Memento

DVD, Stargate SG-1 S6 (Memento)

So SG-1 go to another planet and pretty much mess it up with very little thought or effort, and not even with the good intentions of first contact, but just because they're on a so-called shakedown cruise and something goes wrong so they need that planet's Stargate! That really does sum up the episode, and it makes them look quite bad on the whole as if they can just waltz over to any planet and make huge changes or force the people to face things they didn't want to. But I forget that these are contemporary 21st Century people, not the heroes of 'Star Trek' who had the Prime Directive and many years of experience with both space flight and first contact to guide them. Trouble is, they seem to be invoking Trek with the use of the Prometheus, making this feel less like a 'Stargate' story - you can tell Colonel O'Neill feels that way, too, as he's more of a loose cog in a big wheel than the leader of a small, but important team, thanks to tagging along on the Prometheus' test run in case of problems. And a good job SG-1 were there, since I get the feeling Captain Colonel Ronson (or should that be Colonel Captain?), would be quicker to blow up the ship and land on the closest planet if it meant survival for his crew!

Ronson is very much an O'Neill kind of figure, he, alien military leader Kalfas and O'Neill all have lack of trust and a simple way of seeing the world, in common. What I found interesting about the situation was the complicated chain of command: O'Neill and Ronson are both the rank of Colonel, but Jack's just there for support with his team's level of experience in space, while Ronson's the Captain and has the command of the ship. So it's a tricky diplomatic situation, and becomes even more difficult when they land on Tagrea and have to deal with two very different powers of military and civilian government. It made a change for Robert Foxworth as Ashwan to be playing an honourable, reliable character rather than the duplicitous Admiral Leyton of the 'DS9' two-parter where he was a bad apple, and the role I most associate him with - he also played a Vulcan on 'Enterprise,' but I can't remember how trustworthy he was on that! I kept expecting Ashwan to reveal a deep, dark secret about the past, and that SG-1 were making a big mistake in providing an unknown race with information and use of the Stargate, mainly because of prejudice about Leyton!

Even if Foxworth hadn't played the planet's leader I would have been thinking it best that the 'gate was not directly spoken about. It would have been wrong to try and use it without the Tagreans knowing, and they got themselves into a corner by needing to use the nearest one available in order to return to Earth for supplies with which to repair the ship - but really, they didn't have the necessary equipment or spares to fix the engines, the most important component of the ship? They even eject it and it seems crazy that the equivalent of a warp core is being discarded so early in the ship's life. Once again, I have to remind myself this isn't 'Voyager' (even though they do have hard-landing capability!), and humans having hyperdrive spaceflight ability is a momentous thing in itself. But you'd think, in that case, that they wouldn't have taken on such a relatively long journey without backup from the Asgard or Tok'ra - human pride, I suppose, wanting to go it alone. I must complement them on the smoothness of their ship - even when under attack the quiet levelness of the ship's decks seems very tranquil compared to other ships in sci-fi, though I was missing the low hum the Trek's all had, and these things don't help to sell the 'reality' of a starship.

Even with such a precarious situation to deal with, they seemed far too quick and eager to hightail it to the nearest planet which should have a 'gate, rather than looking at any alternatives - maybe there was another planet that had been visited, a little further away? Maybe they could have contacted the Asgard? It falls to the reliable Jonas to come up with the idea of hopping to Tagrea, as they learn it's called (and I'll miss him when he's gone as he's integrated brilliantly now - would have been fantastic to see him, the whole team and Jackson working together), and it gets them out of a tight spot, but taking into account the trouble they often have with advanced races (or any races, come to that, but if it had been a primitive planet they could have found the Stargate without interference), being so quick to land and spill the beans about the existence of the 'gate was too much leaping before they looked. I know they didn't have a lot of choice thanks to almost starting a war after their engine explodes over the planet, forcing O'Neill to make contact to prevent missiles blasting them out of the sky, so it was a chain of events, but even when they're in with the Tagreans, they're not careful about what they say: for example, Tarek, the professor of mathematics at the library Jonas and Teal'c visit, reveals that he's a member of a secret group that still believe in the past that has been obliterated, when Horus ruled, and Jonas just says that he was Heruer and their people were slaves, thus overturning a religion without thought.

I'm all for the false gods of the Goa'uld being revealed as such to their former servants, but even though that's so, you don't just reveal such major facts to a race without preparation! As it happened Tarek didn't seem that bothered by the revelation, but there were several things like that which people didn't respond in the most realistic way: alien contact for the first time was a big enough bombshell to drop on a people for one day, then to say the Stargate is real (they'd known it only as a myth of 'the ring of the gods'), to find out why the history pre-three hundred years ago had been wiped out, and the discovery of the 'gate (which, by the way was a momentous event, and was filmed in a way that showed that, even if it did start slightly ridiculously with three people using spades!) - even Kalfas' arrest for taking matters into his own hands was far too easy, and came simply because the running time of the episode was almost out, rather than a natural and believable conclusion. The military weren't going to turn on their top brass just because of a speech by the planetary leader! So it ends all happily and safely when really SG-1 would have been shown to totally mess up the planet, which would have been more interesting and might have left the door open for a sequel.

Saying all that, I curiously enjoyed this episode, possibly because of its Trek-like style, something I didn't enjoy on original transmission, but that I appreciate now that there isn't any new Trek on TV. The joke in the teaser was good, about the Captain saying 'prepare to fire' in the usual space sci-fi way, and O'Neill pointing out that's rather melodramatic, but the teaser itself was a bit inconsequential - I suppose the amazement of humans out in space was supposed to be enough, but we see that all the time in other sci-fi, so it wasn't. I couldn't see a spinoff for Captain Ronson, as proud of his ship and crew and as dedicated to them as he kept saying he was, we never got a chance to see him do anything, really - it was too small a story to have two main leaders, and this is O'Neill's world, even if he's straying into unfamiliar territory when he's not welcome on the bridge, which was strange, but believable. As Ronson said, if this ship's crew is to function and work together, they need to do it without the assistance of another group. Interesting to learn that SG-1 had been to one hundred and thirty-three planets, but what was incongruent was that despite all this high tech alien stuff, ring transporters, hyperdrive, etc, they still use those little radios for communication! You'd think they'd have reverse-engineered some superior technology to take its place by now.

Finally, I felt that there was a trick missed by the fact that history would have been like an illegal drug to certain members of the Tagreans. As history before 'year zero' had been completely erased, anything that could exist from that time would be vital and revered to those that disagreed with the system, such as Tarek, yet he happily and unthinkingly hands over this ancient manuscript which says where the Stargate is buried, without question and in full view of the guards following Teal'c and Jonas around. Ignoring the episode's faults and oddities, and missed opportunities, as well as stereotypical leaders, I still enjoyed it, perhaps because it's fun to see SG-1 out in the galaxy, jumping down to planets, sharing walks and talks down corridors (the ship surely isn't big enough for much of that!), diplomatic dinners ('Star Trek VI' came to mind), and playing at 'Star Trek' even if it's not as compelling as that franchise.

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