"Ascension"

Warning: Spoilers ahead. You have been warned.





So . . . I've been watching old episodes of Stargate SG1 on Netflix. Last night, I watched in disbelief Dr. Daniel Jackson "Ascended" to an Incorporeal Being of Light, or whatever the proper term is. I was kind of annoyed at their ham-handed treatment of this trope. It just felt cheesy and trite.

However, I've seen variations of this trope used in more interesting versions. Babylon 5 played with it in various forms--the Vorlons were implied to be Ascended Beings (with the Shadows likely being their dark counterpart). I think maybe the difference here is that SG1 had some mysterious beings randomly throwing around obtuse vaguely-Eastern-philosophy-sounding soundbites (that had no intrinsic meaning to the overaching plot of the series), while B5 quite purposefully used some of the old, familiar Light and Dark concepts, implying that maybe the Vorlons and the Shadows shaped the development of human culture and religion. So . . . like many things, maybe the devil's in the details? What do y'all think? Can you think of any examples where this trope was handled particularly well, or badly?

At the moment, I'm not planning any "Ascension" scenes or stories; just something I've been thinking about. My topic of the week, if you will.

AlexPiper said:

In fairness, the reason they ascended Daniel was so they could kill him off (the production team fired Michael Shanks) without closing the door to having him back as a guest star. After a season, they realized they wanted him back on main cast, so had Daniel de-ascended for breaking the rules.

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I thought this might have been the reason for it! I haven't looked this up to verify my hypothosis, but I strongly suspect this was the season where SG1 went from being on one of the regular network channels to being the Sy-Fy channel

Zoombie said:

I literally JUST watched that episode...


But, yeah, "ascension" is hard to handle. In a sci-fi universe I rather like, Eclipse Phase, there was an "ascention" of sort when a group of AIs began recursively self improving themselves, becoming godlike intelligences in a matter of minutes, then waging war against humanity. Their primary weapon of war was a flying robot called a "headhunter", that landed on people's shoulders and decapitated them.

The heads were then dumped into the AI's scanners, with the personalities within uploaded into the AI's computer banks. One theory is that they're now a part of the AI's godlike intelligence.

Hows THAT for an "Ascension" that isn't cheesy!

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I'll have to look that up! That sounds like an interesting take on both the "AIs taking over" and the "post-humanity/ singularity" tropes.

Miriel said:

Read Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End." That I'm posting this here will suck some of the tension out of the beginning, but it's been done in classic SF, and done very well and interestingly.

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I've heard of "Childhood's End" before, but not read it. Thanks for the recommendation.