Seth

DVD, Stargate SG-1 S3 (Seth)

Another System Lord pops up and this time he's on Earth as a stowaway. Somehow things never quite live up to that premise and it becomes a slow build up to an infiltration of Seth's house. Why he didn't have any CCTV or other technology to alert him to intruders I don't know, but in the end it's too easy for them to get in. The drain was a good set as they must have had to dig out quite a bit to get that, but the pristine 'mine-workings' studio set underneath didn't match up. A shame that Seth gets killed and there are several things that you think might lead to something, but only one does: Jacob reconciles with his estranged son. Unfortunately the plot is rather clunky using the local man whose son is trapped in the cult to activate Jacob's sense, but it doesn't feel very natural and there's no sense of progression.

Teal'c is rather muted (apart from when he tells his Goa'uld joke, funny for all the wrong reasons), and it's more white-robed action like the previous episode. I appreciate episodes occasionally being set on Earth to mix things up, and it was fun spotting 'Smallville's Sheriff Ethan (Mitchell Kosterman) as the head of the civilian authority, (though he didn't get to be Sheriff this time!), but there's a sense that the dialogue was getting a bit bogged down in continuity, something I usually enjoy, but not when it's just spoken instead of seen, and again, though I wanted to like it, it became too unsatisfying to be counted among the good episodes, despite little moments here and there. It ends very pleasantly, but definitely didn't fulfil the potential of it's idea.

**