The Heart & Soul of Atlantis: Carson Beckett/Teyla Emmagan
Title: The Heart & Soul of Atlantis
Author: fiareynne
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Pairing: Carson Beckett/Teyla Emmagan
Spoilers: Up to and including the better portion of season four. Also for the movie Serenity. Don't ask, it will make sense when you've read it. So will the Angel quote below.
If there is no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.
(Angel, Angel 2.16, Epiphany)
The Heart & Soul of Atlantis
The Heart:
Dr. Carson Beckett is a man of many contradictions. From his first appearance in the pilot episode, he is cast in a sort of cowardly light. He is hesitant, almost fearful when faced with the prospect of being the Atlantis expedition's strongest natural gene carrier.* The situation was only made worse when Carson accidentally activated a dormant drone weapon, nearly blowing General O'Neill and then-Major Sheppard out of the sky. On many occasions, he expresses a fear of violence, which is very probably just pacifism which is misconstrued as cowardice. He takes the Hippocratic oath quite seriously, but in situations that call for it, has been known to carry a weapon.
*For those unfamiliar with the series, the Atlantis expedition deals with a form of alien technology which is activated by a gene carried only by certain humans, and until John Sheppard's abilities with said technology is discovered (Rising part I, 1.01) and Carson develops the gene therapy which activates the dormant gene in 48% of those innoculated, (Hide and Seek, 1.03) Carson is the best suited to use the technology.
Carson takes every death which occurs under his care, whether direct or not, very personally. He carries a lot of guilt for the deaths of the Hoffans, (Poisoning the Well, 1.07) a settlement of humans who were techologically advanced enough to develop what they'd hoped was a vaccine which would cause them to be unpalatable to the Wraith. (The Wraith are a sort of space vampire who, instead of drinking their victims' blood, feed on their life force, leaving them dried-out, lifeless husks.) Carson urged them to allow him to run more trials before innoculating their entire population, especially when their first human trial (a man already diagnosed with a terminal illness who was only too glad to offer his life to help his people) died from complications arising from the serum, rather than his illness, but they could not be swayed. Because of that, he watched a number of the Hoffan people, including his friend and potential love interest Perna, suffer a violently painful death when the serum proved fatal to roughly half the population.
In the words of the actor who portrays Carson: "He's been strangled by Ford, tortured by Wraith, attacked by killer bugs -- nasty wee beasties -- punched by Sheppard (made me cry), bear-hugged by Ronon (ribs still broken!), kissed by Teyla (okay, not really), seduced by Weir (wrong again) and molested by McKay (help me!). Levitated, hallucinated, incarcerated and, unfortunately, incinerated." Not bad for a character only intended to be in a few episodes, who started out "recurring" but due to fan response was made "main" and inserted into the opening credits before the end of the first season.
The Soul:
Teyla Emmagan grew up on a planet which, like most planets in the Pegasus galaxy, was ravaged by the Wraith. It's unclear whether her people were transplanted to Pegasus by the Ancients or whether they just whipped up a new batch of humans after getting bored with Earth and the Milky Way, but they regard the Ancients (or the Ancestors, as they call them) with a sort of deity status. That is not to say that Teyla or her people were eagerly waiting to bow down to the humans from Earth who bear the Ancient gene; in fact, Teyla herself has a similar gift. She carries a gene that allows her to sense the Wraith. Upon further exploration, she learns she can actually connect mentally with, (The Gift, 1.18) and ultimately control the mind of a single Wraith at a time, (Spoils of War, 4.12) not to mention she can fly a Wraith hive ship, which is just plain cool.
Teyla's people were booted from their home planet, Athos, in the pilot episode when the Wraith attacked, drawn by the arrival of the Atlantis expedition in search of an escape route in case the city's shields failed while they were still underwater. They were brought back to Atlantis, and from there were shunted to the mainland (Suspicion, 1.05) due to conflict between their ways and those of the people of Earth. They were later moved to a planet of their own (with their own Stargate) when a ship of Ancients took over the city and sent the expedition back to Earth. (The Return pt I, 3.10) When the city consequently fell to the Replicators and the expedition returned triumphant to save their home from -- and this is one of the reasons I love sci-fi so much -- the clutches of the evil robots, (The Return pt II, 3.11) the Athosians remained on their new world.
However, Teyla, their leader, remained with the expedition, having become an integral part of the city's chief gate team almost immediately. It is a decision that she probably questions daily, leaving her people to fight the Wraith at the sides of John Sheppard, Rodney McKay and (initially) Aiden Ford, but it becomes clear that the best way she can help her people is to make the galaxy a safer place for them to live. She is clearly a spiritual person, given to meditation and martial arts to relieve stress, but she's also one of the most kick-ass female characters on television.
~*~
I'm a Medical Doctor, Not a Bloody Fighter Pilot
Carson and Teyla have an easy, natural chemistry that is shown in very subtle ways. But when you're typically a slasher, as I am, subtext is your bread and butter, and it's not difficult to draw the outline of a friendship that could so easily be more, given what little canon we have to go on. Carson states his interest in Teyla plainly, near the end of the pilot episode (Stargate: Atlantis 1.02, Rising Pt. II) in the following exhange with Rodney:
Beckett: (Watching Teyla interacting with Sheppard) How come I never make friends like that?
McKay: You need to get out more.
Beckett: We're in another galaxy. How much more out can you get?
That quote has been used to support the Beckett/McKay pairing (a pairing I personally avoid like the plague, because it undermines not just one but both of my favorite pairings, but which I could see being fun to dabble in, otherwise) but it's really the most explicit display of interest in a woman that Carson gives in the entire show, and considering he has several romantic entanglements, that's not nothing. Teyla is the kind of strong, vital woman you have that kind of visceral, gut attraction to, and Carson is visibly jealous of John Sheppard.
Teyla shows her interest in other, more discreet ways, and considering the way Lt. Cadman has to metaphorically whack Carson over the head to get him to realize her own interest (Duet, 2.04) it's not surprising that we never see any real development on this in canon. Carson is a genius, but like many geniuses (including best friend Rodney McKay,) he is lovably clueless. We are supposed to see a close, potentially-romantic relationship developing between Teyla and the military leader, John Sheppard, but it's Carson she asks for a ride every time she wants to go to the mainland. One could argue this is because John is probably busy, but as chief medical officer for the entire expedition, Carson is easily as busy as John at any given moment, if not more so. And despite his unease with Ancient technology in general and flying the puddlejumpers specifically, he never turns her down, dropping everything to play Teyla's personal pilot.
That they care for each other is undeniable. Carson's concern for Teyla never wanes. He is even eager to cater to her needs shortly after having been decked across the room by a Wraith-possessed Teyla (The Gift, 1.18) and insists she's among the first evacuated when Atlantis becomes the destination for a massive herd of not-whales whose echolocation causes headaches, nosebleeds and worse, aneurysms, among the city's population. (Echoes, 3.12) Teyla's grief upon Carson's death is such that the usually articulate woman is barely able to manage, "I feel a great sadness. He... I feel a great sadness." (Sunday, 3.17). There's been speculation that the man Teyla was speaking to the ill-fated Dr. Hewston about earlier in the episode (Hewston encouraged Teyla to make the first move, because "he" was probably completely oblivious to Teyla's affections) was actually Carson, but that has been neither confirmed nor denied by canon (although Hewston would have been right.) Adding to this argument is the exchange between Teyla and Carson, after Hewston, oh, EXPLODES, and Teyla is injured in the blast. The first person she calls for is Carson, and he's quick to reassure her that he's there, and that he's going to take care of her. It's the last time she sees him alive.
~*~
Thank You, For Everything You... Meant to Say
I can't really remember what it was about Carson/Teyla that first grabbed my interest. Despite the fact that I was fervently working my way through a backlog of Stargate: SG-1 episodes, I first got into the Atlantis corner of fandom the way many people do: McShep. If I had a dime for every person I've run into in SGA fandom that said they read McShep fic before they'd even watched Atlantis, I'd be a rich woman. Well, maybe not, but I could at least get a latte at Starbucks, and they're not cheap. I still love John and Rodney fiercely, and in fact, one of my favorite things about Carson/Teyla is how well they and their relationship complements that of McKay and Sheppard almost as well as Carson and Teyla complement one another. Whatever it was that sparked in my head and said, "Carson and Teyla, yeah," I'm glad it did.
I've explained the Carson/Teyla dynamic to fellow Firefly fans as sort of a Stargate spin on Wash and Zoe. You have the warrior woman, stoic and almost untouchably beautiful while still totally kickass, and you have the sensitive and fairly pacifistic guy who loves her and keeps her grounded. The fact that both men lost their lives doing what they do every day, yet still managing to have completely heroic, selfless deaths, well... that's gravy.
I opened with a quote from an episode of Angel because I felt it was relevent to both Carson and Teyla individually. Watching from a cloaked puddlejumper as the Wraith decimated a settlement where a friend of Teyla's father lived, John commented to Teyla that it was hard to sit there and do nothing, but Teyla pointed out that if they waited for her father's friend and his family, and rescued them, they would have at least done something. (Letters from Pegasus, 1.17) Likewise, to most fans, Carson's death may seem senseless to us, but to Dr. Watson (Hewston's... lab partner, or whatever he was supposed to be, who was afflicted with the same condition that made her go boom) it wasn't.
~*~
That's What Everybody on Your Planet Does For Entertainment? Watch a Box?
Key Episodes
1.10 The Storm/1.11 The Eye
1.18 The Gift
2.03 The Runner
2.13 Critical Mass
3.10 The Return pt I/ 3.11 The Return pt. II
3.12 Echoes
3.17 Sunday
~*~
Thank God it Hit the Reading Library -- Somebody Could Have Really Gotten Hurt
The Best Portion, by Diedre. NC-17. Stuck offworld in a dire quarantine situation, Carson and Teyla are drawn to each other for comfort.
Miracle, by Secondalto. FRT. There are actually two miracles in this piece, but both are the miracle of life. (Also anything else under secondalto's carson/teyla tag.)
To lighten things up, and because I'm shameless, I'm going to also recommend my own fic:
The Scotsman/Carson Where's Your Trousers, by Fia Reynne. PG-13. Rodney plays a practical joke that results in more than a cheap laugh for Carson when Teyla asks to put a ribbon on his sword. (More is available under my own carson/teyla tag.)
There are more stories available on Wraithbait under the heading of Ship Pairings: Beckett/Teyla Emmagan.
Also, the brand-new community teylabeckett has just been launched.
Author: fiareynne
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Pairing: Carson Beckett/Teyla Emmagan
Spoilers: Up to and including the better portion of season four. Also for the movie Serenity. Don't ask, it will make sense when you've read it. So will the Angel quote below.
If there is no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.
(Angel, Angel 2.16, Epiphany)
The Heart & Soul of Atlantis
The Heart:
Dr. Carson Beckett is a man of many contradictions. From his first appearance in the pilot episode, he is cast in a sort of cowardly light. He is hesitant, almost fearful when faced with the prospect of being the Atlantis expedition's strongest natural gene carrier.* The situation was only made worse when Carson accidentally activated a dormant drone weapon, nearly blowing General O'Neill and then-Major Sheppard out of the sky. On many occasions, he expresses a fear of violence, which is very probably just pacifism which is misconstrued as cowardice. He takes the Hippocratic oath quite seriously, but in situations that call for it, has been known to carry a weapon.
*For those unfamiliar with the series, the Atlantis expedition deals with a form of alien technology which is activated by a gene carried only by certain humans, and until John Sheppard's abilities with said technology is discovered (Rising part I, 1.01) and Carson develops the gene therapy which activates the dormant gene in 48% of those innoculated, (Hide and Seek, 1.03) Carson is the best suited to use the technology.
Carson takes every death which occurs under his care, whether direct or not, very personally. He carries a lot of guilt for the deaths of the Hoffans, (Poisoning the Well, 1.07) a settlement of humans who were techologically advanced enough to develop what they'd hoped was a vaccine which would cause them to be unpalatable to the Wraith. (The Wraith are a sort of space vampire who, instead of drinking their victims' blood, feed on their life force, leaving them dried-out, lifeless husks.) Carson urged them to allow him to run more trials before innoculating their entire population, especially when their first human trial (a man already diagnosed with a terminal illness who was only too glad to offer his life to help his people) died from complications arising from the serum, rather than his illness, but they could not be swayed. Because of that, he watched a number of the Hoffan people, including his friend and potential love interest Perna, suffer a violently painful death when the serum proved fatal to roughly half the population.
In the words of the actor who portrays Carson: "He's been strangled by Ford, tortured by Wraith, attacked by killer bugs -- nasty wee beasties -- punched by Sheppard (made me cry), bear-hugged by Ronon (ribs still broken!), kissed by Teyla (okay, not really), seduced by Weir (wrong again) and molested by McKay (help me!). Levitated, hallucinated, incarcerated and, unfortunately, incinerated." Not bad for a character only intended to be in a few episodes, who started out "recurring" but due to fan response was made "main" and inserted into the opening credits before the end of the first season.
The Soul:
Teyla Emmagan grew up on a planet which, like most planets in the Pegasus galaxy, was ravaged by the Wraith. It's unclear whether her people were transplanted to Pegasus by the Ancients or whether they just whipped up a new batch of humans after getting bored with Earth and the Milky Way, but they regard the Ancients (or the Ancestors, as they call them) with a sort of deity status. That is not to say that Teyla or her people were eagerly waiting to bow down to the humans from Earth who bear the Ancient gene; in fact, Teyla herself has a similar gift. She carries a gene that allows her to sense the Wraith. Upon further exploration, she learns she can actually connect mentally with, (The Gift, 1.18) and ultimately control the mind of a single Wraith at a time, (Spoils of War, 4.12) not to mention she can fly a Wraith hive ship, which is just plain cool.
Teyla's people were booted from their home planet, Athos, in the pilot episode when the Wraith attacked, drawn by the arrival of the Atlantis expedition in search of an escape route in case the city's shields failed while they were still underwater. They were brought back to Atlantis, and from there were shunted to the mainland (Suspicion, 1.05) due to conflict between their ways and those of the people of Earth. They were later moved to a planet of their own (with their own Stargate) when a ship of Ancients took over the city and sent the expedition back to Earth. (The Return pt I, 3.10) When the city consequently fell to the Replicators and the expedition returned triumphant to save their home from -- and this is one of the reasons I love sci-fi so much -- the clutches of the evil robots, (The Return pt II, 3.11) the Athosians remained on their new world.
However, Teyla, their leader, remained with the expedition, having become an integral part of the city's chief gate team almost immediately. It is a decision that she probably questions daily, leaving her people to fight the Wraith at the sides of John Sheppard, Rodney McKay and (initially) Aiden Ford, but it becomes clear that the best way she can help her people is to make the galaxy a safer place for them to live. She is clearly a spiritual person, given to meditation and martial arts to relieve stress, but she's also one of the most kick-ass female characters on television.
~*~
I'm a Medical Doctor, Not a Bloody Fighter Pilot
Carson and Teyla have an easy, natural chemistry that is shown in very subtle ways. But when you're typically a slasher, as I am, subtext is your bread and butter, and it's not difficult to draw the outline of a friendship that could so easily be more, given what little canon we have to go on. Carson states his interest in Teyla plainly, near the end of the pilot episode (Stargate: Atlantis 1.02, Rising Pt. II) in the following exhange with Rodney:
Beckett: (Watching Teyla interacting with Sheppard) How come I never make friends like that?
McKay: You need to get out more.
Beckett: We're in another galaxy. How much more out can you get?
That quote has been used to support the Beckett/McKay pairing (a pairing I personally avoid like the plague, because it undermines not just one but both of my favorite pairings, but which I could see being fun to dabble in, otherwise) but it's really the most explicit display of interest in a woman that Carson gives in the entire show, and considering he has several romantic entanglements, that's not nothing. Teyla is the kind of strong, vital woman you have that kind of visceral, gut attraction to, and Carson is visibly jealous of John Sheppard.
Teyla shows her interest in other, more discreet ways, and considering the way Lt. Cadman has to metaphorically whack Carson over the head to get him to realize her own interest (Duet, 2.04) it's not surprising that we never see any real development on this in canon. Carson is a genius, but like many geniuses (including best friend Rodney McKay,) he is lovably clueless. We are supposed to see a close, potentially-romantic relationship developing between Teyla and the military leader, John Sheppard, but it's Carson she asks for a ride every time she wants to go to the mainland. One could argue this is because John is probably busy, but as chief medical officer for the entire expedition, Carson is easily as busy as John at any given moment, if not more so. And despite his unease with Ancient technology in general and flying the puddlejumpers specifically, he never turns her down, dropping everything to play Teyla's personal pilot.
That they care for each other is undeniable. Carson's concern for Teyla never wanes. He is even eager to cater to her needs shortly after having been decked across the room by a Wraith-possessed Teyla (The Gift, 1.18) and insists she's among the first evacuated when Atlantis becomes the destination for a massive herd of not-whales whose echolocation causes headaches, nosebleeds and worse, aneurysms, among the city's population. (Echoes, 3.12) Teyla's grief upon Carson's death is such that the usually articulate woman is barely able to manage, "I feel a great sadness. He... I feel a great sadness." (Sunday, 3.17). There's been speculation that the man Teyla was speaking to the ill-fated Dr. Hewston about earlier in the episode (Hewston encouraged Teyla to make the first move, because "he" was probably completely oblivious to Teyla's affections) was actually Carson, but that has been neither confirmed nor denied by canon (although Hewston would have been right.) Adding to this argument is the exchange between Teyla and Carson, after Hewston, oh, EXPLODES, and Teyla is injured in the blast. The first person she calls for is Carson, and he's quick to reassure her that he's there, and that he's going to take care of her. It's the last time she sees him alive.
~*~
Thank You, For Everything You... Meant to Say
I can't really remember what it was about Carson/Teyla that first grabbed my interest. Despite the fact that I was fervently working my way through a backlog of Stargate: SG-1 episodes, I first got into the Atlantis corner of fandom the way many people do: McShep. If I had a dime for every person I've run into in SGA fandom that said they read McShep fic before they'd even watched Atlantis, I'd be a rich woman. Well, maybe not, but I could at least get a latte at Starbucks, and they're not cheap. I still love John and Rodney fiercely, and in fact, one of my favorite things about Carson/Teyla is how well they and their relationship complements that of McKay and Sheppard almost as well as Carson and Teyla complement one another. Whatever it was that sparked in my head and said, "Carson and Teyla, yeah," I'm glad it did.
I've explained the Carson/Teyla dynamic to fellow Firefly fans as sort of a Stargate spin on Wash and Zoe. You have the warrior woman, stoic and almost untouchably beautiful while still totally kickass, and you have the sensitive and fairly pacifistic guy who loves her and keeps her grounded. The fact that both men lost their lives doing what they do every day, yet still managing to have completely heroic, selfless deaths, well... that's gravy.
I opened with a quote from an episode of Angel because I felt it was relevent to both Carson and Teyla individually. Watching from a cloaked puddlejumper as the Wraith decimated a settlement where a friend of Teyla's father lived, John commented to Teyla that it was hard to sit there and do nothing, but Teyla pointed out that if they waited for her father's friend and his family, and rescued them, they would have at least done something. (Letters from Pegasus, 1.17) Likewise, to most fans, Carson's death may seem senseless to us, but to Dr. Watson (Hewston's... lab partner, or whatever he was supposed to be, who was afflicted with the same condition that made her go boom) it wasn't.
~*~
That's What Everybody on Your Planet Does For Entertainment? Watch a Box?
Key Episodes
1.10 The Storm/1.11 The Eye
1.18 The Gift
2.03 The Runner
2.13 Critical Mass
3.10 The Return pt I/ 3.11 The Return pt. II
3.12 Echoes
3.17 Sunday
~*~
Thank God it Hit the Reading Library -- Somebody Could Have Really Gotten Hurt
The Best Portion, by Diedre. NC-17. Stuck offworld in a dire quarantine situation, Carson and Teyla are drawn to each other for comfort.
Miracle, by Secondalto. FRT. There are actually two miracles in this piece, but both are the miracle of life. (Also anything else under secondalto's carson/teyla tag.)
To lighten things up, and because I'm shameless, I'm going to also recommend my own fic:
The Scotsman/Carson Where's Your Trousers, by Fia Reynne. PG-13. Rodney plays a practical joke that results in more than a cheap laugh for Carson when Teyla asks to put a ribbon on his sword. (More is available under my own carson/teyla tag.)
There are more stories available on Wraithbait under the heading of Ship Pairings: Beckett/Teyla Emmagan.
Also, the brand-new community teylabeckett has just been launched.