If I was Colonel Lionel Pendergast, I wouldn’t let SG-1 on my ship. I wouldn’t want anything to do with them. Here is SG-1’s history with this ship:

• Prometheus 611: While providing a tour of the unfinished ship, it gets stolen.
• Unatural selection 612: SG-1 fly to a planet to activate a time dilation device to stop replicators. No damage.
• Memento 620: First proper flight, the reactor breaks and is jettisoned, explodes and damages the ship. Lands on P3X-744 until the ship can be fixed.
• Grace 713: The ship slowly jumps back to earth. The crew is beamed aboard an alien ship. Damaged.
• Endgame 810: Retrieve stargate from the Trust. No damage.
• Prometheus Unbound 812: Stolen by Vala.
• Full Alert 814: Destroyed cloaked al’kesh. Damaged.
• Avalon 901: Found Avalon. No damage.
• Beachhead 906: Damaged by small Ori ships.
• Ripple Effect 913: Short trip to wormhole and back. No damage.

When SG-1 go onboard Prometheus, there’s a 50% chance it will be damaged or stolen. So I ask you. If SG-1 wanted to use your space ship to destroy a weapons satellite, what would you do?

Jarrod Kane from the Rand protectorate comes to the SGC asking for SG-1’s help in restoring the balance of power to his planet by blowing up the Rand Protectorate’s military satellite. SG-1, the trusting souls that they are, agree and fly the Prometheus to Kane’s planet and check the situation out. SG-1 hesitates in attacking the satellite as they’d planned to do and the Prometheus is destroyed. That was my favourite effect of the season. The Prometheus’s shields hold for a moment before the beam pierces through the ship. I felt shocked that they would destroy the Prometheus but at the same time relieved that it was put out of its suffering. It spent much of its life limping around the galaxy injured and had a quick death. I just wish it wasn’t such a waste.

Someone is going to be unhappy about the loss of the Prometheus. It’s sure to come up in budgetory meetings in the future. It’s not SG-1’s fault though. They didn’t blindly follow the instructions of the alien visitor as they have done in the past. There was a reasonable attempt by Daniel to negotiate with the Rand Protectorate first. The Rand Protectorate do not have advanced equipment and could hardly be expected to be able to build a weapon capable of destroying Asgard shields. It sets a worrying idea about the capabilities of the Ori if they can build a satellite like that with Rand’s technology level. I hope SG-1 can use the satellite plans to build new stuff and salvage some good from this mission.

This episode follows on from an episode of last season which has become a habit of SG-1. While this could be viewed as a cheap plot recycling device, I find it a fascinating thing to do. With a one hour show SG-1 wraps up the issues with a happy ending; when they come back to the planet, the main problems and background are already established and SG-1 can tackle the original complex issues and the problems their solution caused. I love seeing how SG-1’s influence has changed the place they visit the depth it adds to the Stargate universe. The revisiting is selective; there’s no point going back to a boring place.

The hesitation on the ship in attacking the satellite is a sign of Mitchell’s lack of leadership. He’s moved past fanboy but does not lead and tell SG-1 what to do. This is a problem in these situations. Other times SG-1 is fine running as a committee but not when there’s time pressure. It was odd as they’d already agreed on the plan when they left Earth, so dropping out of hyperspace was not the best time to reconsider. At times like these I miss Jack O’Neill.

680

This entry was posted by the illustrious Andy Cocker on Monday, February 20th, 2006. It concerns such pressing issues as Stargate SG-1, tv. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.