Stargate SG-1: Brief Candle 

• Release Date: 19th September 1997
• Season 1
• Episode 9
• Director: Mario Azzopardi
• Writers: Steven Barne, Mario Azzopardi

Exiting a Stargate housed inside a temple, SG-1 discovers some people dressed in Greek attire, who worship the Greek hero, Pelops. One of the people is heavily pregnant and goes into labour, with Jackson being the only one with any kind of experience in delivering children. I’m not quite sure why they couldn’t call back and ask for a doctor, but the baby is delivered safely and the baby is named Dan-El in honour of Jackson.

They get invited to a party, where a woman, Kynthia, offers Jack a cake which nobody else is allowed to eat. This effectively contains a date rape drug and she whisks him off to her bed. Everyone falls asleep when the sun sets and SG-1 finds Jack, who realises that he’s been drugged before he falls asleep like the rest.

Carter makes a gift for the newborn baby only to discover that he’s already a toddler. Not only that, but aging quickly is all these people know, with no concept of a year because they only live for 100 days. Jack also seems to start aging. Carter and Daniel suggest that it’s some kind of Gou’ald made virus, and Jack got infected due to him being taken advantage of.

Having to leave Jack behind, the rest of the team head back to try and analyse everything – Daniel and Teal’c studying a fancy Gou’ald tablet they find and Carter taking blood samples to Dr Fraiser to help study. Daniel and Teal’c figure out that it was an experiment to try and speed up human evolution by shortening the lifespan, with the experiment seemingly unsuccessful. Carter and Fraiser find out that the virus is made from nano machines.

However, the nano virus attempts to adapt and almost breaks confinement, leading to the samples being destroyed and massively slowing down the hunt for a cure. Jack continues aging rapidly (faster than anyone else as the virus is trying to catch up) and spends his time in the temple, first shouting at the statue of Pelops and then trying to tell the truth to the people about what he did to them.

Eventually, he gets them to tear down the statue, and then him and his wife (after telling her he had no idea he was marrying her, even though he did witness Jackson do the same in the film) go for a walk beyond the allowed area. They realise that they’re still awake after dark, but when they return in the morning, everyone is still asleep. It turns out that the statue sends a signal for sleeping and waking up, and that the wake-up call has been damaged.

SG-1 return, now knowing that the signal is what controls the nanites. They send one final wake up call by matching the frequency of the device then turning it off completely. Without the signals, the nanites can be stopped.

The aging of Jack – both RDA’s acting and the amazing makeup used throughout – are definitely a highlight of the episode, but it’s harmed somewhat by its sudden resolution. The nanites were an issue on SGC without any kind of signal, so why wouldn’t they adapt on the planet? Plus the handwaving of “the nanites just made Jack look old” doesn’t make much sense.

It’s a great character episode, not just for Jack but for the team dynamic as a whole, it just didn’t really have a satisfying ending.