Revisions

DVD, Stargate SG-1 S7 (Revisions)

It's a kind of basic story that goes back at least to sixties 'Star Trek,' but it's also the traditional style of episode for this series: the team go to an alien world and find everything is fine. That doesn't make for great drama, so something must go wrong, and it's usually to do with the townspeople or the savages or whatever level the race is at technologically. This story also uses the trope of a computer system at the heart of the problem, and also the solution. But far from this being a malevolent, self-aware computer that can be talked into a logic problem that destroys it and frees the populace, it's actually more sinister because it's a faceless, characterless computer programme that's just doing its job. But because it's a computer programme and can't reason like a biological brain, it keeps the protective dome of the inhabitants' home from failing by ordering individuals out to their deaths. Trouble is, like the Borg they're all linked by a mental internet that erases memories and plants new ones so the missing people are never missed, the houses change position and nobody's the wiser. Clinical, logical survival, but at the cost of longterm growth for the community that has gone from a hundred thousand to almost a thousand in four hundred years as the dome shrinks due to the power weakening. It's not a bad story, ever more apposite for today's world with wearable tech and closer and closer brain and computer interaction. We don't know enough about the human brain to be able to control it, but that's what sci-fi is all about: showing the potential, both for good and ill.

The theme is a worthy topic to investigate, and there's a spooky, chocolate box quality to the setting that is just too perfect to be real. Lush gardens, tall trees, old-fashioned lamps and brick architecture - these people live in a kind of idealised world where technology is so integrated it barely shows, yet is at the root of everything. This is the problem and gives us some interesting questions to explore, most notably in Pallan who doesn't really want to remove his neural interface device as he thinks it will kill him instantly - I thought at first this was a continuity error as earlier his wife had happily taken it off to offer to Daniel (who wisely didn't plug in!), but like everything else it was part of the revisions of the title, with memories and behaviour altered to ensure the continuation of the dome. Because there was no 'bad guy' at the bottom of it all, not even a computer to spar with, it feels more abstract than usual. The direction emphasises this with sweeping shots and smooth motion, wide angle lenses as Daniel jogs through the maze-like streets after Evalla, or when Jack and Teal'c flee from the pursuing villagers. But there's never any violence, in keeping with the flowing nature and beauty of the place, and perhaps that's one of the reasons I wasn't as drawn to it as I was on first viewing. Now I tend to appreciate the continuity episodes a little more, so to have a standalone like this which bears no connection to anything felt a little strange. Like going back to Season 1 when they did this sort of thing all the time.

At the same time, like the equivalent episodes of 'TNG' when they would go down to a planet and calmly explore, find a problem, solve the problem and leave, it was like slipping into a warm bath. The eeriness wasn't really played up, Carter was barely out of control of the computer for a few seconds, so there was no desperate struggle against the villagers under the influence and no creeping tension or dawning horror. Maybe that hurt the potential of the story a little. Back when I first watched it I preferred these one-off episodes with the team working together and basically doing a Trek landing party on an alien world that isn't so unrecognisable, but now it feels a little out of place, as if the series had moved on. I still like seeing the four of them doing their thing, with barely a sign of the SGC, but again, though the stakes are high there was never much feeling of risk as they were allowed to contact home any time they wanted and only needed their environmental suits to leave. Pallan wasn't a bad character, giving us a sympathetic person who is coaxed and convinced into a radical action by Sam (she's the Captain Kirk figure who has to persuade to make a change), and it does leave us with a bittersweet ending as, having experienced the joys of working something out with his own mind, he asks Carter to tell him of the wife that was wiped from his memory. This has a much stronger parallel now as many people have smart phones and the capability to instantly look up any piece of information they want or need at any time, rather than trying to remember for themselves or look deeper than what could be false information.

The total sum of the episode doesn't quite do it for me, not having enough fear factor and physical danger for SG-1, though I suppose it wouldn't have looked very good for them to have been beating up or shooting these poor, deluded townsfolk who couldn't do anything else until they were forced to think for themselves. And it does look good. And it does have a happy ending with the team able to find a new place to relocate the survivors - it's just a shame Daniel couldn't have somehow followed Evalla outside the dome when she'd gone through the brick wall, as he might have been quick enough to save her.

**