Overall Rating: 6.0
Team bonding moments make an otherwise average Gate episode (with some plot holes) a decent viewing experience.
Plot Synopsis:
SG-1 scouts a dead world that looks rather like our moon. Their MALP found a faint energy signature and they trace the source to a small orb with indecipherable alien text embossed in tiny symbols on the surface. Daniel immediately perceives it as a message in a bottle, Carter thinks a power source that lasts for 100,000 years is the scientific equivalent of the perfect nude photo of (insert attractive celebrity), Teal'c thinks it's a Goa'uld booby-trap, and Jack thinks there's a comfy chair in his cabin that needs sitting in, so he agrees to the majority vote and they take the device back to the SGC to let Daniel drool all over it for a day or two before their next scheduled mission.
Unfortuantely, once exposed to Earth's atmosphere, the device goes berserk and the team tries to rush it back to the gate but it rather emphatically says "no, sir!" and plants itself into the base with infinitely long metal spikes that come from (apparently) nowhere. One of those spikes catches O'Neill in the shoulder and pins him against a wall. He angrily orders Teal'c to shoot it (ah the military mindset. :) ) and when that doesn't work, the team regroups to study their earlier findings (from before the device went nutball crackers). When they discover that some kind of alien organism is invading the bodies of everyone within reach and slowly killing them, they start passing out the antibiotics and scanning the base looking for how far the creatures have spread. They discover them pouring into O'Neill's body in huge numbers and drug him up to keep him alive.
Meanwhile, the organisms infiltrate the base infrastructure, corroding through control panels and pipes and spreading everywhere. Teal'c tries burning the organisms with a torch, but Carter thinks the best way to slow them down is to reduce oxygen levels on the base. And right at this time, the base auto-destruct sequence ("Wildfire"...awesome name!) activates to stop the contagion from breaching containment. They have three hours to get the situation under control while suffering from the affects of hypoxia. As Carter begins to realize that her plan is just buying them a little time and not working toward a solution, Daniel spots a symbol from the alien orb flashing on their computer screens and realizes that the creatures may be trying to communicate.
Taking an enormous leap of faith, Carter decides that Jack's involvement was no accident and that the creatures were trying to communicate through him all along. They risk killing him by cutting off his meds and shooting the orb several times to give the creatures the energy they need to form a collective intelligence. We learn through the aliens that the orb was designed to preserve their race as their planet was dying, and that once activated by the presence of a living atmosphere, they couldn't be stopped without killing their entire species. With the minutes ticking away, Daniel negotiates a peaceful settlement to the crisis, offering to take the aliens through the gate to a primordial world they were planning to scout for resources if they would leave peacefully and return control of the base to us. The aliens withdraw and, in classic Hollywood (or...Vancouver...heh) fashion, they stop the auto-destruct sequence with 1 second left on the timer!
Writing: 5.0
Meh...the dialogue lacks the sort of iconic moments that stick in the viewer's mind, but there's nothing off-putting about the script and there are a few nice little exchanges, particularly between O'Neill and Teal'c. The plot itself has some rather questionable premises.
1) These creatures were energy-based...they fed off the energy of Teal'c staff weapon, for example. Why then could they not simply return to the orb and dormancy? Why did their awakening mean if we sent them back to their dead world, they would all die?
2) Speaking of the dead world, supposedly, that world died 100,000 years ago, but it looked like our moon! If it died that recently, you would see evidence of previously thriving ecosystems. Minor scientific quibble, I know, but these things annoy me when the episode isn't breathtaking.
3) Why would antibiotics slow the progress of the alien creatures? That never made any sense to me. Lack of oxygen slowed them down, but antibiotics work in a very specific way that does not seem to fit the description of how these creatures lived and died.
4) If the aliens' plan all along was to spike someone and communicate through them, that's a spectacularly risky (and hence unlikely) thing for the probe to have been prepared for. From the design of the orb, there appeared to be only a handful of those spikes...what if all of them had missed human targets?? And those spikes, BTW, don't make physical sense to me. Unless the inside of that orb is a wormhole to another space-time continuum where all of that extra matter could have been hiding, there's no way huge unbroken pieces of metal could have all fit in that little thing. Big enough, apparently, that they can grow at will and prevent us from cutting O'Neill free!
5) The noble diplomatic solution would have a lot more resonance even with liberal sci-fi fans if it weren't forced on us by the circumstances of the plot. Our choice seemed to be...help the aliens or die...their choice was...feed on the explosion of the base and spread across the Earth or go to another world and spread there. What's even more baffling is that the whole of the SGC stood there looking stupid for like 2 minutes trying to think of how to resolve the situation and only Daniel could come up with sending them to another world.
6) By the way, Daniel claims when he sees the symbol on the computer screens that it can't just be a random image from their photos of the writings on the surface of the orb because he "didn't start working on that part of the text until after we lost control of the computer," but early in the episode he orders technicians to photograph the ENTIRE SURFACE of the orb and archive the images into the computer system. Gibwaaahh?
In any event...I think the script is a bit of a patchwork product and thus, it's hard to get enthusiastic about it.
Acting: 6.0
Chris Judge and Richard Dean Anderson are outstanding. Unfortunately, my love (Amanda Tapping) was off her game this time. When she comes up with the idea of letting the creatures grow, she eats as much scenery as Avery Brooks in one of his mad cap'n Benji moments. It's very offputting coming from her...and I didn't really feel the emotional connection when she was talking to Lt. Simmons as he got near death. Partly because that guest star kind of sucked, and partly because I don't think Amanda was into it much. Why is it that when aliens take control of people in sci-fi TV shows, that those people invariably talk super slowly and struggle to form words? Alexander Siddig did this when Vantika took control of his body in The Passenger. Now we see RDA doing it too. And Carter does it later in the run of the show (fourth season). Annoying.
Message: 7.0
In an otherwise message-lacking episode, I veyr much enjoy seeing the bromance between Teal'c and Jack grow with each passing disaster. The Gate writers seem to have a much better understanding of military camaraderie than any other sci-fi show I have watched.
Highlights:
TEAL'C: When a Goa'uld's world is taken by a rival in battle, he will sometimes leave behind the means to destroy the conqueror.
CARTER: You think this might some kind of alien booby-trap?
TEAL'C: Booby? (LOL)
HAMMOND: You're schedule to leave on a survey mission of P4G-881 tomorrow morning...
DANIEL: ...which is a primordial world with absolutely no civilization and therefore no need to bring along an archaeologist... (LOL...Danny wants to study the orb...)
HAMMOND: I'm willing to postpone your mission for twenty-four hours to confirm your theory.
DANIEL: That's not enough time!
CARTER: But he'll take it. (LOL)
O’NEILL: It’s hot.
TEAL’C: The fever burns within you.
O’NEILL: You?
TEAL’C: The symbiote I carry appears to protect me.
O’NEILL: Way to go, Junior.
TEAL’C: Doctor Fraiser will find a cure.
O’NEILL: Teal’c, you don’t have to stand around.
TEAL’C: Undomesticated equines could not remove me.
O’NEILL: Wild horses, Teal’c. It’s... (beat) That’s a joke. (beat) You told a joke. Don’t make
laugh, please.
TEAL’C: Very well.
O’NEILL: You’re a good man, my friend.
TEAL’C: As are you, my friend.
O’NEILL: I blew it! I screwed up.
TEAL’C: I also believed we should retrieve the object.
O’NEILL: It was my decision.
TEAL’C: If we are to meet the challenge of the Goa’uld, and further your race, risks must be taken. Your decision was correct.
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