Fair Game

DVD, Stargate SG-1 S3 (Fair Game)

An episode of talk. The Asgaard talk, the System Lords talk, the Stargate team talk... for the continuity-lovers there are many titbits, building up a picture of the enemies and allies to an extent rarely seen before. In truth it's all a little too much amid too little happening. There are so many mentions of Sokar, Apophis, and new representatives of the Goa'uld, that you'd need to write it all down to keep up. I usually enjoy all that, but this episode doesn't have much else beyond dispassionate detail, presenting a short whodunnit over an attack on Chronos and the revealing that the traitor was Nierte.

For me, the series begins to look as I remember it from the early- to mid-seasons that I first saw consistently, with characters such as Yew coming in, intervention from the Asgaard, and of course Captain Carter becoming the Major Carter I knew her as. I always liked Yew for being a more reasonable variant of his people (and vaguely remember him getting killed somewhere down the line by his own henchman), but I'm not sure if all that is discussed is true to how the System Lords were portrayed previously. I got the impression they were all fighting over territories, at war with each other as equals, but now we learn they have treaties and agreed policies and rules they stick to. Why do they work together, and why allow the Asgaard to tell them what to do?

One piece of information that succeeded in achieving an epic scope was Thor's mention that his people are at war with an enemy greater than the Goa'uld in their own galaxy, and so their interest is divided. It broadens the canvas and provides acceptable excuses why the Asgaard don't just intervene in all the problems of this galaxy, and has the added advantage of keeping a certain level of threat to Earth, which could be lost if things became too simple with humans under protection all the time and the Goa'uld lost their bite. Hopefully the set up of all these ideas and characters will pay off through the season.

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