A little bit of Atlantis today because Radek doesn’t get as much time in this book.
Having said that!
Radek is doing a good job of being in charge of the science peeps. I mean, Rodney wasn’t bad per se but he definitely lacks the social awareness needed to be in charge of so many different people.
Does he challenge them to be better?
Absolutely!
Does he push them further than they think they can go?
All the time!
But I bet you anything that the person making sure the team didn’t have internal strife over the years was Radek.
Being in charge now is only a little different in that he’s calling the shots. We all know he and Rodney would love to go back to how it was, but Woolsey isn’t stupid and things are different wether they want them to be or not.
Now that Rodney is back though, I feel like things get better with the science peeps. They were all worried about him and leaned on Radek a lot.
Radek, in turn, did a great job keeping them focused and even made things run more smoothly than before because he has the temperament to deal with so many different people at a time.
His interactions with William are interesting, to say the least, because we know he has a temper but I don’t believe we’ve ever seen him actually dislike someone.
He definitely has a problem with William and the feeling is somewhat mutual.
I like that Radek still listens to him when William brings something up that he thinks is important. It isn’t the most opportune time, what with the Wraith and the Genii and everything else going on, but he listens and even goes to Woolsey and Sheppard with the idea.
The Radek and Rodney thing here isn’t really that big of a deal when it comes to the ‘being on SGA-1’.
Radek hated it. Or at least really, really, REALLY didn’t like it. Having Rodney ‘convince’ him to trade places for the mission where they find Alabaster, wouldn’t have taken more than Rodney saying he wanted to go.
Their friendship is such that I get the feeling that Radek would have been okay with Rodney staying fully Wraith if they hadn’t been able to reverse the process. At least, I feel like he would have acclimated to it a lot faster and dealt better with it than anyone else.
Before I sign off for this post, a small scene that’s really quite cute (and sets us up for a novella later on) is when Radek takes William to a room deep in Atlantis and shows him an alien cephalopod that seems to be communicating with him via light signals.
Radek shines a light at the window where the cephalopod is looking in and turns the light on and off in a pattern, which the cephalopod mimics.
The reason it’s so cute is that Radek is showing this almost-enemy-definitely-not-a-friend person a cool thing. Something he knows William will find fascinating even though he doesn’t like William.
It shows a level of growth I enjoy seeing in characters. It doesn’t always have to be huge gestures shouting how they’ve grown . It’s the little things that really make us love characters.
I will see y’all later and pray you have a wonderful week!
The Dark Library 