Prometheus

DVD, Stargate SG-1 S6 (Prometheus)

I didn't particularly like this episode on first transmission, but maybe I was just in the mood for a starship, or because there hasn't been any new 'Star Trek' series for far too long, but I was ready for artificial gravity, inertial dampeners and all that good spaceship stuff that's usually not a part of 'Stargate.' I would have been just as happy with an episode that was all about showing journalists around the Prometheus, otherwise known as the X-303, explaining what it could do, maybe taking it for a spin - they certainly took it for a spin, but not in the way you'd expect from the opening which appears to be about a hard-hitting journalist about to uncover the US government's latest technological marvel. Miss Donovan becomes quickly superfluous to the plot, sadly, just a means for the terrorists to get aboard and make their demands (a bit like the news crew in the film 'Air Force One'), and it was at this point I was thinking it was just going to be boring greedy terrorists and somehow O'Neill would sneak aboard and stop them. Then it took a turn towards the rogue NID group led by Colonel Frank Simmons (John de Lancie making another appearance, probably his last, since he gets sucked out into space after becoming a Goa'uld). This whole thing with Adrian Conrad, the dying man that wanted a symbiote to heal his illnesses didn't really turn into anything, and one reason I didn't associate this episode with it being Simmons' end was because I had the impression there was more lead up to it.

Q finally got to be Captain of his own starship, I'll bet that pleased de Lancie! It's another step to the series becoming more and more like 'Star Trek' in that now they actually have a starship too, and not just a starship, but one that has those Trek corridors, a bridge with a Captain's chair, even Jefferies tubes for Carter to crawl through! I don't know whether it was a concerted effort to interest those who watched Trek (or had abandoned watching it through dissatisfaction with 'Enterprise'), or whether they were running out of ideas for where the series could progress, but I thought the whole point of the Stargate was that it meant they didn't need starships! That minor quibble aside, it was good to see a ship like that on this series, rising up out of the ground - I'm not sure building a spacecraft underground was the best place for it, but they had to keep it secret, I suppose, and a big tent or warehouse facility would cause questions. Mind you, I wonder if they'd told the Russians, because they must have detected this large ship flying into Earth's orbit!

The story does become a bit predictable with Carter separated from the others and trapped, conveniently, in a room full of tools which would facilitate her escape. Neither did I feel any real tension from the knowledge that she would be killed when the X-303 went into space unless she could get to a sealed part of the ship, but I was just coasting along with the story by that time so I didn't mind. I liked that even though Donovan and her Producer find out about this amazing technology the team still don't open up about aliens and the Stargate or tell them anything more than they need to know. It's a big enough bombshell for an uninitiated human to learn that there really are aliens out there without mentioning that Jonas and Teal'c are real, flesh and blood aliens right in front of you. This also meant we could get a bit of humour when Donovan hears of it! I must say she held together pretty well, going from being threatened, basically, by Major Davis (whose first name is Paul, I'm not sure that was known before), to discovering a starship built from alien tech that had crashed in the 70s, to being held hostage, meeting aliens, and finally being requested by another alien to come and help save their homeworld when Thor pops up at the end to turn this into a two-parter - yet she barely bats and eyelid!

I had suspicions this might become a two-parter just from the extensive sets they'd built for the Prometheus. It's not quite a Federation starship in size and scale, but for a weekly TV series it must have been reasonably ambitious, so it was inevitable that the costs would be defrayed by spreading across two episodes. Thor brings news that the Replicators have overrun the Asgard homeworld, though why they would need a human ship and the SG-1 team, being the most powerful aliens in the galaxy, I'm not so sure, but we'll find out in part two. It will be interesting to see how Donovan and the other 'normal' humans will adapt to the new circumstances and whether they'll feature much in this new mission, or whether the X-303 will zip back to Earth to drop them off before helping Thor.

It was a small role for Simmons this time, but it was fun to hear de Lancie with a Goa'uld voice, still in that trademark ironic delivery. I also thought the slightly slow-motion fight between Teal'c, O'Neill and Simmons wasn't bad, though this was one of those things that stuck in my head, that Simmons was sucked out into space. I suppose it's still possible for him to survive somehow, and as he's not the first or last person to return, the possibilities are always open. Not so much for Mayborn who only got to appear as part of the reminder of what happened previously, but I think they were moving away from some of the older arcs by this season. Interesting to hear that official policy on the secret tech the SGC and other organisations have, or are developing, is to deny everything, according to General Hammond. There were a couple of thoughts that popped into my mind as I watched the episode: it seemed like Carter must have left her car with the window wound down because when she gets in there to escape the journalist, she speaks out of the open window, whereas she'd have been more likely to leave it closed if it already had been. And the team weren't intimidating at all to Donovan and her Producer when they first approach the shack which contained the lift down to the X-303, were they? Standing all in a line facing them…

I remember not much liking the Prometheus, feeling it was a ripoff of Trek and trying desperately to get some of the elements that had been missing from 'Stargate,' but at this early stage it was a good setting for an adventure, and reminded me in a very small way of 'BUGS' episodes where people were hostages in some high-tech location, or even 'Smallville' where similar things have happened (not on a starship, I hasten to add!), though this didn't have as much excitement to it, it was comfortable to watch. And checking back to the credits I see that Michael Shanks did the voice of Thor, which I'd completely forgotten, and shows he was still involved, though it's a bit bizarre for him to come back to do something small like that!

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