Moebius

DVD, Stargate SG-1 S8 (Moebius)

If the previous episode was a celebration of the history of the series, without much of the main cast involved, then this is the opposite, a celebration with them. It's definitely an odd and quirky episode to lead out a season on, but then the last several episodes have been particularly 'Stargate'-ey, if that can be said. It begins with a call for Daniel that his old mentor Catherine Langford has just died, he talks at the funeral, then is given a large collection of her artefacts and books, including evidence of a ZPM, or Zero Point Module. This is where it gets especially 'Stargate'-ey as I couldn't remember what that was, but it sounds like some kind of highly efficient and powerful… power source. This then instigates a trip 5,000 years into the past to drop in on Ra and his dominion on Earth, because that's where the ZPM is, and though Carter isn't too happy about it, it's considered worth the risk of altering time to go back and retrieve it! If that isn't celebrating the series and its history, I don't know what is, especially as we get to see the team of SG-1 off on a mission again, as we thought we never would, since Jack is the only one who can fly the time ship thanks to his Ancients' gene.

So far, so very well, and it's good fun to have the team bouncing off each other - only Teal'c is shortchanged by the episode, but I expect he'll have a greater role in the second part. I believe this is the first time we see Ra in the series since he was the villain of the film upon which the series was based, so it's great to see him, as well as the snake head guards. It does feel a little off, probably something to do with the budget being severely stretched at this point in the season (no doubt why 'Citizen Joe' and its budget friendly story got made), and of course it can't compete with a film's production values, even one made a decade previous. The temple looks a little too clean and tidy, there aren't that many extras inside, and the lighting doesn't have much of an atmosphere, nor does the CG blending of the artificial background with the foreground look quite right in the external scenes. None of this matters because it's just such fun having the team on a mission together, and the fact that they're doing a rare time travel episode. It's strange that Carter is the de facto 'owner' of the time ship, and decides whether it can or can't be used, because I imagine SGC would be tasked with learning the secrets of such a device in short order by the authorities, but perhaps they have them over a barrel since O'Neill appears to be the only one able to operate it.

There are some good effects with the snake guard helmet and the cloaked ship made visible by a sandstorm depositing a covering of sand at one end, but things get really interesting when the team decide to leave the ZPM in a tomb they know will be excavated, along with a video message of themselves, and then we hop to the future. At first I thought this was the future just before the series began, with Daniel teaching and Carter not in the military, and Jack… conducting fishing tours in his boat (Teal'c not there at all), but it seems to be more like the future that this episode began in, just an alternate version where things played out differently. I'm guessing on that, since (apart from it being obvious it is an alternate reality), Jack still has grey hair, and despite Daniel having the haircut from the early years, Carter isn't even in the airforce, being a doctor of astrophysics (there's a great introduction of her practicing a speech which is very close to the one she gave in the pilot episode to show how tough she is, then mentally screwing it up as being absurd, a great little joke at the series' early writing!). In this reality we hear Kinsey is President (as opposed to 'Henry Hayes,' the President's name I don't remember being told to us before), Hammond (yay!), is still in charge of the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, Davis and Samuels are still in evidence, and the 'gate was never found because Ra took it with him. I think.

Carter is much more introverted and techy, lacking confidence, with quirks about her that shows what a great actor Amanda Tapping is. It's also wonderful to see her and this oddball Daniel interact, a toss up as to which is the more eccentric. It's also, of course, grand to have Hammond back. It's a shame we didn't get to see Catherine again, as I thought they were maybe setting up for an episode with flashbacks to her or something involving her, but it proved not to be. I wonder if the actress had died in real life which may have prompted the episode? Either way, the pair are shut out of the mission once they've helped locate the second 'gate in Antarctica (we get to see the Stargate lowered into place at SGC), and the episode ends on a slightly underwhelming cliffhanger in that sense. It might have been better if it had been one feature-length episode - perhaps on original transmission it was? Dr. McKay of 'Stargate Atlantis' and formerly of this parish, makes a cameo, going after Carter in any timeline, it seems. And that's about it. It's a typically offbeat episode with some funny moments (such as Carter pulling her lifejacket off after stepping out of O'Neill's fishing boat, fluffing her hair up in a most undignified manner), and I have no idea where it's going to go. I'd love to know if they were aware of whether the series was coming back for another season (or two), or whether these episodes were done with an end in mind? After all, they do say that things are pretty peachy, what with Anubis gone, the Replicators gone, and the occasional System Lord left without much of an army to operate with. So what could go wrong?

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