Stargate SG-1: Rite of Passage

“Then I shall remind you that the woman holding the gun on you is Cassandra’s mother.”

• Release Date: 3rd August 2001
• Season 5
• Episode 6
• Director: Peter DeLuise
• Writers: Heather E. Ash

Sam is visiting Janet Fraiser at her house. It’s the birthday of Cassandra, Janet’s adopted daughter who was rescued from a planet where everyone else was wiped out. Cassie is being a typical teenager who wants to just go out with her boyfriend. She goes out to him, saying she’ll be a little bit longer and he gifts her a prism, giving her a kiss. The lights spark and she passes out.

She gets taken to the infirmary at Stargate Command. Fraiser discovers a retrovirus in her system and she seems to be generating an EM field. Her fever isn’t coming down, either. Cassie wakes up in a daze and says that she needs to go into the forest. Fraiser tests both her and Sam, who have no signs of the retrovirus, so it’s not contagious.

Daniel finds some video footage of similar incidents that happened on Cassie’s home planet. It was something they called the “mind fire”. They refused treatment as the illness meant they were touched by the gods. Instead, the children were sent into the forest alone and came back a few days later, cured. They need to check out the planet, but need to make sure that the toxin spread by the Gou’ald Nirrti has dissipated first.

It seems the toxin has gone and SG-1 head to the planet. They find a little clearing with a campfire and there’s a tree nearby with a glowing handprint. A ring transporter is activated and they end up in a Gou’ald lab. It seems that Nirrti lured the affected kids over here and cured them – although it’s likely she had something to do with the condition to begin with. They find some samples to take back to SGC to get tested.

Cassie tries to leave the hospital bed, wanting to get to the forest. A few soldiers restrain her to take her back, but she shakes them off and screams out, causing the nearby lights to explode. She gets moved to the observation room, which is shielded from the rest of the base. Cassie asks to be allowed to go back to her planet and Sam tells her that they found Nirrti’s lab. 

Jack, Daniel and Teal’c are still in the lab and Daniel discovers that the children are called the Hok’Tar – a word Teal’c hasn’t heard in a long time. The ring transporter activates, which Daniel thinks he accidentally made happen. As they leave, we see an invisible figure watching them. 

Carter visits Cassie to play their regular game of chess, but Cassie is very whiny and says that Dr Fraiser is not her real mother. Sam assures her that Janet loves her very much and deserves more respect from Cassie. They discuss what’s happening to her and Cassie makes a knight fly into her hand – it’s something she can suddenly do. She mentions that Jack calls them horses and that he pretends to not be as smart as he actually is (something we’ve seen often). Sam says that she still sees Cassie when she looks at her.

In a briefing, when Hammond asks how she can move the chess piece, Jack says his usual joke answer of magnets, but this time explains that it’s due to the electrical field around the magnets, which is why she can manipulate them. They still don’t know how she can control electrical fields, though, but Daniel says that Hok’Tar means “advanced human” and that Nirrti was studying the people as they were evolving. She used the retrovirus to speed it up and healed the kids so they could go on and breed. Such a human would make for a powerful host, and she likely wiped them out to hide what she was going when the humans from Earth turned up.

Fraiser visits Cassie, who is spinning a chess piece in mid-air. Cassie says that doing so helps alleviate the heat from her body and that she wants this transformation to happen. Janet is worried that this will kill Cassie, who says she doesn’t care – Janet isn’t having any of that. When Cassie focuses on her mother, the chess piece drops and when Janet picks it up, she burns her hand. Cassie apologies and Janet asks her to fight this.

As requested by Dr Fraiser, Carter visits Cassie to try and get her to sleep. Cassie asks about why Sam decided to stay with her when she was due to explode, and Sam says she had an instinct that it would be fine. Cassie says that is how she feels now. She asks Sam to be there when it’s time for either the transformation or death, and Sam promises. 

Fraiser looks at some stuff in her office, but when she leaves we see Nirrti decloak and root through her stuff. Fraiser realises she’s forgotten her keycard and heads back, just missing Nirrti, but gets an idea. She asks Sam if she can get a bone fragment from the bodies back on the planet, but Carter thinks they won’t find anything. An alarm goes off and they find an injured soldier.

When they reach Cassie, she says that she felt the presence of a Gou’ald. Carter orders for everyone to search the base using the phase-shifting detection technology they used against the Reetou (which should have been installed in front of the Stargate, and Nirrti would have been detected right away). They think she’s here to see if the experiment worked. Nirrti smashes the observation room window and gets stunned by Jack as she jumps down. Cassie starts seizing.

In a holding room, Nirrti makes her demands. She’ll save Cassie’s life if they let her go (with her invisibility device) and give her a sample of Cassie’s blood. Daniel lets Dr Fraiser know what is happening. He heads back to Cassie and tries a few different drugs to stabilise her, but nothing is helping. In the briefing room, Jack pleads with Hammond to accept Nirrti’s offer, but he says he can’t risk her being successful. Teal’c agrees with Hammond as well – the risks involved are too great. 

Dr Fraiser lies to the guard of the holding room, and knocks him out with a sedative when he opens the door. Hammond is called over to calm her down, and says that they’ll let her go, but not let her have the cloaking device or a sample of blood. He also points out to her that the person aiming the gun at her is Cassie’s mother. She agrees to the conditions.

At first Nirrti tries but fails, but manages to stabilise Cassie when Fraiser pushes her to try again, reminding her that her life is on the line. Cassie’s reading returns to normal and she seems to be cured. Nirrti asks to leave immediately, and Jack escorts her to the stargate. She boasts that she’ll have to start the experiment again and that she would have duped them if the roles were reversed.

Cassie is better, and Carter teases her about the magical kiss with her boyfriend that caused literal sparks. They play chess again (it’s seemingly been a fortnight since the last time) and Cassie says she won’t be able to move anything with her mind this time.

This episode is a mixed bag. It’s a really good idea, but they made Cassie into an insufferable moody teenager. A little bit of that is fine, but it’s far too much here. The deal with Nirrti also doesn’t seem like something SG-1 or Hammond would do – Nirrti is going to harm and kill a great many people, and even told them as much. There was no reason to let her go at that point.