The Fifth Man

DVD, Stargate SG-1 S5 (The Fifth Man)

An action-packed opening leads to a mystery about a fifth member of the SG-1 team, called Lieutenant Tyler, and Carter, Daniel and Teal'c are locked up for being delusional as no one else has heard about this extra team member. There's also the discovery by Sam that someone's been hacking into the base computer system and reading reports and such, and what do you know, Colonel Frank Simmons pops up again to take them all to task. The recipe for a strong episode, but the promising opening soon falls into a lacklustre resolution. I guessed right away that the 'hacker' would be Simmons since he's already been shown as less than sympathetic to the SGC, but I was surprised this was confirmed before the end of the episode as I imagined it would be a running plot. Now it seems the running plot is that Simmons is working for someone that wants a regime change for political reasons and the only person that would fit that bill would be Senator Kinsey. The veiled threat that Hammond should know when to leave gracefully would eventually be borne out, I know, but I hope it isn't this season he leaves, and I don't think it is.

The mystery soon dissipates when quite early the team question their own judgement, and then Dr. Fraiser finds evidence of a pollen that passes on false memories and also begins to remember Tyler. Then we get the visual clue that Tyler got his name from a wrapper of food or something and we can easily guess he's an alien. But there's very little going on in the scenes between him and Jack, trapped on the planet, except that humans are good guys that will go back for their people and not leave them behind. Once trust has been earned he reveals himself as a Gollum-like creature, which was some nice CGI, and I reiterate this season looks beautifully and crisply shot, but it was all a bit same old, same old. It wasn't the best idea to follow a story about an alien pretending to be human to find out more about them, with one about an alien pretending to be human so he could find out if he could trust them! With Simmons also playing a role in both episodes there's a distinct sense of déjà vu, regardless that much of this occurs on a planet.

The other side of the story is Simmons' questioning of the SG-1 team and citing examples of Teal'c changing sides, Daniel being emotionally compromised (a reference to Sha're wouldn't have gone amiss here), and Carter being a suspicious character. No one was going to buy that these heroes are really compromised and there's no feeling of a real threat from Simmons - he may look and sound a bit like Agent Smith interrogating Neo in 'The Matrix,' but it doesn't go anywhere and it was a missed opportunity to cite continuity in a way that showed the team in a bad light. He did that, but halfheartedly with a few references here and there. Everyone responded predictably (Daniel looked bemused and irritated, especially at the mention of Dr. Sarah Gardner who ended up as a Goa'uld last season, Teal'c says he'd kill Simmons if he were a Goa'uld agent, and Carter looks daggers before turning the tables on him), but Hammond waved him on before long. He may well be a source of worry for the future, but it wasn't too evident in this episode. It also ends with a bit of a firefight with Goa'uld warriors, but again, they act halfheartedly and it's too similar to the previous episode where the alien sacrificed itself to save Carter. In this one the team save it and it ends optimistically that they might have another ally, but there's little concrete story going on. Almost like we've been touched by the pollen and remember an episode that was better, then wake up and realise it wasn't quite there after all.

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