Vala Mal Doran

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Stargate character

Vala Mal Doran played by Claudia Black in Stargate SG-1
Vala Mal Doran
Race Human
Gender Female
Relatives Tomin (husband)
Adria (daughter)
Jesak (father)
Portrayer Claudia Black
First episode "Prometheus Unbound"

Vala Mal Doran is a fictional character in the television series Stargate SG-1 played by the actress Claudia Black.

Contents

[edit] History

Vala was originally a "space pirate" of sorts, as well as a thief notorious across the galaxy for using sex to carry out her heists. She was apparently a former host to a Goa'uld named Qetesh (named for the sex goddess of Chaldean and Egyptian mythology). She claimed the Tok'ra eventually incited an uprising and the Goa'uld symbiote was removed. However, Vala also claims that the Tok'ra forgot to tell the people of the village that the person who had so harshly ruled them was not Vala herself, but another being controlling her, and as a result the villagers stoned Vala, mistakenly thinking that it was Vala who had enslaved them. The Tok'ra supposedly rescued her before she was killed, and nursed her back to health from near death. As a consequence, Vala has Naqahdah in her blood and can operate most Goa'uld technology, including the Healing Device.

It's not clear how long Vala was a host. That the village remembered Vala before she was taken implies that she was only recently taken as Qetesh's host, meaning that she is only as old (or slightly older) as she appears. This is markedly different from other System Lords, such as Ra or Apophis, who still inhabited their millennia-old Egyptian hosts.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details for Season 8 follow.

She was introduced in Season Eight's "Prometheus Unbound", in which she attempted to steal the Prometheus to trade for weapons-grade Naqahdah, but her plans were thwarted by Daniel Jackson; as was later revealed, this gave her and Daniel a bad name with the Lucian Alliance. Vala eventually escaped from the Prometheus on a captured Al'kesh.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details for Season 9 follow.

Vala later sought out Daniel Jackson on Earth after she obtained a tablet written in an Ancient cipher; she bound Daniel to her with a bracelet which renders the wearers unconscious and eventually dead if they become separated for too long (originally used by the Goa'uld Cronos to assure that a prisoner did not escape from a Jaffa guard). An important result of this connection, to which Daniel had not consented, was missing his intended passage on board the Daedalus, from whence he had intended to journey to Atlantis. The tablet Vala had brought (which Daniel now grudgingly agreed to decipher) led to the discovery of an Ancient/Alteran chamber containing an Ancient communication device and a book which identifies the Avalon of Arthurian mythology to be the name the Ancients called Earth. Together, she and Daniel Jackson use what is apparently an Ancient communicator found as a result of the tablet, to encounter a village in a distant galaxy populated by descendants of the Ancients. There they encounter the Ori for the first time. The Ori turn out to be Ascended beings who dictate that those who do not follow them are evil. Vala was killed by a Trial by Fire after she was accused of being evil and possessed, though she was soon resurrected by one of the Priors (humans loyal to the Ori who are granted special powers). After this, she and Dr. Jackson were taken to the city of the Ori, where they were kept as prisoners; they were returned to the village to be burned. At this juncture, however, Lt. Colonel Cameron Mitchell and Teal'c successfully destroyed the Ancient communication device by throwing it into the vortex (unstable opening state of a wormhole) of the Stargate, obliterating it and saving the lives of both Daniel and Vala.

Prior to meeting the Tau'ri, she had used a voice-altering device on a planet formerly ruled by Qetesh to pretend that she herself was Qetesh, thus gaining the minute quantities of Naqahdah still in the planet's mines. She was by and large a fair ruler, but she did employ forced labor. She invented a trial-like proceeding called a "Mal Doran" on that planet.

Vala appeared to die in the process of stopping the Ori from setting up a Supergate in the Milky Way but later reappeared in "Crusade" where we learn that she was thrown on a Ori homeworld where she lived undercover.

After recovering the communications device in the Ori home world, she takes over Daniel's body in an attempt to transmit information back to SG-1. She tells them how she was rescued by a man, and lived undercover, trying to blend in. Then Vala drops a bombshell: she tells SG-1 that she's pregnant. The biggest mystery is that she did none of the necessary acts to become pregnant. Fearing for her life, she marries the man who saved her and convinces him that she is carrying his child. She discovers the truth about the child—that it's the "divine" work of the Ori—by overhearing a conversation between her husband and a Prior. As she starts to tell SG-1 about the army approaching them, the link is severed and Daniel is back to himself.

Vala is last seen in the closing scene of "Camelot" at the end of Season 9 aboard one of the invading Ori battlecruisers. She appears very far along in her pregnancy at this point, and the season ends when she senses she is going into labour.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details for Season 10 follow.

After the battle, Vala gives birth to her daughter Adria, known to the Ori as the Orici. The child grows rapidly, and Vala, along with Daniel Jackson, who had ringed aboard the ship during the battle, attempts to turn the child away from the Ori. Tomin, Vala's husband and a soldier of the Ori discovers this and tries to stop her. Before they can take the child, however, they are beamed away by the Odyssey.

In "Morpheus", Vala had to undergo tests to get into the SGC, and she accompanied SG-1 on a trip to Atlantis ("The Pegasus Project").

In "Insiders", Vala helps SG-1 (Minus Daniel Jackson) to find two clones of Ba'al.

In "Memento Mori", a Goa'uld known as Athena tries to access her memories to find a treasure left by the Ancients. However, during a firefight between the SGC and Trust, a stray Zat shot hits the memory device attached to her, wiping her mind. After eating at a diner and working as a waitress, she fights some would-be crooks, confusing everyone with her fighting skill. Vala then gets detained by the police because she wouldn't give her name. She was tracked down by Colonel Mitchell, who restores her memory using a Galaran memory device.

In "Line in the Sand", while SG-1 was helping the people of P9C-882, the Ori invade, and Vala gets captured by Tomin, who was ordered by Adria to educate her in the ways of Origin. After a harsh argument ensues, Vala tells Tomin about the true story behind the Ancients and Ori, which makes him question their wisdoms. He helps her escape via rings when the Prior controlling the Ori ship planned to destroy the village below.

In "Unending", the "romance" between Vala and Daniel finally comes to fruition. After they spent three months within the time dilation field, they share their first kiss and continue the relationship presumably over the next 50 years. However, when the time dilation field gets reversed, the relationship and all linked memories get erased as it if never happened. Only Teal'c can remember of what has transpired in the alternate time line that never was.

[edit] Episodes before joining the main cast

[edit] Trivia

  • Claudia Black and Ben Browder starred on the cult sci-fi series Farscape. This was the source of an in-joke in the ninth season premiere when Vala sees Mitchell and remarks "I know we haven't met. That I'm sure I would remember."
  • Another Farscape reference (this one visual) appears in "The Ties That Bind" where she uses a similar, but not identical, weapon to one seen in Farscape.
  • Black's character from Farscape also became pregnant, as Vala does in Stargate.
  • Episode "200" featured a parody of Farscape with the cast playing characters from Farscape. Vala is imagined as Aeryn Sun, but John Crichton is Daniel Jackson.
  • One of the (very few) things the often deceitful Vala has not lied about to the SGC is her name. The lie detector used on her during her psych evaluation confirmed that it really is 'Vala Mal Doran'.
  • One interpretation of the name is 'Vala' meaning being singled out in old German, 'Mal' being an English prefix for bad, 'Doran' being an Irish/Gaelic name meaning fist, stranger, or exile.

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Regular Characters on Stargate SG-1  Edit 
Current: Cameron Mitchell | Samantha Carter | Daniel Jackson | Teal'c | Hank Landry | Vala Mal Doran

Former: Jack O'Neill | Jonas Quinn | George Hammond | Janet Fraiser
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