Overall Rating: 5.3
There's good news and bad news here, as I see it. This episode gets to the right answer in what should not even be considered an ethical dilemma, and demonstrates (in a thoroughly enjoyable way) that we humans aren't so inferior as the Tollans believe (street wise, they should be calling us)...but the path to get there is highly annoying (for the same reason that I hated "The Nox" with the fire of a thousand suns).
Plot Synopsis:
O'Neill is invited to Tollana (the new home world of the Tollans...the race of people we met back in first season who felt it was important to tell us just how primitive and inferior we were) at the request of an old friend. He arrives with SG-1 to find Skaara (!) alert and speaking as himself, rather than as Klorel. The Tollans are about to hold something called "triad" (a three-party criminal justice system in which positive advocates argue like lawyers for their clients and a third neutral party casts the deciding vote) and Skaara has asked O'Neill (and Daniel Jackson) to act as his representative. Klorel, able to talk freely as well with the help of a Tollan technical wonder called a symbiote silencer, is represented by the System Lord Zipacna. The neutral party is an old acquaintance of SG-1 - Lya of the Nox. O'Neill incorrectly assumes that Lya will surely vote his way, but Lya insists that her decision is not made since she believes both Skaara and Klorel have the right to exist.
While the triad commences, Jack, ever mistrusting of snake heads, orders Carter and Teal'c to follow Zipacna's Jaffa and see what they're up to (that is...while Carter isn't too preoccupied with Narim). It's a good thing too, because they spot Zipacna's men investigating and marking the Tollans' Ion Cannons...their only defense against the Goa'uld. However, when they report their findings to Travell (the head of the Tollan Curia and also the officiator at triad), she assumes it's an attempt to bias the triad and orders the gang not to speak of such matters again and to leave Zipacna's men alone. Jack (dis)respectfully flips her the bird and Carter and Teal'c resume their investigation with the help of Lya (who they enlist with promises that they aren't trying to affect her decision at the trial) while court is not in session.
Triad concludes with a victory for Skaara (but not for truth and morality) as Lya decides that the only fair decision is to give Skaara and Klorel an equal chance to live by splitting them up and sending Klorel back to the Goa'uld to search for another host. At the sight of this, SG-1's fears about Zipacna are proven accurate as he orders a nearby mother ship to open fire on and destroy all of the Tollan weapons. Thankfully, although Lya isn't allowed to fight evil, she is allowed to hide the tools to fight evil from the Goa'uld. SG-1 convinced her to hide one cannon to use against Zipacna's mother ship and that cannon reappears in time to save the planet. Finally, the Tollans are forced to admit we can be good allies, though they still refuse to give us any technology to protect our planet from the Goa'uld.
Writing: 7.0
The script, once you get past the basic foundational problem it has ethically, actually zips along quite nicely and it is fun to watch our heroes demonstrate to the high and mighty Tollans that there's more to evolution than technology. Yes...the gadgets are keeping you safe...but without a little common sense, you can still fall just as easily as Cyreeta did. We humans are plucky little mo-fos because we have to be. Don't forget that!
The arguments at triad are reasonably engaging as well (most of the time, when sci-fi diverges into courtroom drama, things move slowly and get boring, but this one is pretty solid), even though the vast majority of them are way...way off base. Of course, the Goa'uld argument SHOULD be off base and the writer actually did a credible job of giving us insight into the way the Goa'uld view themselves and us. But Lya's goofy inhumanity is hard to ignore.
Oh and...the Stargate writers need to stop trying to write romance. They suck at it...only Rodney McKay has ever had a romance I believed...(OK...Jack and Sam have an UNREQUITED romance I believe...but the stuff that actually plays out on screen? YUUUCCCK!). Narim and Sam have about as much chemistry as kissing cousins. Seriously...ew.
Acting: 7.0
Marie Stillan is horribly wooden as Travell...I know she's going for supremely arrogant and tranquil, but what I'm getting is monotone and boring...and Garwin Sanford still sucks as Narim...but beyond that, I have no major beefs with the acting and RDA and Daniel Jackson bring the acting score back over par with some of their usually gifted work.
Message: 2.0
We raise a hearty HOORAY for Skaara, and that is supposed to be enough for us to feel like justice has prevailed. Here's a news flash...Skaara is no more important than Klorel's next host. The end result of triad was a guilty verdict on charges of murder (even Lya is forced to admit that the Goa'uld essentially kill their host, since biological survival is not life without free will) and the release of the murderer back into society. In America, we don't call that justice. And here at Right Fans, we don't call moral relativism - which is the ground state for all the Nox (Lya demonstrates this quite nicely with all of her speechifying about Klorel's right to exist, even at the expense of another life (and the thousands or millions of other lives he would doubtlessly kill or enslave if he had the chance)) - a good way to live either. Message to the Nox (and to Katharyn Powers, who wrote this script)...Adolph Hitler does not have as much right to live his life as he sees fit as I do to mine. Each and every Goa'uld is Adolph Hitler times a MILLION...and I will never accept that killing a mass murderer to stop the bloodshed and the stripping of civil liberties is wrong.
Nor is ANYone buying the dubious distinction between hiding a weapon of mass destruction for later use and actually firing said weapon. The writer knows the basic principles by which the Nox live are hopelessly immoral and stupid so she has Lya behave out of character to save the day and then hand-waves it away with a smart-ass quip about the fine line Lya admits she walked (there is not a fine line here...there's a big huge gaping chasm between non-violence and hording weapons for an ally!).
Short form of the above - this episode would score a zero on the message front if not for the fact that the correct answer to a question that should never have been asked was (at the very least) reached. It's a false dichotomy to present us with only two "moral" options...split the host and let both live...or give Klorel possession of Skaara's body. There's a third option that is actually correct. Split the two and then stomp on Klorel until his filthy, evil little snaky body is ground into an ugly slime...then set fire to the slime and dance a jig by the righteous glow. Or...if you think capital punishment is wrong...could we at least have imprisoned Klorel? Wouldn't that make a teeny tiny bit more sense?
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