ST:TNG 1 Symbiosis S1:E22

 Synopsis

The Enterprise is in a star system to observe a particularly active star when they receive a garbled distress signal from a cargo ship in a decaying orbit.  While Picard struggles to communicate with the captain of the vessel, Riker and Lt Yar attempt an emergency beam out of the crew.  They are surprised that instead of beaming to safety, the crew sends their cargo across first before eventually beaming over themselves.  Within seconds, the wounded vessel is destroyed in the atmosphere.

Along with the crew, there were also two passengers.  These are merchants involved in a trade involving the contents of the lost cargo ship and several metal cylinders that the crew transported to the Enterprise.  The cylinders contain a medicine that is necessary to treat a plague that is raging on the freighter's homeworld of Onara. The merchants are immune to the plague and come from another world, Breka, who supply the medicine in exchange for the necessities of life manufactured by the Onarans.  With the loss of the goods on the freighter neither side is willing to yield their rights to the medicine in the cylinders.

When one of the freighter's crew begins to display advanced symptoms of the plague, Dr. Crusher  discovers that the Onarans do not suffer from the plague but from withdrawal symptoms from a narcotic dependency.  The substance in the cylinders is not medicine but a heroin-like drug.  The Brekans are keeping the Oharans hooked on drugs, under the guise of supplying them with medicine.

Crusher is outraged at this discover and urges Picard to intervene, but the Captain invokes the Prime Directive and says he is forbidden from interfering.  The Brekans, however, have a problem.  If they don't keep the Onarans supplied with the drug, they will eventually work through their withdrawal symptoms and will end up no longer addicted to it.  Because of this, they suddenly change their minds and agree to provide the current drug shipment for free, thus tipping their hand to the fact that they knew about this predatory arrangement all along.  

At the end, Picard decides to deliver the drug to the Onarans but refuses to help them replace their destroyed freighter, ensuring that the trade between the two worlds will eventually break down and the drug addiction will be revealed and dispelled.

Analysis

There are three major problems with this episode, and the primary is one of pacing.  The first act, setting up the problem and bringing the squabbling merchants on board, takes entirely too long and consumes over a third of the run time.  This is something we should have achieved in the first 5 minutes of the show and a sense of urgency here would have set the tone for the entire episode. 

The freighter is breaking up in the atmosphere, while Picard and Riker are seemingly having a laugh at the competency of the freighter's crew.  We go back and forth trying to establish communication through the solar interference while hoping to make the audience feel the tension of an imminent catastrophe.  But the audience cannot feel a tension that the Enterprise crew does not display.  As it was, the lack of focus seemed to have cost two lives from the freighter's crew and made Picard to appear callous.

It's hard to exaggerate how inane the writing of this scene is.  Worf is very clear that the distressed freighter has mere minutes before it will be destroyed, and Picard is consumed with rolling his eyes, "Well, finally we're getting somewhere..."  With seconds to live, they are proposing to beam over a major engine component that the stricken crew are supposed to install and align, a clearly impossible task in the time available.  

They make a feeble stab at using the tractor beam, with the inevitable "Too much interference..." as the response.  No heroic efforts, no ingenious plan from Geordi or Data.  Just a shrug of the shoulders and a smirk from Captain Picard, who wastes more time with snide remarks, "How long have you been captain?"  Let that sink in a moment.  Picard actually spends time insulting the imperiled crew mere moments before they die, with a grin and a nudge to Riker standing beside him, all the while exhibiting incompetence of his own,  blaming it on sunspot activity. 

The storytelling here creates a disconnect between what the writers would like to convey, and the message that the audience is receiving.  The building blocks of story are cycles of tension and resolution.  The tension here appears to be the imminent danger to the freighter.  The resolution of the arc happens when we get the crew off the ship before it explodes.  So we actually resolve a different tension, the danger to the lives of the crew.  By deflecting this arc, the writer creates confusion: Were the heroes successful or not?  Since the ship exploded and we killed two crewmen, it seems that the heroes were not successful, which should create a reaction of its own; either dismay or regret, apologies or resolve to do better next time.  Instead, the writers completely ignore what just happened and move on, seeming to place the blame on the odd choices of the rescued crew.

As a development in this arc, we introduce a second tension.  The imperiled crew doesn't appear to be very competent, or particularly concerned for their own safety.  Why do they seem to make these non-sensical choices?   The resolution here is that we discover 1.) they are suffering from the plague, and 2.) they are actually behaving as drug addicts.  The trouble this cycle creates, is that the story never goes back and connects the initial irrational behavior with the narcotic addiction.  Dr. Crusher would have been ideal to make this connection, but she wasn't present on the bridge to observe the crew's communication. 

The audience can make the connection on their own in hindsight, but the initial confusion that this created in the opening scenes is never resolved and the audience is left with the ongoing feeling that Picard is an unfeeling jerk.  This becomes a problem later when Picard has to defend the prime directive, and the audience continues to think he's an unfeeling jerk.

The middle section of the episode was entirely static and at times felt almost boring.  We established the basic premise:  that the cargo ownership is in dispute, and that one side needs the medicine desperately.  And after 20 minutes, we are in exactly the same place, with no movement on either side, and the captain having done nothing.  We move locations from the transporter room to the sick bay to the bridge to the observation lounge to the guest quarters, but nothing essential has changed. We continue to replay the initial scene where we squabble over the cargo.

The development and resolution happens in the final 10 minutes of the episode and there was no reason why it couldn't have happened 35 minutes earlier.  There's an interesting moment when the anguished Onarans stun Riker with their personal electrical charge.  This could have been a pivotal moment where we see the desperation of the addicts and we come to terms with how their society is suffering. This could have been a catalyst for some kind of insight on the part of the Captain or any of the players.  Instead, it passes without incident.  Picard simply talks them down.  It actually proves the opposite of what the writers intended.  Instead of showing the hopelessness of the Onaran's dire situation, it functionally showed that their situation wasn't that bad after all.

The Prime Directive

The third issue with the episode is that this was intended to be a major discussion of the Prime Directive.  From the perspective of Picard, this was a clear case of non-interference that the Prime Directive demanded.  And this was the opportunity, created by the show, to demonstrate how it worked, and the underlying truth to it.  The problem here is that the writers couldn't present a really convincing argument.

There are two phases to the treatment in this episode.  The first was to define exactly what the prime directive is.  The second phase delves deeper into why the prime directive is such a good idea

 Picard offers us two statements of the premise:

 "It is not our mission to impose Federation or Earth values on any others in the Galaxy."

"I am bound by the rules of the United Federation of Planets, which order me not to interfere with other worlds, other cultures.  If I were to tell them any of this, I would violate that Prime Directive."

This was the clearest articulation of the Prime Directive that we ever get in Star Trek.  Humanity is not mandated to cruise the galaxy imposing their will on other cultures because of their superior technology. It prevents them from being a "bunch of meddling do-gooders" as Q would later remark. From a storytelling perspective, this can be a useful device because it presents an internal source of conflict or tension.  As writers, we can use this to cause secondary conflict, between bridge officers for example, or between Picard and his superiors.  It represents a serious change to the basic Walk The Earth model that Star Trek uses.  On the other hand, the crew of the Enterprise very often IS a bunch of meddling do-gooders as evidenced in show after show.

This definition is so broad that we find ourselves in violation any number of times. Interfering in other cultures, and imposing Earth values on others in the galaxy, "seeking out new life and new civilizations," is what they do in almost every episode. Later, to address this contradiction, we soften the issue by narrowing the focus to "pre-warp civilizations",

How do you  define "less developed", for example?  And what constitutes intereference?  To some, simply appearing in orbit would represent an interference of some kind.  And with how nosy the human explorers are, this rule has been violated any number of times.  For example, the planet Bajor from DS9 would appear to be less developed and yet the Federation doesn't have any problem jumping in to that conflict.

The second phase of this discussion is to try to defend the prime directive as being a good idea. Like Hercules, we travel the galaxy seeking new knowledge, but the actual heart of the stories clearly revolves around fixing things, understanding conflicts and moderating them. 

Beverly Crusher showed that this story was a clear example of one species exploiting another.  This was an example of Parasitism, not Symbiosis, as the episode title claimed. Picard was only able to walk away from this situation because he foresaw that it would correct itself in the near future when the Onarans shipping capabilities failed.  But if that were not the case, would Picard be forced to leave them in this clearly oppressive situation, by the prime directive?  For a show about overcoming adversity, this would not be a satisfactory storytelling model.

If we were to find this situation on the streets of Los Angeles in a cop show, we would absolutely feel that correcting the situation would be the honorable thing to do.  Yet here it is presented as more honorable to leave the exploited in their torment.  The writers set up this situation to fully discuss the ramifications of their choices, but when the time came, Picard was more dismissive of Beverly's arguments than meeting them with a well developed philosophy of his own.  This could have been a Measure of a Man moment in season 1.  Instead, it left the audience ambivalent and dissatisfied.

"Beverly, the Prime Directive is not just a set of rules.  It is a philosophy, and a very correct one.  History has proved again and again that whenever Mankind interferes with a less developed civilization, no matter how well-intentioned that interference may be, the results are invariably disastrous."

Star Trek: TNG S1: E16 Too Short a Season

 One "style" of episode from The Next Generation is one that focuses not on the adventure, but on a particular character.  Too Short a Season is one such episode, where the focus is not on what is happening on the planet but instead on the aged Starfleet negotiator Mark Jamison.  The challenge of these episodes is that their success rides on that single character. But a prominent difficulty is that the story that is happening with the character often overshadows the apparent A plot of the away mission.  Unfortunately, that is exactly what happens here.

The tension of this story line is provided by the one-man show of Jamison and his pursuit of eternal youth coupled with arrogance.  And this proves to be a far less interesting story than Governor Carnass and the hostages.  We talk about Jamison's wife, Anne, and the power struggle between himself and Captain Picard, but this all takes place within the conference rooms and corridors of the ship. What opened with the promise of a fully realized adventure, became a character study of someone who offered very little in redeeming features.  

A character-focused story like this relies on the appeal of the protagonist.  The audience needs to identify with the main figure, understand the internal struggle that drove them to make their unique choices, even to admire them in some ways.  But Jamison wasn't particularly charming or witty or noticeably skilled.  He just came across as faintly unpleasant.  And we could see him heading for a fall as some kind of resolution.

Jamison had a side plot where he had obtained a counter-aging treatment that was making him young again.  Ordinarily, such a revolution would have been hailed as a great development, if it had been devised by the medical staff on board.  But in this episode, it was presented entirely as a negative, and we were made to look down on Jamison for wanting this. And this brings us to the secondary difficulty of this episode:  TNG likes to present moral quandaries to the audience and invite us to work through them, but this story failed to adequately articulate what the moral quandary was about.  It didn't give us anything to think about; it didn't clearly define where the moral dilemma was.

Jamison was getting old and had developed a disease of old age that limited him physically.  Because of this, he sought out a dangerous treatment to reverse the aging process.  He began the treatment and it was remarkably effective, though not without problems.  While a bold move, nothing is presented as illegal or unethical.  There's a faint overtone of things that "man was not meant to know" but the show never develops this theme at all.  Dr Crusher discovers his condition through her unique busibody-ness, but can't really articulate why her nosiness was justified.

So far, there isn't really anything notably controversial in this story premise, so we had to add layers of complexity.  First, he made this move without consulting his wife, and so she felt ignored and minimized.  That suggests that the real struggle was in his relationship, but "helping Mark save his marriage" isn't exactly riveting science fiction.  While we are deeply sympathetic with Anne, we don't really feel like Mark should remain confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his shortened life so that Anne can enjoy her much anticipated retirement. "Why didn't he ask me?"  "Why didn't he tell me?" are questions that echo throughout the ships crew (Deanna, Beverly, Anne, Picard) but we never present a valid reason why each of these people should pry into the medical details of Mark's private life.

At this point in the show, the writers seem to realize that they haven't really developed an adequate conflict.  Because of this, we add on some shady negotiating tactics that Mark reveals to Picard from 40 years ago.  Instead of a pure verbal negotiation, Mark offered weapons to both sides in order to get them to release hostages.  The planet then devolved into 40 years of civil war which cost the residents millions of lives.  As Picard himself points out, the planet's civil war was not the fault of one Starfleet negotiator, and Jamison could not have known that the fractious planet would be unable to resolve their conflict.  He did not cause the strife between warring factions.  But his plan was not entirely ethical and so he was guilty of hiding its true nature from Starfleet for all these years.  The show notes several times that Mark Jamison has had a long and successful career as one of Starfleet's top negotiators, who has risen to the rank of admiral on the strength of his diplomatic success and judgment.  But the episode wants us to feel shocked and betrayed when we learn that it hasn't all been the result of singing campfire songs.

Next Jamison plans to lead a strike team on an away mission to liberate the hostages by force.  This ill conceived plan is in some way an attempt by Mark to make up for his poor judgement in the past.   This sortie is so short lived and pointless that it has no lasting impact on the story.  Jamison remembers the tunnels beneath the city, but they have been sealed in places and alarms set to alert the military, so the raid is soon pinned down and hastily beams back to the Enterprise.  Again, it was unclear why the writers included this scene.  It was obvious that Jamison didn't know of modern developments on a planet he had last been to 40 years ago.  In addition, he was unwilling to take advice from Data or Worf as to the changing situation on the ground.  Was it his hubris that drove him to think he had it all under control?  If his growing hubris was the emerging problem of the end of the episode, what was its cause?

At the resolution, Jamison's body couldn't handle the age-reversing treatment and eventually it killed him, but not before he was able to  convince the evil Carnass to release the hostages.  The moral lesson delivered by Picard in the denouement, was about age:  "The quest for youth, number one. So futile."  Apparently, that was Jamison's big problem.  "Age and wisdom have their graces, too."  Fine, but age had nothing to do with Jamison's diplomatic mistake in arming the fractious planet, which seemed to be the actual conflict of the show that needed resolution.

IN the end, that was the greatest shortcoming of the episode.  The intrepid crew of the Enterprise actually did very little to resolve the conflict points of the story.  Instead, they were bystanders and observers of the drama created by Jamison and Carnass.  And, in fact, Jamison himself did nothing that actually resolved the conflict either.  He did plenty to complicate things and lead us on red-herrings like the tunnel raid, and cause distress for his lovely wife Anne.  But in terms of resolving the tension with Carnass, he actually did nothing but dying painfully which served to ameliorate Carnass' thirst for  revenge.  

And Carnass, the evil antagonist, received nothing in the way of correction, despite his deception and illegal imprisonment of the Starfleet diplomatic team.  The guilty were not punished, the past wrongs were not restored, and those on the planet who were left to mourn were not given a glimpse of their goal at the end of the fight.  We seemed to leave the planet in as much chaos as when we found it, glad to wash our hands of the whole messy affair and, like Picard, happy to break orbit for any other destination.

What Now, Lucasfilm?

The swirling rumors surrounding Kathleen Kennedy's departure as president of Lucasfilm have coalesced into a tornado of retribution.   Finally, after the failure and desecration of Indiana Jones, Disney has finally gotten tired of losing money and suffering grievous brand damage, and are ready to lock Kennedy out of the office, regardless of the cost.  Part of this rumor storm is the idea that Jon Favreau will be given creative control of Lucasfilm, in her place.  Let's take a minute and suppose that all of this is true.

What can Favreau do to save the colossal shipwreck of the Star Wars intellectual property?  Are there any fans left, and is there any way to win back the fans that have already left?  And even if the fans can be convinced to return, what is left of the narrative that hasn't been permanently tainted by the Woke Years?

Step one, for Favreau, would to put out the very best season of Mandalorian that he possibly could.  Despite its ups and downs, this is the series that has kept the Star Wars universe alive through the dark years; the most recent story that is carrying the brand.  Don't have it revolve around Bo Katan, but return to the adventures of Din Djarin and Grogu as they walk the earth, and attempt to right the wrongs of the collapsing Empire.  Don't try to undo anything from Season 3, but just go on from here, with the politics of Mandalore on the periphery. 

On the other hand, I would plan on re-enforcing the ties with Greef Carga and the New Republic patrols.  And then, about halfway through the season, I would have a guest appearance by Gina Carano and Bill Burr.  If everything is working on this front, I would then leverage this spot into reviving Rangers of the New Republic.

Step Two:  The next move for Favreau is to set in motion an animated series featuring Luke, Leia, and Han.  This should be set immediately after the events of Return of the Jedi.  And it should be the best quality animation and storytelling that Favreau can muster.  I would have Mark Hamill on set as a consultant and involved heavily with its development.  Even if he can't voice his original character, I would develop for him an additional character that would feature in the series on an on-going basis.

This animated series should feature the best material from the expanded universe.  Even going to the extent of bringing on EU authors and creators.  This series should be a homage to the original fans,  in some sense a love letter to the fans, in another way an apology for everything that was said about them, and an olive branch.  

This is not a moment to subvert expectations, or attempt avant-garde storytelling, or bring something new to the universe.  Instead, this series should be everything that fans have been expecting for 20 years about what would happen to the original three heroic characters and their supporting ensemble.  Somehow, we've never been able to tell this story, mostly because of George.  I believe it's time has finally come.

Han and Leia and Luke have led the rebellion that defeated the Empire; what will happen in the aftermath?  From the perspective of Leia the diplomat, Luke the Jedi, and Han the scoundrel with his connection to the underworld.  

This is a chance to tell the true story of Han and Leia's successful life together.  Its Leia's time to take on a more powerful leadership role in the revitalized galactic senate, and for Han to develop a network of traders, smugglers and scoundrels to battle the Hutts and other organized crime figures.

This is a place to develop Luke's deeper understanding of the Force, perhaps by taking on a padawan of his own, and by continuing to interact with Yoda, Ben, and even his father Anakin.  Yes, we need to arc toward the Jedi Academy, but also begin to examine the problems of the old Jedi order that led to their downfall.

Step Three:  We know that the Ahsoka series is coming out in August.  Jon and Dave and all the creatives still left at Disney should take a clear-eyed, unvarnished look at its reception by the fans and learn everything they can from it, completely divorced from The Message.  Yes, it has an abundance of female characters, but each of them is well rounded and solid in their own right.  If Favreau and Filoni can learn the lessons that the fans can teach them, they will be well-equipped to continue that story line.  

This is by far the most controversial of the narratives that are currently under way.  And there are still angry fans who will not be kind or patient with a compromised story.  Listen to them, learn from them, but do not give complete control to their invective.  They are hurt and extremely sensitized to perceived mistreatment of something important to them and are not likely to forgive easily.

And yet if we can manage this series effectively, it does have the potential for immediate and mid-term gain, both creatively and financially.  These are good characters and heroic ones.  Give them a clear moral motivation, heroic efforts, and reinforce teamwork and striving for the common good and their stories can be well received.

Step Four:  Step back from Andor, Dr. Pershing, and all the darker, grittier, unpleasanter sides of Star Wars.  There will be time for them in the future, but that is not now.  Let them live on their own for a bit.

Step Five:  At this moment, say nothing about the sequel trilogy.  Don't do anything to ret-con it, but know that nothing that is happening now will head toward that alternate future.  The future of Star Wars remains unwritten and now is not a time to focus on the mistakes of the past.  Let them sink into the distant past without comment.

The Mandalorian Season 3 Finale predictions

 We need to get some obvious things out of the way.

1.  Episode 7 was titled "the Spies" and a lot of speculation centered around identifying who the spies were that the title referenced.  The easy one was Moff Gideon's spy on Coruscant.  But, the titles have been referring to twin elements, and this title was specifically in the plural.  So there's likely also a spy on the  Mandalorian side as well.

In that episode, both the Armorer and Axe Woves left the planetside contingent of mandalorians and returned to the fleet in orbit over Mandalore.  We also learned that Gideon had launched an attack on the mando fleet using his newly minted TIE interceptors and bombers. Their assault is imminent.  The Armorer had reached the fleet and found it in readiness, and was welcomed back on board

So here's the prediction.  I suspect that Axe will reach the fleet and assume command.  But he will not tell anyone about the problems that the scouting party ran into on the surface.  When Gideon's attack appears, he will attempt to surrender the fleet to Gideon.  In this scenario, Axe Woves is the second 'Spy'.

However, the Armorer will arise to oppose him.  The two of them will engage in a struggle for control of the fleet and the mandos in space will have to choose sides.   This will be a major re cap of Bo katan's theme that the mandalorians can only be defeated when they fight among themselves.  Some of the Night Owls will join Axe, who used to lead them when Bo katan was off pouting.  Others, particularly her own people, will rally to the Armorer's side.

Reality:  Neither of these was a spy.  The "Spies" were the remnant Mandalorians they met on the surface

2.  Din Djarin has been taken prisoner by Gideon, who has transported him to the interrogation room.  There, Gideon will remove Din's helmet and begin questioning him about the location of Grogu.  Gideon is still interested in Grogu as a source of cloning material.  While here, Din begins to seriously question the parts of the  Creed that he has now broken.  

A contrast in being drawn between the fate of Paz Vyzla and Din Djarin.  Paz refused to retreat, refused to follow orders, and was ultimately killed.  Din, instead, was captured and will eventually have his helmet removed, both deep elements of dishonor for a mandalorian.  And yet, neither Din nor the audience can see any way that Din acted ignobly, can't see anything that he could have done differently.  According to the Creed interpretations of the Armorer, Din is a Mandalorian no longer.  This crisis of conscience will weigh deeply on Mando.

Reality:  Din was able to free himself from the Imperial troopers and escape, with the help of Grogu.  His helmet was never removed.

3.  Bo Katan will mount a counter offensive against Gideon's stronghold at the Great Forge.  I suspect that there will be a way to the forge from the Mines, and Bo-Katan will lead the remnant scouts through that way as an attempt to infiltrate Gideon's base.  A fight here will ensue, combining both an unceremonial bathing in the living waters, as well as an appearance of the Mythosaur, facilitated by Grogu calling for its aid.

Reality: Axe Woves was able to reach the Mando fleet using his jetpack and send down the remaining Mandalorians to assist Bo Katan.  They re-entered the base and fought the imperial jetpack troopers.

4.  At some point, the fight in space and the fight in the mines will have ground to a standstill, with Gideon's forces appearing to gain the upper hand.  At this moment, some new element will emerge above Mandalore to enter the fight.  This is probably some Cpt Teva, New Republic Ranger contingent aided by Greef Carga, or it could include elements of Jack Black's droid army.  A deep irony that the mandalorians are now aided by imperial droids, instead of attacking them.

Reality:  There was no last-minute appearance of anyone to assist the assault on Mandalor, other than Grogu emerging as a competent fighter who could assist Din Djarin and Bo Katan Kryze.

5.  Finally, Boba Fett will make an appearance at the end, at some pivotal moment, in conjunction with the mention of Admiral Thrawn's name.  Rather than supporting Gideon, however, Thrawn will instead withdraw support and leave Gideon to the mercy of the now-superior Mandalorian forces.

Reality:  Neither Boba Fett nor Admiral Thrawn either appeared or were mentioned in this final episode.

Stargate SG1: 1.14 Singularity

 Did  Capt Carter Know?

If she has no hope of any kind then she's really suicidal.  And if so, she's weak, not a hero.

The week with Cassandra stirred something in Samantha that shows the same depth of feeling that Daniel had for Sha're or Jack had for his son Charlie, or Teal'c has for his son Ryac.

Stargate SG1: 1.12 Fire and Water

 Here's an episode that seems like it would be good on paper.  But when you actually play it out, it ends up being a tremendous amount of wasting time.  For me it was very frustrating because we spent a lot of storytelling capital on watching, and not much on actually figuring things out.

The summary of the story is this:  The SG1 team returns from a off-world mission, without Daniel.  The rest of the team is all convinced that Daniel died in a fire.  We give him a military burial with full honors, have a wake at Jack's house and then start packing up Daniel's stuff.  This would all be great as far as it goes, but this takes fully half of the episode.  No development, no clues, no plot movement of any kind, nothing to generate any tension.  Coming as it does halfway through the first season of this new series, the audience is pretty sure that Daniel isn't really dead. But without any information to the contrary, we are literally biding our time watching the scenes play out, devoid of any tension because if Daniel isn't dead than nothing is at stake.

Meanwhile, on the alien planet, Daniel wakes up to a rubber suited monster straight out of Doctor Who.  And the alien only says one line, "What Fate Omorroca?"  This maddening line is repeated so often that we are thoroughly sick of it long before we move on to any other dialogue.  Because the line is not interesting, then the alien isn't interesting either.  Daniel actually IS interesting, as he deciphers cuniform writing and places it at 2000 BC, though the text itself means nothing and just when we thought we were going to learn something, we realize that the writing is irrelevant.  Again, we throw up our hands in frustration.

So about this time we learn that Omoroca is Rubber man's mate, in Babylon, 4000 years ago. We are as incredulous as Daniel.  This is part of the failing of this episode:  we don't care about Omoroca, her fate, or Rubber Man.  If there was some intriguing reason why we should find out about her, then we would be more deeply engaged with the story.  The subtext is that this is a parallel of Daniel looking for his own lost love, Sha're.  Daniel, and the audience as well, should be sympathetic with this man's plight.  But at this point, it doesn't seem to carry a lot of weight.

The real hero of this episode is Dr Janet.  She is the one that takes the lead, learning of the altered brain chemistry and seeking for deeper clues.  When she comes on the scene, the story begins heading for a resolution.  Finally with less than 10 minutes left in the show we begin the debriefing that should have happened at the beginning.  We begin to discuss lost time, conditioned responses, uncovering secrets through hypnosis.  All the exciting, mystery-revealing scooby-doo type detective work that should have been the meat of the story, crammed into the last 5 minutes.

In the end, we find out that a goauld murdered Omoroca.  That's it.  No greater story, no deeper meaning.  Just evil goauld being evil. This should have been a great story idea, all of the cool elements are present.  But the execution of the story, the writing of the plot, simply wasn't up to the promise of the premise.

Rating:  2.5 Stars. This wasn't a horrible cringe-inducing nightmare.  In the right hands, this could have been an exciting archaeology expedition worthy of Dr. Jones. However, what we got was less than satisfying.  

This is the only episode of Stargate SG-1 directed by Allan Eastman.

 

C:  We're bringing up the fact that it's an ordinary adventure and we could all die at any random planet.  The writers were trying to make that point.  SG1 team doesn't know that they can't die.

This was an opportunity to reveal that there was a great deal of mutual respect between Jack and Daniel.

 

Stargate SG1: The Children of the Gods

 This is a rewatch of the old Sci-fi standard, Stargate SG1.  Originally aired in 1997, Stargate was something of a sleeper.  It came on the downslope of the mighty Star Trek juggernaught, which was firmly in the throes of ST: Deep Space Nine (1993-99) and Voyager (1995-2001).  ST: Enterprise (2001-2005) was still on the horizon for Star Trek fans.  Babylon 5 (1993-98) still had another season to run and it was also up against Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) and Farscape (1999-2003).  If you were inclined to watch Sci-Fi TV, you had plenty of options to choose from.

In short, Stargate came out in a field crowded with already powerful science fiction properties and some strong new contenders.  It was building on the groundwork laid by James Spader and Kurt Russell in the movie Stargate (1994) but the film had done very little to create a coherent universe, having traveled to a single planet beyond Earth.  As a result, this new series had to capture the feeling of the movie but build an entirely new world in which to place its adventures.

The show bridged several transitions in the TV storytelling medium.  The first seasons were 4:3 boxes of low resolution and weakly saturated color, for example,  while the later seasons were high-res, richly colored widescreen panoramics.  The most important change, though, was the transition from episodic, status-quo episodes to fully written seasons that are now released all at once.  Traditional TV established a status-quo, a steady state of character and world development to which the story always returned before the end of each episode.  The following episode started out in exactly the same place as the one before it.  That gave shows like ST: The Next Generation a comfortable and familiar feel.  

In the nineties, though, shows like the X-Files and especially Babylon 5 began to write metaplot arcs that were visited throughout each season.  Events in earlier episodes were maintained and developed in later episodes in a way that could substantially change the steady state of the universe. SG1, because it had a significant world-building task, used this technique almost from the beginning to develop long reaching story lines and character arcs.  Characters like Samantha Carter and Teal'c were given time to grow with the seasons, and because we saw their origins, we were more closely identified with their victories.

The very first episode of Stargate SG1 attempts to create a bridge to the prior film.  The first scene shows the stargate activated, the serpent-head guards and the face of Apophis.  But it also introduces Teal'c as the leader of Apophis' soldiers and we get a few revealing touches of his character.  For example, when the Jaffa open fire and the US soldiers return fire, Teal'c had ahold of the female soldier.  Rather than subject her to machine gun fire, Teal'c turns around to shelter her behind his metal armor.  I think this reflects his instinct to protect rather than destroy, and even in the opening scene gives us a glimpse into his future character.  

As an aside, in this scene we see Apophis' party come through the gate and watch it disengage behind him.  Then, despite the fact that the US gate has no dialing device, when we next see the Jaffa, they have managed to redial their own homeworld and escape through it.

I love the way we build the team.  We start with Jack O'Neill and establish a relationship with General Hammond.  Both of them go through the process of putting up an abrasive front that harbors something more heroic and caring underneath.  Jack could have kept his secret and let Hammond send the nuclear bomb through the gate, leaving Daniel to his fate.  Instead, he revealed his duplicity and accepted the consequences.  Similarly, Hammond could have proceeded with the bomb, following his orders.  Instead, he chose to preserve the life of  5,000 people on the other side of the gate as well as that of Daniel Jackson.

Before we get to Daniel, however, we take a scene to introduce Captain Carter.  The writers go out of their way to escalate the tension between Jack and Carter.  Initially, we feel like the conflict is because Samantha is a woman, and O'Neill only respects men.  Carter certainly feels that is the case and this allows the writers to introduce her history as both an accomplished pilot (100 hrs over the Gulf War) and as the premier scientist with knowledge of the stargate.  Jack reveals that he is actually more concerned about her status as a scientist, whom he dismisses as "dweebs."  Carter's aggressive self-defense, though, earns Jack's begrudging respect

It reveals another side of Samantha Carter.  It feels like Carter has continually been in a position where she needs to defend her record and capabilities.  She suggests that she should have been on the initial stargate mission but was passed over, possibly unfairly.  And certainly the sentiment in the conference room reflects her fears.  Carter has plenty of self-confidence.  She knows that she knows more than anyone else in the room. But she's worried that once again she won't be given the credibility she deserves.

Next, we go through the gate and find Daniel.  After our heartwarming reunion, and Stargate does that better than anyone, we move into the next scene that has become a classic SG1 storytelling device.  Daniel has discovered a room with a cartouche that unlocks the mystery of stargate navigation.  The cartouche (which in this case is simply a stone tablet with written information on it) gives thousands of gate addresses, revealing that the stargate isn't simply a doorway between two planets, but an entire network of planets, each with its own gate and gate address.  This is a puzzle that Hammond and O'Neill hadn't fully grasped earlier.  They thought that if Apophis came through the gate, it must be from Skarra's world.  With this new information, which Sam and Daniel work out, the gate becomes a doorway to those thousands of planets.  In this one scene, the writers have clearly defined and expanded the Stargate universe, informing not only the current episode but the entire series.

This type of lore drop, the Cartouche scene, occurs throughout the seasons, and they are sometimes hard to pick up on the first time through.  The writers like to obscure the true impact of the scene by interjecting humor or impatience from Jack, or by elevating the tension in the background.  The writers also like to limit their new-found knowledge by destroying the key artifacts before they can be fully studied.

While the SG team is off looking at the cartouche, tragedy befalls the rest of Skarra's people.  The Jaffa visit the planet and abduct both Skarra and Sha're.  In this brief scene, we have given motivation to Daniel and Jack that pulls them through the next several seasons.