Their Love Is So Canon!

Cassie Fraiser has two mommies

When two single women both bond with and go on to participate in co-parenting a child, it’s a great basis for speculation on a deeper relationship. Such is the beginning of the great chemistry between Stargate SG-1’s Captain Sam Carter and Doctor Janet Fraiser. An orphaned alien girl is brought to Earth, the sole survivor of a plague implanted with a Goa’uld bond, and both women are more or less instantly invested in her welfare. (Singularity, 01.14)

While it is ultimately Janet who adopts the girl, Cassie, and for several seasons she is only mentioned and not shown, mention is made later about Sam’s standing weekend plans with her in an episode which also features an intimate family birthday celebration consisting of Sam, Janet and Cassie. (Rite of Passage, 05.06)

The heart of Sam/Janet, however, is not dependent on Cassie’s presence in their lives. They first began to show the signs of a great potential pairing when the SGC was overtaken by the Goa’uld Hathor (incidentally, the episode prior to Cassie’s arrival) and all the men on base were taken in by her considerable charms, leaving it up to the duo to defeat the powerful ‘goddess’ with the help of the few other women present. (Hathor, 01.13)

In almost every scene they share, there is an underlying current of connection, if not sexual tension, showing two women who clearly care a great deal about each other. When Janet meets her fate saving a soon-to-be-first-time-dad offworld, Sam is utterly (and appropriately) wrecked. (Heroes pt 2, 07.18)

So for those of you who were wondering “are they or aren’t they?!” like I was, you can relax. You weren’t imagining it. Sam/Janet is totally canon.

In which I get in over my head.

Jack and Daniel. John and Rodney. Buffy and Faith. Angel and Wes. River and Jayne. Seven of Nine and the Doctor.

Every fandom’s got ‘em — those pairings that just spark, no matter what the writers try to tell you otherwise. I’m not talking about the pairings that are painfully obvious, the will-they-or-won’t-they pairings that are designed to keep people watching and caring. I’m talking about the pairings that are just so amazingly wonderful that, sadly, they usually never make it onscreen. The pairings that, if by some freak accident, they didn’t hook up behind the scenes and between the lines, they really really should have.

I’m going to abuse use this blog as an outlet to explore some of my favorites — expect emphasis on slash, because I do tend to see the world through rainbow-tinted glasses. Maybe I’ll explore some of your favorites. It can’t hurt to ask.

For now, I thought I’d go into why it is that I tend to love slash pairings. I tend to watch more sci-fi than mainstream television — a few exceptions are House, parts of the Law & Order franchise, and NCIS, among very few others — and it’s a well-known and bitched-about fact that women are often mistreated in sci-fi. I find this to be sad, but true.

I prefer both halves of my pairings to be on equal footing in the relationship. In the cases of Jack/Daniel (Stargate SG-1) and John/Rodney (Stargate: Atlantis), one could argue that one man is the other’s commanding officer, and so their footing is not equal. However, when you inspect the characters and their interactions, it becomes clear that while Jack and John are supposed to be in charge of their respective pet scientists, Daniel and Rodney are having none of this being ordered around business, and what they lack in military experience they make up for in scientific knowledge. They are more equal partners than subordinates. On top of this, the characters (due in no small part to the actors) have so much chemistry that really, it’s a wonder their uniforms haven’t caught fire yet.

The relationships that the writers put forth for the leading men on these two series involve the women on their teams, and while they are amazing, strong women, when the writers attempt to fit them into the cookie-cutter roles of romantic interest, they lose everything that makes them amazing and strong. Samantha Carter, genius doctor and fearless soldier, becomes a wilting violet the moment she’s faced with the possibility of a relationship with Jack O’Neill, and brave warrior woman Teyla Emmagan has been shown to have nightmares about a date with John Sheppard! With that in mind, it’s not difficult to see why I prefer to see John Sheppard paired with Rodney McKay, his best friend and frequent foil, than to see Teyla reduced to panic, or why I’d rather imagine Jack and Daniel bickering into their old age than witness the removal of Sam’s backbone yet again. (Incidentally, Sam pairs very well with Janet Fraiser, her equal in rank and another strong female character. Together, they are a formidable duo, but that’s a subject for another blog post.)

So you can expect to see a lot of pairings here which are evenly matched, on many levels. And we’ll explore the levels, as well. Occasionally you will see more than one pairing for a given show; less frequently, you will see more than one pairing for a given character. You will see pairings that will make you say, “Oh, them again?” and pairings that will make you say, “Why didn’t I think of that? It’s so obvious, now!” Hopefully, it will make you look more critically at the shows you watch and notice the chemistry as it exists, not only as it is presented, and learn to enjoy the love between the lines and behind the scenes.