2001

DVD, Stargate SG-1 S5 (2001)

It started slowly, I must admit. I felt recognition for the ambassador. Gradually as time went on I began to feel a strong sense of déjà vu. Had I seen this episode more recently than nine years ago when I saw the other episodes from this season? Then I had the impression it was going to be a clips show, for some reason, perhaps because of Kinsey's name in the credits. Then the title began to make me think of '2010' more and more. Okay, it starts with a reminder of a time when O'Neill apparently sent a note back from the future. '2010' was the only future episode I recalled. Then the idea of the sterility, and thinking I'd seen the grey-clothed Mollem, who they deal with on the harvester before, and it took me quite a while to put the pieces together and realise that this was a direct sequel/prequel to '2010'. In that one the same Ambassador Faxon had fallen in love with Sam and married her, I think. All this technology was too good to be true and turned out to be a ploy by the aliens to wipe out Earth's population.

Okay, I'm slow, but really I'm just not that well versed in 'Stargate' mythology. So is this episode the same story as '2010', just showing it from the beginning instead of the end? It gets full marks for cleverness, and was an ingenious way of getting to the same storyline. There's even all the stuff about Kinsey feeling O'Neill's trying to stop him becoming President, something we saw him achieve in the future of '2010'. My admiration for what was a fairly dull episode went up a few notches when all these things came together, but it was severely lacking in the tension that made the preceding episode have a little more danger to it. It's unfortunate that two so similar stories were produced side by side. Both feature the team dealing with an alien race, trying to get technology only to find it's a trap. Both feature Carter and a male friend of hers who stays behind when she has to escape. Both were close shaves, only this one had a lot less investigation and a lot more scenes of people sitting around talking.

The end sequence where Carter has to drop into an open, horizontal Stargate, was what the episode should have tried to do more of. It isn't that a great story needs a lot of action, it's just that the talk that was going on didn't give the feeling of a rising threat. About the most terrifying thing is Kinsey hijacking O'Neill's planned visit to the President. Big whooh. It was also patently clear early on that this was not the episode to wrap up the team's mission, their standing orders to seek out new weapons and technologies, to boldly go where no team had been before. When the technology is too good to be true it immediately brings to mind the previous episode, another unfortunate parallel, and let's face it, you were supposed to recognise the Aschen as being evil. They only agree to the terms if all the governments of Earth agree. This means that the incredible realities of the Stargate would have to be broadcast to the world, then there would be uproar! How dare the USA (and Russia) keep this tech secret? How dare they treat the rest of us in this way? It would take months of negotiation just to talk other countries down!

On that note, how come we never hear about the UK end of things. Surely, if the Russians, America's greatest 'enemy' historically, know about the 'gate, they must have told good old England about it, their closest ally? Yet we never hear of that, and this episode is the one that begins to make you question how they can keep all this to themselves. It was absolutely right of the Aschen to have terms that all Earth's nations had to be included (though it was probably just a delaying tactic if all they were waiting for was to send a biological weapon through the 'gate).

The episode falls down on a few points like that. We, the audience know that something is going to prevent this perfect deal from happening because it would practically be the end of the series (and we should have remembered aspects of '2010'). Peace in our time - it would change the dynamics too much. But there were also smaller niggles such as why farmer Keel had never noticed the 'iron root' as he called it, sticking up in his field before today. According to Daniel the city had been below for a couple of centuries so why did it take so long for the farmer to notice? Instead he mentions it off-handedly, and Jackson just suggests he and Teal'c have a look at it, off the top of his head. Did he think it was just a large root to be blasted out? And it just so happens to be one of the struts that was at the centre of the Volian city right next to a collection of newspapers that have somehow not rotted away underground after all those years. Amazing. Not to mention that the Volians must be incredibly primitive not to have passed down a culture over the years that would have held stories of the atrocity brought about by the Aschen.

The real problem of the episode isn't the logic, it's the execution. It's too slow and uneventful. There are some nice shots of the harvester hovering over the land, but the story moves as fast as that vehicle: slowly. There were good shots looking down from the balcony aboard the harvester, but there was very little meat to get your teeth into. It's clever to tie into another episode in the way they did, but not when it consists of Teal'c and Daniel rummaging through old newspapers in a cave, Carter following an ambassador around, and Jack having a riveting conversation with Kinsey in the back of a limo. Even if the Senator did repeat the joke of 'Starsky & Hutch' that was used when last he was in it. And what about poor Ambassador Faxon, left alone on an enemy world? They all just stand around relieved at the end, or smirking at Kinsey's outrage, no one spares a word for the real hero of the story, not even Carter!

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