“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try, try, try, try again.”
- Release Date: 4th August 2000
- Season 4
- Episode 6
- Director: Peter DeLuise
- Writers: Joseph Mallozzi & Paul Mullie
SG-1 are visiting ruins on a planet that houses ruins with the language of the ancients on them. There’s a massive coronal mass ejection causing a geometric storm. Daniel is working with another archeologist called Malakai (who reminds me a lot of Rip Hunter from Legends of Tomorrow) on a strange device. Malakai asks SG-1 to return home, but Daniel is too interested in the ruins, so Malakai shoots him.
Carter says it’s time to go, so they look for Daniel. The place fills up with electrical energy and the Stargate activates for a moment, with the energy also affecting the Earth Stargate. Carter attends to Daniel while Jack and Teal’c try to stop Malakai, with the three of them getting hit by a beam. Jack then appears in the mess hall, speaking to Carter and Daniel, with Daniel asking for his opinion on something. He questions that they were just on a planet but they’re just confused.
In the briefing, Carter starts talking about the planet that they were just on, with Jack saying they’ve already seen it and Teal’c agreeing. He explains some details, and Carter suggests he’s read the report – which Daniel finds unbelievable. The Stargate activates and Jack says it’s SG-12 returning early, and Teal’c mentions that one of them would be injured. It turns out that they were correct.
They get tested by Dr Fraiser and initial results seem fine. Hammond postpones the mission until the full results are known. Carter talks to Jack, presuming he knows what she’s going to say, but he points out that they were already on the planet at this point, so things have changed. The Stargate activates as before, and the loop begins again – seems like it will happen until they find a way to stop it. In the next loop, they still get examined but manage to convince Hammond to let them carry on the mission. Malakai pretends that he has no idea until he accidentally mentions Carter by name. Jack notices that Malakai has a photo of his wife – saving her must be his objective.
Jack and Teal’c get better at explaining the time loop (although not enough to avoid examination – with a frustrated Jack asking how looking in his eye is relevant). He speaks to Daniel and tells him that he needs to translate all the text on the machine to figure out what it says. The only problem is that it would take much longer than a loop. Jack tries to record Daniel and play it in the next loop, not realising that the recording on the device would have been reset. There’s only one option: Jack and Teal’c will have to help and remember what Daniel translates in each loop to speed up the process in other loops. Carter also discovers that a series of 14Stargates around the planet have been affected, including the one SG-12 is on. They’ll all be having time loops, but nobody there will know
We see a series of multiple loops, with Jack and Teal’c learning what the words say (with Daniel getting flustered when his errors are pointed out) while also both learning how to juggle. We find out that while Jack starts the loop with the end of a question (that he wasn’t listening to the first time), Teal’c starts with someone accidentally hitting him with a door. Eventually, this all gets to Jack, with him taking a loop off to draw a face on a plate with condiments while shouting at being crazy. Daniel then gives them an idea – if time resets, they can do what they want with no consequences.
It’s time for a wonderful montage. Teal’c gets to push the guy that hit him with a door, Jack learns pottery and they both start Golfing through the stargate, getting told off by a baffled General Hammond. In one loop, Jack retires so he can kiss Carter, and it’s kind of sweet that, even without consequences, he still follows the proper procedure. The amazing thing about this montage is that this was only written during filming, when the writers realised that the episode was going to be too short.
Eventually, Jack and Teal’c decide it’s time to carry on and eventually figure it out. SG-1 head to the planet to confront Malakai, who now has a force field set up. Daniel points out that the Ancients themselves abandoned this technology as they couldn’t get it to work. Malakai can’t believe this, so Jack asks if this is about trying to save his wife. As Malakai’s wife died from a heart condition, it’s purely to see her again. Jack points out that he’ll just have to watch her die again and again. Malakai says he can’t understand, to which Jack rebukes by mentioning that he lost his son – and he couldn’t go through that again. Malakai shuts off the device.
Back at the SGC, Jack is glad to be eating a different breakfast. They find out that the Tok’ra have been unable to contact Earth for around three months, so time passed normally elsewhere during this loop, and only Jack and Teal’c experienced this time on Earth. It’s an immensely fun episode, with a ton of humour but also plenty of emotional moments. But that just happens to be how I feel about it. What do you think?
