In Loving Memory of a Sci-Fi Character

We all like to watch TV.  Even I, who has maybe a hundred channels on my economy television plan (and interest in about ten percent of them), have a handful of shows which I follow with avid interest.  Bones, Downton Abbey, and Merlin are the most recent attractions, though I also enjoy going back to watch old favorites.  For the past few weeks now I’ve been watching Stargate SG-1, a great sci-fi show from the nineties, and I noticed something very interesting.

Very basically, the story follows a team of explorers who travel through a machine called a Stargate that can send them almost anywhere in the galaxy.  They explore and gather information about what’s out there and how they can protect Earth.  I like the show because it has marvelous detail, good characterization, and exciting story lines with humor thrown in.  And the special effects are better than most, at least for the time.  But (spoiler alert!) at the end of season five, one of the main characters was killed off, and I was surprised by how much this affected me.

Of the four members of the team, Daniel Jackson was always the one kind of in the background.  He’s the quiet one, the nerd, the one who doesn’t throw himself into the action.  He’s not witty and commanding like Jack O’Neill, or a brilliant scientist like Samantha Carter, nor does he have the interest of being a stone-faced alien warrior like Teal’c.  Probably of the four of them, Daniel was the one who had the fewest episodes devoted to his concerns.  But when he was gone, to me the whole show seemed somehow diminished, and I wondered why that was.

The answer came to me when I was talking to a friend about another television show, Downton Abbey.  We were discussing our favorite characters, and I began to notice something about my choice Mr. Bates.  Bates is quiet, self-effacing, but strong when he needs to be, loyal to his friends and not petty—rather like Daniel Jackson, in fact.

It seems that in most shows that I watch, I’m drawn to the character who provides the moral background, the one who speaks up only when the others are making bad choices, the one who sticks to his beliefs even when things get very hard.  Agent Booth from Bones, Merlin from the show of the same name…Richard Cypher from Legend of the Seeker and Kyle from Kyle XY—all of my favorite characters have these traits in common.  Often it’s the hero I’m drawn to, but not always, as my first two examples show.  In fact, I’m more drawn to the characters who aren’t the hero, but rather stand behind him and support him.

I think I connect with these characters because that’s how I like to see myself.  I don’t really know if I’m like that, but I hope I am.  And I don’t have to be the hero in every episode of my life.  I just want to be the person who can be depended upon to do the right thing.