ut editing... wow. I'd love to know what aspects he chose to play up and play down. I know there's rumours about his influence over the Sam/Daniel and Sam/Jack relationships. Hm!

Hmm! I hadn't heard any speculation about influence he had over S/D. Of course I've heard over the years speculation about his influence on S/J. (While I'm mostly a J/D slash reader now, when I started in the fandom I read everything, and for a while belonged to some S/J lists.)

I *believe* (again, memory for *where* just gets more faulty over time!) that I read an interview with him where he talked about liking to get in there and do some editing work; that's where I picked that up from, and at the time, I was as surprised as you about it.

And I'd also heard (or seen it speculated?) that after the birth of his daughter, but esp. after his daughter and her mother moved back to LA in, um, S5 or S6?, after he went on his "reduced time" schedule where he was commuting from LA to Van, that he cut back on doing that technical stuff. (Well, his time was reduced, and it makes sense that one of the first things to go was that behind-the-scenes work.)

And I read a verrrrry interesting quote recently, about the Jack-Daniel friendship/relationship -- how, you know, people talk about how after a certain point in the show, there's less touching between Jack and Daniel, less of the talking-in-unison thing, and so on (all the "old married" stuff). God... I need to go find the article again! It's becoming fuzzy already. But what I recall was some other production staff (director? or someone) suggesting to RDA (during the shooting of an ep in a fairly recent season) that they do some kind of intimate moment like that... (or was it... someone like a director asking if they could do it, or why didn't he think about doing... something), and anyway, he responded, "Why? It'll just get cut."

And I was putting that together with other comments I've read/heard, such as that Robert Cooper really dislikes anything that suggests intimacy between men -- he really dislikes touching between men, for example. (It was in the context, I believe, of him complaining about that EXQUISITE moment in "Lost City" where Teal'c comes to Jack in the tel'tac, and Jack stops what Teal'c is trying to say by reaching out and cupping Teal'c's face. Can you believe that? RCC *didn't like that*.) And if you watch enough RDA work (in other shows as well as SG-1), you come to realize that the touching thing is *all RDA*, he does it with everyone.

So I read that and something clicked for me, and I thought... huh! We had all that Jack-touching, esp. towards Daniel, in early seasons... when RDA was doing a lot of post-prod. editing work. And fans have complained for years how that kind of thing fell off and then disappeared, leading to a perceived "coldness" between Jack and Daniel. And you have RDA reducing his time, and stopping doing editing. And then you have him snarking to someone about how *they* will cut that kind of thing.

It was just... it's a lot of speculation, but I just found it a fascinating idea. Because for a long time, fans had tended to assume that it was the actors who stopped doing those things (speculation was: because they'd found out about slash and were uncomfortable with it). But, *of course* -- a lot more gets done in the course of shooting an ep than we *see*. (I also recall reading early on comments from AT about stuff she put in that they never included in final cuts.)

I know it's all guesswork, but I do find it interesting (as you can tell!) to think about all the little things that go into making the show what we see. :)