“There is nothing cruvis with me”
- Release Date: 16th December 1998
- Season 2
- Episode 15
- Director: David Warry-Smith
- Writers: Robert C. Cooper
A rather vital episode of the series. Daniel requests a visit to a planet which had nothing but some text in a circle; he has identified the writing as from one of the four great races they discovered when rescuing Earnest Littlefield. One of these is the Asgard they’ve managed to contact, the other two are unknown and the final one seems to be related to this planet. They get there, and it’s just a small room with the writing and nothing else. As they leave, Jack steps over the writing and a strange device appears on the wall, it grabs Jack and leaves Jack unconscious when it lets go.
After being checked out by Dr. Fraiser, Jack seems to be fine. However, in the following briefing, Jack starts replacing words with an unknown language, which he doesn’t even realise himself. They tell him to stay on the base so this can be observed. He helps Daniel with some translations, as he can read the alien language, and Daniel matches it to Latin, but different vocabularies. Jack also writes a load of equations on a board, but Carter can’t understand them.
Jack gets an MRI again and his brain is showing far more activity than usual (the show unfortunately uses the “humans only use 10% of their brain myth” but I’ll chalk this up as Janet simplifying things). Later on, Jack is messing with the computers, writing new code in machine language. The program activates and loads more stargates start appearing on their system – one of them were from the Abydos cartouche. Finally, one of my pet peeves of early Stargate is resolved for future episodes: now it makes sense for there to be no Gou’ald presence on some planets they visit.
Jack carries on helping Daniel translate (now completely unable to speak in English) and gives a note to Carter that lets her know that the maths he did was in base 8, not base 10 and she very quickly realises that it’s a method of calculating distances between planets. They also find a viable planet among the new ones entered into the database, so Carter, Teal’c and two temporary members of SG-1 set off to see if anything there can help Jack.
Jack has moved on from translating to building some kind of device. He has no idea what he’s building, but everyone lets him carry on. Daniel does his best to try and communicate with him and they work out that this device was a Repository of Knowledge from a race called the Ancients – who may have built the Stargates. Hammond gets news from Carter – there’s an issue with the DHD, it’s stuck mid-dial and they can’t reset it. To make matters worse, the temperature on the planet is increasing, there was a second sun that rose that they didn’t know about.
First Daniel keeps this news away from Jack to not put more on his mind, but when she calls back to say they’ll be dead within a few hours, he shows a video of Sam describing the issue. He draws a diagram of the DHD and instructions on how to fix it, they send it over and Sam is able to return, but they don’t have anything to help Jack, and Sam can’t identify what Jack has made, either.
The control room suddenly bursts to life, the gate is activating on its own, and is trying to draw ten times more power than normal. Jack plugs in his device and suddenly the gate has enough power – and the seventh symbol is not the Point of Origin – the stargate is dialling eight symbols. While it’s nice to see that Simmons survived the other episode, it’s a shame Walter wasn’t here for this moment, he’s the best at announcing chevrons being encoded.
It’s calculated that the stargate is leading to another galaxy, and Jack clearly wants to go through. Hammond reluctantly agrees, but he can’t let him have a code to return – it’s a one-way trip. Jack goes through and arrives on an Asgard planet, asking for help. One of them removes the Ancient database and says that, while the human mind was not ready, humans do show potential (they’re clearly impressed that Jack subconsciously accessed the knowledge to get help), and may be the “the fifth race”, confirming that the Asgard, Ancients, the Nox and a yet unseen race called The Furlings were part of an alliance of four great races.
They send Jack back to Earth – with the program he wrote earlier kicking him and preventing the Iris from closing – he says “I’m back” just like his old self, and that he doesn’t remember anything. He does say that he thinks humanity is going to be alright. It’s a brilliant episode, with some brilliant acting from Richard Dean Anderson – he really sells Jack’s concern of not being able to understand what he is doing, but that it’s for a good reason.
