bratfarrar

Ha, yeah, giving people some direction is helpful. XD (As seems to be the cast on rewatch/discussion communities, too ... people who aren't given SOME direction tend not to reply at all, whereas 'study questions' are very useful!)

If he's going to confide in someone, I would call it a toss-up between Elizabeth and Teyla, maybe leaning a little more towards Teyla. Both are people he knows and trusts in his own time. Teyla, I think, is more likely to believe and try to help him, but she doesn't have a whole lot of power yet; in fact, her position on Atlantis is so tenuous at this point that he might run the risk of getting her thrown off Atlantis completely if they don't play it low-key.

Elizabeth is the one who probably has the most ability to actually effect change without tipping off everyone to what's going on. But would she believe him? I'm not sure!

John might actually be quite tempted to confide in Rodney but I don't think there's a snowball's chance that Rodney would believe him at this stage in their relationship; he'd probably just convince Rodney that he's a total loon and Rodney needs off the gate team now. And John probably is smart enough to realize this.

I would think Rodney and Elizabeth, because she can finagle and Rodney can help with the tech/science side.

My automatic reaction is Lorne, because missporcupine has made me fall in love with him, but since that doesn't make much sense, I had to fall back on Carson and Rodney, medical science duo of awesome! Although I admit Elizabeth might be of more use for figuring out how to take advantage of his insights.

If Lorne were around for season one, he definitely would've been first on my list. But he's not, sadly.

I'm somewhat bemused that no one's picked Sumner--I would think he's the one John would feel the most comfortable dealing with, if only because he's the one character John wouldn't have to worry about slipping up with. He wasn't around for the year John lived through, and so is neutral in a way that no one else is.

Does that make sense? I'm going to have to make it make sense, because that's what John keeps insisting on. He's already made me write the scene where he gives Sumner a 4 inch thick report on the year that hasn't yet happened and Sumner looks at him and basically says "what?"

(Also, the nice thing about Sumner is that there's pretty nearly zero canon on him, so I can pretty much write him however I want.)

As for Rodney&Carson and the Why of it all.... I'm currently thinking that they don't ever find out why, or even exactly what. That's not particularly important to them. But I think that what happened is basically the siege went badly, GAME OVER, and John got sent back to the only viable save point. Or something along those lines. We'll see.

I think I'm starting to come around to a Sumner viewpoint. While I agree with trishkafibble that John plays things close to the chest, that's actually one of the things I've always hoped that the first year taught him to give up. John needs a confidant. I do respect the issue of messing around with timelines, though, and thus Sumner is a naturally better choice. I guess what little canon we have of Sumner doesn't paint him as a great guy (not much to mourn when he dies), but I'd be interested to see a more 3 dimensional portrait of the man who chose to be the leader of a military expedition that may not come back.

Seems to me it's the kind of thing that would have to be dragged out of him. John knows sci fi well enough to understand that information from a parallel reality can be a double-edged sword, and I can't see him divulging it just to save his own skin. Thus, I picked Rodney...because I can see him maybe getting a niggling feeling that John's inexplicable actions are based on factors that the others don't see, and pestering him to explain himself. And I can see John giving in because it's Rodney, and he can't help but think of him as a tried and trusted colleague, not to mention, someone who deals with the weirdness of the universe all the time, and actually makes sense of it.