Overall Rating: 7.2
Interesting scientific plot and some cute moments, but the attempt at personal drama for O'Neill doesn't really interest me as much as it should because we had no reason to root for his former colleague who drops on our laps rather abruptly. It's a decent episode, but it certainly won't win any of my top-20 votes.
Plot Synopsis:
SG-10 becomes trapped on a planet when one of its' twin stars implodes into a black hole. When the SGC attempts to understand the strange time dilation that appears to be affecting transmissions from this planet, their wormhole becomes irreversibly stuck - connected to the gravitational field of a black hole. At first, the SGC is unaware of the affects of time dilation on the mountain, but when contact is lost with the surface, the Pentagon sends in a team of special forces to quell what they believe is an alien incursion and Carter, noticing smoke flowing toward the gate after an attempt to short it out fails, orders them to close the iris and slow down the spreading impacts of the black hole.
The special forces team is led by a former brother in arms of Colonel O'Neill...a man who, in a botched incursion on Iraqi soil, left Jakc behind to be captured by Iraqis, thinking he was dead. The tension this creates between then when he arrives at the gate room and realizes what's actually going on is immediately apparent. At first, the plan is to self-destruct the base and hopefully seal the gate, but when Carter expresses doubt that the resulting blast would be strong enough to do the job, their fallback plan is to nuke the base. Carter, frustrated, thinks the plan won't work because their assumptions about quantum physics are being blatantly violated by the actual evidence in front of them. During a conversation with Hammond, the second gate is mentioned and Carter whips up a plan. Rather than detonating a huge explosive with the goal of destroying the gate, they should aim a directed blast at the gate and get it to jump to another gate like what happened in the first season episode "Solitudes."
O'Neill and Cromwell, meanwhile, duke it out over O'Neill's smoldering grudge regarding his days in an Iraqi prison. The impasse they come to allows them to focus on executing Carter's new plan when she arrives with the bomb. As the Iris fails and glass from the control room shatters, ripping Cromwell's harness free of the wires they've rigged to set and arm the explosive, O'Neill tries desperately to save him from being sucked into the black hole...with his last ounce of strength, Cromwell arms the bomb, but he then slips from O'Neill's grasp and is killed. O'Neill barely manages to get far enough away from the explosion to survive, but the plan works and they shut down the gate.
Writing: 7.5
Although the personal stakes for O'Neill and Cromwell don't resonate as well as you'd like them to given Cromwell's sudden appearance and the general lack of an appropriate build up to the dramatic climax, the script generally flows quite nicely. It's high concept sci fi done pretty well (not quite as well as DS9 tends to do it, but still...it's very solidly written). Typical of Gate, the thing that makes the episode flow well is not so much the big moments in the script, but all of the little moments. The scene between Carter and Teal'c, the side moment at the start of the episode between O'Neill and Carter, the jokes about the pain that is relativity.
Acting: 7.5
Marshall Teague was only "so so" as Cromwell...but offsetting some minor issues with the guest stars and the complete absence of Michael Shanks are some outstanding reaction takes from Amanda Tapping when she realizes what's really happening to SG-10, and some very nice work by her later on when she is frustrated with trying to come up with a better plan than nuking Cheyanne mountain. All in all, I'd say the acting was at least par in this episode with some very nice moments pushing up the score a bit.
Message: 7.0
The complexity of battlefield decision making - and the willingness of those men and women who must make the life and death calls in the heat of battle to accept responsibility for those consequences - is always a fascinating topic to explore in a show heavily featuring the US armed forces. They have it about right here, I think. We all want absolution when we make a big mistake, even if the mistake seems impossible to have avoided. And for the victim of our bad decision, such absolution is nearly impossible to give. But in the end, everyone is fighting on the same team, and the vast majority of them want to serve and do the best they can to protect their country and their fellow men. They are amazing people that most of us will never fully understand - the sacrifices they make (as Cromwell makes in this episode) are enormous.
Highlights:
O'NEILL: OK, I should know this by now...but...these wormholes we go through...they're not always there, right?
CARTER: No, sir...they can only exist between two open stargates.
O'NEILL: And the worm thing? What's with the worm part...I don't get that.
CARTER: It's just a metaphor, sir.
O'NEILL: OK, well I knew that. (he motions for more information)
CARTER: Imagine the galaxy is like an apple. We borough our way through it from one side of the galaxy to the other instead of going all the way around it.
O'NEILL: Ah.
CARTER: Now, of course, the skin of the apple is just a 2-dimensional representation of space-time and it's not so much a hole as an inter-dimensional gateway.
O'NEILL: (puts up a hand to stop her) Thanks. (LOL)
TECHNICIAN: This is all we have, sir. 11 frames of video in the last...6 minutes.
CARTER: That represents a fraction of a second!
HAMMOND: Could there be something wrong with the MALP?
O'NEILL: No...that image tells us all we need to know. Those men are in trouble...probably under attack. Now we need to go in.
CARTER: Negative, sir!
O'NEILL: What do you mean, negative...Captain.
CARTER: I'm sorry, sir, but if I'm right...we can't help them. (eerie realization she's having, and well acted too)
HAMMOND: Why aren't they gating out of there?
CARTER: They're trying, sir...but the closer you get to a black hole...
O'NEILL: Time slows down. (Carter seems a little stunned that O'Neill knew this)
TEAL'C: Until it almost appears to stand still.
CARTER: From our perspective, yes. But you have to remember, time is relative. To them only a few seconds have passed...they're still trying to save themselves.
HAMMOND: What will happen to them.
CARTER: Well sir, as the planet orbits closer and closer to the black hole...
HAMMOND: Captain!
CARTER: Sorry, sir...their bodies will be pulled apart from increasing gravitational tidal forces. (I know my sister won't get why I'm highlighting this...but you have to watch the facial expressions...it's all very well done high concept sci fi in here)
HAMMOND: Disengage the stargate.
CARTER: Sir...by some fluke of stargate technology we're witnessing something that the laws of physics say we can't possibly see.
O'NEILL: We are witnessing good men dying in slow motion...Captain.
CARTER: Sorry, sir. (chilling)
CARTER: Hey, Teal'c...do you know anything about quantum gravity?
TEAL'C: Nothing.
CARTER: Apparently, neither do I.
TEAL'C: What are these equations?
CARTER: Maybe a life's work. I don't have that kind of time, unfortunately. I never thought that the affects of time dilation could precede the affects of gravity...but they must...I mean otherwise, we'd all be pulled apart by now!
TEAL'C: And yet, we are not.
CARTER: You know...they're proceeding with a plan that makes assumptions about quantum gravity and wormhole physics that I don't even think are accurate.
TEAL'C: I see.
CARTER: In other words, Teal'c...they don't really know what's going on here, so they're just going to blow it up. (heh!)
CROMWELL: I was sick to my stomach when I heard you were still alive. I wanted to go back for you.
O'NEILL: Let's just do this and get the hell out of here.
CROMWELL: Someone dropped a dime on the incursion, you were hit...you went down! I made a judgment call to save the rest of my team!
O'NEILL: And I saw you take off...and then I saw the next four months of my life disappear in some stinkin' Iraqi prison!
CROMWELL: I thought you were dead!
O'NEILL: YOU THOUGHT WRONG!! WHAT DO YOU WANT? You want me to forgive you, is that it?
CROMWELL: Well...I guess I do.
O'NEILL: Well that's tough. What happened to no man left behind?
CROMWELL: Well what about him (pointing to Boyd on the planet)?
O'NEILL: That is a totally different scenario.
CROMWELL: That...is the same damned thing!
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