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DVD, Stargate SG-1 S4 (Upgrades)

Wish-fulfilment technology gives the SG-1 team wings (not literally), but proves too good to be true, as usual. Is Vanessa Angel famous? I'd never heard of her but she's credited as a special guest star, playing Enys of the Tok'ra. We don't get to see Carter senior, which is a shame, but there's plenty to entertain as it is, when Jack, Sam and Daniel all find they have superpowers thanks to the Tok'ra's salvaged technology from an extinct people. Of course, the reason they became extinct turns out to be the fact the armbands wear off after a time, and the team picked just that moment to go off and take out a new ship that Apophis is having built. Fortunately Teal'c, who couldn't use the devices due to his symbiont (the reason the Tok'ra wanted humans, as they don't have symbionts), comes to the rescue.

There are elements of 'The Matrix' (when O'Neill takes on Teal'c at boxing and moves at superspeed), 'The Champions' (an old TV series from the 60s in which two men and a woman discover they've developed super-abilities and go off to complete missions using them), and even 'Spiderman' ('with great power comes great responsibility') and 'Smallville' (the effects of them dashing around are similar, as is the superior strength, sadly no x-ray vision though!), even 'Star Trek' (they seem to use Vulcan nerve pinches on members of the base to knock them out), so there's a great mix of opportunities to demonstrate their power, from reading an entire book in a few seconds, to writing one in a few minutes or typing so fast a computer can't keep up. Unfortunately they're kept walled up at the base until they break out and get into a barfight, sadly not seen - we just get the comedy sound effects and a view of the bar's entrance.

As ever there's plenty of humour with the four main characters trading plenty of banter in their restrained, ironic way, and though the story of people finding new technology, testing it out and getting hooked until it malfunctions is another tried and tested sci-fi plot, fun is the over-riding feature here, Jack especially getting to enjoy himself. The effects are pretty good, apart from the CGI view of the ship under construction, which doesn't look real enough, General Hammond gets to stick up for his people, and Dr. Fraiser shows she cares (not to mention we get to see Sergeant Siler knocked flying down the stairs by accident when O'Neill pats him on the shoulder, which, though chilling, was also funny).

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