“Earth, steaks, where’s the difference?”
- Release Date: 14th July 2000
- Season 4
- Episode 3
- Director: Martin Wood
- Writers: David Rich
Stargate Command has a Tok’ra visitor, a new character called Anise, with Jack and Daniel oggling her immediately. This was Stargate’s response to Seven of Nine – an attractive female character to boost ratings. They even picked an actress that auditioned for the role on Star Trek Voyager. The writers weren’t overly happy with this, but Seven of Nine managed to become an extremely well written character despite her origins, so it doesn’t mean disaster.
Anise has brought some technology from a lost civilisation with her, armbands that can supposedly massively enhance strength and speed – essentially grant superpowers. SG-1 and General Hammond want to take a cautious approach but Anise essentially extorts them into accepting them straight away as she threatens to find “willing” test subjects elsewhere. She’s desperate as they won’t work on Tok’ra, and Teal’c will have to sit out due to being Jaffa. They handwave Carter having protein markers from Jolinar.
At first, the devices do nothing – it takes time before anything starts. Jack then hurts Teal’c while sparring at boxing (while also dodging at superspeed) and it seems it’s starting to work. Daniel and Sam are also given armbands. Daniel in particular gets annoyed when Jack wanders into his office and reads a book at super speed, although eventually he and Carter catch up. Jack wants to use their skills on a mission, but Hammond is unsure. After some disturbing information from Dr Fraiser (who is conducting her own tests as Anise is hiding information from her) suggesting their minds may be affected and Jack accidentally knocking Syler down some stairs, SG-1 are quarantined.
While sitting in the room, they all get hungry. They run out of the base and to a steakhouse in the nearby town, ordering four steaks each (and a diet soda for Carter), not realising that they’re defining orders until they get there (and then not caring much) They start to hustle at pool and annoy a local gang. They get into a fight.
Hammond is not happy in the morning and doesn’t know what to do with SG-1. He orders the devices removed, but they can’t do it. Anise conveniently gets new information from merge Tok’ra: Apophis is building an extremely powerful new mothership, and these superpowers are the perfect way to stop him. Hammond can’t send SG-1 while compromised. Teal’c offers to go on his own, but Hammond says he’ll be killed the moment goes out of the Stargate. This episode never mentions why another team can’t go, even later on.
Of course, SG-1 defy orders again and head through the Stargate, using their Flash-style superspeed to take out the Jaffa guarding it and head into the ship. Daniel splits up to get a vast amount of refined naquadah, while back at the base Dr Fraiser has found another problem – S-G1 have antibodies in their blood and could reject the devices at any moment. Jack and Sam set up the explosives on a timer. Daniel starts to struggle carrying and his band falls off.
Teal’c shows up and Jack orders him to take Daniel while he and Carter fend of Jaffa. A forcefield appears and traps them in. They try running though at superspeed (matching the frequency) and Jack makes it though but Carter doesn’t, with her band falling off and Jack’s following suit as he frustratingly tried to get back to Carter. As the explosives go off, the forcefields go down, letting them all escape.
Back at SG-1, Jack says they’re ready for a court martial, but Hammond says that being under the influence of an alien device suggests they didn’t have control of their actions. The main cast acting non-chalant about their superpowers makes this episode entertaining, but the manipulation form Anise is not a good introduction for her character, which is really not a good first impression.
