurmountable mission with the odds stacked up against him.

But while it is easy to see what Sheppard does when he undertakes these kinds of stunts as "suicide missions," what Zelenka points out here is important -- that is not really what had happened. Sheppard had never set out to destroy himself, he had never wanted to die -- like he had explicitly told Ronon in the previous episode. Sheppard's overwhelming emotions had driven him to make a choice that he had felt had been the only one available to him at the time, but he had never wanted to die. And Sheppard keeps his cards so close to his chest that most people in his life have no idea what motivates him to do most of the things he does -- even when it is always the same thing. It is always McKay, and even if he had once wanted to shout about it from the rooftops, he is currently bitterly aware that he would never be allowed to let anyone know this even if he wanted to. And as it was, there was no longer anything to tell anyone anyway.

Continued in Pt. 9

[dr-futbol-blog]

Echoes, Pt. 3

We get further scenes between Ronon and Teyla where they are first practicing some form of stick fighting (this time with single sticks instead of two batons like we have seen her practice with Sheppard before) and in which Ronon gets promptly his ass handed to him, and then the two of them walking down the stairs possibly from the gym engaged in a companionable chat while Teyla runs into the same echoes as she had encountered before, now witnessed by Ronon who does not see what she sees. There are some connections between this episode and The Gift (S01E18), and since so far Teyla is the only one seeing these echoes the viewer is invited to speculate whether it has something to do with her wraith DNA and the vaguely psychic powers it has awarded her. While Teyla and Ronon are "friends, nothing more" like Teyla had stated herself in Trinity (S02E06), a possible connection between them is certainly teased in this episode -- and it seems to be misdirection given the developing connection between her and another. What is striking in the episode is that Ronon and Teyla seem to be left mostly to their own devices since Sheppard and McKay appear to be completely engrossed with each other's company. They spend most of this episode with each other.

As mentioned, Teyla later says that she had seen the first echo around the time that McKay had spotted his whale friend swimming outside of the city. Whether or not McKay actually had been whale-spotting the previous night when Teyla had seen the echo for the very first time, this scene seems to coincide with Teyla encountering the echo of a badly burned Ancient in the hallway with Ronon. We join McKay just as Sheppard walks up to him, McKay standing on the edge of a balcony of some kind, resting his leg on the railing -- indicating that he may have been there for a while. Because he is observing what seems to be a whale that is swimming around the city, it would make sense for him to have taken up position at the end of one of the promontories, far away from the central spire. And Sheppard has come all that way to meet him because apparently McKay had asked him to, without even knowing what for.

Later on in The Shrine (S05E06) we learn that Sheppard and McKay used to enjoy beers together hanging out at the edge of the city because Sheppard tells McKay that he likes beer a lot, and his intention seems to have been to recreate something familiar for McKay, something that the two of them had done often. In Sunday (S03E17), we also learn through the parallel of Weir and the random scientist that is introduced in the episode for this specific purpose that Sheppard and McKay used to have dates out by the water. We had seen Sheppard romancing what he had thought was an alien priestess with food and drink that he knew were McKay's favourites while being mind-controlled by her in Sanctuary (S01E14), and because she seemed jealous of McKay, her creating something that Sheppard had done with McKay following the two of them getting together at the end of The Defiant One (S01E12) would not be out of place. All of this is to say that Sheppard might have assumed McKay had invited him to come out for beers, even if it is the middle of the day and he seems to be working, even if he had told him that he had something to show him. Sheppard was not going to say no a mid-day rendezvous with McKay even if he was on duty. But it does not seem like McKay has any beers with him, instead peering out into the sea with a pair of binoculars.

Sheppard walks up to McKay and parks right next to him -- and pay attention to how close he comes to stand. Even if it was Sheppard's intention to try to see what McKay is seeing, there is no need for him to stand that close. A heterosexual man would not choose to stand this close to their platonic friend or co-worker, or what ever we are meant to think that the two of them are to one another. As a matter of fact, Sheppard comes to stand slightly behind McKay, boxing him in between himself and the railing, and the the reason he does not touch McKay is because he had made the decision to tease the boy that he likes by not announcing his coming, wanting to surprise him, to see how long it would take McKay to realize he was right there.

I have mentioned before that we get few scenes where Sheppard and McKay are alone together (this episode seems to contain more of them than any other), and there is always some attenuating circumstance that precludes them from acting the way they normally might around each other. And here it is Sheppard's kidding that makes him approach McKay in a different way than he might normally do when the two of them were alone together at a place where no one is able to oversee them. Sheppard does not touch McKay because he wants to surprise him since McKay had been so engrossed as to not even notice his coming.

And as we have noted before, Sheppard is a jealous, needy man who does not like to share McKay's attention. He had confessed in Aurora (S02E09) that he does not like to be ignored and in Epiphany (S02E12) that he has serious abandonment issues, and he was not kidding about that. Both in The Hive (S02E11) and Common Ground (S03E07) we had also noted that Sheppard is hurt when McKay does not welcome him enthusiastically, when he does not tell him he had missed him, tell him that it is good to see him, that he is glad to see him. And this explains Sheppard's need to tease McKay here, his need to pull at his pigtails. Sheppard is slightly hurt by not being welcomed with open arms by McKay and being ignored by him in favour of something else when he had come all this way just because McKay had asked him to, and so he decides to act like a child about it. Note the way he lifts up his jaw as he looks out into the distance here. He is actually hurt not being acknowledged by McKay. This is not him thinking he is being funny but him trying to hide his hurt.

Note also that the railing they are standing by resembles the bow of a ship, and this seems to be on purpose. I will return to this later.

McKay: Huh! Hey. How long have you been standing there? Sheppard: Hour or so. McKay: What? Why didn't you say anything? I feel like a... Oh. It's the kidding. Sheppard: What did you wanna show me? McKay: Right there.

McKay pulls back from the railing and almost certainly bumps into some part of Sheppard that we cannot see inside the frame of the shot given how close Sheppard was standing half behind him. McKay actually seems surprised that Sheppard had been able to sneak up on him, witnessing only to how engrossed by the whale he had been since we have noted that the Ancient gene seems to give him some form of latent telepathy and that he has an especially strong connection to Sheppard, seeming almost able to sense him. And it is entirely possible that he thinks here that he should have been able to sense Sheppard coming. While McKay had been expecting Sheppard to come, apparently having invited him here specifically, he clearly had not been expecting Sheppard to be able to sneak up on him like this.

Instead of welcoming Sheppard or telling him how nice it is to see him, which is what Sheppard longs to hear, McKay asks him how long he had been standing here, which is not categorically different from him greeting Sheppard with "Why aren't you dead?" in The Hive, to Sheppard's obvious upset. This results from the two of them having a never-ending conversation that they only ever pause, and again while McKay does say "Hey" to Sheppard, it is not intended as a greeting to restart a conversation so much as it is a term of affection, a caress in verbal form. But Sheppard is hurt enough to respond to McKay facetiously with "An hour or so," which is an obviously untrue statement even though it takes McKay a beat to parse it as one. While Sheppard is being sarcastic, this is not how he usually uses sarcasm -- usually he very much means what he says and merely needs some distance to his emotions whereas here he has not factually been here for an hour or so. It is, however, possible that he had been bereft of contact with McKay for an hour or so or that it felt like he had been there for ever being ignored by McKay, so while he is not being factual, his assessment may still be truthful.

It may result from McKay expecting Sheppard to be truthful with him, to never lie to him, that he expects him to be telling the truth even when he is clearly not. We have also seen that McKay tends to interpret things fairly literally and it has been only his acquaintance with Sheppard that McKay has started understand sarcasm. Regardless, it takes a beat for McKay to understand that Sheppard was not being truthful, and he is able to name what Sheppard is doing as "the kidding." This suggests that Sheppard has done this before, and has done this enough times that McKay has had to name and shame the practice. It is quite possible that they have had to talk about this before because it runs the chance that Sheppard has wound up hurting McKay unintentionally in the past, his emotional constipation and McKay's emotional incontinence naturally coming to clash. Sheppard needs some distance to his emotions lest he be overwhelmed, and the way he accomplishes this using sarcasm can be quite hurtful if one does not understand what he is doing. Combined with McKay's difficulty understanding things that are not intended to be interpreted literally, this may easily be a recipe for disaster. But McKay seems to understand that this is what Sheppard is doing here and that he has a tendency to do this, and while it may frustrate him and he may not appreciate it, he does get it. Sheppard is kidding. Sheppard tends to kid around. He does not mean anything by it.

This episode has to be one of those whiplash-inducing episodes for the general viewer where they cannot be quite sure what Sheppard thinks about McKay, what their relationship is like, how Sheppard regards him. Does Sheppard suffer McKay or does he actually like him deep down inside? If Sheppard finds him annoying and irritating to be around, why does it seem like he is seeking out McKay's company voluntarily? It is strange that McKay had assumed Sheppard would care about something that he cares about. It is strange for McKay to have invited Sheppard here in the middle of nowhere just to check out something that he finds interesting. It is pretty presumptive for McKay to invite the military commander of Atlantis to take time out of his day to come check out something that interests him personally. And it is even more strange that Sheppard would do that, that he actually had taken time off his day to come check something out without a hint as to what it is, why McKay had wanted to meet him up out in the boonies.

This, what happens here? Really only makes sense in the context of an intimate relationship between the two of them. McKay is able to invite Sheppard on the assumption that he is going to care about what he has to show him on account of them being in a relationship. When two people are in a relationship, there is an unspoken agreement that you care about things that are important to the other person -- or at least you pretend to care (but when you actually love someone, you do care about the things they care about because they become a part of you; when two people are together they form one organism and try to make their disparate parts fit together). This is not McKay assuming that Sheppard is going to care about something just because he cares about it and Sheppard just indulging him because the poor guy does not know any better, he is so bad with human relationships that he does not even get that people do not like him -- as suggested in his conversation with Rod in McKay and Mrs Miller (S03E08). This is not Sheppard indulging McKay's particular interest in his role as team leader and someone who wants to keep McKay happy because they need his genius to save them from tight spots on the regular. Sheppard is here because he wants to be where McKay is. Sheppard cares about the things McKay cares about because he loves him. It is just that simple.

And because it is just that simple, Sheppard ignores McKay trying to apologize in his own way for not having acknowledged Sheppard, launching right back into that never-ending conversation of theirs, picking up a thread of conversation they had clearly already been having. We do not know how McKay had invited Sheppard here, whether it had happened over radio (we cannot see either of them wearing their radio and while they probably should have them on as leaders of their respective departments that people might need to reach for any number of the reasons, we have also seen before e.g., in The Gift that they have chosen not to wear the radios when they are in each other's company) or whether McKay had asked Sheppard to join him here later back when they had been together earlier in the day -- perhaps even when they had been in their shared quarters before starting the day, what ever the logistics of that had been.

Important is that Sheppard knew to come here because McKay had asked him to accompany him, and it is because he knew McKay had wanted to show him something. He holds out his hand for McKay to give him the binoculars without asking for them, this being a part of the wordless communication between them. When they are alone together they speak using words but they also speak not using words, multiple channels open between them. Note also that while the binoculars are a rather wide object, their fingers almost touch when McKay hands them over because both of them are are almost as though trying to stretch their fingers out to make contact with the other on purpose, whether they actually connect or not.

Sheppard: Wow! McKay: Hmm! Sheppard: All that... water! McKay: Just wait for it. It's my friend. He's back.

Taking the binoculars without another word or question Sheppard looks at the direction McKay is pointing at (and we should note that he hands them over with his right but points with his left hand, left seeming the more dominant of the two), and while Sheppard trusted that McKay had invited him for a reason and was asking him to actually look at something, he cannot resist teasing the boy that he loves some more. And this is Sheppard trying to be funny, this is him flirting by poking fun at McKay. Although Sheppard sees nothing but water, he is pretending like seeing all that water had been well worth him coming all this way and that even if this had been the beginning and the end of it, McKay's company itself would have been well worth the trouble. But of course McKay had not invited him to come look at all that water but had an actual reason for wanting him to come, and Sheppard is soon able to see what McKay had wanted him to see. And here we again see their fundamentally different timetables, Sheppard anxious to get to the good part already where McKay urges him to have patience, that it is well worth the wait when something amazing is in store for them.

McKay had been observing a whale-like creature swimming outside the city, and he suggests that it is the same as had led Zelenka and Sheppard to him in Grace Under Pressure (S02E4), which both of them had actually seen swimming above them when Sheppard had been helping McKay from the crashed jumper into the one that they had come to rescue him in. McKay calls the giant fish his friend, and we see that Sheppard turns his face toward McKay, probably ready to make some kind of a quip -- but he then thinks better of it, and actually keeps what ever he had intended to say to himself. Something about McKay's tone stops Sheppard dead in his tracks.

Sheppard smiles fondly hearing the soft tone that McKay uses, and it is obvious for anyone to hear that this is important to him. Sheppard may need to wisecrack to get some distance to his own emotions, to keep from feeling mushy, quite possibly to keep that voice that sounds suspiciously like the voice of his father inside his head from calling him a big girl or something worse. But Sheppard loves McKay and wants only the best for him, he wants to be a good partner and a boyfriend for him, and whether it results from lessons he had learned through his divorce or not, he knows when to keep quiet. This is not about him, this is a chance for him to be there for someone else.

But make no mistake, hearing McKay talk about someone or something else with these tones does also make Sheppard feel mighty jealous. Sheppard is jealous of the fish. We see later just how jealous of the fish he is. No one had ever accused Sheppard of being too mature, rarely even of acting his age. And yet another reason for Sheppard to choose to say nothing is that what McKay says, "He came back" must pull at his heartstrings a lot what with his abandonment issues. It had been McKay coming back for him in The Defiant One that had made him give in to his growing love for his new friend, had made him decide to give it a chance, and that keeps him coming back again and again for McKay even at the bottom of the ocean, never wanting to let him go. He would always come back for McKay but what had astonished him was that McKay had kept coming back for him.

McKay for his part sounds wistful to the point of being awed as he calls the fish his friend, certain that it is the very same one that had saved him. And it is entirely possible that he is right about that since they seemed to have formed some kind of a psychic rapport at the time, him and the fish. Teyla's wraith DNA makes her sensitive to their psychic powers and McKay's Ancient DNA seems to give him latent telepathy so it makes sense that the two of them would be the first to sense the giant fish attempting to contact them using their psychic powers, even if McKay never does see the echoes himself. Teyla and McKay are the first people in the city that the fish manifest themselves to and slowly but surely they all succumb to their attempts to communicate.

Continued in Pt. 4

[dr-futbol-blog]

Echoes, Pt. 4

In between McKay showing Sheppard the big fish and when they meet again there is a scene in the sick bay where Ronon had brought Teyla to get checked out. Beckett has been running brain scans on her and Weir is there concerned but there is a decided absence of her team leader checking up on her. Sheppard is nowhere to be found so we can surmise that he was still with McKay at this time and that the two of them were out of radio contact, since they would almost certainly have tried to hail Sheppard to get him to the infirmary. The next we find Sheppard he is walking with Weir, getting an update from her about Teyla's situation, which means that even by this time he has not been to see her personally. Sheppard is wearing the same t-shirt as he had out at the edge of the city with McKay but notice how his collar is pulled to the side and down almost like… someone had been pulling at it. But what ever he has done in the meanwhile, it certainly was not with her. It seems like Sheppard was getting the skinny from her because he had been away, and that their conversation had not gone on for long before they now run into an excited McKay.

Sheppard: Is she gonna be OK? Weir: I don't know. Hopefully she just needs some rest. We've all been through quite a lot. McKay: There you are! Weir: Rodney, I told you-- McKay: Oh, no, not you. I mean Sheppard. Weir: Thank you!

They run across McKay who seems to have been looking for Sheppard, wanting to show him something -- and this does not necessitate a very long absence between them, just long enough for McKay to have done some digging up from the database while Sheppard was catching up on his work. Weir's reaction tells us that she had not seen McKay ever since telling him no more e-mails earlier, and it seems like not only had McKay respected her wishes not to pester her with the topic any further, he had put it entirely out of his mind. He had not even been thinking about the ZPMs after being told no.

McKay had not been looking for her at all, and tells her as much with less than appropriate tact, and she seems to take some offense at being so sidelined even if she seems mostly amused by his excitable state. But McKay is just so excited about what he had found that he cannot wait to share it with Sheppard, again with the assumption that Sheppard would or should care about it just as much as he does. Note the way McKay gestures at Sheppard as he mentions him by name, pointing at him from across Weir, seeming to stretch his neck to be able to see the man from over her head. Sheppard seems somewhat uncomfortable with the way McKay is approaching him here in public and in sight of everyone, and we should note that "There you are!" is still not the kind of welcome that Sheppard desires from McKay. Pay also attention to the fact that Sheppard is and had been walking with his hand in his pocket on Weir's side, needing to keep it as a barrier between them, blocking her off from his soft and sensitive parts.

McKay: Oh, I mean, not that I don't wanna talk to you. Well, you can be a part of this conversation. In fact, I think you'll probably find it every bit as interesting... Sheppard: What are you saying? McKay: Check it out. Found it in the Ancient database.

McKay stumbles over his explanation in his excitement and takes his time getting to the point -- to Sheppard's enduring frustration -- and we can see McKay's idiosyncratic way of associating here, how his mind bounces from one thing to the next. We had seen something similar taking place when McKay had returned from Ford's planet while hopped up on enzyme in The Hive (S02E11), trying and failing to explain himself to Weir, circling around what he needed her to understand and never getting to the point because one tangent seems to lead to another.

And let us be clear that it is McKay taking his sweet time getting to the point here that frustrates Sheppard, not McKay's presence or that he had come to him, wanting to share something important with him with the enthusiasm of a child -- and certainly not the fact that he had interrupted his conversation with Weir. Sheppard does care about things that are important to McKay, and even if this was not the case, their spheres of interest seem similar enough that they naturally gravitate to the same topics, and their conversation remains interesting because while their interests are shared, they come at them from different perspectives and points of view -- something that has facilitated their close relationship, however you want to interpret it. Sheppard sounds frustrated and impatient as he cuts McKay off with "What are you saying?" essentially telling him to spit it out already, but this is because he is actually eager to know.

Sheppard wants to hear what McKay had come to tell him and it seemed to take him so long getting to the point that Sheppard needed to get his attention back on the topic (and himself), thinking he had spent quite enough time with the teasing and foreplay already -- not for the first time. But note that the reason McKay seems to feel the need to do this is because he has poor self-esteem, he has an assumption that people do not like listening to him and do not care what he has to say, and so he has to sell the topic itself as something really interesting to Weir to excuse to himself why he is taking up time from her day to talk to her. He has to justify taking up her time whereas with Sheppard, because the two of them are in an intimate relationship, there is a natural assumption that they get access to each other's time and attention. But while Sheppard does not need McKay to fluff him up to get him interested in what ever McKay might have to say, he is not keen on watching him fluff up other people in front of him. And so McKay whips it out and shows them.

McKay: They have a whole subsection on indigenous Lantean animal life. Did you know that there was a lobster-like crustacean down there the size of a Buick? Weir: Hmm! And what is that? Sheppard: That's Rodney's whale friend.

And so we get to observe the rub. McKay explains excitedly what he had discovered, still seeming to take a detour even though now Sheppard knows what he is talking about, having only needed to see the picture McKay had been holding up for them to understand what this was about. Sheppard looks like he had been sucking on a lemon all of a sudden, unable to look at McKay or thinking -- as they both are prone to do -- that if he does not meet McKay's eyes that the other man will not be able to read his thoughts right off of his face even though Sheppard is broadcasting his every thought here up to outer space. He looks physically uncomfortable, almost squirming, barely able to keep his thoughts to himself. And when Weir asks McKay what the picture was that he had shown them since this was starting to sound interesting and somewhat relevant if not acute for this precise moment in time, Sheppard cannot help bitterly commenting on McKay's whale friend.

Sheppard is jealous. Sheppard is jealous of the big fish that McKay had called his friend. Sheppard is jealous of this fish that McKay is giving his time and this attention to. He is purposefully using a dismissive tone in referring to the whale friend but at the same time displaying his superior knowledge of McKay. Sheppard was in on McKay's show-and-tell, he seems to know precisely what McKay is talking about, witnessing to the fact that this was a topic the two of them had broached before (as we had seen them do but which Weir did not know), and that this was a topic of conversation the two of them were picking up from before. Sheppard is able to translate McKay's meaning to Weir, cutting to the heart of the matter since McKay still seemed to be circling around the actual topic he wanted to talk about. Sheppard smiles as he finally meets McKay's eyes and while he may be aiming for supportive, he may even sound fond since McKay having this childlike enthusiasm must be wonderful for Sheppard to witness, he still manages to look like someone who had just bitten into sour grapes. Sheppard may be mocking McKay for thinking of a whale as his friend but he is the one jealous of this whale.

McKay: Ah, but not actually a whale. Whale-like, but not a mammal. It's a fish. It's a big, big fish. Sheppard: Did the Ancients have a name for it? McKay: Yeah. Flagecallus. I know -- they were terrible at naming things. I've just... I've just called it "whale" for now.

Sheppard betrays the fact that he actually is invested in the topic and is curious to find out more about it by the fact that he asks McKay a question about it, whereas if he thought this was a waste of time and some childish pursuit of a guy he tries to avoid and does not want to spend his time with, he would not ask, he would not make an effort to keep this conversation going. But that has never been Sheppard, he actually very much enjoys his conversations with McKay, McKay is his favourite person, and later on in the season when he can no longer have these conversations with McKay we see him try to use both Teyla and Ronon to fill in the void left by McKay and come out dissatisfied. McKay is like a force of nature as a conversant, he is quite unique as a conversation partner, and Sheppard appreciates that about him.

McKay seems uncomfortable as he shares with them the name the Ancients had given the fish that he had found in the database, seeming to almost blush. The fish had been called flagecallus, which may be a combination of flagellum for "whip" and callus for "hard skin." Flagellum is also the tail of the spermatozoid and may invite an association with the word "flaccid," so the name the Ancients had given to the fish may sound somewhat naughty to him -- especially since McKay has already seen what the fish are packing. Of course in noting that the Ancients were terrible in naming things McKay is calling back to Inferno (S02E19) where they had discovered the Ancient warship Hippaforalcus named after the Ancient general Hippaforalcus, which Sheppard had then renamed as the Orion.

It seems like McKay thinks that Sheppard is much better at naming things than the Ancients, even if he had some ideas of his own for the name of the ship at the time. And it seems like Sheppard agrees with McKay's assessment of this being a bad name, and note that although Sheppard does not say a word it seems like again McKay is able to read his thoughts just from looking at his face. There is a part of their conversation that always seems to happen entirely without words. And note that Sheppard's thoughts sure seemed to go somewhere naughty as he hears the Ancient name of the fish.

Weir: And why are you studying this? McKay: Oh, ‘cause he's out there right now, circling the city. Sheppard and I saw him. Probably the very same whale that saved me last year when I was trapped in that submerged jumper. Sheppard: I thought Zelenka and I saved you? McKay: Well, you did, technically, but only after Sam led you to me.

Weir feels like she is still missing half the story that both McKay and Sheppard are clearly in on, and she asks why he is pursuing this even knowing that she might not even want to know the answer because she, along with everyone else in the city, have given up trying to understand what Sheppard and McKay get up to a long time ago. It is only now that McKay gets to the actual point, which is telling her that he had seen the whale outside and he had been researching the whale because it was a present and actual issue for the city currently. The fish may not have been threatening the city but it was something new, and all of their job was to learn new things about Atlantis and the Ancients.

McKay suggests that the fish that is circling the city is the very same one that had saved him -- and as mentioned, he may well be right about this. It was the intention of the fish to warn the inhabitants of the city of the impending disaster, and since the fish had likely used its psychic powers to project itself in the visage of Samantha Carter into the jumper to converse with McKay, it may have felt a connection to him and had been the first one to come and warn them. McKay recalls the events of Grace Under Pressure (S02E14), which had been harrowing to both himself and Sheppard, and it was only in Phantoms (S03E09) that we had learned -- or would learn -- exactly how harrowing the experience had been for Sheppard, who had been convinced that history had been about to repeat itself and he was about to lose another lover, helpless to save them.

And this is why Sheppard is mortally wounded to hear McKay say now that he thought the fish had saved him instead of himself -- he throws Zelenka's name there to take some of the edge off his words, but he means mostly himself -- even though he tries his best to disguise how much these words hurt him. Sheppard's face suddenly becomes like stone here, his voice a flat monotone, and although he is so clearly hurt this whole exchange is played for comedy. They went through all that trouble and McKay thanks the fish, cares more about the fish, thinks the fish was his saviour. Sheppard was fast staring to hate this fish, but it is not until McKay lets slip that he calls the fish Sam to himself that the green monster truly raises its head. He has to wonder whether McKay is doing this on purpose since he manages to hit so many of Sheppard's sore spots at one and the same time.

Weir: Sam? McKay: Uh, it's the whale. I named him -- after Sam... antha Carter. Personal reasons. Sheppard: You named him after Samantha Carter? McKay: Well, Sam's a boy's name too.

McKay let it slip that he calls the fish Sam and Weir finds this curious, asking him about it and forcing him to admit that he had named it after Samantha Carter. Sheppard is immediately seething mad. To say that Sheppard is jealous of the connection McKay and Carter have is to downplay it. We had seen Sheppard's face sour the first time that McKay had spoken her name in his presence in Childhood's End (S01E06), and regardless of whether or not Sheppard knows that nothing has ever taken place between the two of them (beyond Carter kissing his cheek and McKay's hallucination of Carter trying to seduce him), Sheppard hates her.

We had seen in The Pegasus Project just how much Sheppard resents her, even though the two of them should be fast friends as Air Force officers of similar rank, for Carter being a beautiful and brilliant scientist who every man she meets falls in love with. I have discussed it many times, but it seems like McKay had actually thought that Carter was a gay woman in the closet in the military, and he had thought he was doing both of them a favour in publicly hitting on her, in letting people think that he was crassly and sexually interested in her where most of his comments were coming from his feelings of inferiority connected to beautiful and intelligent women -- like his sister, and quite possibly his mother. McKay had never actually found her sexually attractive because women are not on McKay's radar like that, his pursuit of her purely performative.

But he has learned to both see her as a human being and to grow to like her during their acquaintance, even to respect her as a fellow scientist. Carter is many things that McKay wishes he were, able to effortlessly capture the attention of handsome men like Sheppard. Only, she had never captured Sheppard's attention. Sheppard had hated her long before he had ever met her. It was bad enough that McKay held the fish in his heart as his saviour instead of Sheppard who had effected the daring rescue but to have named him after Carter? We see Sheppard lift his chin defiantly, drawing his lips in a tight line and he is clearly putting effort into tamping down the anger that this had ignited in him. But the anger is him sublimating his hurt into something that is easier to deal with. Sheppard almost seems ready to cry here. He is hurting.

McKay himself gets defensive when Sheppard comments on his choice of name even though Sheppard manages to keep his tone almost neutral. He points out that Sam is a boy's name too, pulling the kind of face one might make in kindergarten in response to some juvenile taunt, like he was saying some variation of "I am rubber, you are glue." While McKay likely has no idea that Sheppard is jealous of Carter and the attention he thinks McKay is giving her, not understanding his own worth to his partner, it is possible that McKay simply misattributes Sheppard's comment here. He says in his defense that Sam is a boy's name too, and because we hear Sheppard call McKay Meredith later on in the episode, this may have something to do with him being defensive over his own name, of having what he calls to his sister a "girl's name" in The Shrine (S04E06). He may have interpreted as Sheppard making fun of him calling a boy Samantha like he had called a boy by a girl's name and that had been his issue when Sheppard's mind had not been able to parse anything beyond that Jezebel ever since McKay had spoken Carter's name. McKay is hitting him with a lot here, and Sheppard is not very good at dealing with his emotions in the first place.

Weir: And how do you know he's a he? McKay: Oh, because I cross-referenced the renderings in the database with the whale outside and, you'll see... the males have a rather prominent-- Weir: Oh, it's OK, never mind. I'll take your word for it. I trust this little diversion isn't actually cutting into your work time?

Weir asks how he knows it's a he not because she is really interested but to facilitate what amounts to a dick joke. McKay is only too eager to show her that these fish have really large members, prominent masculine attributes. And it is really important to note what Sheppard does here. We have noted before that Sheppard seems to have a preference for large penises. Not that he necessarily has a large one himself -- surely he is perfectly average -- but that he prefers other men to have large penises, which is a curious attribute for a man to have. This goes back all the way to Hide and Seek (S01E03) where he and McKay were having a conversation about dicks and dick-sizes even as they had been dealing with the crisis of the week. McKay had told him that it is not the size of the boat that counts, suggesting that the motion of the ocean is more important -- a saying frequently connected to sex -- and Sheppard had insisted that that is a myth. Size does count. The size counts for him.

We have also been given hints that McKay himself seems to be packing something above average in his kiwi-slice decorated pants to Sheppard's enduring joy. The two of them seem uniquely compatible sexually. And it is in this scene that we get to see openly -- if not textually -- Sheppard's preference for large members. McKay tries to show Weir the fish's junk, and she does not want to look, seeming too bashful and telling him that she will take his word for it, she does not need a demonstration of whale dick to spice up her afternoon. Sheppard, however, does not just look and nod appreciatively, he seems to get caught in it. He looks not once but twice, making a face that says "Good for him." Obviously what McKay is showing them is much larger than anything humans have but Sheppard can appreciate a big dong. This is not a face that a straight guy makes when they are shown another guy's dick.

However, let us appreciate why Sheppard is doing this. Note that somewhere along the way, quite possibly when Carter's name had been mentioned, Sheppard has lifted and folded up his arms in front of him, putting them up as a protective barrier between himself and McKay. Sheppard is still very much feeling hurt when McKay veers the conversation into whale dick, and him pretending to be paying attention to the whale dick is him trying to make it seem like he is not even bothered, like he had not just been mortally wounded by his lover right in front of someone who is an outsider to their relationship, out in the public where Sheppard's men are walking past them during this whole conversation. Sheppard does like a big dick but that is not what this is about. Sheppard is making a show of appreciating the whale's dick a little too much on purpose because he wants to incite jealousy in McKay. He wants McKay to feel as jealous as he does in this moment. He is dying. He wants McKay to get a taste of this. Because Sheppard is prone to projection, it is entirely possible that because he is feeling jealous himself that he has convinced himself that it is McKay who is actually jealous, and so he is playing it up by giving the fish an appreciative once-over. This scene is hilarious but it is also so very, very tragic.

McKay: Oh, no, no. No, of course not. No, I'm just dabbling in my free time. Weir: Alright, then, boys. Dabble away! Sheppard: So, these whales. Did the Ancients say they're good eating? McKay: Oh, you wouldn't! Sheppard: I would.

Weir wants to make sure that this diversion is not cutting into McKay's work time like he was not doing the workload of two or three people as it was (being the head of the science corps and on a gate team in addition to being a scientist), and McKay is quick to assure her that he is just dabbling in his free time, which does not seem to be entirely truthful since not just him but also Sheppard have not been doing any work leading up to this, neither of them have even been to see their team mate who had recently needed medical attention. McKay had even dropped the topic of the ZPMs, having been doing nothing but this for the whole morning.

And while they have been spending time on the fish, most of all the two of them have been caught up in each other. And while McKay only speaks for himself, Weir seems to correctly intuit that Sheppard has been spending time on this too since Sheppard seemed to know exactly what McKay had been talking about. She tells them to "dabble away," referring to them as "boys," suggesting that there was something boyish about getting excited over big, big fish. Not for nothing but the word "dabble" also has the meaning of experimenting sexually with one's own gender, and it is not out of character for Weir to have intentionally given them leave to dabble here since Sheppard's collar made it rather obvious that some dabbling had recently already taken place.

Weir seems to have had enough of this and so takes off, leaving Sheppard and McKay to their own devices, and note that while Sheppard had lifted up his arms as a defensive barrier against McKay, he drops them just as soon as Weir takes off, letting McKay into his personal space. The two of them also start walking together, both of them seeming to know where they are headed without even needing to talk about it. But while Sheppard may let McKay into his space and he may angle his body toward McKay as they walk, he is not letting him off the hook just yet. Sheppard is partially teasing McKay as he asks whether the fish are good eating just because he likes to tease him and he wants McKay's attention by any means necessary. But partially he is not joking -- he wants to murder this fish. The only thing keeping the fish in his good graces is that it had helped him save McKay, and saving McKay is the quickest way to Sheppard's good book. That is the only reason why he cannot hate the fish as much as he would certainly like to. But he does not have to like hearing the infatuated way that McKay talks about it. He wants McKay to talk like that about him and no one else but him.

Continued in Pt. 5

[dr-futbol-blog]

Echoes, Pt. 2

The plot of the episode revolves around what seem like echoes of the Ancients that people keep seeing in the city, and Teyla seems to be the first person to encounter such an echo. She later speculates that she had seen the first echo at the same time as when McKay had first seen his whale friend swimming outside of the city, and we should note that the first time that Teyla encounters an echo appears to be late at night when she is on her way to parts unknown with a kind of an amused smile as she comes down the stairs also from somewhere unknown. The viewer is invited to make the assumption that this is immediately after her meditation session where Ronon had fallen asleep on her, and that her smile accompanied with a sigh and knowing roll of her eyes is somehow related to the previous scene, as though she were still rolling her eyes at Ronon, when there may be no connection between these scenes and her smile may result from her either having recently interacted with someone or her just thinking about someone fondly as she returns to her quarters for the night.

The thing is that Teyla had looked a lot more annoyed at the end of the previous scene, and her warm and fond smile just before she runs into the first echo may be caused by someone else entirely, her thinking about someone else entirely. The thing to pay attention to in this is episode is that this is where they start hinting at a relationship between Teyla and Heightmeyer that is meant to parallel the relationship of Sheppard and McKay, and the motivation for Teyla's late night trek through the empty hallway is something that is left open. Let us recall that Teyla seems to live in that same part of the city where Sheppard's original quarters were and where no one else seems to live at this time, meaning that if she were on her way back to her quarters that she would have expected the hallways to be empty, and hence her encountering the echo of an Ancient there would have been highly unexpected. Ever since Sheppard had moved in with McKay in Irresistible (S03E03), Teyla would have lived there basically on her own with not another soul in sight.

McKay: Elizabeth. Did you get my email? Weir: Which email? One of the seven today, or one of the eighteen yesterday? McKay: I know, I'm being unusually persistent about this, but that should only underscore its importance, yes?

But the echo of the woman that Teyla encounters at night is left unexplained, and we next join Weir as she too is on her way down the stairs, this seeming to be the following morning, and she seems to be followed by McKay who has things to say to her. We do not know where she is coming from or where she is going, but we are able to gather from the dialogue that McKay is picking up on something that had been on-going, as him having looked her up specifically to follow up on an e-mail he had sent to her to which he had not received a reply.

Weir's response makes it clear that it had not been the first e-mail he had sent that she had not replied to since he had been bombing her with messages, and while the two of them know what he the subject of the e-mails had been, the viewer is left wondering what this might be about since the two of them probably are not e-mail pen pals where McKay had been writing to her just to ask about her day. McKay admits that he has been unusually persistent meaning that he would not be writing to her like this under normal circumstances. What is more, since Weir notes that he had sent seven already on this day when the day seems only to have been starting is meant to indicate that McKay has been really proactive about this. Whether McKay had time for a warm bath and a hot meal since Sheppard had returned to the city with Ronon and Zelenka is anyone's guess but probably he had been doing other things even if he had time to write her several e-mails, and we might even suggest that some of the e-mails had been written while Sheppard had been out moonlighting as a cab driver, leaving McKay ample time for e-mail-writing activities.

What remains is that McKay is really excited about something and seems to want something from Weir that he cannot get from anyone else, and we are meant to wonder why since McKay does not usually follow Weir around like a dog begging her to give him something. This must be important, like he points out himself.

Weir: We cannot keep all three ZPMs from the replicator take-over, Rodney. We get one. Now, I don't know how to make it any clearer for you. McKay: Well, I felt if I could just outline the reasons for keeping them -- you know, bullet point, very brief-- Weir: It was twenty-six pages! McKay: I know, but if we hope to persuade Stargate Command--

And so we finally find out what they are talking about -- the ZPMs from the mid-season finale. The replicators had brought ZPMs with them and combined with the one the Ancients had brought with their ship, there were now extra ZPMs to go around. McKay seems to be salivating over the prospects of what they might be able to achieve with three full ZPMs in the city, knowing that with three they could even make the city fly, which is something that he seems to want to be able to make happen for Sheppard. He might have been having wet dreams about this for ages -- they both have.

There is still some ambiguity over the actual number of ZPMs and how many there had been before the replicators had arrived. There should have been one that the Ancients had brought and the one that they had from before that had been brought over by Caldwell on the Daedalus in The Siege (S02E01), which had been discovered at Giza, left there by Ra of the original motion picture, following some timeline shenanigans by SG-1. This particular ZPM had been depleted by McKay during McKay and Mrs Miller (S03E08), only we had discovered the mid-season finale could not have happened without it since they needed a ZPM to get O'Neill and Woolsey to Atlantis for the negotiations, and they later needed one for the Daedalus to get to the city in 4 days to nuke it from orbit. The point is that the reshuffling of the episodes leads into some continuity issues that they are trying to fix here with this conversation. That is the whole point here, to use this as exposition that will leave them with one functional ZPM in the city, and no more than one. This will leave them with the ability to use the shield, to cloak the city when and if necessary, but which will not give them full functionality for the city ship -- effectively grounding them for the finale of the season.

Because this episode had clearly been written after the mid-season had been plotted out, intent on calming things down after the dramatic events that were meant to shake things up for the Sweeps (shows on network television need to prove their viability for the advertisers around this time of the season, hence usually featuring some dramatic events or bringing back fan-favourite characters that will put asses in seats, to make sure that people tune in for these episodes in particular, after which they can return to business as usual, maybe run some episodes lighter on plot until things start ramping up toward the end of the season), the purpose of the episode is to establish the status quo on the show: they have just enough of unobtainium to facilitate sci-fi shenaningans on the show but not too much to jeopardize the building of suspense, raising the stakes for the finale. The city gets one ZPM, not three. It will not get three until the end, the final showdown where the wraith are defeated once and for all. It was only to tease the final showdown that we had been reminded of what the three ZPMs can do in the previous episode. And they needed to figure out how to disperse them now in a plausible way, this conversation just making sure that everything is as should be so that episodes more or less make sense in the order that they are in now. There are some details that might seem out of place, but roughly the current sequence of episodes works, even if the drama at the end of McKay and Mrs Miller is kind of vanished and it seems like the dramatic events of Phantoms (S03E09) had no effect on anything or anyone.

The conversation between Weir and McKay here is necessary for them to establish what they have achieved so far, what they are capable of currently, and what they might potentially be able to do in the future at full capacity. And this is relevant only as it regards the subtext in what it tells us about Sheppard and McKay's current living arrangements now that they have returned from Earth. McKay had been at Area 51 and Sheppard at the SGC, and while they may have made use of McKay's Colorado Springs apartment during their time there, they had still been in a more or less long distance situation for the duration. But now they were living together again. This, here, is when they are the most together, when they are at their most domestic, when they are the most couple-y until it all starts going to spectacularly wrong. There are no dark clouds gathering in the horizon, not yet. This is the calm before the storm. This is when both of them are happy.

Weir: OK. So tell me. Who would you deprive of the other ZPMs? The Antarctic outpost? McKay: Well, no, because they need it to power the Chair to protect Earth. Weir: OK, how about the Odyssey, then? They're getting the other ZPM to help them in their fight against the Ori. Rodney, we have enough power now to raise the shield and cloak the city and dial home. Please, can you start seeing the glass as half full? McKay: Well, you mean one-third full. Weir: No more emails.

There is a comedic beat to their exchange what with Weir using the Socratic method to allow McKay to come to the conclusion himself that they cannot in good conscience keep all three ZPMs no matter how much he would like to. We have seen that McKay does not share well and seems to hoard resources quite possibly on account of his childhood, of having been deprived of basic necessities.

Children who struggle with food insecurity and poverty often grow up wanting to make sure that they have enough, that they never run out of things, and they may have a difficult time sharing of things they have amassed or letting go of things they have accumulated. It seems like in this McKay and Sheppard have experienced very different upbringings, and where Sheppard is easily able to share and gives liberally of what he has, seems to enjoy providing the person he is in a relationship with and where he seems to require very little for himself, McKay needs to make sure that his needs are met -- and also that the needs of the people he loves are met. McKay is concerned for his home and that he has the resources to defend it and the people he loves, and what Weir manages to do here is to expand his sphere of concern, of pointing out that the people of the Earth are also important to him, that the battle against the Ori is also his battle. And although McKay grumbles and seems to make a sarcastic quip about the glass not being half full but one third full with getting to keep only one ZPM, he does acknowledge the point Weir had made.

What is more, with Weir telling McKay in no uncertain words that he does not want to receive one more e-mail about this, it seems like McKay honours and acknowledges the boundary Weir sets here, and McKay does not pester her further about the topic. He has been told no and he understands that no means no. McKay seems to be very respectful of other peoples boundaries, and we have seen how careful he is to get consent from Sheppard to touch him, how careful he had been even to hug his own sister and making sure that his touch is welcome. This hints at McKay possibly having experienced his own boundaries being violated in the past, and so he does not want to subject other people to unwanted advances of any kind. Just as soon as Weir tells him that he does not want to hear another word on this topic again, McKay drops it just like that, even though he really, really wants them to get another one of the ZPMs, just the one extra, even though he thinks that they deserve to have a full three of them. McKay believes that now that they actually have four ZPMs to go around that they should be able to have three of them.

Note that Weir places one ZPM at the Antarctic outpost and another in The Odyssey, seeming to be the flagship for the Earth at this time. She gives the excuse that the Odyssey needs one for combating the Ori, to be able to travel faster within the Milky Way as needed. But Weir makes no mention of the SGC getting one, and surely the SGC having a ZPM would be a priority. Surely the SGC should have one even before Atlantis since it had been the SGC ZPM that had been brought to Atlantis to protect it against the wraith originally. Atlantis needs one to be sure but so does the SGC, even if the gate bridge was meant to make travel between the two galaxies faster and more convenient. This, giving an extra ZPM to the Odyssey is another hint at the fact that they were actually playing thimblerig or "follow the queen" not with three ZPMs but with four, a four-card monte. There are so many things that only make sense if there are four ZPMs to go around and not three.

We see McKay open his mouth as though intending to argue the point but then think better of it, and he looks bashful as he recognizes that the case was now closed, that he would not get to argue his case further. He had been dismissed by Weir, and it did not matter how rational an argument he might be able to build, it would not change things. Like the Rolling Stones had pointed out in 1969, You Can't Always Get What You Want. McKay knew it well. He was disappointed but not crestfallen, seeming far too content to let this darken his day.

Continued in Pt. 3

[dr-futbol-blog]

Tao of Rodney, Pt. 11

From McKay thinking about whose wings he is the wind beneath we move to Sheppard entering Weir's office, seemingly to check up on what she is doing. While we have not seen Sheppard and McKay together since they had been listening to Beckett's diagnosis in the infirmary earlier, Sheppard seems nonetheless aware of where McKay is and what he is doing, having at the very least been keeping tabs on him. Although we have seen Sheppard join Weir in her office before e.g., in Critical Mass (S02E13), Coup d'État (S02E17) and No Man's Land (S03E01), and have seen him seek out her company on many other occasions -- usually seeming to need for her to ground him, to let her non-emotional demeanour calm his overwhelmed emotions -- we have to note the fact that Sheppard's motivation for coming to her now is McKay. He had not come to her office to find out what or how she was doing, he had come here to find out what she had discovered about McKay's condition, and it has nothing whatsoever about him being keen to try the machine for himself so that he might get some superpowers of his own. For all he might pretend the thing is not concerning him, Sheppard is on the edge of his proverbial seat.

Sheppard: Well, how's it coming? Weir: Actually, I think I'm just getting to the good bit. Sheppard: Don't you hate it when people interrupt right when things are getting good?

Sheppard saunters into Weir's office like he owns the place and parks himself right next to her but it seems to be because he is curious to see what she is doing, he actually wants to know what she is working on because it has something to do with McKay. The question that Sheppard speaks to Weir, "How's it coming?" is one we have heard him speak to McKay often, and this is because McKay is usually the guy he turns to for answers, but he seems to feel like he cannot rely on McKay with this, cannot trust McKay to be impartial when it comes to his own condition, knowing as he does that McKay is prone to both catastrophizing and self-delusion. But note that although Sheppard gets close to Weir, he is keeping his arm between the two of them as a barrier because if getting close to her was the point, he would be leaning on one arm and have his body open to her, which he does not. This is about needing to know what she has discovered about McKay, this is not about being close to her.

Weir tells him essentially that he was interrupting her and she would like to return her focus to what she had been reading but in referring to it as "getting to the good bit" she is, possibly unwittingly, opening herself up as a target for innuendo, and we have noted how Sheppard's nervous system seems to shift his thoughts to sex when ever it is over-excited. Sheppard's comment is suggestive, he definitely seems to make a reference to "things getting good" as a euphemism for sex, his cheeky line meant to purposefully rile her up. There is a comedic beat to this in that Sheppard is doing exactly what he claims to dislike here, as though he was oblivious to the fact that he was interrupting Weir -- which he is not, we have seen Sheppard frequently interrupt McKay on purpose, knowing that McKay sometimes needs to redirect his thoughts from scenarios of certain death to something more productive, like being annoyed with Sheppard. When Sheppard manages to annoy McKay, the man forgets that he was ever meant to be afraid of something.

But Sheppard making this comment also suggests that he has been interrupted when things have been getting good, possibly recently, and since he says it so pointedly, possibly even by Weir himself. We had seen the way Sheppard was practically humping the air while half-climbed on McKay's bed in the infirmary earlier, and he had certainly seemed like he might want to do something about that with McKay, whether or not they ever got the opportunity to act it out. Sheppard's comment really only makes sense if Weir has caught him in delicto flagrante and he is now wanting to repay the favour.

Sheppard: I know McKay is some super-genius now, but I find the flickering lights incredibly unnerving. Weir: Doctor Coleman has -- however reluctantly -- admitted it does seem as if Rodney is significantly improving the city's power system.

The lights suddenly flicker and Sheppard cannot help commenting on them, just like he usually is helpless not to comment on things that McKay does -- and we should pay attention to the fact that Sheppard knows this is McKay's doing, he knows where McKay is and what he is occupied with, he has obviously been keeping tabs on him. What ever Sheppard has been doing with his day after returning from the mission apart from having been fiddling with one of the machines in the Ancient lab, he has kept on top of McKay's whereabouts and as suggested, had very likely been the one to assign Ronon to look after him.

Sheppard calls the flickering lights "incredibly unnerving," and he does this with the intent of undercutting the moment with humour, his favourite deflection technique, rather than to actually talk about his feelings with Weir. He may genuinely be unnerved but it is not by the flickering light so much as the fact that McKay is now this super-genius who can do that, feeling like the chasm that had existed between them intellectually -- like Sheppard has always felt -- was only getting bigger. While McKay has always thought that Sheppard is smart -- at least ever since he had impressed McKay with his mental math skills in Rising (S01E02), proving that he is more than a pretty face -- Sheppard himself suffers from feelings of inferiority when it comes to McKay specifically in the intellectual arena. And while it would be easy to think that Sheppard's issue was with the unnerving flickering lights here, it is actually the "some super-genius" part of what he says that is bothering him but which he cannot admit even to himself.

We had heard Weir describe looking at her counterpart in Before I Sleep (S01E15) with "When she looks at me, it's as if she's sensing my thoughts, and I'm sensing hers. It's very unsettling." And as discussed at the time, Sheppard seems to recognize this feeling. Sheppard had further confessed that he was unsettled in The Brotherhood (S01E16), having apparently been unsettled by their experiences on Dagan. While Sheppard is being facetious here, we have noted how he tends to use sarcasm not to say untrue things but to get some emotional distance to his own feelings -- and he does indeed seem to find this whole experience "incredibly unnerving." And it seems like Sheppard gets what he had come to Weir for, which is her assurance that everything is fine. McKay is fine. Doctor Coleman vouches for him.

Sheppard: Whatever. Anyway, you were saying...? Weir: Well, we know the Ancients evolved physiologically to a certain point where they could transform into a state of pure energy.

Sheppard leaves her side and takes a seat on the other side of the table like we have seen him do before, and Sheppard has usually had some kind of an agenda in coming to her, whether to seek for her protection or to make sure that their working relationship has not been damaged by what ever events had transpired. While Sheppard may have sought Weir out now to ground him, to assure him that everything is going to be alright and there is nothing to worry about, it could also be that he does not know what to do with himself now that McKay is otherwise occupied. We had seen in Echoes (S03E12) that Sheppard had happily spent his entire day following McKay around, and he had been ready and willing to do that even earlier on this day. But now that McKay was occupied doing some super science and he had Ronon on McKay detail, it may be that Sheppard is feeling adrift, like he does not even know what to do with himself.

Pay attention once more to how Sheppard takes his seat. He had just made a reference to people interrupting when things are "getting good," which may hint at this having happened to him recently. Sheppard again takes his weight off of his tailbone by keeping most of his weight on the hand he rests down on Weir's desk, sitting first on one cheek and then adjusting himself, slouching down so that his full weight does not land on... areas that might be sore. For sure he is trying to affect a slouch to communicate how much he does not care about any of this, because like we have seen, the more Sheppard tries to perform being relaxed, the less relaxed he actually is. But Sheppard taking this slouch also parallels him with McKay laying back on the Control Chair at the same time, the two of them engaged in the same activity, and in fact Sheppard could be seated on his lap given how he is several floors topside.

Sheppard further emphasizes how unbothered he is by responding to Weir's comment with "Whatever" like he did not care about what McKay was doing when that is the only thing he cares about in this moment. We should also note that Sheppard almost touches the tip of a triangular box of some kind on Weir's desk, hinting at the fact that he is longing to touch something, but then thinks better of it, not wanting to touch her things. It speaks of him being nervous or anxious over the situation, touching something a self-soothing technique, but the fact that he decides not to do it also implies that he does not feel entirely at home in her office.

Sheppard: Ancient History 101. Weir: Yes. We also know that not all of them managed to get there. Sheppard: You're saying some of them needed a kick in the pants. Weir: So to speak. I think this machine was not meant to help them fight the war against the wraith but rather to help them escape it.

Sheppard makes a pun about Weir telling him something he already knows, something that both of them already know -- exposition for the audience -- by calling it "Ancient history 101," which is made humorous by the fact that "ancient history" is a topic covered in many curriculums where the contents of the class would of course be entirely different from what they are talking about. His 101 class is more to the tune of "History of the Ancients" than ancient history.

Regardless, Weir fills him in on what she had managed to discover by reading texts seemingly pertaining to the machine suggesting that the machine had something to do with ascension, which she had already suggested earlier in in the infirmary where she had been discussing the topic mainly with Beckett. Sheppard again makes a humorous comment about the Ancients having needed a "kick in the pants," meaning that they had needed help with the process, and the way Sheppard seems to be making this entire thing into a joke only speaks of how serious he actually finds this situation. It is a well-established psychological defense mechanism in Sheppard to use humour to undercut serious, emotionally overwhelming situations and him needing to do that here -- him needing to talk about this with Weir to begin with -- is testament to how much this is actually bothering him. At the same time, him implying that the Ancients had needed a kick in the pants betrays how he feels about the Ancients, and likely he would not have eschewed giving them a good kick in the pants personally.

Sheppard: An ascension machine? Weir: Like the one the Goa'uld tried to create in the Milky Way. Sheppard: Are you saying McKay's going to ascend?

Sheppard seems to finally catch up to what this means and we see the pretense fall away all of a sudden. This is an important moment where we can actually see that Sheppard is performing aloof a lot of the time, that he pretends not to care about the things that he really cares about. It seems like his entire body becomes alert and he turns to Weir, leans toward her, giving her his full attention -- and it seems like there are full on Ironside sirens blaring in his head all of a sudden.

Sheppard is immediately alarmed by the prospect that McKay might ascend, and we have to acknowledge the role that Sheppard's "serious abandonment issues" are playing here. McKay ascending essentially means leaving him behind. Whether or not he would continue his existence in the form of pure energy, it would mean that McKay goes somewhere where he cannot follow, and Sheppard is not alright with that. He is not alright with that at all. While causing McKay to die through his own actions is Sheppard's worst fear, at the root of that fear is McKay leaving him just like his mother had left him, just like Captain Holland had left him, just like everyone he loves always leaves him. Sheppard may have been flippant only a moment ago but now he is deadly serious, needing to understand precisely what Weir is saying here. He needs to understand what this means. For all he may have pretended that McKay is a nuisance and a pain in his ass earlier, this is the truth of it.

Weir: Unfortunately there's a whole lot more to ascension than just being physically evolved. Sheppard: Believe me, after spending six months with a bunch of pansy wannabes, I know! But what does this mean for McKay?

Not really allaying his worries, Weir mentions that ascension is not that easy and Sheppard makes a reference apparently to the time he had spent in the Sanctuary in Epiphany (S02E12), none too charitable in his description of them.

It possible he is referring to them as wannabe Ancients since the whole village had eventually managed to ascend, but him referring to them as pansies certainly makes it loud and clear what he had thought about them. Sheppard makes it sound like he had spent six months too long with these people, and we can surmise from this that Teer had not been the love of his life or even someone he had liked very much. This is Sheppard's own interpretation of the events, just as describing the attempt of the Ancient woman to seduce him as not having been very "entertaining" is how he had interpreted his encounter with an Ancient woman previously. Interestingly enough, Sheppard mentions having spent six months with them, which corresponds with what I had calculated from Teyla's measurement of the time dilation effect, translating to 17 hours of time for the others, meaning that McKay's assessment of it having been twelve years for Sheppard was way off. Maths truly is not his strongest suit.

Important to note here is that Sheppard seems to double down on his question of what this means for McKay. He really needs to know because he really cares about McKay in spite of what he might like to pretend, McKay is the love of his life regardless of the current state of their relationship -- and regardless of what we had seen in the previous episode, they seem perfectly domestic in this one. And Sheppard is not even sure which answer he would prefer here, what he would like to hear. He does not want McKay to leave him by ascending but what would it mean for him to be unable to ascend? Sheppard needs to know the implications, needs to know what Weir is not saying here, he needs to understand this so that he can decide what to do about it. He wants to know what he can fight to save McKay because the scariest thing of all is that there is nothing for him to fight, that there is nothing he can do to keep McKay safe in spite of his best efforts. We see Sheppard blinking here, betraying how afraid he truly is, as we usually only see him blinking like this when he is truly harrowed.

Weir: Like I said, just getting to the good bit. Sheppard: I'll leave you to it. Weir: John, wait. We need to talk to Rodney right away.

Sheppard seems unsettled and vulnerable as he offers to leave Weir alone so that she can concentrate. For all he had walked in with jokes to interrupt her work and to annoy her on purpose with the intention of lightening up both of their moods, he is deadly serious now. He understands that this is important and he needs Weir to understand what is going on so that she can explain it to him. He cannot read Ancient so he will not be able to help her with that, the most he can do is to remove himself as a distraction. Look how Sheppard is almost trembling as he gets up, a fine sheen of sweat gathering on his lip that he sucks in, worrying his lip in a self-soothing manner.

But Sheppard does not manage to get very far when Weir calls him back, her tone of voice alarming him. To make the situation more ominous the lights go out again, and they do not flicker this time but stay out, plunging them into darkness. Weir tells him that they need to talk to McKay immediately and that does not sound good. Note the way Sheppard turns to go without waiting for Weir, probably intending to take off at a run because if there is something that is a threat to McKay, he needs to be there to protect him from it.

Continued in Pt. 12

[dr-futbol-blog]

Tao of Rodney, Pt. 24

We then join Beckett and his team as they are running McKay's hospital bed through the corridors toward the Ancient lab where the accident had happened. McKay appears to be on life support and both Sheppard and Ronon are with them, Ronon pushing the bed and Sheppard by McKay's side, dragging the bed forward by the bar at its side with a grimly determined look on his face. It seems like both Weir and Teyla had gone to the lab in advance of them and Zelenka likely had already been there, never having ceased working on the machine, and they seem to be preparing the machine now for something that they want to do to McKay who, according to Beckett, had just told him how to save him. But even though Weir and Teyla had gone ahead, it seems like Sheppard had not wanted to leave McKay's side for a moment. As someone who is not a medical professional he could have easily been in the way of the people doing their job but the thing of it is that his place is by McKay's side and nobody was going to tell him to get out of the way.

Beckett: We're en route. His pulse is very weak. Are you ready? Weir: We will be. Zelenka: Almost.

They reach the lab and Ronon is the one who lifts McKay up into his arms and carries him over to the dais, being that he is by miles the strongest one of them. McKay actually looks small and frail in his arms. It is possible that Sheppard had wanted to be the one to carry him -- evidenced by the way he hovers right by McKay as Ronon is carrying him the whole way from the bed to the dais -- but although we had seen him carry a man in his arms in his hallucination in Phantoms (S03E09) while he had actually been carrying Teyla, and he may have carried McKay to the infirmary in Echoes (S03E12) in analogue to Weir that we did not get to see, it is for McKay's own safety that he allows Ronon to be the one to carry him now, and Ronon here is a proxy for Sheppard just like he had always wanted Ronon to be. But it is obvious that Sheppard is taking care of McKay, staying by his side until the very end. It actually seems like he has trouble letting go of him long enough that they might actually put him under what ever cure he had uploaded into Beckett's mind earlier.

Beckett: Right. Hurry. He can't breathe on his own. Zelenka: OK, stand back!

As they are rolling in McKay's bed, we see Sheppard glance down at him, making sure that McKay is alright, making sure that McKay is still there. As they come to a stop having reached the Ancient lab, it is very dark and there is a nurse blocking the way, but it seems like Sheppard touches McKay and we then see Ronon picking him up, and Sheppard's hand is holding McKay's elbow as though with the intention of shielding him from bumping into anything where more than likely he is seeking comfort for himself from the touch. There is literally a female character blocking us from seeing what is happening between the two men even though it is happening there in the background, and this is how they have been carrying the subtextual narrative this whole time.

It seems that as Ronon lays McKay down that Sheppard is there to help ease him on the platform, making sure that he does not hurt his head. Sheppard goes with Ronon the whole way and crouches down with them, and the camera cuts away just as Sheppard is about to take a hold of McKay. The next we see them, Sheppard seems to be letting go of McKay's hand, McKay's hand stretched out straight like he was trying to reach out for Sheppard. The gesture goes by very quickly and is partially obscured by Ronon standing in front of them but this is one of those moments that seems designed to confirm the subtext, McKay's hand even closing on its own when he is no longer holding on to Sheppard, as though he was unconsciously still reaching out for him in his final moments.

Holding another man's hand to the last moment and not wanting to let go is difficult to explain as something that takes place between buddies and pals, and again if one of their genders were reversed, no one would have trouble seeing how romantic this moment is. The room is full of people and yet there is in this stolen touch, evidence of the bond between them that is deeper than they have with others. And we have seen such stolen touches between them before when one of them has been unconscious, in Hide and Seek (S01E03) and 38 Minutes (S01E05). It seems obvious that for both men, it is important that their last gesture toward the other man is a gentle touch. McKay seems to be the only person Sheppard wants to touch anyway, any how.

Beckett: Rodney? McKay: It worked! Beckett: Did it? McKay: Well, I'm alive, aren't I? Sheppard: Sounds like him.

McKay is surrounded by the light of the machine while they all stand back and watch, and as soon as it is over we again find Sheppard crouching by McKay, wanting to make sure that he is alright. It seems like Beckett as his doctor is also immediately there and we see Ronon likewise rush to him in case they might need to move McKay quickly, but again Sheppard has no reason to be there by his side immediately beyond needing it, beyond wanting to be there.

McKay seems to still be reaching out for Sheppard's hand as he comes to, but while his hand hovers near, Sheppard does not grab his hand now that all of their attention is on McKay and now that McKay is awake. McKay's eyes go around the room and stop on Sheppard as though he had been looking for him, and it is only when Beckett asks him what McKay seems to deem like a stupid question that he shifts his attention away from Sheppard. Sheppard's voice sounds rough as he responds to McKay snapping at Beckett, probably overwhelmed with emotion not just from what they had just witnessed and how intense it all had been but from how much McKay sounds like himself, how much Sheppard had missed that.

Sheppard has not been screaming or even talking, and we have seen before how he tends to go very quiet when he is emotionally overwhelmed, so the roughness of his voice speaks of him having constricted his throat in his anxiety. And while we have heard Sheppard tell McKay to shut up and stop talking on a few occasions before, if I am not mistaken we do not hear him say it to him ever again. If Sheppard had learned anything during McKay's final moments, it is that he never wants McKay to shut up again. Sheppard seems to have some amount of magical thinking related to the things he says to others anyway, so it would not be out of character for him to feel like by telling McKay not to talk he had actually invited this whole thing to befall him.

McKay: Yes, yes! I can't hear one of your thoughts. The telekinesis is gone. I'm still smart, I think... Yes! Yes, I'm me! I'm my old self!

We then get another angle with the camera placed behind Sheppard's back as though we were looking at McKay from over his shoulder, and we are able to see the way McKay looks up at Sheppard with his eyes wide and full of awe, having been given a new lease on life. And it is notable how much he is focusing on Sheppard in this moment, seeking his eyes, wanting to lock eyes with him. McKay also sounds genuinely happy in a way that he had not been even when he had first discovered he had superpowers.

The thing to notice here is that the camera angle gives us a glimpse of what McKay might look like in bed, lying on his side and looking up at someone else who might be resting on their elbow above them, his gaze at Sheppard soft and vulnerable. We should also note that as McKay looks at Sheppard and tests his telepathy, he is saying this to Sheppard. He is using the singular "you" here, he cannot hear one of Sheppard's thoughts, not that he cannot hear any of their thoughts. And the thing of it is that even though he can no longer hear Sheppard's thoughts, it does not mean he cannot read them right off of his face -- any more than Sheppard has trouble reading his face in this moment, seeing him full of joy and gratitude. But if McKay tested his telepathy specifically on Sheppard, he then tests his telekinesis on Beckett because Beckett had been the first person he had tested it on. And notice that as McKay gets up from the floor that both men rise with him as though there was an invisible power tying all of them together. McKay announces that he is his old self again, and Sheppard could not hope to hear any betters news because he has always liked McKay just the way he is.

Beckett: Are you certain? McKay: Yeah, I'm alive! I feel great! I feel... Hungry? Sheppard: He's fine.

Evidence of this very thing is seen in how Sheppard reacts to McKay searching his feelings for a moment and then announcing that he is hungry, causing Sheppard to both grin and point at McKay to Beckett, wanting to share in this moment with McKay's best friend whom he knows also loves the man.

Both of them had been teasing McKay about his eating back when he had only just discovered his powers and had been struggling with an increased appetite, and it seems like Sheppard has never heard a more wonderful thing in his life than that McKay is hungry. He would probably feed McKay with his own two hands as grateful as he is to hear this, and he has no intention on teasing McKay about his eating again. Sheppard's ribbing of McKay may always have been good-natured, him looking for attention and pulling the pig-tails of the boy that he loves more than anything but this experience had made him realize that he loves all these things about McKay that annoy him, that he does not want to live without McKay leaving food wrappings all over the place and probably his dirty socks on the floor where they are the first thing Sheppard sees when he gets up every morning. We only come to appreciate the little things when they are taken away from us but in the immortal words of General O'Neill's favourite cartoon character Homer Simpson: these little things make up life. Sheppard speaks the words "He's fine," and he has never been more glad to think it.

Weir: And you said it was impossible. McKay: Yeah, it just came to me. I was, I was, I was floating in this, this big black emptiness and then the answer just came out of nowhere. Look, the device was designed to manipulate your DNA. It couldn't reverse the evolutionary advancement process because everyone's DNA was different. It makes certain changes that causes the DNA to evolve in ways specific to your own unique physiology.

McKay gives them an explanation of something he had only been able to explain to Beckett via some mind-link before, which is that it had occurred to him that the machine could be used to manipulate his DNA back to the state it had been before if they had a reference point for it, and they did have a reference point for it since Beckett had samples of all of their blood.

What McKay's explanation here seems to confirm is that all of the abilities McKay had developed during this time were specific to him -- they were an amplification of the skills he already possesses. It was always McKay, only more. It was the full potential of the his genetics made manifest. The potential for telepathy exists within McKay, and we have seen him utilize some latent version of this ability many times before, and particularly with Sheppard. And this gives us room to speculate what the machine might have done to Beckett and Sheppard if they had undergone the process of speeding up their evolution, of what Beckett's empathy and Sheppard's ability to push people might have looked like fully manifested -- the latter at least likely manifesting as mind-control akin to what Athar had displayed in Sanctuary (S01E14). McKay sounds giddy as a school boy as he explains this to the others, in his element when he gets to convey information to others and able to distill it into a package they can understand -- that most of them can understand.

Zelenka: Yeah. In order to manipulate the DNA back to the previous state, the programme required a precise reference point. Beckett: Fortunately I keep blood samples from all the Atlantis team members for baseline comparisons. Dex: I don't understand what any of you are talking about. McKay: What -- what? Dex: It's good to have you back, buddy. McKay: Yes, well -- it's good to be back. Dex: Yeah!

It seems that Ronon has had enough of the science lesson, confessing that he has no idea what they are talking about. He does understand the most important thing, however, which is that McKay is fine and that McKay is McKay again. And just like everyone else, Ronon had missed McKay -- Ronon too likes McKay just the way he is.

Even though we had seen Ronon awkwardly pat McKay on the back earlier when he thought McKay had been hugging him and had actually been healing his wounds, he grabs a hold of him now and pulls him into a bear hug in front of everybody -- reminiscent of how Ford had hugged McKay in Hot Zone (S01E13) when they had survived being killed by the Ancient nanovirus. Rejoicing after a near call, a life and death situation, is one of the sanctioned moments for men to show affection to one another and because Ronon is a very tactile person, he takes this opportunity. Note the way he pats McKay on the back, making it clear with this gesture that this is a bro-hug, this is a hug between bros and buddies, not a man embracing another man -- even going so far as to call him buddy. And the thing of it is that we are able to see this because there is nothing between Ronon and McKay besides friendship. No one will mistake the two of them for anything else. This is why we never get to see Sheppard and McKay hug -- it would be difficult to disguise it as a bro hug.

While Sheppard had almost certainly wanted to embrace McKay, we only got to see Sheppard wrap his arms around McKay when he was curling up in pain. And while McKay seems awkward and even a little dazed at being hugged by Ronon, exchanging a glance with Beckett and even Weir as though to communicate "Take a load of this!" or "Did you see that?" or some variation thereof, him feeling embarrassment after the hug has again nothing whatsoever to do with McKay being weirded out being hugged by a man. It is being hugged by Ronon that seems to weird him out, and even then he is not displeased by having been hugged. We may recall that McKay does think that Ronon is "hot," and he would never say no to being hugged by a hottie like him. But it is not Ronon's embrace that he yearns for, and there is someone that yearns to enclose McKay in his arms even worse than Ronon had. Only, he cannot be seen doing it in public. Sheppard has to wait until the two of them are alone to show him how happy he is to see McKay alive and well. In fact, Sheppard may have needed a moment entirely alone to reign in his feelings after this. These calls were becoming closer and closer.

Continued in Pt. 25