“You can’t just slap a US Air Force sticker on the side of a Death Glider and call it yours.”
- Release Date: 15th September 2000
- Season 4
- Episode 12
- Director: Peter DeLuise
- Writers: Michael Cassutt
At a US Air Force Air Strip, Jack, Sam, Daniel and Hammond are meeting another general, one higher up than Hammond. Jack makes a wonderful first impression then says that Teal’c will be here at any moment. Teal’c does indeed turn up, in a brand new fighter – Earth’s first space fighter. It’s capable of immense speed but, due to technology Carter doesn’t understand, the pilots feel nothing. It was built using parts of the two death gliders SG-1 escaped in at the start of season 2. The general is very impressed.
The next test is a combat exercise. Jack heads into the X-301 Interceptor along with Teal’c and they set off to combat some drones. However, the ship just keeps on going, out into space, accelerating at an immense speed – up to 1 million miles per hour. Jack sends a message about not being in control, not realising that it would take time to reach Earth. The glider plays a message saying that a recall device will pilot the ship back to his homeworld – which will take hundreds of years. They have life support for a few days.
Back at SGC, Carter has a plan – slingshot around Jupiter to send them back towards Earth. Which would be an immensely precise manoeuvre and a millisecond of timing would cause them to miss. I’m also not quite sure what the full plan would be. Even if they were heading close to Earth, they’ll still fly past at over a million miles per hour. There seemed to be no end to the plan, but I guess they were still figuring it out. There’s a complication in that Teal’c has no control for even a nudge, when Jack has the idea of using the missiles.
After Carter calculates the timings, Jack tries it, but the missiles disengage and end up hitting the ship, damaging it and lowering their time remaining to 12 hours. Daniel returns to SG-1 after asking around for help. The Tollan aren’t anywhere near, and Anise of the Tok’ra (probably her last mention) has said that their only operative nearby – a friend – is undercover on a Gou’ald world and the council don’t want to blow his cover. Carter realises that Anise was actually giving them too much information on purpose – they can work out which planet the operative is on.
Daniel and Sam head to this world (with no backup) and spy on the place, coming up with a plan. They get caught in some transportation rings – and it’s Jacob on a Gou’ald cargo ship. He says they’d better have a good reason to blow his cover and is satisfied with the answer of Jack and Teal’c being in danger. He pushes the engines over the limit to be as fast as possible. In the fighter, Teal’c tells Jack how much their friendship means and goes into a deep state of kelno’reem meditation, increasing how much time they have left.
On the way back to the Sol system, the Tel’tak cargo ship breaks down. Jacob and Sam fix it while Daniel – with his vast knowledge of ancient history and the kind of gods that the Gou’ald pose as – tries to buy them time by claiming to be the Great and Powerful Oz. It doesn’t work, but the ship gets fixed in time and heads back to hyperspace. Somehow, it doesn’t concern anyone that there are some Gou’ald motherships just hanging near earth.
When they arrive, Jack has passed out from lack of oxygen. They nudge the ship to wake them up. They can’t beam them off the fighter, so they get Jack to wake Teal’c up so the plan can be explained to him. They need to breathe in and open the hatch while pushing off and exhaling. They manage to do it and the rings are used to pick them up from space. They’re alive, the message is sent to SGC and everyone celebrates, with background staff throwing paper all over the place.
There’s some great emotional moments in this episode, although it is one where you just have to completely ignore all the science involved as nothing makes much sense. It’s an important step in the development of Earth – they can’t cut too many corners and they’ll need to work out how to rebuild stuff themselves instead of slapping bits of alien technology together.
