Sunday, Pt. 18
Next, we join what seems to be like most of the city in the gate room for the memorial, not just of Carson Beckett but apparently everyone that had died as a consequence of the two explosions, being the three people who had died with Doctor Hewston, Beckett, and the ordnance disposal guy that Sheppard had sent in to secure the explosive tumour. They are all standing by what seems to be Beckett's casket covered by the Scottish flag, suggesting that his was the final service, his would be the final body they would be sending off on this day, the culmination of the event.
The scene begins with McKay walking away from the casket likely having said a few words, even though it is important to note that McKay was not the one to read Beckett's eulogy even as his best friend -- that is Weir in the role of the director of the expedition. And it is important to note that we do not get to hear what McKay had said about and to his best friend because, as I will discuss with the final installment tomorrow -- it is likely that McKay had read the poem by W. H. Auden from which the episode gets his name, famously read to another jovial Scottish man in a well-known film. We do not get to hear McKay read it to his friend -- and we do not get to hear him read it to Sheppard at the same time. As a matter of fact, since we only see him walk off, most viewers might miss his role in the proceedings altogether.
Weir: We've said goodbye to a lot of friends today.
The only sound that can be heard as McKay retakes his place next to -- but not near -- Sheppard are his footsteps echoing in the hall where everyone are keeping respectfully quiet, and likely one could hear a pin drop in the room. McKay's footsteps are replaced by those of Weir as she takes up a post next to the casket where likely McKay had been reading the poem just moments ago, this being the time for the reading of the eulogy.
Since this is the last memorial and some exposition is necessary, she recaps the proceedings by pointing out that they have already said their goodbyes to a lot of "friends" today, earlier in this memorial service, and while she is not speaking specifically to or about Sheppard and McKay, many of her words are applicable to their situation. The two of them have recently said goodbye to each other, even though Sheppard had never wanted to say goodbye to McKay and McKay never wanted to separate from Sheppard. But for all they may have said goodbye (whether or not the words were ever spoken between them, and likely they were not), as McKay himself muses in the coda, the two of them are not and never have been friends. They could not continue as friends following their relationship because that is not something that they ever were -- neither one of them could pretend like they were. There are people who can separate and continue as friends, but the two of them are not people like that. Loving someone the way they had, being as close as they had become, losing a lover that both of them were still very much in love with -- it felt like death. This may be the memorial of Carson Beckett but this is the funeral of their relationship at the same time. In their minds they are not just saying goodbyes to Beckett but also to each other, to the world they once shared. That world is no more.
Weir: Our mission is a dangerous one. We lose people -- a fact we're all painfully aware of.
Weir continues describing the mission on a general level, and while the personal nature of her grief is clear in her voice, what she says her is not dissimilar to what she had been saying to the families of the people they had lost on the mission in her video messages in Letters from Pegasus (S01E17) that we got to hear only the once but which she had likely personalized for every member of the mission who had lost their life in service of it.
Her mention of the inherent danger in their endeavour being a fact that they are all "painfully aware of" also resembles what McKay had told Sheppard in Trinity (S02E06) when the other man had been trying to guilt McKay to stop pursuing the dangerous project further, having reminded him of the member of his staff that he had lost -- just as McKay had lost one of them now to what he feels had been due to his negligence, broken up about that even if he is not as broken up about that as he is about the loss of his best friend and his lover within the span of a week -- not to hurt him but to manipulate him, Sheppard having feared for McKay's life and seeming ready to do anything to get him to stop pursuing the project further at the time. We had heard the pain in McKay's voice then even though he had been dissociating, we had heard his voice break as he had confessed to Sheppard that he would have to live with that fact for the rest of his life. He told Sheppard: "I am responsible for his death. Yes, I am painfully aware of that. I sent him in there, and I will have to live with that for the rest of my life."
Because Weir had been there to hear him speak these words, she may even be quoting him here, whether wittingly or unwittingly. She may be trying to remind McKay of the fact that it is their responsibility now to understand what had happened and to learn of it, just as it had been then. Weir may correctly suspect that McKay is blaming himself for what had happened just as McKay tends to blame himself for most things that happens in the city, and because there is an expectation put on his shoulders to save them from the things that befall them, it is easy to see how this pressure they put on him would only make him feel more like he was to blame for their failures. Weir may be trying to comfort McKay in his grief but likely she is just managing to make him feel worse about it all.
Note the way Weir seems to look from McKay to Sheppard as she mentions that they lose people -- and there are more ways to lose people than just by them dying. McKay and Sheppard have both lost people during these tragic events, both of them having lost a friend and someone working for them. But they have also very recently lost each other as surely as if the other man had died. The loss of each other feels as final to them in this moment as though the other man had died, and Weir's eulogy cannot help reminding both of them also of this fact. They are painfully aware of having lost each other too. This is why we get a close-up of the two of them for this painful fact that we are aware of. They are more aware of this fact than the others in this moment.
Weir: But Carson was… I can't remember anyone coming to me with a complaint against him -- ever. He was a kind soul. He was… he was a healer.
Weir continues, speaking now of Beckett specifically, reminiscing about what kind of person he had been. He calls him a kind soul and a healer, and likely these are things that most people can agree on. Most people seem to have liked Beckett. But it is interesting that Weir mentions here that she cannot remember anyone coming up to her with a complaint against him because this implies that people have come up to her with complaints against other people -- and what is left unspoken here is that people may have come up to her with complaints against McKay and Sheppard in particular.
McKay seems like the more obvious case given that we had seen how not self-aware he is as a leader even earlier in the episode when McKay had described himself as a "pretty easy guy to work for," causing the two people working for him to exchange a knowing look. It seems like most people who work for him do not share this self-assessment of his, and while McKay may not be an easy guy to work for, he still seems to take his leadership position seriously, he seems to put in the effort to be a good leader and a responsible leader even if he is not a nice guy. This tragic accident is something that McKay had tried to keep from happening with his safety protocols, and he had berated the "junior guys" to make them remember this moment, to impress on them how dangerous the mission is, the danger of the stuff they are dealing with. McKay had foreseen something like this happening and had taken precautions to avoid it, and it had been a series of unfortunate accidents that had led to this happening regardless. McKay is for sure blaming himself even if he had tried to keep something like this from happening. And yet McKay is an abrasive man who may have had complaints lodged against him for how he treats the people working with him and for him, whether he has ever actually heard about them, whether they have made it to his ears.
But the thing of it is that Sheppard may similarly have had complaints lodged against him, even if he has tried to create an environment for the people working for him now that he had been made officially the base commander where they could feel free to be who they are and love who they love. It seems like after being subjected to the experience of Sergeant Bates questioning his command every step of the way during their first tour and the Marine officer making insinuations about his personal conduct that may or may not have been warranted that Sheppard had chosen people for the command he expected to be loyal to him like Major Lorne. But even in spite of this Sheppard seemed to anticipate that people like "this Woolsey guy" who he felt had been interrogating him in Misbegotten (S03E02) might have wanted to lodge complaints against him. And if complaints have been brought up to Weir about Sheppard, and she looks directly at Sheppard as she speaks the words, it is unlikely they were about what a poor commander he is when he seems unable to actually give orders to his men and they might have been about his violation of certain regulations instead (regulations he had openly violated in this episode, no less) -- something that Weir seems to have made an active choice to turn a blind eye on. So while people may not have complaints against Beckett ever, they might have had ones against Sheppard and McKay -- and while both of them are good men, no one would describe either one of them as kind souls either. Both of them had respected Beckett for being a better man than either of them felt they could ever be.
Weir: And he will be very deeply missed. George Fabricius said, "Death comes to us all, but great achievements, they build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold." Every single life Carson saved is a monument to him. And that gives me great comfort.
Weir speaks the words "He will be very deeply missed" and we see McKay lift up his eyes at this, not looking at Sheppard but seeming aware of him in this moment because while he is missing Beckett, his best friend is not the only one he is missing in this moment, the man who is standing right next to him seeming to be a million miles away.
To finish up her eulogy Weir quotes a German early archaeologist and historian Georgius Fabricius, and this is a really curious -- if powerful -- quotation to throw in there. This quote is a translation from the original Latin poem that Fabricius had written for the magnum opus of his good friend Georgius Agricola De Rea Metallica (1556) about mining and minerals. The translation that Weir uses had actually been made by Herbert Hoover, later known as the US President, together with his wife in 1912 -- a labour of love -- and they had opted not the translate the whole poem, basically just translating this part of a much longer homage from one man to another:
He doth raise his country's fame with his own And in the mouths of nations yet unborn These praises shall be sung; Death comes to all But great achievements raise a monument Which shall endure until the sun grows cold.
It was his friend's book that likely was intended by Fabricius in the poem as being this great monument that endures the ages, and to be sure, the book had endured the test of time. The importance here is that the quotation seems yet another tacit acknowledgement of the subtext -- because not only is the book from which the quotation is from about the exploration of the subterranean, about the art and science of finding valuable things under ground, but the very same poem from which the quote comes contains the following lines:
It is not a vain tale that holds the mind in suspense here: But the reader will find it valuable and of great benefit. Whatever the earth has hidden deep within its bosom and lap, Everything has been revealed to you in many books before: Or, flowing above, it voluntarily strives towards the shores, Let him find an easy or more artful way.
Even though the story is now at a very suspenseful place, it is not in vain that the narrative has brought us here but this is a necessary part of their journey. We can recognize what is going on here because we have read this in many books before, we have seen this in many films before -- the narrative follows the beats of a love story. We know how this story goes because we have seen it play out so many times before. What Weir says about Beckett is a very beautiful, powerful thing to say as homage to someone -- and while Georg Fabricius had said if of his friend Georg Agricola, it was Fabricius who seems to have had many close male friendships in his life.
The quotation here is also important with regards to the W. H. Auden poem discussed in the next installment, and seems also a tacit confirmation of the fact that McKay probably would have read it -- we are to understand that he had read it based on Weir's quote because her line about the sun growing cold rhymes with the dismantling of the sun mentioned in it. Basically McKay and Weir had the same idea but we only get to hear this more obscure recitation because the Auden poem is well-known for being from a man to another man, and we can note that the camera focuses on Sheppard at these words, staring out into nothing and trying not to reveal anything of what he is thinking. Of course that is precisely what Weir's quotation is from also, a poem written by a man to another man as an expression of love, only it is less known and given to us through the filter of a heterosexual married couple -- an archetypal married couple in the form of the POTUS and the "first lady," representing the husband and the wife. The subtext is buried under several layers but it is most decidedly there.
Weir finishes up her speech and tells the gate technician to open the gate wordlessly, a Scottish man with a bag pipe sounding out a funeral dirge to send Beckett off. Weir touches the flag on the casket and walks off, seeming to give it off to Sheppard who takes over for her, watching her take up her previous spot before doing what they seem to have agreed to do previously, which is to lead the pallbearers to the coffin to walk him off into the wormhole.
It is unclear at this point how many ZPMs there are around -- Earth seems to have one at the start of the fourth season when they send in Carter through the gate -- and we do not even know whether the gate bridge is working at this time. This is to say that when Sheppard, McKay, Lorne, Zelenka, Ronon and Beckett's colleague Doctor Cole take Beckett's body -- however much was left of it -- through the gate, we do not know how long their trip to Earth is going to be. They could be gone from anywhere from an hour for anyone that did not accompany McKay to Beckett's family in Scotland to an excess of a month, since the trip back on the Daedalus would take three weeks. Regardless, this is a somber moment for the entire city, everyone looking on wordlessly as the pallbearers take their places around the coffin.
What is notable here is that Sheppard seems to look at McKay, really look at him, for the first time in this episode as he gives him a wordless request to accompany him to the casket, to take their places, and while it might again be obvious that Sheppard wanted to communicate this -- it is another example of this wordless communication between them. McKay does not need Sheppard to speak words to him for him to understand his meaning, McKay is capable of reading Sheppard's thoughts right off of his face.
It is not customary for people to wear a blue shirt to a funeral the way McKay does here, and we can note that he has been wearing blue all throughout the episode, from start to finish, from his blue bathrobe to the blue shirt he is wearing with his suit now. McKay likely is wearing a black suit but the blue shirt and the blue of the wormhole make his suit look dark blue or grey (and Weir's black suit certainly looks a lot more black than McKay's suit when they are stood in a row), and so with McKay in his Sunday suit and Sheppard dressed in his dress blues the two of them standing side by side solemn and serious makes it look like they might be attending another ceremony altogether -- and that is not an accident.
Gif-sets from this scene have been used to portray a marriage ceremony between them by more than a few people over the years, and while their intention may not have been to provide fans with material at the time, they certainly were playing with the thematic of weddings (and a funeral) with this episode. Juxtaposing the two of them in their Sunday best is on purpose here, dressing McKay in garb that is slightly off for a memorial is on purpose. Both of them had mused on marriage in this very episode, and even though they are both in mourning, even though their relationship has just ended, we are meant to think about who the both of them might want to marry one day and to actually come to the conclusion that there is no one better suited for them to marry than each other. We are taken by the hand and actually walked into this conclusion with this episode. For all marriage is usually a happier occasion than a memorial service, both of them would surely be serious and Sheppard especially would be so afraid by the prospect of marrying the love of his life that it might have looked exactly like this if they ever did get married.
Seeming lost, McKay glances at Sheppard from over Beckett's casket, the two of them stood on either side at the front, as a pair separated by grief -- and this is symbolic. Many people have noted the way Sheppard looks away from him here, unable to offer McKay the comfort that he so desperately needs here, that he is looking for from Sheppard, seeing this as his failure as a leader and a friend here.
And to be sure, Sheppard is neither a good friend nor a good team leader to McKay in this episode. It would be his duty to try to reach out to McKay when he is so obviously in pain. It is the subtext that explains why Sheppard can't be that for McKay here, why it is too much to ask from him in this moment. The two of them are truly separated by their grief in this episode, the pain dividing them as surely as the coffin between them. Apart from having tried to talk Beckett out of performing the surgery this is probably the only thing they have done together in a week following almost three years of doing almost everything together, and it has to be a bitter-sweet moment for them -- and it does not require them to actually speak to each other, which likely neither of them could have done here. Sheppard is lucky that McKay seems able to read him as well as he does, saving him from having to say things, as important as it would be for McKay to actually hear him say them. We watch them walk into the wormhole both in their private mourning, not just of a good friend but of the end of the most important relationship of both of their lives.
Continued in Pt. 19