Overall Rating: 4.0
The first 1/2 or 2/3 of the episode is a dull clip show...it's really bad form to end a season with a cliffhanger-style conclusion that's tacked onto a clip show. You should never use a finale merely to set up the next season's premiere. Normally, I'd rate both of these next two episodes simultaneously, but...though their stories are connected, they are radically different in quality and need to be handled separately.
Plot Synopsis:
The episode opens with Jack O'Neill being awakened from cryogenic suspension. He is informed by SGC officials that the year is 2077 and everyone he knows is long dead. As his energy returns, he tours the new-look base and learns that his team died on the same mission during which he was frozen and that Earth is currently at war with the Goa'uld on other planets. His superior officer asks him to undergo a high tech version of hypnosis with a Tok'ra thought amplifier so they can learn about any race that might have the technology to defeat the Goa'uld and freeze-dry him for later use. After a round of fun clips from past episodes, the big reveal comes. Jack is not alone...Carter and Daniel are there as well...and equally being lied to. Their interrogations focus on rival Goa'ulds, human military tactics and other pieces of intel a Goa;uld might want.
Meanwhile, at the real SGC, Teal'c regains consciousness and reveals that his team was ambushed on a routine scouting mission by a weird mix of Jaffa from different deposed Goa'ulds. He wants to return to the planet to search for information, but it is pointless. We have no idea where SG1 has been moved. Hammond refuses his request to lead a search team and in response, Teal'c quits the SGC and returns to Chu'lak.
Meanwhile, O'Neill escapes his captors after hearing them speaking Goa'uld and scouts his prison. He realizes that it's an elaborate mock-up of the SGC within a Goa'uld pyramid. While looking around, his mind-reader gizmo starts acting up and sending flashes of memory and pain through him. Eventually, he stumbles on Carter's holding cell and frees her. Once un-doped, Carter senses all the Goa'uldy goodness around her and they get a much better idea of what's going on. Only one Goa'uld has seen enough of the base to create such an accurate forgery of the SGC...Hathor. As they are realizing this fact, she arrives and starts preening and gloating, and presents a mature Goa'uld which she wants to force on one of the members of SG1 to gather information so that she might gain power and influence among the Goa'uld hierarchy.
Writing: 1.0
OK...there is one really nice exchange between Hammond and Teal'c...but otherwise, apart from coming up with the idea of a Goa'uld inventing a fake SGC to trick us into giving her intelligence, no creativity was required here. Which really annoys me. A cliffhanger finale should be a big send-off into the next season, but this one is just there. *sigh* And Hathor was an annoying bad guy in the first place....I saw her and said "Her again? c'mon now..."
Acting: 6.0
Meh. Chris Judge and Don S. Davis had some nice moments...the rest is fodder. Nothing creative to say here. The next episode was way more interesting and fun.
Message: 5.0
There is no message in a clip show.
No Highlights Today - Clip Shows Don't Earn that Privilege
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