Pre-show comment:

OK, so there are only so many titles in the world. All we can hope is that this episode will be a lot more interesting than its Star Trek: The Next Generation cousin!

I believe it can only be called a Shade when you add Black, if you add White it is a Tint. (Well, at least the writer didn't call it, A Whiter Shade of Pale.)

Loved the Seinfeld reference.

Seinfeld reference? I don't remember that one.

They obviously resolved a storyline here from all the back in the day of "Touchstone".

It was interesting to see how the one lady on the mercenary team had been passed up for an SGC position which went to Carter. Reminded me of Carter in "Children of the Gods" mentioning how she had been supposed to go on the original mission to Abydos.

Lee,
The Seinfeld reference is an allusion the the Newman character and Jerry's "Hello Newman!" catch phrase.

I saw this one today. And thought it was great episode.

My only major problem with it was the time frame. Apparently from Daniels comment Jack steals the technology and is "retired out" and back at home in a day or so. Something about that seems wrong. Then for the rest of the episode to just take place over a week, makes it all seem unlikely in my book.

I think something like that would have taken place over at least a month.

One has to wonder if there are more 'teams' offworld working without the SGC's knowledge. The episode made it seem reference that Jack would be leading one of the rogue 'teams', when everyone seems happy enough when they get this group.

This is similiar to the TOS episode
THE ENTERPRISE INCIDENT in that both episodes
deal with a covert mission that only the
top two commanding officers are in on.

Unlike THE ENTERPRISE INCIDENT though this has
to deal with a sting operation to uncover a
mole that has been planted by a renegade fraction
within the organization itself.

I have to admit that for awhile I thought that
Tea'lc might have been in on the know as the
way he appeared to look at O'Neil made it seem
like he knew something was up.Of course that
is just the way Tea'lc always looks so you
can never really tell!

Actually I had a feeling something was up early
on as O'Neil was acting totally out of character.

Too bad we never got to see Mayborne's face
when he found out his little scheme backfired!

Great O'Neil line:"My job,which is arresting you!"
to Makepeace after he puts the cuffs on him.

Another Great O'Neil line"Those guys love me!"
about the Asgard.

It's clear that Hammond and O'Neil suspected
Makepeace was the mole since he was the one
Hammond chose to replace O'Neil,but the fact
that they were uncertain is shown by the fact
that O'Neil was more than a bit nervous when
Carter and Tea'lc both walked passed the
DHD.

Just a General Rumination of sorts... I think they went a little too black/white on the question of whether they need weapons or knowledge. Really, is the ONLY reason SGC exists to find things to toss at the Goa'uld? I mean, if they found the specs to a perpetual motion machine would they think "hey, we can use this as a weapon" and classify it, or would they maybe think "hey, we can generate some energy to send to poor California where every volt counts" and 'invent' it?

This was a really great episode. Everytime my husband & I thought we had it figured out, there was a new twist. One of my favorites!

The plot of this was also similar to the one used throughout the second season of Star Trek: Voyager, with Tom's disruptive behavior and leaving the crew (with it all being a plot to weed out a traitor to the Kazon).

There's a word for writing like this... hamfisted.
Jack's temper was too much to be believed. Also the whole plan depended on Makepeace believing that Jack would want to be on a rogue Stargate team. If Makepeace had been smart he never would have approached Jack.

Adora seems to have regenerated quickly. In the 100 days that passed since the meteor strike the ground remained rocky & plantless, but here Jack shows up & there are plants.

The Tollan justice lady says, “You were there, Dr Jackson, as were you, Major, and Teal’c.” Interesting turn of phrase, as neither Jack nor Teal’c are present when she says it: not mentioning Jack was odd (until later in the plot, of course, but at that time we’re not supposed to know what’s going on).

Nice touch: Hammond calling the Colonel “Jack” all through their most traumatic conversation.

Let’s see that huge show of hands from all those who sussed that this was a plot to smoke out Melbourne’s spy as soon as Harry turned up on Jack’s doorstep.

Would Jack – by now a civilian – be allowed to interrupt a meeting between Hammond and Makepeace? For that matter, who let him in in the first place? Do they normally allow civilians onto the base?

I did not appreciate the immediate segue between Earth and Edora – if that’s how quick it happens, what’s this ‘travel’ sequence we so often see?

Are Maybourne and his team really so arrogant that they would trust Jack to go on a mission alone so soon after being recruited? No wonder Harry fails so often.

When SG-1 dial home, they dial Triangulum as the Point of Origin (seventh) symbol. Not possible. As far as I’m concerned, the Point of Origin symbol (that’s Winnie to you and me, Keith!) cannot be a sign for a constellation.

No wonder Jack always gets someone else to dial home – he really hasn’t got the hang of it. He only dials six symbols! Then again, the Gate still obligingly opens for him.

As the Asgard attack the base, Jack stands at the Gate and says, “I’ll be holding the door open.” How, precisely? Those Gates seem to close when they choose!

So how’s Harry going to get out of this one? Surely he was arrested off-screen?

It seemed that he was holding the gate open by keeping his hand in the wormhole. I thought that was very dangerous before?

Just saw the episode on tv last Friday.

He certainly ought to know better - doesn't he remember part of Kawalski's head being cut off when it was still inside the event horizon at the end of The Enemy Within? As far as I know, there is no way to hold a wormhole open.

Watching later episodes makes the issue of Jack ‘holding the door open’ by keeping his hand in the wormhole even more nitpickable. Wormholes travel one way – you can’t put anything in the wrong way. In a season 4 episode a MALP is sent through to a Gate which is lying on its back – the MALP emerges very briefly through the Gate, then falls back in and is immediately destroyed.

So how did Jack get his hand into the wrong end of a wormhole? The only way he could have done it would be to go into the off-world Gate with one arm stuck out behind him and then stop just at the right moment in SGC’s Gateroom so that his arm didn’t emerge from the wormhole. I’d need to actually watch the episode again but I don’t recall him stepping into the off-world Gate with an arm stretched out behind him.

In a season 4 episode a MALP is sent through to a Gate which is lying on its back – the MALP emerges very briefly through the Gate, then falls back in and is immediately destroyed.


That's AHundred Days, the ep immediately before this one.

Callie, I wondered the same thing about Jack and his arm. It looked like he walked through the gate normally.

Have we seen the rogue NID planet before? The structures looked familiar.

At the end, Teal'c has a great scene with no words.

Jack is trying to make up with Daniel, pointing out that he had to lie about stuff, and Daniel makes his "We drew straws. I lost" comment. Everyone walks away, but Teal'c pauses just before he leaves Jack, as if he is going to say something, and then just walks away, with his patented "Teal'c Look" on his face.

Nomination for Great Line, by the way:

Daniel: "We drew straws. I lost."

Without a GDO, how did O'Neill avoid being splatted on the iris at the end of the episode?

Careful coordination, most likely. The Asgard probably informed the SGC of the time they planned to attack the outlaw base.

Well, possibly. But the Asgard had to wait until O'Neill dialled back to the NID off-world base before they attacked it.

Which reminds me of another nit: The Asgard that beamed down to the DHD after O'Neill went through the gate had a look at the symbols on the DHD to see which planet he had gone to. But just knowing the symbols that were dialled on the DHD isn't enough. You have to dial them in the right order, and the Asgard fella (Was it Thor? All the Asgard look alike to me.) had no way of knowing in which order O'Neill had dialled the symbols.

Why is the right order of the symbols important? I think in the movie the principle of how the stargate works is described: 6 points - connected by three lines - define one point in 3D-space, and the 7th is the POO - to get the vector. I don't know enough about 3D-geometry, but are there that many possibilites that the order of the chevrons matters, or that the DHD can't figure them out on its? (Esp. since the result has to be a planet or goauld ship: if the three lines cross in empty space, its the wrong combination.)

Well, as Callie has pointed out elsewhere, you only need two lines to determine a point, so that movie explanation is suspect.

In any case, the DHD has to know which constellations to connect, but let's suppose it computes all the permutations. In this case there are 6 possible choices for the first chevron, 5 for the next, 4 for the third, 3 for the fourth, 2 for the fifth, and 1 for the last. Hence there are

6! = 720

possible combinations if the DHD is given six symbols in any order and needs to find the "right" order. It certainly doesn't dial them all to see if they connect (or we'd notice the gate moving), but if it had a table of valid addresses built in, then it could do a look-up and dial the address in the "correct" order

Well, I didn't actually answer your question -- the gate or DHD needs to know which constellations to connect, so that is why the order is important. Let's say that given the symbols P₁P₂P₃P₄P₅P₆, the gate interprets that as connect P₁ & P₂, P₃ & P₄, P₅ & P₆. Then the question is "is it possible to arrange the six P_i's in a manner such that within all the distinct connection possibilities, there exist two valid gate addresses?" Where a valid gate address is given by the three lines intersecting at one point.

In this case there are fewer than 720 distinct addresses since clearly P₁P₂P₃P₄P₅P₆ is equivalent to P₂P₁P₃P₄P₅P₆. For this set up, there are

(6 C 2)(4 C 2)(2 C 2) = 90

distinct possible addresses, where n C r = n!/((n-r)! r!) which represents the number of ways of choosing r values from n values when order doesn't matter.

And, given the number of constraints that are imposed by the valid gate address, it is possible to construct at least two valid gate addresses (that is, two points in space - it is not known whether or not these two spots have planets, but it is possible they could) when reordering the symbols. An example is here

The address P₁P₂P₃P₄P₅P₆ gives you P₀
P₁P₂P₃P₆P₄P₅ gives you P₀'

While O'Neill has his arm in the event horizon to "hold the door open", he was lucky that none of the NID guys came through the gate at the spot where he was standing. If someone coming through the gate had been reintegrated on top of O'Neill, things could have got a bit messy.

Simon,
I'm guessing that the stargates, being the rather intelligent devices that they are, can alter the objects out of the way of something that's standing right in front of/within the event horizon, as long as the entire event horizon isn't blocked by some sort of physical shield. We've seen several times where folks walk into the gate one right after the other, and we know that people like to loiter for a moment once on the other side. (See "Rising", among others)

The Stargate on the secret off-world base seemed awfully close to the work area where everyonen was standing. Wouldn't they have run the risk of getting incinerated by the wake of the wormhole each time the gate opens?

I thought at first that O'Neill's behavior was very unrealistic and out of character, then I remembered that he had just spent an extended period of time living on an alien world and had grown quite attached to the place, and may have gotten a little tired of the whole SG-1 thing. In fact, I think it would've been incredibly unrealistic if O'Neill had just been acting perfectly normal as if nothing had happened in the next episode. I was worried that they would've just totally forgotten about this and made no mention of it, then O'Neill asked General Hammond to go back to that planet so he could retire there. Of course, he ended up not doing that, and his behavior ended up having nothing to do with that, but it was still a nice touch that they mentioned it.

Simon: "Without a GDO, how did O'Neill avoid being splatted on the iris at the end of the episode?"

Some possible explanations:

* Although Hammond says that O'Neill won't get a GDO, he may have got one secretely

* O'Neill may have "stolen" a GDO or used a GDO stolen by the Makepeace group.

* As the Asgard action looks pretty coordinated with O'Neill's action, the Asgard may have sent a GDO signal through the wormhole. (The Asgard attack doesn't look like if they want to *destroy* the secret base - they just wanted the bad guys to move back to earth)

NANJAO Daniel's request for Tollan technology at the beginning was of course part of the deception (unbeknownst to him, obviously) and never meant to go anywhere. However, it occured to me that a better request could be made, one that the Tollans could in fact agree to. Ask them to set up orbital weapon platforms around Earth, platforms that they would man, maintain and operate themselves, with no involvement by Earth at all. Earth would simply pay for the service, it would be protected and the Tollan technology would remain safely out of their hands.

I can't imagine the Tollans being interested in helping. IIRC they're a smug bunch who think that other 'lesser' humans shouldn't be allowed anywhere near their tech, and I don't think they'd want to go to so much effort of running Earth's defences for them. Probably they wouldn't need the money - or other services - either.

I find it hard to believe any Earth government would trust orbital weapons platforms manned & operated by aliens.

I can't imagine the Tollans being interested in helping.

SG1 had just thwarted a Goaul'd attack that would have meant their extinction. And they were sincerely grateful about that, so they would have welcomed an opportunity to help defend the earth against those same Goaul'd.

IIRC they're a smug bunch who think that other 'lesser' humans shouldn't be allowed anywhere near their tech

Well, smugness might have something to do with it, but they did share such technology with less advanced humans before, with catastrophic results for both sides. Understandably, they are not eager to repeat that mistake.

Probably they wouldn't need the money - or other services - either.

Earth has a lot to offer, resources, culture, exotic foods, great vacation spots, etc,. I'm sure a satisfactory deal could be worked out.

I find it hard to believe any Earth government would trust orbital weapons platforms manned & operated by aliens.

Yes, that could be a deal breaker. However, when you think about it, if the Tollan ever did decide to attack Earth, having weapon systems already on site or not would make very little difference.