Resurrection

DVD, Stargate SG-1 S7 (Resurrection)

The law of averages says that after a great episode you're going to get a weak one, and while this isn't bad, it is a bit of a nothing. Which is a shame, because it was written by Michael Shanks and directed by his costar, Amanda Tapping, so you can't get any deeper entrenched 'Stargate' blood than that. The title was a misstep for a start, hardly the most sensitive, following directly on from Dr. Fraiser's death (much like 'Star Trek: First Contact,' which was originally to be called the same, and following Kirk's death in 'Star Trek: Generations' it would have begged the question), and while it was very unlikely to be connected, you can't help but make the link. Another thing that hurts it a little is that it doesn't feel very of the series, being one of those stories bound to planet Earth, that will feature a threat to the planet, or some of it, anyway. Usually this means more time at the SGC, and perhaps more General Hammond, but in this case it's completely on location, and not a very attractive one, being a dark, musty industrial complex. There's very little humour, since O'Neill is said to be still in recovery and, like the General, doesn't appear at all. None of this would matter if we had an incisive, exciting story, but the episode fails on this front, too.

It's not uninteresting, as Daniel gets to do what he's good at, and talk to an alien woman who has some sort of problem/ is a captive/ an unknown experiment (made me think of 'Frozen,' where Jonas had a similar role; or even Carter and Cassandra in Season 1). It's just that it felt rather derivative, like we'd seen this a few times before, not just on the series, but on other sci-fi shows as well. Again, repetition isn't necessarily a mark against it, but it's a lumpy episode that can hardly be said to rattle along. There's a bit of mystery with the team called in to the remnants of a rogue NID operation, on the say-so of Agent Barrett (whom I at first confused with Carter's new boyfriend, which made me think they were at first being extremely professional and distant, until I realised!), to see a Nazi horde of Sekhmet, a Goa'uld who served Ra and was exiled for plotting against him, living on earth for much of his dynasty. Among her plunder is an ark, but just when it threatens to get exciting, perhaps setting it up for the girl to be Sekhmet herself, the best they could come up with was a bomb hidden within the ark, which gives us the ticking clock for the episode.

The only clue is Anna, a woman kept in a glass cage by Dr. Keffler, the rogue behind it all. Keffler wasn't bad as a heartless villain (played by Brad Greenquist whom I know best from 'DS9' as one of the mafia-type aliens of 'Who Mourns For Morn?' so I'd never seen him out of prosthetics, which added a note of interest - I recognised that slimy voice, which I couldn't place at first…), who gets his gory comeuppance at the end, constantly smoking, and smiling knowingly. His guard was pretty stupid though, allowing him to get some water and then walking right up to him so he could pull that diversionary stunt. What do they teach them at Agent School? There is a pitiable character in Anna, for Daniel to be at his empathetic best with, but it does rather devolve into his recounting events from the series (such as losing his own memory; the Harseses), which distracts from the possible connection between the two. Not even when we learn she was bred by Keffler with Goa'uld DNA, or in some such experiment, so he could get at the race's genetic memory for the advantage of the human race (or, more likely, his own), with a split personality developing, did things get moderately interesting - it probably wouldn't have been that different if she had turned out to be Sekhmet rather than a snake-less homebred Goa'uld.

She even escapes her prison, using Daniel's meditation lesson to get a candle and burn her disturbing drawings. These people always have nasty dreams that they draw on large sheets of paper - I'm sure they'd do better as tortured artists, and their works would sell for millions. But she doesn't get to have that life, preferring to commit suicide after taking out her tormentor, Keffler, and using his remote control to die in Daniel's arms. Another unfortunate soul he was unable to save. So we end on rather a downer, even if it was a nice, affecting shot as we pull back from the two of them, past the shot-up body of Keffler. But the story doesn't really have any bearing on anything, nor does it teach us anything new about the characters or is full of great dialogue and scenes that impress. Even though it was an interesting pairing to have Dr. Lee and Teal'c be the bomb defusers, it wasn't really explored, and the whole bomb scare was just there to add a little time-related tension. The real drama was, or should have been, in the mind of this young woman, an experiment that had a tragically short life, and that she died for something. But she didn't. And again I say, it's a shame that a Shanks and Tapping created episode should fall flat, but I can't deny it.

**