Alyse: last of her breed

About your first point, it's quite true that Jack is under pressure. But if you can't do the job, don't do it ;) If he feels that way and cannot cop with everything the missions impose, he should take a vacation or get out. Sorta crude, but what he did to that man was even more. If I remember right, Jack,s attitude was very ambiguous when he left through the Stargate. That's a reason why this event bugged me so much. he was the last to go, and Alar asked to come, saying he had nowhere to go. Jack doesn't say anything. He just looks at him and slowly turns around and go through the stargate. In fact, if you don't know Jack (which Alar of course didn't), and if you come from another culture than American (which was the case), you could totally take his gesture as acceptance. How someone from another culture, that doesn,t know personally the man, understand that those body language mean "Don't follow me" ? It's impossible. It was like Jack purposefully, on the moment, thought that Akar would follow and he could close the iris. That,s why he said nothing. he detached himself form the action. "It's not my fault he followed me, I didn't tell him to!", but he hoped he would. See what I mean? I had hoped we would get more Sam angst out of it, form the look she gave Jack when he ordered to close the iris. It could have been very interesting. But alas.

You said that Jack warned Alar what would happen? I don't think so... I would have to check, but I don't recall Jack telling him anything.

I am realistic. I know we could rule this on simple bad writing. Because I don't think that it's really in character with Jack to do such a thing. Even if he did worst things during his Special Ops days, he never acted like that before in the SGC (That I know anyways). It just pisses me off what they did with Jack. =)