August 16, 2023

Sam: I feel compelled to warn you, most of the guys I have dated recently have died.

Pete: As in…

Sam: Dead.

Pete: How?

Carter: Various circumstances.

- "Chimera" (2004-01-30)

Welcome at last, readers, to the first installment of our Women's Division. This time, we're tackling the troubled love life of the Stargate character Dr. Samantha Carter - astrophysicist, Air Force officer, certified genius, gorgeous blonde, and permanently single lady.

The Character

Sam: Y'know, you blow up one sun and suddenly everyone expects you to walk on water! (achieves something impossible) Next step, the parting of the Red Sea.

- "Reckoning, Part 2" (2005-03-04)

As that quote would imply, Sam Carter is a miracle worker. She saves the day dozens of times, getting promoted all the way from Captain up to full Colonel over the course of 14 years (1997-2011) and 3 shows (Stargate SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe). In that time, she frequently encounters our favorite romance trope, that of the doomed love interest. Sadly, she also spends that entire time engaged in my least favorite romance trope, the "Will They Or Won't They?"

Why is that your least favorite?

"Will They or Won't They" (hereinafter "WTWT") dynamics are popular on television. Yet in real life, if two single adults are interested in each other, they don't usually spend years dancing around the subject. Therefore, WTWT questions tend to be answered quickly. If they both like each other, they will. If the feeling is not mutual, or some other compelling factor makes a relationship impossible, then they won't. And we can all move on with our lives.

Not so on TV, though. On TV, it can take ages for two people to admit they like each other. Then, crisis after crisis will intervene, one unhappy twist of fate after another contriving to keep them apart. There will be a hundred reasons why they can't date/stay together. Why? Because screenwriters have heard that if the answer is "they will," the show will get canceled. It's called the moonlighting curse - and although Moonlighting's cancelation predates my birth, lots of shows still believe in it.

What's this got to do with Sam Carter?

Her primary love interest is her commanding officer in the Air Force, Colonel Jack O'Neill. He's 14 years her senior and comes with some baggage, like a deceased son and an ex-wife who left him in the year between Stargate the movie ends and Stargate SG-1 the series begins. He's also legally prohibited from dating, sleeping with, or even socializing one-on-one with Carter, thanks to a little thing called fraternization regulations. O'Neill could literally be charged with a crime for an "appearance of partiality" towards Carter, which should pretty much mean that they won't. 

And yet, somehow, the various showrunners dragged out a WTWT subplot for a decade and a half.

Agent Barrett: So you're single again?

Carter: Not exactly.

- "Ex Deus Machina" (2005-08-26, the ninth year of a WTWT)

So, uh, will they or won't they?

They won't, but:

• They really want to;
• They have done in at least 2 alternate universes, one in which they're engaged ("There But for the Grace of God") and another in which they're married ("Point of View");
• They do when they're infected with an inhibition-lowering virus ("The Broca Divide");
• Jack represses the thought of doing it so hard that it makes him fail sci-fi polygraphs ("Divide and Conquer");
• Jack gets dumped by a girlfriend who wishes they would do it already ("Threads");
• They did in an alternate timeline that saw them get stuck in ancient Egypt ("Moebius Part 2");
• They might be, offscreen, for all of seasons 9 and 10 of SG-1 plus season 4 of Atlantis, if you believe certain deleted scenes and cryptic throwaway lines; and
• One character suggests out loud that if their lives were a TV show, a wedding between Sam and Jack would be the only good way to end it.

Meanwhile, Sam Carter, the brilliant and beautiful Sam Carter, worker of miracles, destroyer of suns, saver of days, kicker of asses, a woman who would have men lined up around the block in any vaguely realistic world, has to stay canonically single. If she ever settled down, the franchise would have to drop the WTWT, and it isn't willing to do that.

It defies belief, is what I'm telling you.

Me: Lots of the fandom hates [Carter's boyfriend] Pete.

Bryan: What's wrong with him? If Carter was going to get together with O’Neill, they’ve had 8 years to do it!

- my husband getting sick of this plot, fall 2022

By season 7, the writers must've realized that they were flogging a dead horse. I say this because there's an episode in which Carter is trapped alone on a spaceship with a head injury and hallucinates that O'Neill is there. The hallucinations find time for a make-out session, of course: 

Yet she also realizes she's only spent this long pining over him because of her own intimacy issues:

[Mental Projection of] O'Neill: Sam, I'm a safe bet.

Carter: As long as I'm thinking about you, setting my sights on what I think is unattainable, there's no chance of being hurt by someone else.

[Mental Projection of] O'Neill: You deserve more.

- "Grace" (2004-01-16)

But then she keeps pining, while feminist media bloggers like me howl in frustration.

Lucille Ball making an "ugh" face on I Love Lucy. via GIPHY

Does this woman date at all?

Yes. Sometimes. But the show's commitment to the almighty Sam/Jack WTWT means that her relationships never last long. And what's a safe, convenient way for a show to keep their main character single? Why, simply kill off everyone she might be interested in!

GIF of the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland shouting "off with their heads!" via GIPHY

The Study

Our methodology was covered in the men's division of Stargate.

The Men

All told, I've counted 12 individuals with whom Sam has romantic interludes. Some viewers might argue it's only 11, though, because 2 of them share the same body.

I assume there's context?

Sure. In this universe there's a race called the Tok'ra who consist of snake-like aliens living inside the brains of humans. The human host retains their own personality, though, and the two switch off control of the body. Sam's body is briefly inhabited by a Tok'ra, Jolinar, who had previously been in a relationship with Lantash and his human host, Martouf. Jolinar dies, so Martouf/Lantash transfer their romantic interest to Sam. Sadly, Sam has to fatally shoot Martouf when he gets brainwashed into becoming an assassin. Lantash survives that, implants into a new host, and then heroically sacrifices himself to save Sam in a separate incident.

So Martouf/Lantash could either be 2 love interests who each die once, or one love interest who dies twice. I'm counting them as 2 who die once, but there's an argument to be made either way.

Have I mentioned that Stargate involves a lot of aliens possessing other people's bodies?

Woolsey: This brings us to the alarming frequency with which members of SG1 have fallen under alien influence.

- briefing the incoming president, "Inauguration" (2004-03-05)

OK then, who are the other men?

Besides the aforementioned Jack O'Neill and her season 8 fiancé Pete, Sam has:

• an ex-fiancé, Jonas Hanson, who has come to believe he's a god and gets murdered by angry natives;
• a representative of an advanced civilization, Narim, who mistakes her for an angel when she rescues him and then reprograms his smart house to sound like her;
• a husband from one possible future, Joseph Axon, who dies twice (once in that future and once in the show's present);
• a noncorporeal Ascended being, Orlin, who takes physical form twice to be with her (except the second time he becomes a 12-year-old child with dementia); 
• a Replicator (android), Fifth, whose obsession with her causes him to create a copy of her (which tries to take over the galaxy);
• Dr. Rodney McKay, a running gag from SG-1 who becomes a series regular on Atlantis, to whom Sam says "I was more attracted to you when I [hated you.]" He's her ex-husband in an alternate universe that we glimpse in season 9.

Plus 4 one-off characters with whom she has flirtations or first dates.

As that list suggests, Sam is something of a magnet for melodramatic and/or megalomaniacal men. Perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised, therefore, that some of them meet sticky ends. If there's one thing screenwriters like more than killing off women, it's -

Eh, who am I kidding? They don't like anything more than they like killing women. Still, "killing off bad guys" might be a close second.

Deaths

Of the 12 boyfriends, a full 50% of them die. There are 4 survivors, 1 man who both dies and lives, and 1 "other."

The "other" is Orlin, who more-or-less dies in season 5 when he adopts a non corporeal existence because his physical body is dying. He returns to the physical realm in season 9, though. In other words, he only sorta died.

The "both" is O'Neill, who is held captive in season 6 by a villain whose M.O. is to torture him to death, then resurrect him with alien technology. Luckily for him, he's alive and well by the end of the TV franchise. Unluckily for us, that means the aforementioned insufferable WTWT dynamic is also immortal.

Of the men who kick it for good, we have nothing but violent ends, which is in line with most of the franchises we've covered. It's a 3-4 split between regular ol' murder and heroic sacrifice. (One unlucky guy dies twice.)

How many of her boyfriends' deaths is she responsible for?

Only one directly, since she shoots Martouf. The Replicator Fifth does get killed by a robotic replica of her. Carter blames herself for that:

Carter: The fact is, [the duplicate] learned betrayal from Fifth. And he learned it from me.

- "Gemini" (2004-12-14)

Frankly, though, I think just because a woman doesn't encourage the romantic interests of a man-shaped robotic enemy, doesn't mean he should fly off the handle, create a replica of her, and try to take over the galaxy. He should learn to handle breakups with a bit more emotional maturity and less violence. It'd certainly spare him the humiliation of being murdered by his own creations.

This gives Sam a very low culpability score compared to most of our other contestants:

(Graph description: Would they still have died if they hadn't met the protagonist? In Carter's case, the answer is yes for 5 and no for 1.)

Do her boyfriends have nefarious intentions?

I mentioned the one who creates a replica of her in order to take over the galaxy, right?

Also the ex who tried to enslave an indigenous population because he thought he was a god?

And the one she had to shoot because he'd been brainwashed into committing an assassination?

Add in the guy-in-a-wrecked-spaceship who flirts with her while she's trying to repair said spaceship, only to be revealed to be an escaped felon, and you've got a full third of her love interests having nefarious intentions.

This puts her in third place for Rate of Nefarious Intentions, behind Daniel Jackson and Captain Kirk. You're reading that right: she's actually unluckier than Joe Cartwright, MacGyver, and James Bond in this respect.

That's probably not meant to be a specific commentary on how women in the singles scene are surrounded by men who could hurt them. Given the general flavor of the franchise, and Daniel Jackson's high score in the same category, it's more likely that Stargate characters simply live in a dangerous world. And yet, if the screenwriters wanted to make the point that women have to constantly be on guard against violent men...this could be an excellent way to start, couldn't it?

Dare we ask about the fertility/mortality correlation?

As we've seen in several of our other contestant franchises, killing someone off is automatically more dramatic if they were pregnant at the time. That never happens to Sam Carter, because she does not get pregnant, ever. Interestingly, however, there's an episode that puts a unique twist on the trend. In "2010," the audience sees a future in which Sam is married to Joseph Axon and they're trying to conceive. However, they're suffering from infertility, and the Aschen, their friendly alien overlords, keep insisting that nothing is wrong. Suspicious, Sam finds proof that the global birth rate has dropped 90% since the Aschen started vaccinating humanity against all diseases. When she breaks the news to Joe, things don't go how you might expect...

Joe: Oh my God. It was supposed to be a third of that.

- "2010" (2001-01-03)

Yeah, turns out that Joe agreed to help the Aschen "limit growth" of Earth's population, in a twisted attempt at sustainability.

Before you decide to hate the guy, let me assure you that once he realizes the truth, he heroically dies while sending a message back in time to prevent humanity from ever meeting the Aschen. (And then, a season later when they meet the Aschen anyway, he heroically dies again while preventing an Aschen invasion.) So he's officially redeemed, at least as far as this show's narrative is concerned.

More importantly, the whole Sam/Joe relationship provides a rare example of someone dying specifically because he can't get his wife pregnant. Which is the trope reversal we all need in this world, in my opinion.

Phase 2 Research Questions

Back in January when I promised to look into the question "What about Dead Boyfriends?," I also proposed two hypotheses about the female victims of the Cartwright Curse.

1. There are fewer Dead Boyfriends than there are Dead Girlfriends.
2.  The deaths affect the women's character arcs more than they affect the arcs of the men surveyed so far.

Allow me to attempt to answer those for Sam Carter's case, now.

Are the numbers lower overall?

Yes, but also no. As mentioned above, if we focus only on the ones who are not only merely dead, but really quite sincerely dead, Sam has 6 dead boyfriends. This puts her in fifth place among our 7 contestants to date, behind Bond, Winchester, Cartwright, and Kirk:

However, that 50% mortality rate has her tied with Daniel Jackson for first place, and she actually has 2 more deaths than he does.

Therefore, the data on hypothesis #1 are inconclusive. More comparison is necessary.

(*eyes my Roku remote*) Luckily, additional comparison is possible.

Do the deaths affect her arc more than deaths affected arcs of her male counterparts?

Surprisingly enough, no. In my post about Daniel Jackson of Stargate, I noted that his wife's kidnapping, possession by a god-alien, and eventual murder, are a huge part of his motivation throughout the franchise. Sam Carter has nothing comparable in her story. For example, although she was engaged to the delusional Jonas Hanson at one point, her only stated regret over his death is that she didn't shoot him personally. She's sad when Narim dies trying to stop his people from attacking earth, and when Lantash sacrifices himself, but those deaths never come up again. When Orlin develops dementia she's shown visiting him in his nursing home, but that plot point is similarly not mentioned again. The lack of follow-up, combined with the eternal spinsterhood that the unresolved WTWT dooms her to, means that no man - living, dead, or otherwise - ever changes Sam Carter. So hypothesis 2 is false as far as Sam Carter is concerned.

Conclusion

When I started to watch this franchise, I was put off by some sexism in the third episode of SG-1, and my research partner Sarah said, "Brace yourself, it's a long series." Which it was - that was nearly 2 years ago. I'm happy to report, therefore, that the franchise as a whole treats Sam Carter pretty well. In fact, she's probably the least misused female character we've met so far. She kicks ass alongside her male colleagues, and is always given due credit for how brilliant she is.

Gen. Landry: I've read enough of your SG-1 mission reports to know that there were times when no one else but Samantha Carter could have pulled your ass out of the fire. 

- "Beachhead" (2005-08-19)

Furthermore, her being single never comes across as pathetic, merely a side effect of her devotion to her work and/or her crush on her boss. Sam Carter, feminist icon.

And yet...why'd they have to include that interminable, inappropriate crush? Why string out a WTWT for so long? Is it because a woman with limited interest in romance is somehow harder to write than a woman with a taste for unattainable men? Or is it just not possible to have a single woman on TV unless there's a heteronormative, stereotypical reason for her being single? The longer it went on, the longer I felt like the showrunners wanted to have their cake and eat it, too. The crush serves as proof that Sam is straight, while also not requiring her to demonstrate emotional intelligence or navigate a realistic relationship on-screen. Because nobody turns to sci-fi for that girly stuff, right?

Bleh.

With the exception of that one extremely annoying subplot, however, I'm actually fairly happy with Sam Carter's arc. Let's see if I can say the same after our next entry in the Dead Fictional Boyfriends saga, Buffy the titular Vampire Slayer.

Until next time, keep your sexy lamps burning.