Character Musings, Dr. Elizabeth Weir

[mari4212]

A little late, but better late than never, right?

I will probably write another essay on Dr. Weir, focusing on the growth between the current season and last, but this essay contains no spoilers for the second season of Atlantis.

Who is Dr. Weir? We learn from Stargate that she is a diplomat, that she works to promote peace because she hates war. She is a negotiator, someone who is trained to see both sides and to get then to agree.

She is thrown head first into the Stargate program, and has one man telling her not to trust SG-1, not to believe them when they say that the bad guys are on the way. At the same time, she has the SGC, and SG-1, and everyone talking about how Anubis can kill us with one arm tied behind his back, and a cockamamie plan to save the day. She is completely out of her depth, but she is willing to trust SG-1, and as a result the day gets saved. She also tells off Kinsey, and proves herself capable of making her own decisions.

Then she gets assigned to the Atlantis mission, and it captivates her in a way that the SGC never seemed to. By the time Rising aired, she had won the respect of the scientists and military she was leading down there. She was relaxed, and enthusiastic, and could tease Rodney McKay without him getting upset. Atlantis was her baby. I'd note that while the SGC was primarily military, with some scientists attached, Atlantis and the Antarctic mission were the exact opposite. Elizabeth does best as a civilian leader of civilians.

And then they discover the way to Atlantis, and she gets to lead the expedition. Watching her good bye video to Simon, it's clear that she's discovered where she wants to be, and what she wants to do. Atlantis can teach them so much, there is so much to learn, so much that could potentially help mankind. Her goal is always to help people, it's one of the driving forces of her personality.

When they get to Atlantis, everything changes. The scientific mission of discovery becomes secondary to defending themselves and their new allies from the Wraith, and making sure that whatever else happens, the Wraith do not learn how to get back to Earth and our own galaxy. There are two main episodes in the first season that show the depth and richness of Elizabeth's character, and they are, quite obviously, "Before I Sleep", and "Letters From Pegasus". LFP shows how much she cares for her people. She sits there and makes a personal message to the families of everyone who died, and she cared enough to start crying midway through. She feels that much for the people under her command.

"Before I Sleep" was perhaps the best episode of the first season. But regardless of your opinions of the show itself, it did present a wonderful image of Elizabeth. This is a woman who would sacrifice herself to save the lives of the people under her command. The love she has for her people fuels her decisions.

The one weak point Elizabeth has in the first season is that she sometimes allows Sheppard too much latitude, and he abuses it. The best example of this is in "Hot Zone", the episode in which they discover the nanovirus. Sheppard deliberately disobeyed her, and it was a million to one chance that everything would have worked out as well as it did. He put people's lives at risk because he wouldn't listen to her. But he'd done things before, and she'd allowed it, so he thought he could do it here as well.

Comments

[ljmckay.livejournal.com]

Wonderful, as always! Brilliant analysis!

[mari4212.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'm finding I do best with essays. Fiction is much harder.

[ljmckay.livejournal.com]

Whereas I probably lean more toward fiction. Which is why we work so well together!

[mari4212.livejournal.com]

Probably. Our readers tend to appreciate it!

And these essays have been linked to places. It's cool, and slightly weird. I mean, how did the Atlantis news people even hear about them?

[ljmckay.livejournal.com]

Connections, connections! That's pretty cool; I've seen you on the Atlantis News page. Congrats!

[mari4212.livejournal.com]

It is bounce inducing, especially when complete strangers are commenting and saying that I'm describing what they see as well. And they're calling me eloquent! *bounce, bounce, bounce*

[heylittleriver.livejournal.com]

Very nice. *grin*

Her goal is always to help people, it's one of the driving forces of her personality.

I think that sentence there points to how she's changed since coming to Atlantis. While before - as shown by her line about helping humanity - she was definitely in it for helping people (though I'll bet 'helping people' isn't the only thing that gave her an adrenaline rush during negotiations), since arriving in Atlantis, her main goal seems to be protecting and helping her own people. She'll help others if she can, but not if it's at a detriment to her people (ie. Underground till John forces her hand).

Of course, you've got the other end of the stick where she won't cause deliberate harm on other innocent people, to help her own. (ie. Childhood's End)

Okay, that was rambling. Love the analysis and am off to read John's.

[mari4212.livejournal.com]

Yay for rambling! I love it when there's something I say that sparks someone else to think about something. I love it even more when they say it to me.

Elizabeth is a lot like me I think, and the balance always is what will help the most people without doing unacceptable harm to anyone. Stealing the ZPM is beyond what is allowable, so she wouldn't even think of it as an alternative. Or at least, I wouldn't, and I think she and I see eye to eye on this one.

And the adrenaline rush of making people who wouldn't ordinarily be able to stand each other come to an agreement? Yeah, she so gets that. It makes up for all the times when she wants to bang their heads together because they're acting like two year olds.

[heylittleriver.livejournal.com]

the balance always is what will help the most people without doing unacceptable harm to anyone.

Exactly! The girl has her morals - even going so far as to bring up the Geneva Convention in reference to the Wraith. Which, I admit I think, may be going a little too far. But still, it's nice to see that they have a leader who puts the people before the gains - since she did it with the Wraith she'll definitely do it with the humans.

And the adrenaline rush of making people who wouldn't ordinarily be able to stand each other come to an agreement? Yeah, she so gets that. It makes up for all the times when she wants to bang their heads together because they're acting like two year olds.

HEE! Well, that's one of them.

But I also think that Elizabeth likes to be in control and sometimes relishes that power. (Not only over other people, but herself and her emotions too.) At the same time, I think she hates it and wishes she could just get away from it all too.

[saeva.livejournal.com]

Hey! I was going to comment here on your commentary but it sort of got out of control and spiralled, so I ended up doing a separate post (http://www.livejournal.com/users/saeva/62125.html) about it over on my LJ, if you'd like to go check it out.

- Andrea.

[mari4212.livejournal.com]

I've read it, and it's interesting. I think you were focusing on how she chose to do the job, and how it defined her, while I was focusing on her personality, and what that meant about the way she chose to do the job. Nice to see the other side of it.

[saeva.livejournal.com]

Actually, I was focusing on how she chose to do the job and what her job was, while you were focusing on things that really have nothing to do with her job and I have trouble seeing what they have to do with Elizabeth. Being anti-(non-necessary) military action isn't the same as being, politically, for peace.

Elizabeth Weir is not for peace, or scientific discovery, as you posit. She's for cooperation, which a completely different thing than peace and is shown widely in her actions, from the response to Rodney stealing things from possible allies (which is an utterly idiotic political move to begin with) to her treatment of the situation with the Genii. I think you'd be hard pressed to come up with an example of situation in which she chose the peaceful option over the practical one, though if you have an example I'm more than willing to change my mind.

She *wasn't* willing to trust SG-1, for example, but she was willing to allow them, with the proof they were capable of offering via O'Neill's condition and in the necessity of the situation, to act as they had no better plan. I think there's a significant difference there between trusting people and trusting evidence. And she didn't just have one man telling her not to trust SG-1 either; she had Kinsey against them but others, like Hayes and Woosley, uncertain about them, and the evidence in the files of both their successes (which are huge) and their failures (which are equally huge).

You also fill in a lot of things I just don't see, between the end of Lost City and the beginning of Rising. McKay's allowance of her isn't really surprising, he's really rather allowing of most people who show the slightest bit of intelligence. And as for the SGA mission capitivating her in a way that SGC didn't, I don't see that either and if I did I'd probably explain it in just the way I did in my post -- the people of the SGC, Daniel especially, don't want her.

I think you really focus on certain things that were more practical decisions than intuitive or empathetic ones and then call them empathetic, like Before I Sleep. In BiS, if she succeeded then at the least a version of herself would be able to survive in the situation she wanted to be in and at the best it would actually be herself. The Stargate universe isn't clear on the exact rules of time travel and Janus was using a prototype without much, if any, time to test it. A prototype he was barred from making in the first place because of the Ancients's bad experience with time tampering. Her decision of self-sacrifice was the most practical decision for herself, her expedition, and her team, but it wasn't a noble act as you seem to imply. She knew the Ancients were doomed and would have died regardless.

I, on the other hand, feel the most significant moments for Elizabeth's characterisation in the first season are in The Siege, Childhood's End, Hot Zone, all situations where we see her interacting on a city-wide scale, and Home, where we see what sort of *woman* she is. I don't want to spoil for the second season here but I think her actions in Intruder with a certain character she also saw in Home and the fact that she wished to bring him back with her, violating every good sense a leader might fall back on, is very significant.

How she chooses to do her job *is* her personality as she's always, always on duty on Atlantis, and part of that choice is her allowance of Sheppard and what she doesn't allow Sheppard (and how she reacts when he violates that). I completely disagree it's a weak point, for example, as I said in my post. It's, if anything, a strong point of who she is, how she does her job, and how Atlantis is run. It doesn't need a commander, as I said, or a leader even; it needs a negotiator, which isn't the job as per how you define it either (another point I covered in my post). Her job doesn't define her, she defines her job. Negotiation, International Affairs, isn't a science in the way astrophysics is; it's a career based almost entirely on personality.

- Andrea.

[mari4212.livejournal.com]

I think we have very different ideas about what Elizabeth is, far more different than I thought when I read your own commentary.

In Before I Sleep, you say that she knew the Ancients were doomed, and that that is why she chose to try to change the future. We are never given a timeline for how soon the Ancients started to die out from the plague after the evacuation of Atlantis. Clearly, some time has passed from the exploration they do after returning to Earth. She knew she had the option of leaving with the Ancients, and it was probably safer than staying on Atlantis to try to save another version of the Atlantis mission. And Janus does explain what she would have to do, and that she would go into stasis to do so. The stasis chambers were an established technology for the Ancients, he knew what would happen to her, that the stasis chamber slowed the aging process down. I can't imagine he wouldn't tell her what was involved. So yes, I see it as being less pragmatic of a choice than you evidently do.

I won't get into the second season with you, except to say that yes I have seen it, and our interpretations seem to be very different.

As for her attitude about Atlantis v. the SGC, I look at her body language and attitude in Rising. She's very excited by it, more so than she seemed to be about the SGC, and considering that one of the people working with her in Antarctica is Daniel, I don't think he was quite as hostile to her as you seem to think.

As for peaceful over practical? Pragmatism would have told her to take the children's ZPM in Siege and take them over to Atlantis. But that would have destroyed their trust, and made an enemy. In Siege, although this bit was cut, she also sends Sora back to the Genii, hoping to restore peace between the two.

[saeva.livejournal.com]

To go backwards: It's practical not to make enemies. Preying on members of the Pegasus galaxy, even ones as disconnected as the people in Childhood's End (though if the Wraith can get to them then they're going to suddenly be far less disconnected), will make enemies and the mentality of might to take equates right to take, as Rodney was displaying, would develop enemies they can't afford.

Ones they especially can't afford given that they're reliant on these people for trade and food, which they can't produce themselves at this point and time. Stuck in an isolated (from base, i.e. Earth) situation with a finite amount of supplies and an indeterminate amount of time before they're able to reestablish connect with their base, making enemies of the people who grow crops is insane. Something that Rodney has failed to recognize more than once (though he's getting better by the Brotherhood).

They could, of course, take the tact of hiding, manipulating, and threatening that the Genii seem to employ in various amounts of that's not a strong position to take when, unlike the Genii, they cannot grow their own food.

If I thought for a second Elizabeth wasn't considering every single one of these factors when she berated Rodney's short-term view, I might agree with you, but given her previous career and expertise I can't think for a second that she wasn't.

I will agree with you that she seemed very excited in Rising, as much of the expedition is, and nervous, but I don't equate that with taking to it better or more personally. In her time at the SGC there were none of the discoveries that would excite someone, whether they were looking for knowledge, technology, or just adventure. In comparison, during her time in Antarctica there was. Furthermore, Simon does refer to her as someone who enjoys and seeks out adventure -- going well with her career on Earth -- and so it would make sense she'd be excited about such an expedition.

And Daniel was very hostile when she was head of the SGC and the idea of publicizing the program itself was still at the forefront, but it would make sense that once that idea was removed and she was transfered he would no longer be hostile. He wasn't objecting to her, merely her role in the situation; once it changed he stopped objecting. I don't think I said he objected to her personally.

As for BiS, what I said was that the *time travel* technology was untested and uncertain, because the Ancients first experiment into it was a failure and Janus's Jumper device was a prototyped he was banned from testing. Therefore they could predict what the statis would do, but not the ways the timeline would be effected.

It's possible that staying where she was, then going with the Ancients to Earth, would mean that her future self would end up doing exactly what she herself had done with the time machine and the shield failing and everything else. Janus did know that someone *had* to be there to adjust the city two times in between the exit of the Ancients and the arrival of the expedition, which means that if she had left chances were things would repeat themselves. In which case nothing is solved by her going to Earth, the same mistakes are made, and the cycle starts over.

Knowing the Ancients are doomed -- that they will die out or ascend (and not being capable of ascending in her own right, though they *might* be able to make an exception if they were willing to make an exception for that when they weren't for other things) -- and knowing that if someone does not stay the situation will repeat itself, the most pragmatic decision is to do exactly what she did.

It wasn't the statis that was the variable, it was the timeline.

And, yes, we do have very different ideas about Elizabeth because, I think, I see her first and foremost as someone who would become a negotiator. That's where her personality starts for me, everything that comes after that, on Atlantis, is movement out from that point.

- Andrea.

[mari4212.livejournal.com]

I think our basic starting assumptions about Dr. Weir are very different, and I can't say that mine is better or worse than yours. Every piece of evidence I can see is going to have multiple interpretations, so I won't argue the point further.

[permetaform]

this is great! May I link to this in my own upcoming babble and squee?

[mari4212.livejournal.com]

Thank you, and sure, as long as you give me a link to the babble and squee.

[permetaform]

referenced your post here =):
http://www.livejournal.com/users/permetaform/311787.html

thank you!