Stargate SG-1 Season 4
Executive producers: Brad Wright, Michael Greenburg, Richard Dean Anderson
Executive consultant: Jonathan Glassner
Original air dates: June 30, 2000 – February 23, 2001
Mission briefing. O’Neill, Carter, and Teal’c are rescued with the second gate being installed in the SGC. However, the primary gate goes down with the Biliskner, the Asgard ship that was overrun by Replicators. While Carter helps the Asgard deal with the Replicators in their home galaxy, O’Neill and Teal’c have to deal with a new set of Replicators in the Pacific thanks to a Russian submarine that tries to salvage the Biliskner.
That event has far-reaching consequences, beyond the introduction of the Replicators to the Stargate universe. The Russian government does manage to salvage the Stargate, and they also have the original DHD that went with the gate found at Giza. As a result they start running their own Stargate program—with some help from Maybourne, now a fugitive from the U.S. government, but more than happy to sell out—but things go horribly wrong and SG-1 has to come to the rescue. After that, the Russians discontinue their program—but hold onto the gate.
The Tok’ra alliance deepens, though it’s not without its setbacks and difficulties. The Tok’ra provide enhancement bracelets that don’t work on those with symbiotes, so they test them on SG-1—a test that goes a little too well. The formal signing of a treaty between the Tok’ra and Earth is almost done in by a za’tarc, a Goa’uld assassin who is brainwashed and could be anyone. Unfortunately, the za’tarc turns out to be Martouf, and Carter is forced to kill him to save the alliance, though the symbiote is spared. However, the Tok’ra teams with SG-1 to try to sabotage a potential alliance between Apophis and Heru’ur. At that, they’re successful, though Heru’ur’s death during the mission results in Apophis being even more powerful, as he absorbs Heru’ur’s forces as he did Sokar’s.
An old flame of Teal’c’s named Shan’auc has been communicating with her symbiote as it matures. She believes she has convinced it to reject the Goa’uld and serve as a spy for the Tok’ra, providing information from its genetic memory. However, Tanith, the symbiote, was playing her and when it matures and takes a host, he kills Shan’auc. The Tok’ra, however, learn of the deception, and they use Tanith to feed misinformation to the Goa’uld.
The team also find the Goa’uld homeworld, even finding some less evolved Goa’uld (who don’t have naquadah in their blood), and an entire race of Unas, who are established as the previous hosts of the Goa’uld before they started taking human hosts.
The Harcesis child is tracked down on Abydos, and gives Jackson a vision of the future that is not a pleasant one. Another unpleasant future is stopped by SG-1 using time travel in 2010 to stop a race known as the Aschen from basically taking over the Earth.
Heru’ur isn’t the only Goa’uld the team takes out: Cronus is killed, though ironically not by Teal’c, but rather Teal’c’s robot duplicate (who has the same memories and emotions as Teal’c, and so feels the same need for revenge against Cronus for the death of Teal’c’s father). It turns out that the robot duplicates from “Tin Man” have continued to go on missions, though the mission to Cronus’s world goes badly for them, as they’re all killed.
We also meet a new Goa’uld: Osiris, who has been trapped on Earth for some time, and manages to escape, killing Jackson’s mentor along the way and also taking his ex-girlfriend as a host.
Politics continue to interfere with the SGC, as the NID maneuvers Hammond into retiring and replaces him with an incompetent. O’Neill reluctantly works with Maybourne to force Senator Kinsey into reinstating Hammond.
An early attempt to retrofit Goa’uld technology fails rather spectacularly, as a recall device in a death glider that O’Neill and Teal’c try to test-fly for the Air Force sends the pair of them out into space.
We also meet the future of the SGC in Cadet Jennifer Hailey, a young woman with Carter’s brilliance, but also with a significant attitude problem. Carter’s solution is to take her through the gate and show her what’s waiting for her.
And, of course, there’s the usual crazy stuff they find on the other side of the wormhole, whether it’s relocating people to a planet that’s also claimed by an alien lifeform that is terraforming the planet; getting caught up in the Eurondan war, where a lack of complete intelligence results in SG-1 being on the wrong side; SG-1 being kidnapped and brainwashed into thinking they’re miners; tiny energy beings on a moon; a light that soothes also proves addictive, nearly killing both SG-1 and SG-5; an entity takes over both the SGC computer and Carter; and O’Neill and Teal’c get caught in a time loop started by a scientist desperate to save his dead wife and willing to warp the space-time continuum to do it. Plus, right here on Earth, a guy named Martin Lloyd knows a lot about alien life, mostly because it turns out that he is alien life…
After Cronus’s death, the SGC takes his mothership and lends it to the Tok’ra, who intend to use it to relocate their Stargate to a planet not on the Goa’uld map. That also means they can leave Tanith behind, and Carter also plots a way to wipe out Apophis’s army: by making the sun go nova…
Best episode: “Window of Opportunity.” Like there was any doubt. One of SG-1’s finest episodes, a brilliant, hilarious Groundhog Day riff that is perfectly constructed, from the initial frustration to the giving-in-to-the-absurd to the final confrontation. So many brilliant comic moments here, none more perfectly delivered than the reveal of the painful way that Teal’c has been starting each of his loops. Best of all, after delving so thoroughly into the ridiculous—playing golf through a wormhole, juggling, O’Neill kissing Carter (though, ever the good soldier, he hands in his resignation before doing so)—the episode also manages some genuine pathos with the scientist responsible, giving Richard Dean Anderson a rare chance to dig into O’Neill’s pain as a person who lost his son.
Tons of honorable mentions in this excellent season: “Small Victories” is half a good vehicle for Carter, half a brilliantly claustrophobic action sequence on a Russian sub with O’Neill and Teal’c. “Upgrades” plays with the clichés in true SG-1 fashion and makes it fun, mostly due to watching how much fun the three characters have with it. (Teal’c’s non-apology at the end is brilliant, followed by Hammond’s terse, “He was actually following orders.”) “Tangent” is another great problem-solving story with consquences as the characters have to move heaven and Earth to save O’Neill and Teal’c from the out-of-control death glider. “Prodigy” gives us a strong character in Jennifer Hailey who should’ve come back more than once. “Double Jeopardy” is a delightful sequel to “Tin Man,” even if killing all the duplicates was tiresome—it was made up for by Teal’c’s robot duplicate being the one to kill Cronus and the never-gets-old visual of O’Neill giving himself noogies. “Exodus” is a slam-bang season finale, complete with Carter blowing up a sun, a signature moment for the character. And the exciting, cleverly written “The Serpent’s Venom” would’ve gotten best in any year that didn’t have “Window of Opportunity” in it.
Worst episode: “Entity.” Just a dreadful SGC-in-jeopardy episode whose only saving grace is Amanda Tapping’s superb ability with facial expressions.
Dishonorable mention to “Beneath the Surface,” a ridiculous amnesia story folded together with a ridiculous prison story, with no predictable story beat left unturned. (The only saving grace was that this episode got rid of Teal’c’s soul patch.) “2010” and “Absolute Power” both give us spectacularly uninteresting alternate futures that result in a couple of boring, inconsequential episodes.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? “The Serpent’s Venom” has one of SG-1’s finest moments in its understanding of the fact that there are numerous scientific disciplines. Carter is an astrophysicist; Jackson is a linguist and archeologist. In a genre that tends toward all scientists knowing all science generally (yes, Spock, I’m looking at you), it’s incredibly refreshing to see a show that understands that that isn’t how it works. Jackson has to translate Phonecian numbers, but it’s Carter who has to explain that there needs to be a 0, even if Phonecian doesn’t usually have that, in order for the programming to work. It’s a classic moment.
For cryin’ out loud! We get all the extremes of Jack O’Neill this season, from his lightest side (making fun of himself in “Double Jeopardy,” the lunacy of “Window of Opportunity”) to his darkest (closing the iris on the Eurondans at the end of “The Other Side”).
It might work, sir. Carter blows up a sun.
I mean, yeah, sure some other stuff happened with her this season, including one of her potential love interests dying in “Divide and Conquer,” but who cares? Carter blows up a sun!
I speak 23 different languages—pick one. Jackson learns what it’s like to rule the world thanks to the Harcesis, starts a dialogue with the original hosts of the Goa’uld (a connection that will prove useful going forward), and attends the funeral of his mentor and watches an ex get possessed by Osiris.
Indeed. Teal’c is reunited with a long-lost love in Shan’auc, and becomes her greatest advocate for Jaffa attempting to communicate with and turn their symbiote larva. However, when the plan fails and Shan’auc is killed, Teal’c is denied his revenge by the Tok’ra’s use of Tanith to feed misinformation to the Goa’uld. That thirst for revenge later gets him shot and back in Apophis’s power. For good measure, Heru’ur has him tortured too.
Oh, and for nine episodes, he had a blond soul patch. Yes, really.
You have a go. One of Hammond’s greatest moments is in “Upgrades,” when he sees right through the Tok’ra’s deception, realizing that they wanted SG-1 to attack Apophis’s new battleship all along.
Wayward home for out-of-work genre actors. From the Star Trek side of things, Rene Auberjonois (Deep Space Nine’s Odo) plays a Eurondan in “The Other Side,” while Marina Sirtis (The Next Generation’s Troi) appears as a Russian scientist in “Watergate.” (Reportedly, Sirtis auditioned along with several Russian actors, but she got the role because she could handle the technobabble better than the others.) Steven Williams (“Mr. X” on The X-Files) appears in “Tangent” and “Absolute Power” as General Vidrine. Peter Wingfield (Methos on Highlander: The Series) debuts the recurring antagonist Tanith in “Crossroads.” Vanessa Angel of Weird Science fame appears in three episodes as the Tok’ra Anise, and Ronny Cox is back as Kinsey.
Trivial matters. This is the only season in which Tony Amendola does not appear as Bra’tac, though the character is mentioned, particularly in “Crossroads” and “The Serpent’s Venom.”
The recurring characters of Anise (Vanessa Angel), Martin Lloyd (Willie Garson), Sarah Gardner/Osiris (Anna-Louise Plowman), Rak’nor (Obi Ndefo), Dr. Bill Lee (Bill Dow), Jennifer Hailey (Elizabeth Rosen), Chaka (Dion Johnstone), and Tanith (Peter Wingfield) all debut in this season.
This season sets up the Russians as wanting to be involved in the Stargate program in whatever way they can, with their salvaging of the Stargate from the Biliskner.
The robots in “Double Jeopardy” still appear as the characters did in season one, so the O’Neill robot has brown hair, the Jackson robot wears a bandana (to cover the fact that he should have longer hair), and the Carter robot is still a captain and has a different haircut. In addition, the robots still have MP5s instead of the P-90s that the SGC personnel switched to.
Your humble rewatcher explained both Teal’c’s soul patch and Carter’s non-regulation shaggy hair (both of which happened in the week the two of them and O’Neill were trapped on a planet between seasons) in his short story “Time Keeps on Slippin’,” which appeared in the 2014 anthology Far Horizons.
By the end of the season, Apophis is back to being the primary threat among the System Lords.
The Replicators will continue to be a recurring nemesis in both SG-1 and Atlantis moving forward.
Longtime director Peter DeLuise takes his first of many shots at writing with “The First Ones,” and Michael Shanks makes his directorial debut—the first cast member to do so—with “Double Jeopardy.”
General Michael E. Ryan, at the time the chief of staff of the Air Force, appeared as himself in “Prodigy” (an episode that also has numerous scenes in the Air Force Academy). The USAF cooperated with SG-1 throughout its run, and this was one of the more overt examples of it.
Chevron seven locked. This is a really strong collection of episodes. Even its failures are noble ones, or at least have a redeeming feature, whether it’s Amanda Tapping’s powerfully wordless performance in “Entity” or Michael Shanks taking to fascism like a duck to water in “Absolute Power” or the hilarious tour of the decommissioned SGC in “2010” (“We’re walking…”).
And holy crap, the high points. Carter—the smartest human around—being sufficiently stupid to help the advanced Asgard deal with the even more advanced Replicators. Jackson snarking off Dr. Markova in “Watergate.” O’Neill giving himself noogies (really, that never gets old) in “Double Jeopardy.” Teal’c’s emotional roller-coaster in “Crossroads.” Hammond’s cutting through the crap in “Upgrades.”
And the sense of continuity is as strong as ever. The ongoing chemistry between O’Neill and Carter, causing issues in “Upgrades” that then cause more issues in “Divide and Conquer” (not to mention being the source of a great sight gag in “Window of Opportunity”). Picking up on the Harcesis child in “Absolute Power” and the NID in “Chain Reaction.” Developing Apophis’s return to power after last season’s “Jolinar’s Memories” and “The Devil You Know,” until he’s the biggest bad again by season’s end. Developing the Jaffa rebellion in “Crossroads” and “The Serpent’s Venom.” Developing the Tok’ra in about half the shows this season. Plus, several episodes from this season will be followed up on.
Everyone gives it their all here, too. Michael Shanks gets some great stuff to sink his teeth into, especially in “Absolute Power,” Richard Dean Anderson and Christopher Judge are at their best in “Window of Opportunity,” Don S. Davis knocks “Upgrades” out of the park, and “Small Victories,” “Entity,” “Prodigy,” and “Exodus” all give Amanda Tapping plenty of opportunities to remind us how awesome Carter is. Plus there are some great guest stars, from the radiant Musetta Vander as Shan’auc to the complex Peter Wingfield as Tanith to the always-brilliant Rene Auberjonois as the Eurondan bad guy to the hilarious Willie Garson as Martin.
Keith R.A. DeCandido is hard at work on Kali’s Wrath, an SG-1 novel taking place in the fifth season.
An awesome season indeed. 2010 is one of my favorite episode concepts, so I’m surprised to see it in the bottom tier. Forget the extremely effective takeover of the planet, I’d rate it high just for Jack trying to zipline into the stargate.
I never noticed before seeing your screen capture how they lit the Eurondan leader so he has a particular shadow mustache…
this season was the one that always seemed to be playing when I would watch reruns on Sci-fi channel back in the day, and practically every episode is one my ‘best of’ list for this series with – of course – Window of Opportunity at the top of the pack.
This is about when the Iron Rule of Stargate began to fully manifest itself: every human civilization beyond the early industrial age in technology is comprised entirely of jerks.
Never gets disproven, either.
I agree. This is an awesome season.
Not to be picky, but isn’t your picture of Shan’auc from season 6 (The Changeling)? And now I’m wondering if it says something about me that I can pick that out automatically.
An excellent season all around.
Definitely the strongest season yet, and one of the best of the entire franchise. I believe it’s also the first season I started watching regularly (albeit in syndicated reruns that were a year behind the Showtime run).
“Scorched Earth” is one of my favorites. It’s a striking concept, it has a terrific conflict between Jack and Daniel, and it features genre stalwart Brian Markinson (Durst in Voyager, Dr. Giger in Deep Space Nine, Durham in Caprica, Dillon in Continuum) in a very sympathetic role, the one that first really brought him to my attention as a performer.
I also utterly adore “Tangent,” because it’s when this show, based on an utterly fanciful premise, fully embraced hard science fiction and solid research and told a classic “problem story” in which the science drove both the problem and the solutions (even if the solution did rely on the one fanciful element in the story, hyperdrive). It was brilliant in the way it handled lightspeed time lag, something most screen sci-fi totally ignores. I love “Tangent” so much.
Speaking of science, I have to talk about the whole “Carter blows up a sun” thing. At first, I thought it was good science, based on the principle that a star maintains a balance between the inward pressure of its gravity and the outward pressure of its fusion. But I finally realized that Carter’s plan — remove a little bit of matter and the balance is broken and the star blows up — makes no damn sense whatsoever. And that’s because stars lose mass all the time. They’re constantly outgassing atmosphere as stellar wind. Indeed, relieving the pressure by removing mass would not only fail to cause a premature supernova — it would have the exact opposite effect, pushing the star’s death further into the future. Reducing the pressure also reduces the temperature of the core and slows down its fusion reaction, so it lasts longer. Star-lifting, extracting matter from the Sun through advanced technology, has actually been proposed as a way to extend its lifespan. (Not to mention that Stargate Universe later shows the Destiny refueling by scooping up stellar matter, and it doesn’t cause the stars to explode behind it.) So, as seminal a moment as blowing up the star was for Carter, it just doesn’t make sense scientifically. And that’s a shame, given that by this point, SG1 had become one of the most science-savvy shows on TV.
One thing that bugged me here was the introduction of Shan’auc as Teal’c’s old flame, without any mention of his wife Drey’auc. How does she fit into his past? Then next season they bring back Drey’auc in a flashback in “Threshold,” and then the season after that, they have Teal’c hallucinate a version of Shan’auc as his love interest in “The Changeling.” They couldn’t seem to make up their mind about who Teal’c’s love interest should be.
Still, I did like Musetta Vander, even if her character confused me. I can’t say the same for Vanessa Angel as Anise/Freya. She was added to the show for the specific purpose of adding sex appeal to counter Voyager‘s Seven of Nine, and not only did that feel contrived and intrusive, but it didn’t work, since she wasn’t really that appealing. She was the weakest element in a really strong season.
According to what I read in gateworld, there was a part of the episode that introduced Shan’auc that would tell that T’ealc had started the divorce procedure with his wife, but it was cut in the editing room and made T’ealc seem more promiscuous and less faithful.
@7/Ryamano: Well, “faithful” is a cultural concept that isn’t even universal among humans, let alone aliens. If they’d gone ahead and explained that Jaffa weren’t monogamous or had open marriages, that would’ve been enough for me. It just bugged me that they didn’t even seem to remember Teal’c was married, since it seemed like a continuity error.
This is the Star Trek season; Odo plays a fascist and Troi crashes a submarine…oh so many jokes, plus Cadet Jennifer Hailey, who has the relatability of Wesley Crusher combined with the loveableness of Neelix.
I’m with everyone else stating that this was a really excellent season, and I also really enjoyed (I generally find alternate reality stories appealing, particularly once a series I enjoy starts solidifying in a direction that I’m not taking a shine towards) both 2010 and, particularly, Absolute Power.
2010 had definite problems (although the entirety of the SGC tour was gold) and I’ll admit that there’s probably some nostalgia goggles in its direction – it certainly perfectly examplifies how only the key principals in the cast could figure out a problem that everyone else on the planet doesn’t even notice and then, of course, only the key cast members can resolve said problem…. That said, Absolute Power was just a really cool showcase for Michael Shanks, an interesting way to follow-up continuity on several levels, and I’m not sure that it would just be nostalgia bias to say so.
However, I’m fully on board with the concept that even the weaker episodes of this season had moments that shined and that what was really well made was creamy and filling.
@6 IIRC they threw into the star an active stargate connected to the planet being sucked in by a black hole, so they at the same time removed matter but also added gravity…
As soon as we can calculate which had more impact on the star in question we can (in)validate Carter’s metod of blowing up a star ;-).
@12/Spriggana: Nope, that still wouldn’t cut it. All that would do is suck the matter away a bit faster. And as I said, the flaw is in the idea that sucking the matter away would cause a supernova at all. It does just the opposite, by easing the pressure and temperature in the core and slowing the fusion reaction. The more of the star’s atmosphere you take away, the further it slides down the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram and the less explodey it gets. It’s like opening the valve on a pressure cooker. It prevents an explosion rather than causing one.
I haven’t made it to that episode yet, so I don’t know what technobabble they invoke, but wouldn’t the gravity of the black hole eventually compress the mass coming through, or trying to come through, the stargate enough to cause nova-like event? Especially if the pull of the black hole exceeds the stargate’s ability to transfer mass or starts to pull the outer layers of the star in before it’s finished sucking away the mass in the core.
I will say that one thing I really liked about 2010 was the “present day” SGC’s reaction to getting the note from the future:
“We have a note in Jack’s handwriting splattered with Sam’s blood saying never, ever go to this particular planet? Okay, put that stargate address on our ‘never dial’ list.”
I always liked seeing SGC avoid the “arbitrary skepticism” trope; I liked that they deal with the weird and wacky every day, and thus have just learned to accept it when something like that happens, rather than saying, “That couldn’t possibly be true.”
@14/noblehunter: No. Nope. No matter what mechanism you invoke, we’re still talking about a tiny, infinitesimal percentage of the star’s outer atmosphere being affected. Nothing is “sucking away the mass in the core,” because the core is hundreds of thousands of kilometers away from the Stargate. It’s just skimming a tiny bit off the top. The premise of Carter’s explanation was that a star was so delicately balanced between the forces of compression and expansion that tilting the balance even a tiny bit would cause an explosion. But that’s nonsense, because — as I said — stars are constantly losing mass naturally through the stellar wind. And the loss is too trivial to make much difference anyway. If it were done long enough to reduce the mass by a non-trivial amount, its only effect on the core would be to slightly slow the reaction and cool the star, so that the balance would remain — not only less mass pushing in, but less fusion heat pushing out. Changing one doesn’t cause the balance to collapse, because they cancel each other out.
Even if there were enough compression of hydrogen around the Stargate itself to trigger a local fusion explosion, that would still be like a firecracker going off next to a blast furnace. It might cause a bit of a fusion chain reaction in the surface layer of hydrogen and cause a flare-like effect, but it would dissipate before it affected more than a fraction of the star’s upper atmosphere, and would have no effect on the core deep beneath.
I think the only way we can settle the argument over whether Carter’s method would work is to repeat it. So, over to NASA for that one. Get cracking on that guys. Science demands it. :)
As I said, I haven’t rewatched that episode yet. I assumed the gate was near the core because that’s the only place I could see it working. I also remembered that the gravity effects would have taken awhile even to pull Earth through the gate, so the fun gravity effects would have taken quite some time to show up.
A better plan would have been to stick another gate inside another star and let mass pour into the target star. That at least gets to handwaveable levels of credibility.
@17, Nope. Bennett’s right, everything we know about supernovas says this couldn’t work. It’s like trying to gain weight by getting a haircut. It has SFA to do with the relevant process and is heading in the wrong direction anyways.
I loved your season 4 review! The only thing I didn’t agree with is your opinion on the episode “Entity”. Okay, it’s my favorite episode (hehe), but I also think it’s just a really interesting and well done ep. About the only thing I’d change is the guys having more of a reaction when Sam came back to them at the end.
But YES, Amanda was superb in the episode!!
@16: Here’s my thoughts on blowing up the star.
They dial the black hole gate and toss their gate into the sun. The gravity of the black hole immediately starts compressing the matter of the star around the gate. While only an insignificant portion of the star’s mass reaches the gate in the time before it fails, it is enough time to get a lot of the star’s mass falling toward the point gravity source. The whole flow of matter within the star is changed. After a few minutes, the gate fails and the wormhole vanishes.
The star goes “boing”. That’s gotta be good for a flare, if not a nova.
I agree that’s nothing like how Carter explains it will work, but if I argue fictional physics on two more sci-fi shows I get my merit badge.
I avoided Stargate SG-1 for years because of how poor I thought the movie was. But this season was where I joined the party.
In an age where the internet was not ubiquitos, and catch-up TV didn’t exist yet, I was still watching free-to-air TV and an ad for the season 4 premiere caught my eye. It looked interesting. I tuned in and never looked back.
Definitely one of my favorite seasons of SG-1, and probably one of the strongest seasons of any genre TV show ever.
Divide and Conquer has a line from O’Neill that never fails to crack me up: “Excuse me! Do we or do we not have a Xanax detector?!”
The other thing about “Window of Opportunity” that stands out is how a comedic romp managed to lay down a key part of the Stargate backstory: The plague that wiped out the Ancients.
Such a throwaway part of this little romp, yet it ends up becoming so important moving forward.
I also really liked 2010, but this time around I noticed a huge plot hole (don’t remember noticing it before). Carter says they can’t send a message through using radio, because there’s an EM damping field around the gate as part of the automated defense system. So how does the GDO signal get through?
Interesting thing about “Window of Opportunity” is if you figure the loop is going back 10 hours, and the Tok’ra have been trying to contact them for 3 months (and as Carter says, who knows when they started trying) then that’s well over 200 loops. No wonder they had time to learn how to juggle. Does their body chemistry reset too, with only their memories going back? The show seems to imply that they are always awake during the loops, since it was during daytime hours. We never see a loop where they are just really tired and need to go to sleep. If that’s the case, would an injury incurred during a loop go away at the start of the next?
@ChristopherLBennett
Out of curiosity, is there a way they could have blown up the star with Stargate technology that is scientifically valid?
@25/Kaboom: Not that I can think of. And I’m not convinced they really needed to. A large enough flare might’ve been enough to wipe out the Goa’uld fleet, and there’s discussion above about how that might’ve been achieved.
And here I am still, even if I haven’t really watched this season. I just can’t stay away from Krad’s rewatches…
@15 – Lsana: I love that they are not skeptic after all that wackiness. I really, really, really loathe when it happens, for example, when Batman comic writers have him be skeptic towards magic or stuff like that, when at the same time he’s been in the same team with people with magical abilities, gods, etc. (And I’m not talking about reboots or stuff where he hasn’t have those contacts yet.)
@25, 26 wouldn’t a flare or similar event move too slowly to threaten a FTL capable ship? For that matter, I don’t know if the material from a supernova is fast enough. I suppose it depends on how fast the Ga’ould FTL drives charge. (I hope the episode hasn’t answered this, too).
In Star Trek, especially that one plan by the dominion to trash the combined fleets, it definitely isn’t fast enough since they’ve got FTL sensors and can apparently warp on command.
@@@@@ 15
On arbitrary skepticism, another good event is when Jonas Quinn says to Hammond that there’s a flying bug that only he can see hiding somewhere in the SG complex, and after no more than three questions, Hammond starts the quarantine procedures. Shows that these people are veterans of seeing weird stuff happen and are prepared to believe in one of their team very quickly.
Hey folks! Due to deadline pressure (ironically, on my Stargate SG-1 novel Kali’s Wrath, which is ALMOST DONE…..) and travelling to Atlanta for Treklanta 2015, I’m not going to be able to get season 5’s rewatch done in time. We’ll have it next week. Meantime, look for the rewatch of “Balance of Terror” on the TOS Rewatch on Tuesday as planned.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I just watched ‘Enemies’ and I’m kinda flabbergasted at how inept everyone is. I have a laundry list of how many stupid things went wrong; from letting Tannith escape to not putting up shields in orbit around the sun…..not to mention Carter’s Rube Goldberg plan for getting rid of Apophis.
Ah stargate, so much fun but I can’t take it seriously!
Hey, Carter Blew Up A Sun!!! So of course her method worked. She also hugged as Asgard who enjoyed it.
O’Neil: ‘They say the first one is the hardest.’