Vala Mal Doran’s MBTI type stands out as one of the most dynamic in Stargate SG-1. Portrayed by Claudia Black, Vala embodies the spontaneity and boldness of an ESTP, combined with the thrill-seeking, opportunistic mindset of an Enneagram7w8. Her quick thinking, love of risk, and unapologetic pursuit of freedom make her a fascinating example of this personality combination in action.
ESTP 7w8 Characters
Why is Vala Mal Doran from Stargate SG-1 an ESTP? Continue reading for my argument using cognitive functions! The headers for each section are clickable, so you can easily access more information about the dominant function and the Enneagram type, or discover more characters who share the type.
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Extraverted Sensing
Vala is an opportunist of the highest order; she first meets Daniel Jackson by stealing his cargo ship and intending to deliver it elsewhere in the galaxy. She “keeps” him on board because she likes him, but later tries to join SG-1. While traveling with her, they discover she has been to multiple planets, usually on trade runs in which she has carried on schemes, served as a bounty hunter, been a Goa’uld queen and enslaved nations to mine quiet, and been involved with various Goa’uld “gods.” In any new environment, she reacts to opportunities or threats in real time by taking whatever is in front of her and turning it to her advantage. This includes physically exploring unknown places (ships, markets, alien worlds), confidence in knocking people out, escaping restraints, and adapting her approach, and boredom in a stagnant environment.
When her quick thinking saves her friends but gets her booted across the universe, Vala winds up living on a planet inhabited by the Ori, a new system of false gods who convert people and invite them to supplicate and worship. When she mysteriously becomes pregnant without having sex with a future prophetess of the Ori, Vala quickly gets married to a nice local man. From there, she tries to work against her daughter, who is growing at a rapid rate. In another episode, she loses her memory and is running around in America. With no sense of self, she works for a diner, winds up holding Cameron Mitchell hostage, and is good at knocking people unconscious!
When stuck in SG-1’s base camp under Chyenne Mountain, Vala scouts around for something to do because she’s bored out of her mind and doesn’t like to sit still. She wants to be exploring worlds, challenging herself, or even just… having fantastic sex.
Introverted Thinking
Vala’s logic is pragmatic and self-serving, but internally consistent: if it works and it benefits her, it makes sense. She thinks of everything in terms of a negotiation, in which as long as both people think they get what they want, they are all good with it. For Vala, though, this usually means a “scheme” in which she benefits and the other person doesn’t. One entire episode is spent undoing her previous con jobs, in which one thing leads to the next, and proves what a financially beneficial life she was living; trading one useless power cell for something else, which she traded for another product, etc. Her reasoning can be quite solid.
Vala is logical and does not easily believe tall tales; when her memory is lost, Cameron tries to convince her she is part of a secret Stargate program. Vala thinks that sounds bogus. Particularly the part about being a bounty hunter alien. She has to see things to believe them, or she will pick them apart as being irrational. She’s also an amazing problem solver; it’s Vala who finds out they can sabotage the Ori’s super-gate by parking a small ship between two of the links, thus interrupting the power cells.
After her Goa’uld was removed, Vala continued to pretend she had one, to get people to obey her and give her whatever she wanted. She kept an entire planet “enslaved” and when she returns there, continues the farce for a short time, much to the annoyance of Daniel Jackson, who sees that as an immoral thing to do. To Vala, just made sense to use anything to her advantage. When SG-1 wants her to pass a psyche evaluation before joining the team, Vala thinks she can study up on it on the internet and learn what answers to give, rather than wanting to be honest in her responses; humorously, she picks positive but inauthentic ones that give the therapist a headache.
Extraverted Feeling
At first, Vala just uses her low Fe to charm people as a con woman and to get a rise out of them; she likes to say things to get a reaction out of them, such as teasing Daniel about going on a date so that his coworkers think he’s being inappropriate, or making remarks about how great he is in bed (they have never had a romantic relationship). She likes to get his goat. On other worlds, she adapts her behavior to whomever she is talking to; she can be a sweet and innocent villager, or a tough-talking bounty hunter, or a Goa’uld queen with ruthlessly high standards. When SG-1 sends her into a cell to “break Baal,” she tries to seduce him, and her plan almost backfires when he wants to take her up on it on the spot.
When passing her psyche exam, she tells the therapist what she thinks he wants to hear rather than the truth about her feelings, by cherry-picking answers that sound good. Her true feeling come out with her daughter; Vala, who has never been maternal, cares about the baby, who becomes a little girl, and then a grown up almost overnight, and wants to convince her to turn against the Ori, rather than to see her destroyed. She has humanitarian concern about her husband, “a good man” even if he is misled by the Ori religion, and when arguing with her daughter, points out that what she is doing is hurting a lot of innocent people. It doesn’t work, but at least she tried.
Introverted Intuition
Most of the time, Vala has no thought for the eventual consequences of her decisions, and it shows. She never thought that she would have to return to any of the planets where she pretended to be someone else and took advantage of a situation, or that she would need to trade with the traders she ripped off, so undoing all of that proves to be a tedious business in which she defers responsibility. When the villagers find out she is not still a Goa’uld, they arrest her and her friends and want to put her on trial. Some of them banter about executing her. Other former business partners want to “even the score” when they catch up to her and make trouble for SG-1.
A few times, she has a shrewd sense of who people are and uses that to her advantage; she instinctively knows that Daniel is useful, that her daughter is dangerous, and what she could become given a few weeks (“She will turn into a very dangerous influential person”). This revelation comes too late, when she is in the middle of dealing with a crisis.
The Enneagram 7
Vala is one of the more likable characters on the show because she is so cheeky in being… well, totally immoral. She is just here to have a good time and get whatever she can out of life, and part of that is to drive Daniel nuts, because his moralizing falls in deaf ears with Vala. She will just turn his conversation around and find a loophole in it to prove him wrong, or she will grin and think that will fix it. In talking to Landry about passing her psyche eval, she points out to him the wonderful thing she does, which is to turn a negative into a positive statement. And that is her attitude toward life; it’s always great, they will somehow get out of this dangerous situation, she can charm her way out of anything, there will be no consequences, only fun! And if she can’t use charm, she can talk them into listening to her.
In reality, though, Vala is running away from her past and refusing to deal with her problems. She isn’t facing the real horrors she inflicted as a Goa’uld queen, or dealing with her feelings, or unpacking what it is to be a mother to an Ori prophetess (without being asked for permission; one day she just woke up pregnant!).
The 8 Wing
Rather than have the cautious “should” thinking of a 6 wing, Vala has the assertiveness of an 8 wing. In her mind, if she has the upper hand, she needs to take it, and if people are too stupid or weak to stop her, that’s on them. This causes her to clash with Daniel often, since she doesn’t see the point in his moralistic behavior (even if he’s pretty cute). When in a position of power, she used people as her slaves to feed, clothe, and serve her, even without still being host to a Goa’uld, and isn’t sorry about it.
Elsewhere, torture does not work on her. She just becomes more defiant or snarks back in their faces. She sees Baal and other system lords as equals rather than authority figures or anything to fear. With or without her memories intact, she reacts to attempts to control her with aggression, knocking people out, kidnapping them, and demanding that they provide her with information.
