Overall Rating: 5.0
A basically boring episode whose initial concept will be done at least ten times in Gate canon before we're through...with one hilarious line that still cracks me up to this day.
Plot Synopsis:
Aliens with a piece of technology manage to hijack the SGC posing as key personnel. When SG-1 returns from a routine mission, they are ordered to the infirmary to get shots supposedly to deal with the fallout of a chemical spill on level 25, but the shots are laced with a sleeping drug. Carter and Teal'c awake to find O'Neill and Jackson gone. The aliens say that Teal'c's symbiote screws up their mimic technology and they can't put him in their web, and they want to study the Goa'uld markers in Sam's blood to find a way around this problem. Sam (with Teal'c's help) manages to escape the SGC and reluctantly calls Colonel Maybourne of the NID to try to get help containing this foothold situation. Maybourne, however, chooses to believe "Hammond's" story about the chemical spill making Carter hallucinate. Meanwhile Teal'c stays behind to cause trouble at the SGC...he frees his comrades in the web of goo and they eventually retake the SGC while Carter - who has been dragged by Maybourne in a flight with "Daniel" and "Jack" - exposes the other two aliens (much to Maybourne's shock).
Writing: 2.0
I can barely keep my eyes open just thinking about this episode. Verrrrry slow paced action, dialogue lacking any sense of a pulse (with the exception of the one line that will get quoted as today's highlight), and a plot concept that would be interesting only if we could see the real threat posed by the aliens. Their goal in taking over the SGC was NEVER MADE CLEAR!...if we could see the deep threat they posed from minute one of the script, then the jeopardy would be much more compelling than just "oh noes! IMPOSTERS!!!" (you know it's a bad episode when I start mocking it in LOLCATZ)
Acting: 7.0
Nothing deep to say about the acting. Everyone did their jobs and no one showed up to the set drunk off their ass...which is quite an accomplishment since it might take inebriation to make one's acting job interesting while filming a show like this.
Message: 6.0
I guess I'm getting a little bored with the whole "never trust civilian oversight of a top-secret project" angle. While I agree, in principle, that the way to avoid problems like the NID's evil finagling of the Stargate program would be public transparency OR letting the military run their operation...that trying to have your cake (secrecy) and eat it to (still have civilian oversight) is a really bad idea because civilians don't know how to run a military operation and are more prone to corrupting it to serve political or financial motives...I've certainly had enough of that already and it's only season 3...or 10 full seasons all of which feature several episodes dealing with this problem. *sigh*
Highlight:
CARTER: Damnit, Maybourne! You are an idiot eight days a week...why couldn't you have taken ONE day off?! (This is the one-liner of the year...pity it happened in a crappy episode)
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