Friendship vs. Duty [Shades of Grey]

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RuffledPuppy

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Jack had to make a lot of choices in Shades of Grey.

Accept or reject the assignment.

Keep his mouth shut, or tell his friends what was going on.

Apologize afterwards, or argue that he did the right thing.

Did he make the right decisions? Were any of his options "right", or would any choice he made be at least partly wrong?

I'd like to hear some opinions, and especially how you all reached those opinions, because I sure don't know the answers.
 
Originally posted by RuffledPuppy
Jack had to make a lot of choices in Shades of Grey.

Accept or reject the assignment.
Click to expand...

don't think he had a lot of choice there. yeah he could have refused it but..since the nox, tollan & asgard were ticked off at us...how could he refuse when it was literally fate of the world?


[/B][/QUOTE]Keep his mouth shut, or tell his friends what was going on.[/B][/QUOTE]

well, i think he had to keep his mouth shut mainly cause he really didn't know who to trust. sure in his heart he may have 'known' sam, danny & teal'c weren't guilty but...he had to prove it. and to prove it they couldn't know there was a sting going on. there is also the fact that had they known it would have made them a target...let's say sam knew there was a traitor at the sgc...you think she would have not stuck her nose in? i personally see either her or danny trying to 'help' by finding the traitor, which could have gotten them killed.


[/B][/QUOTE]Apologize afterwards, or argue that he did the right thing.[/B][/QUOTE]

i think he just had to forge ahead trusting them to understand. i mean have you ever been in the situation when you knew someone was in trouble or something but couldn't tell? i have been and it's not fun...but it does come down to doing either your duty or what you think is right or best...and since he couldn't tell them without possibly risk tipping off the bad guy...he just had to hope they'd get over it


[/B][/QUOTE]Did he make the right decisions? Were any of his options "right", or would any choice he made be at least partly wrong?[/B][/QUOTE]

given the magnitude of the problem, i don't see how he could have changed things. three races were deservedly mad at us, and he had to prove without a shadow of a doubt that they were making every effort to catch the bad guys(which, come on, someone at the sgc or nellis had to be in on it from the beginning...which means anyone at the sgc was suspect)
and i remember how travelle said the tollan insisted the humans police their own...they had to go above and beyond the call of duty to prove to them that the sgc was innocent.



and welcome rp....nice to have you around :D
 
Intriguing questions...

Hi, RP!

Hmm. Here's my thoughts..

Accept or reject?

He never really had a choice. Primarily, Jack is a soldier. This is his life's work. When he accepted his commission, he made a vow to obey the orders of his superior officers, and Jack is a very honorable man. He might have argued and asked off the assignment, but once given, it's his duty to fulfill the task given him. Plus, the accusations being made against the SGC would have deeply angered him, and I'd bet he was more than willing to defend the SGC by ferreting out the rats.

Apologize or argue he did the right thing?

I don't see these as being mutually exclusive. He did the right thing; he had to find the mole, find out who was stealing tech, and stop them. Then, he had to apologize for the hurt he was forced to cause.

Keeping his mouth shut?

Yeah, he had to. He had to protect his friends, and to insure the sucess of the mission. Like Skydiver said, he had to prove to himself as well as everyone else that SG-1 wasn't involved. But, too, he knew there was at least one mole, (and who knows, maybe more) within the SGC. Once Jack began his charade, the mole would be watching the remaining member of SG-1 like a hawk, waiting for any sign of their part, however inadvertent, that Jack was faking. Maybourne and NID might have even targeted SG1 as hostages against Jack's good behavior if they'd ever had any suspicions about his turning coat. Imagine, Makepeace was in a position to be in very close contact with all of SG-1 while he was their C.O. Any slip of the tongue would have endangered Jack's life.

Did he make the right decisions?

I think he made the only ones he could. He took an awful risk. What if he'd said and done all those things to Daniel, Sam, and Teal'c, and then the mission had failed and he'd been killed by Maybourne or Newman as a spy -- D, S, & T would have spent the rest of their lives believing Jack to be a traitor.

The title of this episode is very good: it was a situation where there was no black-and-right, no correct vs incorrect answer, no good vs evil .... everything was gray. Makepeace & Newman et al really believe what they were doing was for the good of the planet.


Ask more questions like this RP!
 
Oh, and just wanted to add...

I've never really bought into the whole "Daniel was devestated" by Jack's 'no foundation' speech. I think he was hurt by it,because no one can hurt you quite so efficently as your best friend, but once he knew it was faked, and why Jack had to do it, he forgave him. That's why he made the "we drew straws - I lost" crack at the end.... getting a bit of his own back.
 
that crack, and the look on sam's and especially teal'c's faces said'oh we may understand but you got some major sucking up to do'.
 
Originally posted by skydiver
that crack, and the look on sam's and especially teal'c's faces said'oh we may understand but you got some major sucking up to do'.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but the look on Jack's face...felt kinda bad for him.

anyone read Ozkaren's 'Medical considerations' for this ep? Very good.
 
oz karen does a wonderful job of delving into their feelings...in a totally believable way.

here's a thought, SoG seemed especially devastating on the heels of 100 days and the 'i didn't want to come back' way jack felt. now i will freely admit i didn't doubt for a second that jack wasn't bad...had it pegged as a rewrite of 'the enterprise incident' from the first promo but...let's say 100 days didn't happen. would your perception of jack being a jerk change if the episode hadn't happened?
see there are two eps back to back where jack is a bit of a jerk(ok let's say insensitive) to the team...so let's take 100 days out of the equation. would you still feel he was as 'bad'?

a paralled to this is past & present following FIAD...most people seemed to object to danny falling for kira just 7 days(seemingly) after shau'ri's death. putting those two eps back to back colored people's perceptions of danny falling for kira.
did putting 100 days & SoG back to back color your perception of SoG?
 
When I saw 100 days and SoG there was a four week gap between them (for some stupid syndication reason well beyond my understanding) and because of that I didn't really put the two end to end. But...reading the fanfic and thinking back...yeah, those two eps back to back so to say, did change the whole feel of SoG. I don't know if it was the best idea to order them that way...unless it was intentional--which i doubt seeing as how they leave such gigantic gaps in some of the continuations of the eps. Er, does that make any sense to anyone but the poor little man in my twisted brain?
 
That's a very good point, skydiver, and one we tend to forget, that our perceptions on a episode can be very different depending on when we saw it and what we saw right before it. I have t think about whether I would have reacted differently to Jack if 100 Days hadn't been right before. What struck me most was how hard it was on the team to have those two incidents happening one after the other. I too, knew jack ws doing something undercover, but what makes this episode work is that the episode still has a powerful story to tell anyway, which is the effect of his actions on the team & on the 'conspiracy'.

I have to think about this some more. . . . .
 
For some reason the PTB didn't want me to see this episode(SoG), 3 minutes into the premeir showing, my cable went out, and 6 months later when it re-ran, 10 minutes into it My T.V. Blew up! I desperatly went to my parents house intime to see the tale end, and was severly screwed up for a while, then I finally got to see it, and I have to say, I think this is my favorite ep of season 3
 
I think that Jack thought this was a no Brainer. He has seen first hand what this tech could do in the wrong hands. The Tollen, Nox, and Asgard have helped to the best of their ability. And at least Sam and Teal'c would understand being solgiers. And besides he gets to help put Mayborn into levinworth.

ZachWZ
 
But even without S4 spoilers (lets avoid them for now), can anyone see Maybourne allowing himself to stay in any sort of detention for long.

His connections must go stratospheric, where the air is real thin, so as minimum him, and maybe his boys and girls too, will be either let out, or transferred, or allowed or helped to escape within a short time. The people who must owe him and his organisation favours is potentially worrying.
 
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