New Guy! Cameron Mitchell

Half a season in, Stargate SG-1’s Nine is looking mighty fine.

The odds were stacked against it. A natural conclusion to many long-running storylines, the tying of a lot of loose ends, resounding defeat of the biggest and baddest of villains. A shiny new show everyone wanted to play with. Maternity leave. Lead actor exiting stage left, lead character stepping into a new role and off our screens. The end of everything.

Also, the beginning.

In Lt. Colonel Cameron Mitchell, Stargate SG-1 has regained something sadly absent for several seasons.

A team.

Not the team we started out with, but then Stargate hasn’t been about that since the movie. Two became four and the original journey of Jack and Daniel had to be broadened to encompass new players Carter and Teal’c, our first team replacements. A noble sacrifice of self cost the team of four Daniel and saw him replaced by Jonas Quinn, at best complicit in Daniel’s death, whose ‘redemptive’ journey failed to convince. Daniel descended, Jonas exited, Jack was too often missing in action and our team of four effectively became a team of three.

Stargate SG-1 doesn’t have a happy history with replacements. Carter, Teal’c, Jonas, Cameron, Vala — all new and non-original. All replacements. They didn’t open the gate, they didn’t start the journey. But they have continued it. Like or loathe any or all of them, they’re part of Stargate’s history. They’re part of SG-1.

This editorial isn’t about slamming Jack, but it’s impossible to review Cameron Mitchell’s impact and contribution as a character without establishing a baseline. For me, that’s the slow and painful withdrawal of one of the two defining characters of Stargate, the ones who were there at the start to open the gate. Jack’s pale presence in the latter seasons, his broad-stroke humour and ‘Cosmic Giddiness’ materially damaged, if not crippled, the essence and energy of that team of four.

Stargate SG-1 actually *works* with four equal and counter-balancing characters. It’s the exact formula that kept fans from the movie and drew in new fans who’d only ever known the team of four. The quality of ‘team’ is the one most often singled out as the grace note of the golden seasons: One, Two and Three.

Season Nine is a golden season. It has the grace notes of my favourites, Two and Three, and is a more encouraging beginning for a new evolution of Stargate than I even considered Season One to be.

It’s not solely due to Cameron Mitchell, of course. This *is* a team of four: Daniel, Carter and Teal’c leading and new guy Cameron following. A cool, substantive change right there. New guy isn’t laconic, damaged, done it all, cynical, stick-it-to-the-man Jack Jnr.

Cameron is reverent. Of our team of four, of their characters, history, accomplishments. He’s amazed and awed by them, he wants so badly to learn from them the promise of being one of them was enough of a motivator to get him back on his feet. Literally. He wants SG-1 so completely, so openly, even our favourite all-beautiful sex goddess thinks he should *try* playing hard to get.

Cameron is enthusiastic. Brimming over. In fact, he has a quality of enthusiasm we’ve never quite seen. It’s not based on the beautiful, idealistic academic obsessions of our peaceful explorer Daniel Jackson. It’s not based on stepping into another man’s life, taking his place, his books, his tools and even his fish. It’s the enthusiasm of a military man who hasn’t done the damned distasteful things Jack has done and isn’t soured by what life and service in the Air Force have demanded of him. It’s the enthusiasm of a man who still respects — and salutes — authority. It’s the informed enthusiasm of a smart, accomplished, combat-experienced Type-A personality who wholeheartedly believes what Daniel Jackson does is beyond cool. It’s *fantastic.* Blows new guy away every time. Now, when have we ever seen *that* on Stargate?

Cameron is a hero, but that’s not really the point. His heroism has been tempered by combat, loss and self-sacrifice but because this is a smart man, a thinking man, he understands being a shining example in his conventional sphere doesn’t really mean squat. What he knows, what he’s done, that stops at the gate. On the other side of it, he needs direction. He never meant to be team leader, he meant to learn from the best. And maybe it’s in being open, being willing to learn and take direction, he’ll earn his place as team leader. And not giving in to insecurity, not pulling rank or blindly rushing in where SG-1 fear to tread, admitting to the seriousness of the consequences if he screws up, that’s a different kind of bravery right there.

Cameron doesn’t have all the answers. That sets him apart from Jack and even from Carter, who launched into our team not only with her PhD in theoretical astrophysics, extensive Air Force scientific projects under her belt as well as flight credentials, but also somehow managed to find the time to acquire the self-same skills, competences, confidence and experience in field combat as Special Ops Colonel Jack. You go, girl.

Cameron has energy. He engages. I ached, watching him in action this season. Not firing big honkin’ guns, not the ‘pull the pin and throw’ thing, not even the fancy Sodan kick boxing, but using his intelligence, his life experience, his character and morality not to kill but to influence, to win an enemy over from vengeance to alliance. No ‘Cosmic Giddiness’ in sight, although the guy has a nice line in deprecating humour.

The energy, the engagement are there in his excitement over solving an Ancient puzzle, seducing our favourite stoic Jaffa away from government and back into humping the off-world boonies, getting a rush from his first flight since crashing, touching techno-toys he shouldn’t, demanding respect for a female colleague, playing the archaeologist and the aliens at basketball.

Energy. Commitment. Every day, in every way.

And maybe that’s the essence of this character, who isn’t Jack Jnr or a cannibalised construct of Daniel’s puppyish qualities from the early days. Cameron isn’t a cipher, a constant reminder of another’s absence, or a mere foil for all the ways Daniel and the others have grown up and changed on us over the years, he’s a presence. Real and whole, complex and layered, learning his way, earning his place, instead of having it handed to him pat and whole, gift-wrapped and tied up with a big bow.

As much as Cameron is being affected by his experiences with SG-1, he’s affecting our loved, established teammates. Cameron isn’t taking anything away from Daniel, Teal’c or Carter. He’s helping renew and even build them. His presence enriches theirs. Teasing out new layers in their characters, opening up new ways for all of the four to interact and even counter-act, building an entirely new team dynamic.

Cameron is a replacement. Everyone but Jack and Daniel started out that way. His addition to Stargate SG-1 has helped accomplish something I haven’t felt or truly seen since Season Three.

Synergy.

The sense that the team of four, the team of SG-1, is greater than the sum of its constituent characters.

Season Nine is about a team of four. Not two – not your fave pairing, my fave pairing, or theirs – not three or one. Four. And all of them equal.

Team.

That’s what Cameron Mitchell brings to Stargate SG-1.