Teal'c & Daniel in Season 4

I did think we saw some Teal'c-Daniel relationship development despite the fact TPTB seemed to be keeping those two apart as diligently as they did with Jack and Daniel. But in the few snatched moments where Teal'c and Daniel were allowed to share some screen-time I thought we got some very significant insights.

In Crossroads, Daniel is the one who goes to see Teal'c, not Jack. Daniel is the one who says he is there if Teal'c wants to talk about the situation with Shau'nac. We don't know how much of an effort this is for Daniel, but Teal'c doesn't appear to be surprised by it. Teal'c is much nicer to Daniel in Small Victories than either Jack or Sam, and clearly doesn't agree with Jack on a number of occasions where Jack apparently thinks yelling or bullying would be the right approach. (The Other Side and Scorched Earth springing to mind.) Teal'c has only once told Daniel off that I can remember and that was in that wonderful scene in Secrets. (Are there any scenes in Secrets that *aren't* wonderful? I think they had more character development of Jack, Sam, Daniel, *and* Teal'c in that one episode than we got in almost the whole of S4…) He is never rude to him. He doesn't raise his voice to him. And even when he doesn't agree with him he never forcibly removes him from a situation even though he is certainly physically capable of tucking him under one arm and carrying him off if he wanted to.

I thought that by the time we got to Exodus Teal'c seemed to be regarding Apophis as the person responsible for Sha're's death. Whether this is because Daniel has told him that as far as he is concerned that is the case, or if he has come to this conclusion by himself we don't really know. In Absolute Power Daniel definitely seemed to confront his subconscious hostility towards Teal'c (or his *fear* that he might have a subconscious hostility towards Teal'c at any rate), but we've not really had a post-FIAD equivalent of Cor-Ai (or even Thor's Hammer) where Teal'c gets to see for himself what the state of play is between Daniel and himself since his killing of Amaunet/Sha're. (Although we did have that smokin' hot scene between sweaty Teal'c and sweaty Daniel in front of that furnace in BTS…but that wasn't really character development it was just very nice from a hormonal point of view…)

I feel almost as deprived of Teal'c-Daniel interaction in S4 as I do of Sam-Teal'c interaction but at least with the hints we got in Absolute Power and Exodus there does seem at least a possibility that the writers might be intending to explore this relationship in more depth at some point, but I guess only time will tell on that score. On the evidence of S4 I'm just going to cross my fingers and hope that we'll see an end to exclusion zones in S5 and a lot more insights into the way SG-1 (and Sam and Teal'c, and Daniel and Teal'c in particular) all feel about each other.

Lori

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