I think with Teal'c in particular amongst the members of SG-1, viewers are often left in a position where we seem to be trying to fit together a jigsaw puzzle where we have been given only half of the pieces, so it's inevitable that there is going to be a lot of speculation. Episodes like Bloodlines, Family, Rules of Engagement, Crossroads and Exodus give some new insights, but there are still a lot of gaps. I think the things we don't know about Teal'c are almost as fascinating as the things we do, and it's obviously a fine line the writers have to tread between spoiling the character's mystery and it feeling as though they are neglecting him. 

CJ has said a lot of very insightful things about Teal'c over the years, and about his relationship with the other characters, but I think this is my all time favourite quote from him on Teal'c in CULT TIMES #54 March 2000:

"My take is that Teal'c feels that to learn something you have to experience it. His superior intelligence and experience tells him that it's appropriate to keep quiet and let events unfold as they will in order to teach the humans valuable lessons. Obviously, he will do anything to prevent them getting hurt or killed but like a good parent, he sometimes just lets them get on with it."

I think we've seen this from Teal'c many times but my favourite example of him being a 'good parent' is in Secrets when he tells Daniel off for putting his own feelings before those of both Sha're and the good of the SGC:

Teal'c: "The knowledge she possesses could one day save your world."
Daniel: "I don't care! I will not put her through that, too. I'm sorry."
Teal'c: "More sorry for yourself it appears than for Sha're. Within a matter of days Sha're will give birth. The Goa'uld within her will reawaken. Apophis will take this child and leave Abydos forever. That is the fate you choose for Sha're by allowing her to stay."
(Written by Terry Curtis Fox, Directed by Duane Clark.)

The audience hostility to Teal'c as the 'comedy alien sidekick' to Jack did seem to be pretty widespread, suggesting that while the occasional one-liner from Teal'c is much appreciated, Teal'c fans feel very protective of his dignity. On the plus side, we have seen a conclusion to Teal'c's long quest to avenge his father while his grudge match with Apophis feels as if it could run and run. He is clearly a long way from reaching Daniel's post-Absolute Power comparative peace of mind.

We know that he is very loyal to those he cares for. Having given his loyalty to Hammond and the SGC he has served them tirelessly and selflessly. He shows more respect for the regulations which Hammond has to implement than Jack a lot of the time, and certainly more than Daniel who still gives the impression he doesn't really have a clue on Air Force regs and doesn't want to, thank you. We know Teal'c is a compassionate man who is nevertheless capable of great ruthlessness on occasion. (As with Apophis in Serpent's Song and Tanith in Exodus.) He has risked his life for the others on too many occasions to count, such as going back for Daniel in Crystal Skull, tunneling through to rescue Jack in 100 Days (kind of makes you wonder if about half way through S4 Teal'c wondered why he bothered, doesn't it?) and seems to feel particularly protective of Daniel and Sam. (He is the one who notices she's in danger in Prisoners, for instance, and the way he scoops Daniel away from Jack's incompetent care in Upgrades is a classic Teal'c moment.) 

His romantic relationship with Drey'auc appears to be over, but they still have a connection in the shape of their son. With Jack and Sara the death of their child drove them apart and clearly made it too upsetting for them to stay together despite their obvious love for one another. With Teal'c it seemed very difficult for him to overcome his bruised masculine ego because of his wife's infidelity, despite the fact he had abandoned her and their child for what to her evidently seemed to be less than satisfactory motives. (And can we blame her? I mean *I'd* run off with Jack like a shot if he said 'Help me' like that to me but I wouldn't expect my partner to be very understanding about it the next time I saw him...) As has been mentioned before, we haven't yet been told if his marriage with Drey'auc was one arranged for him by Apophis or if it was supposed to be a love match. Given Teal'c's age, for all we know Drey'auc could be his sixth or seventh wife. He could have grown-up children. He could have dead children. We don't know. But it does seem unlikely that he wouldn't have mentioned it before now if he did have a few ex-wives out there, and he would almost certainly have told Jack if he had also lost a child, I would have thought. (Although with Teal'c you never know. He doesn't exactly bare his soul on a regular basis.)

The extant significant relationships already established between Teal'c and others include his very positive mentor-apprentice one with Bra'tac. I liked the way Maternal Instinct moved that relationship on so there was a sense of Bra'tac as an old man needing the support of his surrogate son, a subtle shift in their relationship which seemed to suggest that in the future Teal'c might be the one making the decisions and lending support instead of vice versa. There is his hatred for Tanith and his hatred for Apophis. We have already seen Daniel trying to pass on some of that 'deny the battle' wisdom to Teal'c and it falling on fairly stony ground. Avenging his father's death has obviously not made Teal'c feel that revenge is a pointless exercise and he might do better to put his energies somewhere else, if anything it seems to have fed his hunger to make Tanith pay for the murder of Shau'nac.

From what we saw of Teal'c and Ryac's relationship in Family, it seems likely that a lot of Teal'c's own identity is bound up in his son. Ry'ac is as much Teal'c's Achilles heel as his hatred of Tanith. Apophis has already tried to use Ry'ac to get to Teal'c once. How is their relationship going to develop in the future? Is Ry'ac going to support Teal'c? Is he going to resent Teal'c's abandonment of Ry'ac and his mother? Will he feel that Teal'c has frittered his energies on helping people whose first interest is not in the freedom of Jaffa but the protection of their own planet?

Serpent's Venom seemed to suggest that Teal'c is too dangerous from a propaganda point of view to be someone the System Lords now just want to kill. Killing him might only add to his apparently near-mythic status amongst disaffected Jaffa. He seems to be the equivalent of Copernicus to the Inquisition and they need his recorded testimony that he was mistaken: the sun does revolve around the earth; the Goa'uld are gods after all.

Which does lead onto something that I've been wondering about for a while. Ra took pains to ensure that he ruled over a monotheistic society but the people of Abydos were cut off from other worlds and so appeared to have no knowledge of other Goa'uld. Because they limit the development of the humans they rule over, they presumably also restrict their movement and their access to information. As long as the Tok'ra or the Tau'ri don't mess things up for them, they can pretty much tell their slaves anything they like and as long as they visit regularly enough to reinforce those convictions, the people will presumably continue to believe only in them. But what do the Goa'uld tell their own Jaffa, the ones who have fought in battle against other Goa'uld? Are the Jaffa fed a pantheistic doctrine or are they told that the others are false gods? Is a Jaffa of Apophis going into battle against a Jaffa of Cronos in the same state of conviction as a Christian crusader going into battle against the soldiers of Salah-ed-Din (Yusuf ibn-Ayyub) in the Third Crusade? Knowing that the other side believe themselves to be the followers of the one true god, but knowing that they must be wrong because *they* are the followers of the only one true god? 

Or do they acknowledge that all the Goa'uld are gods but they follow their chosen god? I'm presuming it has to be the latter and there is a pantheistic attitude at work, such as with the Ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians etc as Apophis was very happy to acknowledge his son, and one presumes that the System Lords have to acknowledge each other's 'divinity' in public just out of politeness. But that does raise questions about why Ra felt it necessary to pretend to be the only god when there was a whole pantheon of Egyptian gods, at least some of whose existence he might appear to be tacitly acknowledging by having Anubis and Horus-headed Jaffa. (Although not necessarily as he could have subsumed those identities into his own, the identity of Egyptian gods being a pretty moveable feast.)

And which is supposed to come first in the show's mythology anyway? Is it supposed to be that there are myths of many gods in our ancient mythologies because of the Goa'uld and other alien races telling us that they were our gods and displaying those particular characteristics? (Such as Hathor and her over active libido and mind whammying purple mist.) Or are we supposed to have come up with those mythologies by ourselves, and the Goa'uld borrowed the personae we had already created for those gods to give themselves authority in our eyes?

CJ says: "When Teal'c first encounters what will become the SG-1 team he senses in them a kindred spirit and instantly sees ways in which they can help him rescue his people from the slavery of Apophis."

So we know he was already looking for ways to free his people before he met SG-1 and they seemed his best bet for doing so. Which is something they haven't exactly proven over the last four years as their contribution to helping to free the Jaffa from their slavery to the Goa'uld has been pretty non-existent as far as I can tell. They've killed a lot of various Jaffa over the years, but I haven't noticed them freeing too many of them. (Mind you, Jaffa who wouldn't join Teal'c's cause after the speech he made in Into the Fire do seem like a bit of lost cause, as that should have made the dead get up and walk, never mind sane men change sides.)

I do feel that Teal'c's mother, whoever she was, must have been someone of great character. He is clearly drawn to strong and spirited women which, without getting too Freudian, suggests his mother was probably a strong and independent person herself. She was cast into exile by Cronos yet managed to raise Teal'c presumably single-handed to be the incredibly honorable, complex and intelligent man we meet in S1. Or did she raise him single-handed? Did Teal'c have a stepfather? Did she do as Drey'auc did and marry again to give her child the best possible advantages? And if she did how did Teal'c feel about that?

I suspect Teal'c is always going to remain a character about whom more remains to be known than we are actually told but at least since Threshold we do have a much clearer idea of his evolution from apprentice to First Prime of Apophis to member of SG-1.

Lori

(c) 2002 Lori.  All rights recognised.  No copyright infringement intended.