Things you discover catching up on Numb3rs

[eruthros]

Larry Fleinhardt wrote an article on zero point energy!

And then he was recruited to work on the international space station! By NASA!

... so my question is, why isn't Larry Fleinhardt on Atlantis yet?

Comments

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

Because you have not written it yet. I presume you will?
(hopeful)

[eruthros]

But what would Larry do there?

I mean, I hate crossovers that privilege one fandom over the other, and make someone look like an idiot. So what does Larry do on Atlantis, where he's outnumbered by the Rodney-Zelenka-etc crowd? What help can he provide, when Rodney will dismiss him out of hand?

[metamiri.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Well, why would Rodney dismiss him out of hand? I mean, yeah, Rodney dismisses everyone but himself, but we also know he respects the hell out of Carter, and he respects Zelenka... I tend to think that Larry's pretty damned bright, especially as he seems to have the capacity to think in interdisciplinary ways, which would be helpful in unconventional circumstances.

I don't know that anyone has to look like an idiot... I guess what intrigues me is how someone like Larry would work in an environment like that, especially given the danger. I suspect he and Rodney might get in a few shouting matches, given that Larry has, canonically, referred to himself as losing his temper with someone at an academic conference. But Larry's curiousity might well outweigh his fear in ways that it doesn't for Rodney.

Gah. I hate that you've even made me think about this, dammit *g*.

I can see them having Charlie on board, as we haven't really seen anyone like him on SGA. I think that, to see Larry there, you have to be more realistic than the show itself is, in that it's unlikely they'd have such a team of one, y'know? SGA tends to err on the side of not showing much collaboration within departments (it's always Rodney Rodney Rodney, which of course, if it were true, they'd save money by getting rid of the people on his staff whom he just seems to use as objects to abuse).

Maybe Larry could be brought on because he's written something that Rodney hadn't though of, and Rodney's torn between interest and deep, deep annoyance that anyone thought of something he hadn't.

[eruthros]

Well, I was thinking Rodney would dismiss him out of hand because Rodney does not appear to be good at ... well, working with people. (Zelenka excepted.) As you said, its the problem of the show itself, in that it tends towards the single-genius (as does numb3rs, really) rather than the collaborative model; on SGA, it's rarely true that things work better when groups are involved.

I like the idea, though, that Rodney asks for him; it would make him fit better -- Rodney reads the zero point space paper, and the IOA's trying to get him to expand his department, and as much as he doesn't want to deal with new people freaking out all the time he figures Fleinhardt would be the best fit. (Even if they did get into a shouting match at a conference once; Fleinhardt was wrong wrong wrong but, Rodney admits in retrospect, couldn't know it, because he doesn't have data on wormholes.)

The trouble with bringing Charlie in is that Charlie tends to warp plots around himself! The idea here is that Rodney asks for Larry, specifically, and that NASA fakes whathisname dropping out of the space station program to see if Larry can adapt before trying to send him across the galaxy -- Rodney doesn't have a reason to ask for Charlie.

Also, I like Larry better, so in my head this hypothetical story is about Larry's adventures in Pegasus. Where he does have to try to move past his monochromatic food thing, as he said coming back from the space station, and where he can't have his order and everything is chaos -- but oh, it's beautiful chaos.