I think the pilot episode did motivate Eli's place on the ship, and he *could* have been a great character if the series had stayed consistent with the picture of him as a "highly unmotivated genius". Previous SG scientists have all been highly motivated and hard working, driven by a need to prove themselves. Eli could have been a nice contrast to this, with someone who is brilliant but really doesn't care much.
But you are right, in the rest of the episodes he was turned into just "a slacker teenager" who doesn't show any of the genius that brought him onboard in the first place. The writers pretty much use him as a button-mashing monkey for times when the story keeps Rush away from the console.
I am with you all the way on that the ship and its role in the mythos was tragically underused. Had they focused more on that, and tied the plot to it, the series could have been brilliant.
You make a good point on the crew-crew interaction. However, it may still be that this was caused by the "main plot" being so thin in most episodes, as it did put more focus on the soap opera part. I mean, also in SG-1 the character interactions could be cheesy at times, but this was less evident as the focus typically was on an engaging plot. A counter-example is one of my least favorite SG-1 episodes 'Solitudes' where O'Neill and Carter spends the whole episode stranded in a cave, with O'Neill dying. It is one of the few 'crew against nature' plots in SG-1, and to me, it mostly falls flat.
My take at some reasons for failure:
1. Most of their viewers identify with Eli (the slacker nerd genius), but he ended as a minor support character, often just tangentially involved in the plot. He should have been SGU's Rodney.
2. Unlike previous Stargate iterations and BSG they tried to pull off 'crew against nature' plot lines rather than 'crew against enemies' . To get such plots feel like 'action' is really hard. A lot of them (especially in the beginning) was "crew lands on planet, somehow gets stuck, must get back in time before the ship leaves". There is only so many times you can do that before it becomes repetitive.
3. Point '2' got even worse since the planets often were ridiculously uninspired, "Desert planet", "Freezing planet", "Jungle planet", etc.
All this said, I think the show was heading in an interesting direction. I'm sad to see it go.
Thanks for the tip. I didn't know about this (needs a plugin for thunderbird)
But I couldn't find a standard for redirected email, is there a rfc for this? Essentially it is like Ccc: + setting a custom from address. To me this really proves how this Aprils fools joke really isn't a joke. Rather, it would be nice with a standard for headers that covers this functionality.
You could always use "Forward", which includes the original message along with the list of original recipients.
Which usually requires you to add an awkward "Hi, I forgot to send this to you" to not make the inline headers too confusing. Sure, this is what I do today, but it is less convenient than Ccc: would be, and exposes my mistake, which I'd rather avoid if I could.
Sounds more like you'd want to recall the original, and re-send the revision.
I am absolutely opposed to a feature that would allow people to alter email I have already received. I often use my email as an historic record of events, and would hate if I could not be sure that it is immutable.
Also, I'm pretty sure there is no standard for doing this across mail systems. To roll it out would require a major revamp of email as we know it today, since it requires some careful form of cross-realm authentication. On the other hand, the Ccc: header is just a straightforward feature to implement in the MUA.
With a CCC, the original group still doesn't know Alice is invited.
True, but for me this usually is not as important as to point out to Alice that she is not the only one getting the email. In the rare occasions when it is critically important that everyone is aware of everyone else, a followup email with "I forgot Alice" would be motivated.
Personally, I'd like support for multiple Dcc: headers: Disjoint Carbon Copies. I want to send the same message to multiple groups of addresses where I want those in one set to know they were all copied but want to hide that it was sent to the other group, and vice versa.
If the Ccc header was implemented, you could easily do this by sending the mail multiple times. Send the mail once to just the To:/Cc: recipients. Then put the To:/Cc: recipients in the Ccc: header, and for each set of Dcc: recipients send a copy with them in the Cc: field.
Since I can't figure out a way to emulate Ccc: with Dcc:, my vote is with Ccc:.
I have actually wanted this feature at times and wondered why there was no way in the MUA UI to do it. Not for keeping people out of the loop, but for resending emails that get bounced (say, misspelled email or delivery failure) or to recipients I forgot the first time.
Lets say that you are sending out a move invite to a number of friends. Just after you send it you notice that you forgot Alice. Now you need to send the invite just to her, but you prefer the email to look as the original so that she can see who else is invited. This is a common occurrence! And it would be very convenient if you could just bring up the email again, move everyone from To/Cc into Ccc, and then put her as the only CC.
Please explain to me again why this is presented as an Aprils fool, rather than a genuine feature?
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