Stargate SG-1 Minicaps / Season 3, Eps. 21-22 and Season Three Highlights

The Stargate SG-1 Season Two Minicaps only used that extra Gate once, and it was for business purposes only.

The Stargate SG-1 Season Three Minicaps likes to be notified in advance of a being beamed up to an alien ship. You know, to be polite and all.

Stewart here…

A lot has happened for the members of SG-1 this season. Daniel’s wife died, Skaara was saved, and their enemy Apophis came back from the dead, seemingly stronger than before. As bad as the Goa’uld System Lords have been, there still is one significant threat looming on the horizon, one the Asgard have apparently been occupied with, and one that will end up at SG-1’s front door…

“Crystal Skull”

A planet’s ancient alien pyramid contains a crystal skull not unlike one Daniel’s grandfather, Nick, discovered many years ago. When Daniel stares into this skull, he vanishes, and the team asks the help of the still alive Nick to find out what’s happened. If only the team knew Daniel was alive, but almost ghostlike, and that only Nick can see him! Considering the episode after this, this is a nice Daniel-centric episode.

“Don’t wander too far off into the green screen background!”

–Quetlzelcoatl is a Mayan connection, and also, the basis of the great b-movie classic, Q, The Winged Serpent.

–Wow, the blue screen set for that pyramid. Well, at least that type of work has improved over the years.

–Poor Dr. Rothman. Even the lieutenant assigned to him thinks he’s screwed in figuring out what the skull does.

–Wonderful pratfall with a weak O’Neill flopping off his hospital bed, Teal’c calmly watching this happen.

–“Hey, if you’d been listening, you’d know that Nintendos pass through everything.”

“Nemesis”

As the team is starting to enjoy a brief vacation, O’Neill is beamed onto Thor’s ship. There he runs into those enemies the Asgard have been busy fighting, the miniature robot spiders called Replicators, who have occupied the ship and injured Thor. Once the rest of SG-1(well, almost all of them) come to help, they have to keep the Asgard ship from landing on Earth. Their solution: burn it up in the atmosphere!

As season finales go, this is a definite step up from last season’s cliffhanger. We get the introduction of one of SG-1’s most persistent baddies, along with some fun twists. And by the end of it, the team’s fate is unknown after crashing the ship, but despite their efforts, one of the Replicators makes it to Earth!

–So Daniel’s limited appearance in this episode came from an 11th hour real life issue actor Michael Shanks had regarding the same thing that happens to Daniel here: surgery to remove his appendix. While the actor clearly was better in the break between this and next season, that was a plot point that had to be carried over for Daniel into the season four premiere.

–So our Stargate gets beamed over to the Asgard ship to help SG-1 escape and that extra one is getting taken out of mothballs to replace it. That’s a pretty big plot development in seemingly losing the OG Stargate in that crashing Asgard ship.

–Boy, Thor must have had a lot of time to record tutorial videos for O’Neill in-between lingering near death and trying to contain a Replicator infested ship.

–The “one small step for Jaffa” line. Sigh.

–“You know, maybe it’s just me, but I always thought that when one got some leave, one actually *left*.”

And that’s it for the season three minicaps of Stargate SG-1, but before we leave, here’s some highlights of the season:

–BEST EPISODES: “Nemesis”, “A Hundred Days”, “The Devil You Know”, “Forever In A Day”

–WORST EPISODES: “Demons”

–THINGS WE LEARNED THIS SEASON: There’s always a bigger, stronger thing than you waiting in the wings, space angels or robot spiders; don’t steal from an advanced civilization; and burn your enemy’s body, just to avoid them coming back from the dead.

–SAMANTHA CARTER BOYFRIEND COUNTER: Zero, excluding her Tok’ra crush from season two coming back in the two-parter this season.

–TEAL’C’S ‘INDEED’ COUNTER: We’re up from zero from last season to two this season. That’s like a 200% increase over seasons!

–PREDICTIONS FOR SEASON FOUR: More metal spiders! Ok, maybe not, but yes.

–SEASON THREE ANALYSIS: For a season that closes up a lot of threads since its beginning, the third season of Stargate SG-1 also opens up its universe in some surprising ways. There’s the return of Apophis as maybe a bigger bad than he was before, meeting the System Lords, the first appearance of the Replicators, and the concept of Ascension (all of which factor into the upcoming seasons in their own way). The fact as I write this post up that I struggle to pick a bad episode in this season is a warm surprise (and the one I picked as “bad” is better than the worst episodes of the last two seasons). And certainly the spectacle of the show has improved, the mid-season two parter on the prison planet and the thrilling season finale are some of SG-1’s most action-packed episodes to date.

Season four brings a few changes (not of which is Carter’s haircut and Teal’c’s chin hair), along with the rising threats of Apophis and the Replicators looming over things. And that’s going to be interesting to watch boil over…

NEXT TIME: We start Season Four of the Stargate SG-1 Minicaps as SG-1 arrive back in time to fight a Replicator invasion on a Russian sub in “Small Victories”, an exchange of resources puts the team in a difficult position in “The Other Side”, the team learns the ups and downs of enhancing alien tech in “Upgrades”, and a daring plan to cripple the Goa’uld gets jeopardized in “Crossroads”.