#lifeboat

Christina Koch put it well to describe Earth as a lifeboat. I like that even better than the concept of 'spaceship Earth' and it fits well to see that we are indeed in heaven.

On 21st January 1970, while on service to the Danish fishing vessel Opal, the lifeboat Duchess of Kent capsized with the loss of five lives.

The Duchess of Kent was a Watson class lifeboat built by Groves and Guttridge in 1954, and stationed at Fraserburgh. 

While in service with the RNLI,  thelifeboat launched 23 times and saved 13 lives. On 27 October 1959, she launched to the assistance of two fishing boats, rescuing two men and earning RNLI Gold Medals for Gallantry for acting Coxswain Alexander John Duthie and Mechanic Frederick Alexander Kirkness.

while on service to the Danish fishing vessel Opal, the lifeboat capsized – resulting in the loss of five of her six-person crew. The five men who lost their lives were Coxswain John Stephen, Mechanic Frederick Kirkness and crew members William Hadden, James R.S. Buchan and James Buchan. Assistant Mechanic John (Jackson) Buchan was flung clear and saved by a Russian trawler. 

13,000 people attended the joint funeral of the crew members. 

Following the capsize The Duchess of Kent was broken up at Herd and McKenzie’s boatyard. It was the third loss of a Fraserburgh lifeboat in the 20th century, following Lady Rothes in 1919 and John and Charles Kennedy in 1953.

The names of the crew of The Duchess of Kent are listed on the RNLI Memorial Sculpture outside the RNLI College in Poole, Dorset.

A free-form reflection

I’ve been thinking recently about the episode Lifeboat— specifically, the idea that it acts as an examination of Daniel’s psychological reaction to trauma by exploring his use of identity compartmentalization and dissociation to cope with situations he finds upsetting.

The entire premise of Lifeboat is rooted in the (often inaccurate) DID-inspired tropes present in a variety of media, and though I personally don’t see this episode as meant to be an exploration of DID in Daniel or otherwise, I do feel like this episode may be read as commentary on Daniel’s tendency to create specific, compartmentalized identities and roles for himself; these roles may act as a coping mechanism and/ or social navigation tool like code switching in a way. This would be a very nonphysical and internal subject to tackle in an ep, something that I imagine wouldn't translate well to the screen given stargate's format. However, a more striking conflict through sci-fi magic and allegory can be created in this episode by making these aspects of himself various previously separate people fighting for control instead. Though other personalities are shown for brief scenes, I’m focusing on the three main individuals who speak through Daniel during Lifeboat and what they might represent: Tryan, Martice, and Keenin. 

Firstly, there’s Tryan, the scientist who is praised and labeled by the SGC as the most helpful and competent of the downloaded people. He is the most neutral of the three and may be representative of the inventive, genius archaeologist and linguist that Daniel is espoused to be by the SGC. In a sense, Tryan is his professional, “useful” identity-- the person who figured out the Stargate and provides life-saving information.

Then there’s Martice, the egotistical and selfish sovereign. He may represent the negative aspects that Daniel hates about himself, an echo of all the times Daniel has become “corrupted” or acted against his team. He isn't just a random sovereign, but one who sacrificed innocent people to save himself. He is the evil alternate Daniel in Absolute Power, the drug-induced selfishness from Need, the self-importance he felt in Maternal Instinct. He is negative and powerful and despised.

Finally, there is Keenin: the frightened child who I feel reflects both the actual child Daniel who haunts the narrative (Gamekeeper, Crystal Skull) and the emotionally vulnerable Daniel who yearns for and needs support and care. Both are willing to give everything (for Keenin, Daniel’s body despite being a child; for Daniel, oftentimes his own life) up for the greater good.

The structure of the episode allows for these three sides/ roles— competent, cruel, and childlike— to literally argue and be at odds with each other. It shows the extremes of what Daniel feels he is capable of, and possibly that Daniel feels overwhelmed by what he views as contradictory parts of himself. He pushes the child and the cruel side down; he performs the scientist that gets praised as useful. Still, none of the three feel right to him. Thus, as a result of such conflicted emotions, he compartmentalizes these three different identities and views them as something outside the core “him” to preserve the idea that he isn't that. It implies that his thoughts and identity up to this point, the products of growth and trauma, are so foreign and unsavory to him that he feels he can't do anything to reconcile but set them aside and look at them as something outside himself.

This is where a reading of Lifeboat as a more subtle acknowledgement of dissociation comes in. As Frasier says during the episode, Daniel's brainwaves are able to be isolated and his mind can remain in his body at the end of the episode because “his consciousness protected itself and he never emerged for more than a few seconds”. Though the word isn’t explicitly used, the way she describes this as his brain literally withdrawing out of self-preservation in an emotionally and mentally overwhelming situation strongly implies dissociation as an interpretation of what happened here, if not stating it as the explicit canon reality. So, from this, I read his reactions as thus: compartmentalization is the way he copes with internal conflict, but dissociation is how he is protected from the physical reality.

And honestly, the reason why I don’t find the idea that Daniel dissociates far-fetched is because I feel like it’s not the first episode that Daniel’s been shown or implied to dissociate in situations he finds upsetting.

The most unambiguous example of this, and what I consider the event which spurs on more habitual dissociation, is from the episode Hathor. From the catatonic state Sam found him in, to the sort of distant and almost unaffected demeanor he had at the end of the episode, Daniel was written in varying degrees of detached and dissociated for a lot of this episode in a way that makes my heart ache for him. It's as close to an explicit depiction in nineties media as one often gets. From this point on, there are other examples of Daniel possibly dissociating that are more up to interpretation. In New Ground, when locked in the cages and threatened while separated, Daniel has an uncharacteristically flat affect and often disinterested tone. When they meet Hathor again in Into the Fire, he doesn’t say more than a line to her; he simply stares blankly in every scene with her in the room, not even reacting as Jack becomes host to a goa’uld. He is not fully present. All in all, these episodes suggest that Daniel’s reactions to various kinds of distress are informed by a subconscious affinity toward dissociation as a coping mechanism. 

I’ve been sitting with this for a while trying to figure out what exactly Lifeboat is saying if all this is assumed to be accurate. Because, while I do take everything I said here as a (albeit loosely) canon-supported conclusion regarding Daniel’s characterization, I think the thought process that the writers/ director went through was much less thought out in terms of the implications for Daniel as a person and more about the talent they had. I think, in addition to Lifeboat being a fitting meta narrative exploring Daniel’s coping mechanisms, it's also just a reflection of the character archetypes that Shanks is good at playing. Of course they would write three people who respectably act competent, arrogantly antagonistic, and vulnerable for him to play— these are the extreme aspects of Daniel’s character that he’s proven to play well before. These are the archetypes he thrives in.

Thus, I consider Lifeboat to have a dual nature: firstly, it is a statement regarding the effects of trauma we rarely get to see in characters. It is painful and sad, an exploration of the darkness in Daniel's mind, yet the ending is meant to be hopeful because, through it all, Daniel's friends stuck by him. It isn't a sad ending. It is a story that says, “Daniel is affected by the past seven years of pain. He’s found ways-- both unhealthy and healthy-- to cope, but no matter what happens, every time he is lost or hurting, he will have people who stay and care and will help him through it.”

And the second? It is, from the production perspective, a tribute to the versatility of performers, in particular a letter of appreciation to Shanks, and an appreciation for the seven years of Stargate up to that point that they were always there for.

And I think thats quite nice