They certainly had some of the best villains, I might be taking the easy way out here, but Ba'al was always a favourite of mine.
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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Ba'al is wonderful. And cute.
He has a LOT of charm. And I love that about him. I honestly really wish they'd just let Ba'al stay on earth, that would have been awesome and hilarious. I think Cliff Simon wanted Ba'al to be an anti-hero/anti-villain and help SG-1 more, so it would have really worked out.
What's your favorite thing about Ba'al?
For me, it's just that overly serious all the time, and is quite happy to make disparaging remarks or two or just plain make fun of the main team. Where the others all take themselves way to seriously, but I suspect after centuries of only really fighting against other system lords and only really having servants to talk to, I think he enjoyed having having someone else in the arena to battle wits against.
I never heard that said before but it wouldn't surprise me which how the role evolved over the seasons.
Ba'al was the best! Great villain who was quick to adapt. Was sad to learn about his actors passing.
CS passing was dark news for all of us. He really put his heart into the Ba'al character, and we were blessed to have him.
I would've liked to see them do more with the Tok'ra and humans volunteering, after Jacob (who didn't really have much time to consider it), to show that the Tok'ra really are who they claim they are. Or, that they're not and make that more of a story, because with how they were using Tanith's host, they didn't seem to care that much about humans.
Also would've liked to see the Asgard get more involved in de-snaking people, and maybe that could've led to a confrontation between the Asgard and the Tok'ra.
Honestly, the show creators should be ashamed with how they underutilized the Tok'ra. They were given no cultural depth whatsoever. The show alluded to things like "How have the Tok'ra, with all their technology, been fighting the goa'uld for thousands of years and made no progress, but 10 four-man teams under a mountain can do it in their spare time in a few years?" but never actually made any effort to answer them. "We have a plan" became sort of a running joke - the steiner's counterattack of the Tok'ra.
Eventually they had to pivot to intentionally portraying the Tok'ra as arrogant, incompetent assholes because they failed to portray them any other way.
They had so much opportunity to delve into things like the ethics and practical effects of only accepting hosts who essentially have to sign on to dedicating their life to being a member of the alien taliban, or how relationships work, or why the Tok'ra never had any harcesis children, or how they handle the effects of constant host replenishment on their reigning political ideology, or the differences between born-tok'ra and goa'uld converts, or how they envisioned society being after the fall of the empire, or 100 other things.
The tok'ra were wasted (along with the goa'uld to be honest) and it drives me up the wall.