“We are witnessing good men die in slow motion, Captain.”
- Release Date: 9th December 1998
- Season 2
- Episode 16
- Director: Misha Rashovich, Brad Wright
- Writers: Robert C. Cooper
This episode starts with a space shot, showing a black hole forming and heading towards a planet. We see a terrified SG team (SG-10) rushing towards the game, with some slow motion effects. The leader orders the gate to be dialled, which they manage to do. We cut to the Earth side, where nobody goes through the gate. They go through a list of possible teams (Daniel is with one of them), but identify it as SG-10 once they speed up the signal they received by 600%.
Jack wants to instantly go on a rescue mission, but Hammond wants a MALP sent though first to determine any threat. Jack is still itching to go ASAP and thinks Hammond is being stubborn by not approving a rescue mission. The MALP goes through and the signal is odd, but they manage to boost and speed it up. It shows SG-10 staring towards the MALP, looking terrified but not moving. After moving the camera (which shouldn’t work), they see a black hole – Jack knows that the team is doomed.
Cater mentions the possibility of studying the effects of the black hole, but Jack is appalled – they would be watching good men die. Hammond orders the gate to be turned off, but it doesn’t work. We cut to a special ops team outside Cheyenne Mountain, they’ve been ordered to break into Stargate Command as communications stopped four hours ago.
Hammond can’t contact the president or anyone outside – they can’t even talk to anyone higher up in the building. They’ve also passed the 38 minute window that should be how long a Stargate can remain active for, and the vortex even starts acting strange. Hammond heads to the surface to make contact while Jack tries to shut down the gate by turning off the power. Teal’c and Siler are injured and it doesn’t work – but Sam does discover that they’re starting to feel the gravity from the black hole through the stargate. She orders the black hole closed.
The special forces team arrive at the main level, accosting Dr Fraiser. They believe that it’s an alien invasion, but Jack lets them know what’s going on. They learn that it’s been five hours since they lost contact, a lot longer than they have experienced – they’re being affected by the time dilation. On top of this, gravity on the iris is increasing – eventually, the entire Earth may get sucked through the stargate.
During this conversation, Hammond reaches the surface, is greeted by Major Davis from the Pentagon (I know he shows up fairly often), and meets with the president in Washington before returning, he’s gone for 18 hours by the time he returns, Jack says he thought he was just on the phone. The orders are to set off a self destruct. Hammond tells them to wait five minutes before setting it off and everyone, other than Jack and the special ops leader, evacuates.
On the surface, Carter calculates that the five minutes will last six hours from their perspective, and thinks that the plan will just bury the gate, not shut it off. Hammond says that he hopes she’s wrong, as if they blow up the stargate, they can set up SGC again with the second stargate. This gives Carter an idea – directing an energy blast directly at the gate would jump the other hand to a nearby gate, where they’d be able to disengage – like when they got to the second stargate but in reverse. They get the equipment needed and rush back.
Within the five minutes of waiting, Jack and the ops leader, Cromwell, discuss a mission in Iraq – where Cromwell left Jack behind to be tortured in prison. Cromwell tries to compare it with leaving SG-10 on the planet, but it’s really not the same. As they’re about to set off the self destruct, Carter returns saying it won’t work. The two instead gear up and rappel down with the targeted bomb.
As they work their way down, the glass to the control room falls past them, damaging the rope. The iris itself also fails, getting pulled into the stargate. It cuts the rope with Cromwell, but Jack grabs him. Cromwell notices that Jack’s rope is also failing, so he flings himself into the wormhole and to his death. Jack sets off the charge and it works, with the stargate shutting down.
He wakes up in the infirmary. Since the start of the episode, two weeks have passed. A new iris is getting installed (enhanced by Trinium, presumably the small amount they got a few episodes ago). While some of the science is a bit wonky, it’s a great episode, and I do love episodes where the stargate is used (or reacts) in a strange way.
