Once again, we begin in a very Egyptian setting, except this time there’s some sort of Roman or Greek statue there. (What…?) SG-1 steps out of the ‘Gate into a temple of sorts, once again just the four of them. They encounter a man, Alekos, and a pregnant – very pregnant - woman in purple. She’s going into labour.
Oh, and the midwife? She’s gone.
Jackson, being the heroic know-it-all he is, tries to help the woman through her labour best he can. The procedure is a success, and “it’s a boy!”
This place is definitely more Greek than Egyptian, now that I think about it. They name the child Dan-el, after Jackson (ha, ha, remind anyone of Friday’s Child?) and we find out that these people are called the “Chosen”.
The crew is invited back to the village and will stay there as thanks for their help. They observe that “no one looks over the age of forty”. O’Neill echoes my feelings when he muses that something feels a little “off”. It just seems too perfect. Everyone seems very happy; almost too happy.
Teal’c hypothesizes that perhaps a “good Goa’ulc” brought these people to this rather perfect, work-free world, since they are not doing the slave labour of most other races. O’Neill scoffs at the idea, and I can’t quite tell, but Teal’c almost looks… offended. I suppose it’s possible. Surely he knew one or two Goa’ulc who weren’t obsessed with conquest and were more like the Preservers than the Founders (that’s a ‘Trek reference).
O’Neill is taken away and a beautiful woman dances for him. He is transfixed by her presence and does not protest when she comes near and takes him away. The culture seems obsessed with beauty, celebration, and happiness, much like the aspects of Dionysus. Perhaps there’s a connection.
O’Neill wakes up next to the dancer and she’s out cold. Everyone in the hut is. O’Neill figures out that he was drugged through the cake he was offered earlier.
Okay, maybe this place isn’t quite so perfect.
Teal’c and Jackson go back to the temple with the Stargate and learn of the god Pelops, “the giver of days”. Per usual, the Chosen expect his return. They find out that the writing beneath the Pelops statue is in Goa’uld, according to Teal’c. Part of me thinks he knows more than he’s letting on, between not telling them about this right away and his comment earlier.
Underneath the statue is a hidden panel, which Teal’c finds out the combination to, and Teal’c tries to figure out what the stone there says. Apparently it’s a very ancient dialect.
Dan-el is now the size of a three-year-old, even after just one day. I’m thinking the “one-hundred days” they referred to is the lifespan. And that’s right – the life span was shortened to 1/250th of the normal human life span. Jackson thinks it was perhaps a virus of sorts. And now they’re worried about Jack, since he passed out with all the Chosen the night before. He passes out for the night and orders the crew back to Earth to figure out just what’s going on.
They go to Earth, discover something in the blood, and return with news that it isn’t a virus, and that they’re basically nowhere. Since it’s compensating for his actual age, he has maybe two weeks to live. He orders them back to Earth – again – and a search for the cure ensues.
The organisms in the blood turn out to be nanotechnology; not biological.
Back on the planet, O’Neill talks to the woman he slept with and is being rather cynical about it all. He tries to disillusion her about her god, Pelops, insisting that they were merely used for an experiement, not loved.
Days, perhaps, pass, and O’Neill is looking quite old. Alekos is visibly upset at hearing that a man – O’Neill – has lived for thousands of days, instead of merely one hundred. He starts to dream of living longer and traveling further, outside of their borders given by Pelops.
He speaks with the woman, Kynthia, who tries to get him to understand that they merely live day by day and cherish every moment, since each is so precious.
Hammond orders the experiments to stop, since the nanobots replicate so rapidly and so dangerously. The crew protests, but to no avail. They will have to leave him there. They say their goodbyes via a recording and send it to O’Neill.
He’s noticeably upset and people start to protest Pelops. They topple his statue and it shatters. Convinced of their freedom, they start to explore it more freely. Kynthia and O’Neill become closer despite his rapid aging, and she seems to love him all the same. But then they notice something. Outside of the village, they do not faint at night, and so it’s a possibility that by merely leaving the village (which was prohibited under Pelops), they defeat the sickness.
O’Neill finds a device underneath a broken part of the statue. He orders the crew back to the planet, and they return in haz-mat suits. They discover the sleeping-waking cycle is, in fact, part of a sequence, and with the statue broken, they return to a normal aging process. O’Neill, too, will be back to normal in a couple of weeks. He and Kynthia share one last moment together before he leaves.
Final thoughts… I like this episode because it feels a little more universal. Yes, we still have the ongoing controversy of the Goa’uld taking advantage of all these people and making themselves out to be gods, but there’s also a lot about time and using the time we have to the best advantage possible. These people really learned to live in the moment and not get wrapped up in things that are largely meaningless. It’s very much like Rush’s “Hemispheres”; the whole fight between Dionysus and Apollo; the heart and the mind. While SG-1 was the mind, the Chosen were the heart.
The relationship of sorts between Kynthia and O’Neill is very sweet. She kind of brings this whole concept of really living to him. He’s always come off to me as a bit of a workaholic so perhaps she’ll inspire him to just slow down and enjoy the world as it is. This is a lesson anyone in the modern, crazy, Western society can appreciate and live by. We may have more than a hundred days to live, but perhaps the old adage is true, and we should live today as if we were to die tomorrow.
PREDICTION FOR NEXT EPISODE:
(Based on basic one-line summary for "Cold Lazarus"...) Colonel O'Neill "finds a mysterious crystal" and is screwed. Again.
O'Neill: Damnit, why do I always have to be the fall guy?
Carter: 'Cause you're the hero.
Jackson: 'Cause you need us to always save you.
Teal'c: Because you are eternally "screwed".
O'Neill: Okay, who let Teal'c watch cable TV again? Come on, you guys.
No comments:
Post a Comment