I Can See How These Dead Girlfriends Might Seem Unusual: Dr. Daniel Jackson
April 17, 2023
O'Neill: Last year, you died.
Daniel: I'm dead?
O'Neill: Obviously not. You just sort of died. Actually, you…ascended to a higher plane of existence. Last time I saw you, you were helping us fight Anubis.Daniel: Anubis?
O'Neill: Yeah. Kind of an over-the-top, cliché bad guy. Black cloak, oily skin, kind of spooky. Anyway, obviously since then, you've retaken human form, somehow. I — Actually, I can see how this might sound a bit unusual…
Daniel: A bit?!
- "Fallen" (2003-06-13)
Welcome, readers, to the men's division of our Stargate analysis. Stargate takes place in a world where "finding love" ranks higher than "smoking" on the risk factors for a premature death. For this post, I'd like to focus on the women who die in proximity to Dr. Daniel Jackson, the franchise's unluckiest male victim of the Cartwright Curse.
The Character
I'm Christian Bocher. I'm portraying the character of Raymond Gunn, who portrays the character of Dr. Levant, which is based on the character Daniel Jackson, portrayed by the actor Michael Shanks. Originally portrayed by the actor James Spader, in the feature film.
- Star of the show-within-a-show "Wormhole X-Treme" attempts to explain Daniel (2001-09-08)
As previously discussed in our introduction post, Dr. Jackson is an archaeologist/linguist who got sucked into the world of space travel when called upon to translate the hieroglyphics on an ancient Egyptian device that turned out to be alien in origin. Although he's technically a civilian, he spends the next decade fighting various aliens with the US Air Force.
The Study
This portion of my study involved watching Stargate (the movie), 10 seasons of Stargate SG-1, and two direct-to-DVD sequel movies. In addition to being time-consuming, this required me to put my Roku remote through its paces. See, thanks to the fact that Stargate SG-1 was distributed by MGM, and MGM's streaming rights are all mixed up in a sale to Amazon, the Stargate franchise has hopped from Netflix to Hulu to Prime and back and forth several times over the past 2 years. There have also been 2 non consecutive months in which it was on none of the above, and I had to get DVDs from the library. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: God bless the American public library system.
The Women
Across the 3 movies and 9.5 TV seasons that he's in, Dr. Daniel Jackson is shown kissing and/or dating 8 women.
9.5? I thought the show ran 10 seasons?
Yes, but Jackson was sort-of-dead for most of Season 6. See the introduction quote for details.
O-O-K...
Anyway, of those 8, the first appears in the 1994 feature film, in which Daniel accidentally gets married to an alien named Sha're.
Carter: So, Dr. Jackson, tell me about Sha're. How did you meet?
Jackson: Oh, Sha're. Well, she's, uh--
O'Neill: She was a gift.
Jackson: She was, actually, from the elders of Abydos the first time we were there.
Carter: And you accepted?!
- "Children of the Gods" (1997-07-27)
To his credit, however, he commits to the marriage after realizing they share a passion for liberating her people from slavery. She gets fatally shot with a laser beam, and he risks everything to resurrect her in a magical sarcophagus. In fact, at the end of the movie, he decides to stay on her planet and let Col. O'Neill report him as KIA, just so he can stay with her. He only rejoins the Stargate program for the TV show because she gets kidnapped by the bad guys.
That, my friends, is where his troubles really begin. Because when "I need to find my kidnapped wife" is a major part of your protagonist's motivation, well, you can't actually have him find her, now can you? You'd be wasting a perfectly milkable plot point. So, no points for guessing how well Daniel's love life goes after that.
Hmm, maybe she's dead by the time he finds her?
You're not thinking nearly tragic enough. He finds her when she's pregnant with her kidnapper's child, delivers the baby, then sees her get kidnapped again. He spends another season trying to locate her, only to have the alien that's possessing her attack him - forcing his allies to fatally shoot her.
This second death set a DFGRR record for most times a particular girlfriend has died.
Oddly enough, though, that record is currently a tie, because starting in season 8, Daniel has a will-they-or-won't-they situation with Vala Mal Doran (Claudia Black).
First, she gets burned at the stake by religious extremists, only to be resurrected by the gods those extremists worship. Then, in the series finale, she, Daniel, and the rest of the main cast are all blown up and then saved when they travel back in time.
This makes Stargate the undisputed champion of killing off women multiple times apiece.
Do Jackson's girlfriends hold any other interesting records?
Hmm, well, 2 of them (Sha're and Sara) are possessed by aliens who impersonate Egyptian goddesses (Amaunet and Osiris, respectively) during the course of the relationship. So that's a record for most Egyptian god-aliens dated in a single franchise.
Vala is also possessed by a god-alien, but not while she's involved with Daniel. Relatedly, since in this universe all of the Egyptian gods were secretly aliens, this is the third of our contestant franchises to feature Anubis, Egyptian god of death, as a character.
On a darker note, both Sha're and Vala, at different times, give birth to a child with whom they were forcibly impregnated.
Both babies turn into all-knowing beings who ascend to higher planes of existence, but one of them uses his powers for good, and the other uses hers for evil. The two never meet, which is just as well, because with the screenwriting already this dark, I shudder to think of what additional horrors would ensue.
Incidentally, the evil one, Adria, develops a crush on Daniel...which he finds himself having to encourage in order to gain her trust so he can defeat her. She's one year old at the time.
For those of us keeping score at home, that's Sha're, Vala, Sara, Adria...how about the other 4 women?
Let's see, he hooks up with one total stranger, Melosha, while infected with a virus that makes him behave like a caveman, and with one almost-perfect-stranger, Shilah, who gets him addicted to the magical healing sarcophagus. At one point he falls for an amnesiac scientist, Kira, who turns out to be guilty of genocide. Oh, and the Egyptian goddess Hathor drugs him and has her way with him - which wasn't counted as rape at the time the episode aired (1997) because, as we discussed when we talked about both Captain Kirk and Sam Winchester, the legal definition of "rape" specified a female victim until 2013.
That also about covers "Nefarious Intentions," doesn't it?
Not quite: Vala also met Daniel because she was pirating his spaceship. That makes it a round 75% of girlfriends with nefarious intentions. Daniel seems to attract trouble, is what I'm telling you.
How many of them die?
With only 8 notches on his belt, and only 4 deceased lovers, Daniel's raw numbers are the current lowest score for the DFGRR.
However, that entails a whopping 50% mortality rate:
Making him our top scorer by percentage of the DFGRR to date.
Daniel: Oh, God.
Captor: Your gods cannot save you now, Daniel Jackson.
Daniel: Actually, that's just a statement of general dissatisfaction.
- Stargate: The Ark of Truth
So, how many of those deaths are his fault?
It's worth noting that Daniel Jackson blames himself for every death resulting from Stargate travel.
Oma: Why do you feel you have failed on your journey? You opened the Stargate for your world....
Jackson: I had the chance to live out my life with [my wife]. I couldn't leave it alone. I was the one that unburied the Gate. What happened to her was my fault.... Maybe I did something good every now and again, but nothing I've ever done seems to have changed anything.
- "Meridian" (2002-05-10)
Granted, it's possible to argue - as at least one minor villain does - that the Stargate is Pandora's box, and by opening it, Daniel assumed responsibility for all the wickedness that flew out into the world. If that's so, then Daniel's relentless attempts to continue saving the day, regardless of the personal cost, are the symbolic equivalent of Pandora managing to capture hope in the box before it flies away.
Kane: Do you ever give up?
Jackson: Not until I'm dead. (pause) And sometimes not even then.
- "Ethon" (2006-02-03)
Another possibility is that Daniel is responsible for none of this, and simply has survivor's guilt. Let's break down the manners of death and see.
- Sha're: Killed by Teal'c to stop her possessing alien from killing Daniel.
- Hathor: Killed by Col. O'Neill because she's kidnapped SG-1
- Vala: Burned alive by enemies, and killed in an accident (resurrected both times)
- Adria: Killed by Daniel and his allies to stop her from taking over the galaxy
Of the four, only the last one gets killed by Daniel, and frankly she has it coming. Sha're and Hathor are killed by people defending Daniel, but again, they have it coming. Which leaves us with only Vala as an innocent victim of circumstances, and neither set of circumstances is Daniel's fault. In the first case, she insisted on visiting another galaxy with him and accidentally ran afoul of local law, while in the second one, they were both trapped in a time bubble that they could only escape by temporarily dying.
Carter: If this works, we'll only be dead for a few milliseconds… And time within the bubble will reverse, and we won't be dead, and the ship won't be destroyed.
- "Unending" (2007-03-13)
This gives Daniel a respectively low 25% culpability rate for the deaths of his love interests.
Hey, if your job description involves "fighting aliens who want to take over your body, planet, and/or galaxy," you're going to have to put an alien on ice once in a while.
Does getting pregnant by Daniel Jackson spell doom?
Vala: I had to tell you in person. I'm pregnant. Pretty sure it's yours, anyway. There's at least a one in……hmm…ten chance?
- "Avalon" (2005-07-15)
Although Vala is just joking in the above quote, 3 out of the 8 women in this data set do get pregnant at some point. However, Daniel is only the father in one of the three situations, and it's the icky one. Hathor's reason for assaulting him is that she wants his DNA for the purposes of making human-compatible alien parasites.
Like I said, ick.
Luckily, Sam Carter catches Hathor while she's spawning these, and sets fire to the incubation tank, killing all of the monster babies. Hathor escapes, but when she turns up again a season later, O'Neill kills her.
This leaves Daniel with a 100% mortality rate for women he's impregnated, and probably also a severe need for trauma therapy.
It leaves me with the burning question: what is up with forced-breeding tropes? This is our third speculative fiction franchise in the DFGRR, and all 3 have featured at least one such plotline. There's probably an entire separate blog to be written about why pop culture is obsessed with loss of reproductive autonomy, but frankly, I'm terrified/depressed by the most likely answer. Here, go read my Requiem for Roe v. Wade instead.
Conclusion
Daniel Jackson ends the series carrying a lot of pain and grief, although he also starts to move on by getting together with Vala. In the series finale, they spend 50 good years together, before they time-travel backwards and forget all about it. Despite the time-travel, this makes Daniel our first DFGRR contestant to ride off into the sunset with a woman who a) survives in the end; b) doesn't outlive him, at least as far as we know; and c) has a name and characterization. That's the closest thing to a happy romantic ending the DFGRR has had to date.
Huh. My fellow feminists, does it ever feel like we might be grabbing crumbs while the patriarchy walks away with the cake?
These fragments I have shored against my ruins.
Are you quoting "The Waste Land"?
Yes, and that's usually a sign I should wrap things up. So let me crown Daniel as our newest Top Mortality Rate winner. That prize should look good on this mantlepiece:
But we're not quite finished with this franchise yet! As my introduction post mentioned, Stargate SG-1, unlike some late 90s/early 00s sci-fi shows we could name, actually bothers with representing women on screen. That includes our first female DFGRR study subject, Sam Carter. Our next post will examine her string of dead boyfriends, and compare and contrast her experience with Daniel's.
Until then, keep your sexy lamps burning.