Sirrush's people must have originally come from the Babylonian part of the Earth, since a Sirrush is considered to be a type of Babylonian dragon.

Talk about slipping someone the tongue. Eeeeeew.

The head Tok'Ra said to remove the traitor from the new host. I thought doing that would kill the host?

Okay, Daniel, Jack & Teal'c get to the gate, Daniel quickly dials in, then as soon as he's done he runs for the gate. However, shouldn't there have been that little burp thing the gate always does when it opens? The burp that kills anyone who gets in its way. Also, I didn't see anyone activate the signal to tell SG Command to open the iris.

Sam, M'Tooth (?) & Sam's dad get to the gate & see that the Goa'uld are starting to dial in. So Sam quickly dials Earth's gate. Excuse me? Didn't previous episodes, like There But For The Grace Of God, indicate that you couldn't do that?

It's a pity we didn't see the head Tok'Ra's reaction to their 'home-built' DHD.

My nephew, Jon, wondered why the 3 Tok'Ra walked up the ramp to the gate when they had to quickly get to the rest of the Tok'Ra, before they could start tunneling, and move them to a new world?

In the teaser SG-1 asks the Tok'Ra if there could be an alliance between them. Problem is the Tok'Ra already said no in part 1.

Also the head Tok'Ra says that allying could make Earth a target for the Goa'uld & Teal'c says that they are already a target, that the Goa'uld have already launched two ships against Earth. Again, information that was given in part 1.

Cordesh jumped from his host to a new host to evade capture, but what about the new host's symbiote? A great sticking point in the story is that there is no one to serve as the new host for Sirrush's symbiote, so every non-SG person at the Tok'Ra base must be carrying a symbiote already.

When Mr. Carter asks what to do to accept the symbiote, Sirrush says to kiss her. The kiss was not a universal sign of affection on Earth when Sirrush's people were taken. Considering that the last of Earth's people would have been taken off of Earth before the Stargate was sealed several thousand years ago, I'm not even sure if Humans even kissed back then.

When the rings faded away after bringing M'teef & the Carters to the surface, I wondered if that was a self-destruct system?

It's explained that the Goa'uld's don't enter through the mouth of the involuntary hosts because they don't want to have the memory of the terror on their new body's face. So why not cover up the new host's face? Or cover the eyes of the old host? The Jaffa can guide the heads of the two hosts together.

Maybe it was Jake’s stubborn pride, but when he tottered into the Gateroom supported by Jack and Sam, I was yelling, “Get this man a wheelchair!” Surely they could have wheeled or stretchered him that far?

Why wasn’t Jake advised to exhale, like Hammond was on his first trip through the Gate?

There was a huge amount of cabbageism in this episode – in fact it’s a miracle that they got the transfer done in time because poor Jake had so many questions that he didn’t already know the answer to. It actually got to the point where I wanted to shake Sam by the shoulders and yell, “Didn’t you tell him anything before you got here?!!”

Selmak tells Jake, “We’ll be spending the rest of our lives together.” Umm, no, Selmak, you’ll be spending the rest of Jake’s life together but once he’s too old and frail for you, you’ll clear off and leave him to die alone!

It’s a good job Jake instinctively understood that Selmak wanted a really wide mouthed kiss from him. If I’d just been ordered to kiss a complete stranger, I’d have been very tentatively puckering up, not going in with my jaws gaping!

NANJAO: Selmak must have been incredibly ill – or incredibly old – if the symbiont couldn’t help her but could cure Jake’s cancer and arthritis in such a short time.

Daniel said it might be possible for humankind to provide more hosts for the Tok’Ra. He might want to ask a few people from the SGC programme about that before making such a rash offer. If he, Jack and Sam cringe at the thought of acting as hosts, there’s not likely to be a queue of eager volunteers. I would also imagine that the ‘opportunity’ could only be offered to people within the SGC programme, so there can’t be very many available people.

If Kordesh (or his host – I lose track of who’s called what!) somehow survived the extraction of the symbiont, why didn’t he say so when he was challenged? OK, so he might have been chewed up by the memory of what he’d done (even though it was under duress) but he ought to have realised that committing suicide would leave the Tok’Ra believing that their spy was gone.

Waiting back at SGC for Sam, Jake and Martouf to dial in, one of the technicians, clearly very proud of her BIMOL, says, “Still no SG-1 signal.” Sorry, dear, but there wouldn’t be at this point – the wormhole hasn’t been activated yet!

Was it ever established which of the System Lords sent the attack?

I hadn’t noticed the melt-away of the transporter rings when I first watched this episode. Nice touch.

What would have happened if it had been the Goa’uld who’d got the dialling routine finished first? (For that matter, why hadn’t they finished first? They must have taken ages in between each symbol for Sam to beat them to it.) If the wormhole had been an incoming one rather than outgoing, what would have happened to Sam and co when they tried to run through the Gate? Would they have just bounced off the edge of the wormhole, or what?

Garshaw tells General Hammond that she wants to dial in the coordinates of the Tok’Ra's new planet herself. Either SGC has an IFOS, or she’s an incredibly quick learner, or someone called up a picture of the Gate and she pointed to the six symbols she wanted. If the last of these, she wasn’t dialling herself, but why did she need to input the symbols herself? They’re going to move again as soon as they get there, so the current location doesn’t need to be kept secret. And unless she’s clever enough to reprogramme the computer in a few seconds, even if she did input the symbols herself and got everyone to turn away while she did it, the computer will have the record of those symbols.

What's most amazing about out-dialling the incoming Goa'uld is that it happened. When I dial a phone number, the phone doesn't ring until after I dial the last digit. So either the gate was opening before the dial-in was completed, or the address had been dialed and the gate was 'ringing'. (Ever try dialling a phone while it's ringing?)

Another entry for Callie's favorite board. ;-)

Maybe Sirrush had a disease, or condition, that Selmak can't cure, or maybe, without sarcophagi, the hosts build up an 'immunity' to the symbiont's abilities to cure them?

At the end of the episode Daniel gives Garshaw a box to throw through the Stargate if the Tok'Ra want to get in contact with Earth. But how will this box send a remote signal through to SGC? Yet if it doesn't, the iris will be closed against the opening wormhole and the box will be vapourised.

This is covered in a later episode, it's not a spoiler so I'll spill the beans. The box leaves a radioactive signature which the SGC can detect.

Rewatch Thor's Hammer, Callie. At the beginning of that episode they mention checking a radioactive trace that matched the isotope that was in the box they left on Cimmera. Same deal.

But, but ... surely they couldn't detect the radioactive trace until after the box had entered the matter stream? And by the time they realised, "Oh, that's one of our boxes, quick, open the iris," wouldn't it be too late? Cos I thought travel through the wormhole was pretty much instantaneous - or at least very very quick!

Yeah, alright, so it doesn't matter if the box gets splatted against the iris as long as SGC have recognised the signature, work out which planet it's come from, and send a probe through. But if the purpose of the box is simply to be detected and then instantly vapourised, why's it look so pretty? I can't remember who built the original boxes (was it NASA?) but surely SGC must have got some more built especially for them. If it's just a very functional and short-lived box, why put all the pretty pictures on it?

Probably so the aliens don't forget which box it is. ("No, the gaudy box with all those ugly pictures, that blue box contains my trophies.")

As far as I can tell the point of the boxes is to go splat against the iris to get SGC's attention, then SGC runs a radiation sweep to see if there is a matching sig to one of the boxes they gave away. Apparently each box has a different radioactive trace so they know whose box it is.

Or maybe the SGC didn't want their stuff to be referred to as that ugly human junk after looking at the more artistic Gouald stuff.

Keith said:
[When Mr. Carter asks what to do to accept the symbiote, Sirrush says to kiss her. The kiss was not a universal sign of affection on Earth when Sirrush's people were taken. Considering that the last of Earth's people would have been taken off of Earth before the Stargate was sealed several thousand years ago, I'm not even sure if Humans even kissed back then. ]

My take: First of all, it *could* be completely coincidental that her name is also a Babylonian word. Plenty of similar words crop up in completely unrelated languages.
Secondly, while I don't know enough about that time-period to comment on whether they kissed or not (I know some cultures did and some didn't, it going in and out of fashion over the millenia [g]) it's safe to say she *isn't* one of the original Babylonians. The Tok'ra can only maintain hosts for a few hundred years at most, if I remember correctly. So even if she is a descendant of Babylonian people, over those thousands of years those people will have interacted with plenty of other cultures where it -was- a custom. Enough to be familiar with the concept, even if they didn't adopt it themselves. Taking the extreme view, *if* her folk are from Babylon, *if* that culture didn't kiss at all and *if* the descendants of the Babylonians taken never interacted with other cultures (because they didn't know how to use the Stargate, perhaps)... Sirrush herself, as an individual, obviously met at least one-off-worlder somehow - the symbiont's last host. If Sirrush has been with the Tok'ra for a hundred years, that's plenty of time for them to introduce her to the concept. She had to kiss the previous host to get the symbiont, presumeably, it looks to be the Tok'Ra SOP.

Previous Host: okay, you've agreed to host Selmak and you survived an interview with her...
Sirrush: So, what do I do now?
PH: Kiss me.
S: Huh?
PH: Lip to lip....
S: Not following you.
PH: [sigh] Like this [grabs S's head and demonstrates]

What *I* don't get is why goa'uld and Tok'ra symbionts cause a scar if they enter via the neck. These guys can cure cancer, arthritis, basically most known illnesses, but they can't fix a little cosmetic damage? Can they cure internal problems but not fix the skin for some reason? Does every little scrape and graze over how ever many hundred years scar permanently?

Update: having quizzed a friend with a knowledge of Babylon, she couldn't answer the kissing question but did show me a webpage with the following information on the Sirrush:

"...a slender body covered with scales, a long slender scaly tail, and a long slim scaly neck bearing a serpent's head ... [from the mouth] a long forked tongue protrudes. There are flaps of skin attached to the back of the head, which is adorned (and armed) with a straight horn. "

(http://www.fortunecity.com/roswell/siren/552/mushrush.htm)

Sounds vaguely goa'uld-y to me, which is nice :)

The page also goes on to say...

"the Apocrypha (a collection of stories which claim to be expurgated sections of the Bible), in the Book of Bel and the Dragon, it is recorded that King Nebuchadnezzar kept a dragon in the temple of the god Bel, which the people of Babylon worshipped. When the Hebrew prophet Daniel began to denounce the worship of idols, Nebuchadnezzar confronted him with the Bel-dragon, saying that it "liveth and eateth and drinketh; you cannot say that he is no living god; therefore worship him." Daniel responded by killing the dragon. "

Interesting (although not entirely on topic. Apologies.)

Thanks though. Ever since hearing of the Sirrush I been trying to find out more about it. (Unfortunately there's very little to find.) Although the cryptozoologist seemed to think the Sirrush was based on an African creature. Another source I read (The Bestiary by T.H. White, maybe???) thought it could be a creature living amongst the reeds in the hard to explore river regions of Babylonia.

Back on topic. Cally, in Thor's Hammer the boxes are called Sagan boxes, no doubt after Carl Sagan, and the images on the sides are probably the same as the plaques sent out on Voyager, which were intended to teach aliens about us.

'ere, Keef, how come you can complain in one of the Voyager pages about Ben spelling your name wrong, and then promptly address me by the name of that woman in Blake's 7, huh? ;)

All these babes with sound-alike names.

Cally from Blakes 7.
Callie from NitCentral.
Kali from Hindu mythology.
Qalee from Quadran VII.

It's a wonder I don't make this mistake more often.

Callie: In the 4th Season episode Seth, it is mentioned that without a sarcophagus a symbiont must change hosts every 400 years or so.

These are actually inconsistent plot points for In the Line of Duty but if I posted them there they would be spoilers. Anyway, it’s only when you’ve watched The Tok’Ra that they become nits.

The wife of the Nasyan who had hosted Jolinar was interviewed by Daniel. He asked if she’d noticed any scars or cuts on her husband recently and she remembered a cut on the side or the back of his neck (it’s not quite clear exactly where she points to). Yet during the course of The Tok’Ra episodes the Tok’Ra not only insist that they never take an unwilling host unless it’s an emergency but that they enter through the mouth, not the neck. Now I suppose it’s possible that the cut had actually been caused by something else and Daniel just assumed it was a Goa’uld entry point; it’s also possible that Jolinar had to grab a new host in a hurry and had no choice but to dive into the man through the neck because the previous host had no way of getting the new guy to pucker up!

For that matter, did the man know about Jolinar before she entered him? Did he actually agree to host her? If he did, the wound on his neck can’t have been from Jolinar transferring to him.

And why didn’t Jolinar try to get back to the Tok’Ra earlier? Why was she hiding on Nasya instead of returning to her people?

The Tok’Ra insist that they have a symbiotic relationship with their host. Jolinar may have been in dire straits and didn’t know if she could trust the humans of Earth but if she’d tried some of that symbiosis with Sam instead of keeping firm control over her and not telling her much she might have been believed a lot quicker.

Not a nit as such, more of a minor grumble: During The Tok’Ra Martouf tells Sam that Jolinar preferred to have female hosts. Throughout In the Line of Duty Jolinar is not only referred to as male by Sam but is also called ‘he’ by Teal’c who had heard of Jolinar when ‘he’ tried to overthrow one of the System Lords. It’s just rather convenient that Jolinar was in male hosts on the two occasions when our heroes encountered her, just so that we could have a surprise during The Tok’Ra!

The dvd spells Cordesh, not Kordesh.

When Sam mentions cancer, Martouf doesn't know what it is. Apparently the Tok'ra don't experience this and haven't ever met anyone with any similar disease.
Then suddenly the head tok'ra acts as if she knows what it is.

Martouf: What is cancer?
Daniel: It's a disease in humans where the cells grow out of control, you get tumours...
Garshaw: Oh yes, it's a common ailment amongst your species. We cure it all the time, it's no problem.

My question, how does she know if she hadn't had contact with Earth / the Tau'ri before?

Because the Tok'ra hosts are humans, castaways from the Tauri just like most of the humanoid species the Tauri encounter.

They know what cancer is, they just don't call it that.

NANJAO: The Tok'ra also get KREE-ed. When Jack tells them abou the traitor, the Tok'ra leader says, "Tok'ra KREE!"

Makes sense, considering they speak Goa'uld.

When Jack comes into the Tok'ra council room to tell about Cordesh having a Goa'uld communications device some Tok'ra are putting items in boxes. Look closely. They are regular computer joysticks spraypainted gold.

"The wife of the Nasyan who had hosted Jolinar was interviewed by Daniel. He asked if she’d noticed any scars or cuts on her husband recently and she remembered a cut on the side or the back of his neck (it’s not quite clear exactly where she points to). Yet during the course of The Tok’Ra episodes the Tok’Ra not only insist that they never take an unwilling host unless it’s an emergency but that they enter through the mouth, not the neck."

Didn't the body of that man get left behind on the planet? I think Daniel was just asking about what the SGC thought was a sign of Goa'uld possession.

Maybe Sirrush had a disease, or condition, that Selmak can't cure, or maybe, without sarcophagi, the hosts build up an 'immunity' to the symbiont's abilities to cure them?

In part one of this episode it was mentioned, that the symbiosis roughly doubles the lifespan of the host. So we can assume that a symbiont doesn't stop the ageing of the host, it just slows it down. And Goa'old can live some millennia in the same host because they use the sarcophagus - Tok'ra don't use it.
In part one it was also mentioned, that Sirrush is over 200 years old. So she is old, really old. She is just dying of old age - and a symbiont can't cure age.
Jakob Carter looks like if he is somewhere between 55 and 60 years old, so he could still life 30-40 more years as a human if he wouldn't have cancer. So with the Tok'ra symbiont I think he can live approx. 60-80 more years in good health.

An other possible nit:
After Sam dials home near the end of the episode, we see her entering the code into the GDO. While doing this, she seems to miss the second digit - she seems to be 1-2 cm off the keyboard.

When Jack and Sam are returning to the Tok'Ra with Jacob, we first see people putting crates in position and beaming them away with transport rings. Then, the rings activate again immediately after and beam in Jack, Sam and Jacob. The crates do not return with them, yet there was no time for people at the destination to remove the crates and let the three travelers get in position during the literal second separating the two beaming operations.

Clearly the transport rings read the script and teleported the crates high into the air. Our heroes stepped into the circle and the rings teleported them out, just in time before the crates crashed to the ground.

Or not ... ;-)