Sam and Teal'c in Season 4

The Sam-Teal'c relationship development this season seemed pretty much non-existent to me. Entity was certainly a big fat wasted opportunity on that score. (Although the excellent Sam and Janet friendship development there was some compensation.) We did get two scenes where Sam shows anxiety for Teal'c in Serpent's Venom and Exodus, and that wonderful scene between the android Sam and Teal'c in Double Jeopardy but apart from that they were barely even in a shot together. It was a pity that WOO was structured in such a way that we didn't get to see Teal'c interacting with Sam at all. We know Teal'c would be too honourable to steal a kiss from Sam (Jack please take note), but they could still have had one scene together, surely, where Teal'c utilized the opportunities the time loop gave him to perhaps share something with Sam he never had before. Even if it was only to tell her something about himself that no one else knew, or about his relationship with Shau'nac or Drey'ac, or how he'd felt when Ry'ac was born. Something!

I do happen to think Sam and Teal'c have incredible sexual chemistry so I can see why they might want to keep them apart in a season where they were trying to ultimately depict Teal'c as someone who was consumed by his tragically brief reunion with Shau'nac, and in which Jack and Sam were supposed to be having sparkage. But there is an awful lot of mileage to be got from a relationship in which both of the protagonists see themselves only as friends and never think about the other as anything other than a friend and yet their scenes together have an extra frisson which really works for the viewer. That's what some people get from the J/D and J/S (not to mention D/T, S/D and J/T) scenes so there seems no reason why they can't utilize this asset for the S/T scenes.

I think they've been a bit reluctant to commit themselves with Teal'c because his is a character that is dependent to a certain extent on remaining something of an enigma. They don't want to commit to too many specifics so they confine themselves to generalities because they don't want to limit their options too much. One can definitely sympathize with that, but I do think that after four seasons, they really need to commit themselves to a policy on how Teal'c perceives Sam. Does he see her as a soldier? As a scientist? As a woman? As his friend? As someone he needs to protect? What? Does he confide in her? Does she confide in him? Do they shake their heads together over Daniel's abilities as a soldier from time to time or not? Do they occasionally have a bit of a bitch about Jack? What is there about their relationship that is specific to them? What do they have in common that they don't have in common with Jack or Daniel? In most episodes we've seen Daniel as the person the others confide in, be it Jack, Teal'c, or Sam, but after Teal'c killed Sha're it's reasonable to assume he wouldn't have been knocking on Daniel's door to talk about his feelings of guilt over it. Nor, if he came back from The Land of Light after a visit in which it was obvious that he and Dray'ac were never going to want to get back together again, would one expect him to be picking Daniel out as a confidante. Would he confide in Jack? Or would he feel that there was an area of competition between them that might prevent him from wanting to appear in any way weaker or more vulnerable in front of him? Would he have cultural problems about sharing confidences with a woman or not?

I can definitely see Teal'c confiding in Sam and even asking her advice, but I've never *seen* it because the writers have never written it. I do think by now we should know a hell of a lot more about the relationship between Sam and Teal'c than we do and I *really* hope that they're going to put that right in S5.

Lori

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